Mobilizing Adult Education

Submitted by Paul Rogers on Wed, 01/04/2017 - 15:48
  • 4067 Views
  • 12 Comments

MOBILIZING ADULT EDUCATION

The use of mobile devices in adult education is an important addition to the tools used by students and teachers alike. With a mobile device, especially a smart phone, at any time any student can access lessons on the Internet, through Google, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.

To read the whole article, please go to:

Tech Tips for Teachers-http://edtech.worlded.org/mobilizing-adult-education/

 

 

Comments

Paul, 

Thanks for sharing this post. You are correct - as educators, we need to integrate many of the online tools into our instruction. While this article from the Pew Research Center is from 2015, these numbers are only going to increase. At the time of the report, 2/3 of Americans own smart phones. 

From the report: "10% of Americans own a smartphone but do not have broadband at home, and 15% own a smartphone but say that they have a limited number of options for going online other than their cell phone. Those with relatively low income and educational attainment levels, younger adults, and non-whites are especially likely to be “smartphone-dependent.” Smartphones are widely used for navigating numerous important life activities, from researching a health condition to accessing educational resources. Lower-income and “smartphone-dependent” users are especially likely to turn to their phones for navigating job and employment resources."

I think the key element for educators to consider is that these students are still vulnerable to data usage and must be careful about how they access the Internet. I think this puts a responsibility on us as educators to make sure the resources we are integrating into instruction is meaningful, relevant, and efficient. 


Respectfully, 
Kathy Tracey
@Kathy_Tracey

Paul and Kathy, Thanks for your comments! Despite all of the advances and promises about using mobile devices, all of which I promote, still, there are issues among very rural communities, which represent a good portion of the populations served by Adult Ed programs of different types. I have to admit that although I, personally, use a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a Dell PC, an iPhone, and an iPod, I still haven't used anything but my computers for learning. Clearly, I need to to grow in this regard.

About six years ago, I created an educational series to be offered through smart phones to adult ed students. My partnering technician posted the series as .asp files. The material was very interactive and contextualized.  Result? Students didn't access the content although it was created for mobile devices. Most learners and their teachers did not have mobile divices, and if they did, they were not trained to use the materials on their android phones. The curriculum has been dormant for years since .asp files cannot be posted on Websites without some sort of transformation. I have asked and asked for help on how to get those files published online and, so far, have had no offers for help.

How can we best optimize the use of instruction delivered through mobile devices to very isolated populations that are not in touch with how to use those devices for learning? Never mind the fact that rural teachers are often the last to learn how to do that, if they do at all! Leecy

Leecy, I am running into a similar problem in that many of my "go to" resources were all designed in either proprietary or outdated technologies. Old standards like Shockwave and Flash are now not able to run on many of today's devices. This brings to mind two thoughts: How do we encourage developers to use as generic a standard as possible? How can we recreate or translate older gems into something useable today?

Right now, HTML5 seems to be a standard web language many communities are pushing to help eliminate or reduce future translation problems. This has helped somewhat, but you will still find elements of the big three (iOS, Android, Windows) that can be a bit troublesome at times. They are getting better, but all of the producers need to have some agreement. Back in the days of modems, there was a huge battle between companies as to which communication protocol was going to be used. This was so disruptive, that the Federal Communication Commission stepped in and mandated that they all work together to pick a protocol or they would be denied service access. Sure enough, the companies complied and poof one standard was developed. It is too bad that we could not see a more current standardization in terms of digital protocols that meet the specifications of existing technology. Of course that may be difficult with newer technology coming out almost daily.

To the second point of updating the old gems. For all of the older technology, and certainly for the proprietary technologies, there just is not a simple translation tool to get them up to date. I suggest they simply need to be re-engineered for today's available standards and tools. Let me share one example. 

A wonderful collection of math applets, (MISTM), was developed quite some time ago. As is the case with many collections, the resources came from all over the Internet and consist of many different technologies. One of my favorite tools in that collection was a tool called  EDC Applet: Mixing Paint (#27 under Cluster 1). This tool allowed exploration and discovery of all of the ways to measure something smaller than 1 (Fractions, Percents, Ratios, Decimals...). This applet is not currently working on many of the devices my students have, so I decided to recreate the experience in a tool I knew they had access to. I made it into an Interactive Google Sheet (basically a cloud based spreadsheet).  

This recreation was awesome in that I really had to understand what was going on and, more importantly, what I wanted the tool to do educationally. This resulted in a more powerful tool in that I was able to include a translation of any language that would be used. For example, with 6 blue paint cans and 5 white paint cans the text will say "For every 6 Blue cans there are 5 White cans." in addition to sharing the ratio of "6 : 5"  Users can simply choose how many blue cans and how many white cans from a drop down list and the tool will automatically adjust all the measures.Another wonderful feature is that I was able to allow for some global interaction. On the instructions tab, there are some exploration prompts offered to help in discovery learning and there is a link for teachers to use to submit additional questions. These questions get submitted right away and are added to the list by simply filling out a simple form that asks for only 2-3 pieces of information. Now my students can explore the world of rational numbers and their representations in a way that is so much more diverse than more traditional, sequential jaunts through each type of measure only to tie them all in together months later. 

There are many of our adults that may secretly desire to get into something cool like computer programming, but the individuals believe the field is way too complex and out of reach for "mere mortals". In fact, I suspect many of us have similar feelings when thinking about authoring digital creations. The reality is that many of the digital tools today are quite easy to use. Your thinking needs to be flexible to adapt to how the tools communicate and process information and after that one simply needs some time and desire to discover and explore. Sadly, I fear our push to survive day to day and to comply with so many fairly rigid procedures in life no not easily foster a growth of that flexible thinking needed to be a successful digital tool creator. Perhaps we may start fostering flexible thinking by turning over some of our old digital gems with a simple request, "Can you see if you can get this updated to work with ...(insert a tool that you feel might be universal today)?" Follow this request up with a number of resources that support and tutor a learner into that world of creation and see what grows. I think we all might be surprised. I know I was when I dove into the paint project shared above. 

Does anyone feel they could have a small team, or individuals that might love to tackle a digital revival of some of our oldies but goodies? I am sure the field could share tons of old tools that do a good job but are no longer available on all devices today. 

 

Ed, thanks for the suggestions and examples you shared. If I were a techie, I would volunteer to work on that team. I hope others will join you in producing that revival!

A techie in a local program here suggested that we get our own server, which could host the .asp files. I wonder if that would work. He uses Linux a lot. Loves it.

Thanks for posting your paint-cans example as OER. That way, folks can download the spreadsheet and modify it for their own purposes, hopefully sharing their expansions. I absolutely love Excel for creating that kind of interactions. I'll post some of those samples here when I dig them out.

Can students access the sheet you posted through their cell phones? What needs to happen in publishing content in order to make the material viewable on mobile devices? Leecy

Leecy, I did up the paint can project in the Google Sheets and Google Forms tools. Google has designed both of these tools to be phone and tablet friendly. There is a slight adjustment I noted when using my phone. On some phones, Google will kick the person into a sort of edit mode to allow them to change the values. This may require the user to see the results and if one is not used to the way Google does this, instruction may be necessary. In all other ways though, the distribution over all systems is good from what I have been able to test. I have found the Google tools to be the most flexible systems for hitting all devices which is why I continue to tinker and learn more about how Google works. 

For the OER aspect, I would advise that people do NOT export this sheet as an Excel especially if they wish to use the interactive form on the Instructions Tab. There will be some slight formatting issues as well. 

Instead, if people would like to play with this sheet, Simply go to File and Make Copy to have a copy of the sheet in your Google Drive. In that way you can modify all aspects of the document and you can share it easily with others when you improve upon it. I look forward to any changes others make! I know I have a few I wish to tackle if I ever get time. 

I really like the portability of Google and how easy it is to share with anyone on any OS and any device. Are people finding any other platforms or digital software that allow for easy transference? Are people finding that some Google products are not playing nicely on their device? It is impossible for most of us to have access to all of the devices people might use to interact with things so hearing your experiences is so valuable to designers and educators!

Thanks, Ed. OK. So it's time for me to start testing these resources on my own devices so I'll know first hand. That's my first baby step in the direction of meeting my New Year's resolution. In fact, I'll see if I can post the Excel interactives I have on my computer into Google. I hope others join us here with responses to your questions. Leecy

Paul, the ideas you posted in your article are wonderful and deserve a lot of attention. One of my 2017 resolutions is to become more competent using mobile devices for instruction. You've given me a good start. Thanks. Leecy

Leecy, I am glad to be of some service in helping people who live in the rural areas gain better access to adult education. The problems people in rural areas have are also the same problems the poor and under-served communities have elsewhere. So - I think that once you gain success and share it here, the process can spread. I hope!

I am going to investigate how Memory Chips work  to learn how a teacher can create lessons for use on the phone and simply make copies of these chips for the students. I hope our Tech experts can guide us here. 

I also like the idea of Drop-In centers where we can set up libraries of books, cds, dvds and mobile devices for people to borrow.

At the same time Home Visits could be incorporated, or perhaps a Learning Mobile could travel around to different areas, like a BookMobile that many libraries use.

One thing that could be helpful for everyone here in the discussion groups would be to describe what classes and courses we are talking about and our populations - i.e. whom are we serving and what are they studying. It makes a big difference if the students are young exchange students or older working adults, for example. And I think that math lessons would also be treated differently from English lessons. It would be important too to know whether the classes are Formal or Non-Formal.

I am interested in focusing on providing ESL to low-income immigrants who live in the rural areas and also in housing developments in the cities. 

Si se puede! We can do it!

Paul

 

Paul, I'm really thankful you started this thread, as I currently have an app development project on my hands which is intended to support ESL education for our low-income refugee and immigrant clients. There's been talk for years in the refugee and immigrant service community about using mobile technology to expand our reach of sound, affordable education to these populations, but naturally, we run into many challenges along the way. Many of our adult clients come to us with absolutely no previous education of any kind - they cannot read or write in their native languages, much less in English. There are classes in our area for such individuals, but the problem is that most of these clients are women who either have young children that they are culturally expected to stay home with, or elderly women who are intimidated by the idea of going to school for the first time in their lives. There's also the never ending problems of transportation and childcare logistics. If these clients could have access to some sort of app or online program from which they could learn at home, that would be great, but part of the problem is developing something that works for someone with absolute zero literacy (and sometimes zero technology literacy, if I can use such a term). That's why we have the program I run, where we train volunteer tutors to go to these clients' homes and teach them English one-to-one, but we would still like for our clients to have access to other resources so that they could study on their own in between their tutoring sessions. 

Kelsey - actually my program is specifically designed for low-income immigrants from Latin America. I am particularly concerned with providing mothers with access to ESL classes.

I also include "old school" methods and tools, such as...books, cds, dvds, etc. 

You can view my free lessons on inglesconprofepablo.com, which is a Google Wix site, and a work in progress.

My email is - paulawaynerogers@gmail.com

Paul