Susan's Response

Submitted by Susan Gaer on Fri, 03/31/2017 - 20:47
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  • 23 Comments

Think about teaching, learning, or programmatic challenges you experience (or are aware of)  as an adult education professional, and respond to these two conversation prompts:

  • Describe 1 or 2 of these challenges. Please be specific.
  • What kind of support can the LINCS platform help provide you to address these challenges?

Right now I am teaching a night class to the lowest level of ESL offered at Mt San Antonio College. One of the largest challenges that I face as an educator is the lack of internet access for students. My students come with phones but no access. Wifi is available but it is not adequate for more than 30 students to log on to a wifi hotspot and have enough bandwidth. My workaround is to train students in groups with one phone per group and have them go home and do the activity. Most of my students DO NOT have access to a computer in their home. They only have their mobile device. They do have internet access at home. I am not sure how.

 

I don't see any other challenges. I am very adept at using technology with my students and often find that they meet me or have better knowledge than I do no matter what their language level. Students want to extend their knowledge by using their phones and are eager to do it. 

Comments

Hi Susan,

I love your idea of having students work in small groups with one phone per group. Could you also use an Internet-connected smartphone or computer and a multimedia projector in the classroom, perhaps to see a screen capture or other video you have made on how they could use a smartphone to do the exercise or homework? As one of California's -- and the country's -- long-time experts in using technology in the ESL classrom, you have probably thought of that. 

Is there any way that you think the LINCS Integrating Technology community of practice could help you -- or another teacher, or adult learner, with Internet access issues -- to solve this kind of problem? Anyone else have ideas about how LINCS might help?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

Integrating Technology CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

Hi, Susan -

Thanks for raising this request.  Maybe a living document where members could self-report where they're able to access free/low-cost internet in their city/state?  Would that answer this need?

Mike Cruse

In Washington county, Maine, most of the libraries have access to hotspots to loan out to area residents. When I work with the librarians, I hear that the hotspots do not get used very much at all. The feedback they shared was quite interesting. The quality of the internet connection available through these hotspots (they are all cell tower access points) is too inferior or limited for many of the patrons. The patrons rationalize, "If I have to come to the library to get the dang thing, why wouldn't I just use the high speed internet at the library instead of this slow service I have to wrestle with at home?" 

I know many point to evidence that a lack of Internet access can severely limit opportunities, but as websites become more complex with much more bandwidth heavy overhead I think we may have to ask is just having access enough? If all of your friends are getting the newspaper delivered to their house for free and you get a free hook up that only ships you the obituaries and comics sections are you going to be pleased to have the access? The libraries I have had the pleasure to work with have been sharing that patrons would much rather bum a ride to a local library to use the great services there instead of loaning out substandard systems. I am sure it is not pleasant news to those supplying the hardware or to those service providers, but it seems to be the perception being shared by patrons. 

We are rapidly entering a reality where it will be very difficult -- both personally and professionally --  for those who do not know how to problem solve using computing devices, software, and the Internet; and for those who do not know how to troubleshoot and program the software and devices they use at home and at work. Classrooms can introduce people to the basics of this technology and the prerequisite non-technical knowledge and skills, help them overcome their years and become comfortable with using it, and give them pointers on where to go next; but a classroom cannot make using this technology second nature, which is what people need to use it efficiently and effectively. This is done by practicing it regularly and using it in real-life situations, which is difficult when you don’t have reliable access to this technology.

There are four small libraries on my rural, 70-mile-long peninsula. Each serves an area of roughly between 200 and 300 square miles, are open 5 1/2 days a week (mostly during working hours), and I am almost certain they don't have hotspots to loan out. For learners and tutors who live near one of these libraries and are free during the day and on Saturday mornings, this might be an option for gaining access to the Internet, computers, and expertise. For others, distance and time are barriers.

A year-and-a-half ago, my program obtained a EveryoneOn hotspot on a trial basis. I spent two afternoons and a tank of gas driving to all but one of our sites to see if it would work. At one site, I had dial up speed, which was minimally workable. At another site, I had a little less than that. At all the rest, nothing. We returned the hotspot. I don’t believe things would be any better if I tried again today.

We have 10 laptops that were purchased through a grant. Having them is a giant step forward, but cannot be used to their full potential because of lack of Internet service.

Most of the teaching sites are rooms donated by local churches.  One site may have Internet access. I taught in one where water dripped through the ceiling during heavy rains.  Like the libraries, they are far and few between. Tutors and learners who live near, can use them. It’s more challenging for those who live further away.

We are on our fourth executive director in two years. The longest-serving staff member has been there about a year. Board members come and go quickly as well. Because everyone is in a constant state of learning their job, the program lacks the stable leadership needed to look beyond the immediate crises and plan and implement the long-term strategy needed to address these problems.

There is much more, but I will stop.
What can Lincs do to help? Many of these issues are beyond the scope of  a lowly CBO. Addressing them really lies at the national level. Lincs members are very forthcoming about the problems they face, and provide a lot of insight into the big picture. Even in the current political climate, Lincs might be able to use these insights to persuade legislation to address these issues. Low adult literacy is a vastly greater problem than it has been in even the recent past and needs to become an “endangered species.”

I'm thinking that preparing/finding materials that can just be downloaded and then used offline would have serious advantages -- you wouldn't need as much access (and if use in minutes or data were an issue... it wouldn't be).   SOme of the OER in oercommons are set up like this -- so that you can pull them up and view them on your device even if you're not connected to the internet.   

In the past, I've used HTTrack Website Copier (https://www.httrack.com) to download websites for offline navigation. It's a great workaround for not having Internet access, but you do need to be careful about copyright infringement. If you do a search on website copiers/downloaders, you'll find similar products.

I'm a program coordinator.  The single biggest way that LINCS can help me is by being a one-stop for resource recommendations. 

Far too often I find myself reinventing the wheel for some program change I need to make or learning about some extremely valuable resource completely by chance.  If I want to know which fantasy TV show to watch, I can get a list like this in 10 seconds where the collective wisdom of the TV-watching masses gives me a rough guide of what to check out.  When I want information for Adult Education, I might ask on LINCS or the ProLiteracy listserv or visit ProLiteracy's, LINCS's, Southwest ABE's, or Florida Literacy's, or bug my network of people.  There is no one go-to place.  And when I find info, it's a list of "recommended resources", which is a just a way of not really recommending any one of them over any of the others.  I cannot tell you how useful it would be to have an annotated and ranked list like this for topics like: online tutor training resources or leveled reading materials (online and in print), ESL apps, Math manipulatives...

In short, I think LINCS can help me by doing small projects to collect information and then saving that collected wisdom in an accessible faction. 

Here's one way I think this would be doable:  Moderators solicit topics people are interested in collaborating about.  People send in annotated lists.  The list is compiled by someone with the annotations.  The resources that get the most recommendations go at the top.  If there's not a ton of interest, publish that list as is.  If people are excited about a topic, a mini-taskforce can be formed to refine the information.  (Furthermore, there's a ton of information archived on the forum.  An effort to organize the useful information that's spread out through the web of forum threads would be daunting, but it wouldn't be hard to search the forum archives for info on new topics as they come up.)  I think people would actually contribute to this.  It's not hard to type out a couple of sentences about your favorite resource, especially if you know you're going to have easy access to everyone's recommendations afterwards.

The stuff that's most intriguing on LINCS right now, Ed Latham's Ed Tech Group and the hotspots conversation are both in this vein.  I hope that LINCS will organize and host the results of these conversations.

I think Google Forms specifically the best venue for working on submitting info like this.  I'll do an example as a link here.  I'm starting now at 9:56 a.m.  Finished at 10:56 with a short office conversation interrupting me.  It took me 4 minutes to finish the post.

Please tell me about your favorite cookies and check to see your results pop up on the spreadsheet.

Important Cookies in Adult Education Survey

You can see the results by clicking here: Cookie Survey Results Spreadsheet

Hi Josh, and others,

It took me under a minute to respond to the survey you created. Seconds later I clicked on the Cookie Survey Results Spreadsheet and my response was there. Very fast!

Is it possible to show the spreadsheet results in a graph? If so, how can we see that?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

Integrating Technology CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

 

For those of you interested in graphical results of the Important Cookies in Adult Education Survey, this link

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VcN8DD8PoSchSH8yR53gXqCMsQcElyyBRtONAh-yiAs/pubhtml?gid=314225228&single=true

will bring you to the survey results. This chart is updated whenever someone enters data from the survey. If we wished, we could have had this graph published on a webpage, a Facebook Feed, a twitter feed, posted to a G+ group, or even emailed only to those that supplied a valid email address in the survey. So much versatility!

This may get us started?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fs-KrXXDi90KMP1A77jnzvpqOpQDJZVdOg2x0nQ2Fa0/edit?usp=sharing

I started it for a hometutor workshop I did in Canberra Australia.  I set it free to see where it will go....

Let me know if you have trouble editing it...

 

Having said this, I think your idea of rating resources is really good, as useful things will rise to the top. Maybe someone clever has a way to start it off?

Jakki

Susan, one of the reasons I am working on developing "Drop-In Centers" is to work with different agencies that already have or are interested in computer labs for the community. Then a teacher like you could work with an agency, like a library, to provide the students with a place to go in order to use computers. Also there is a way to get low cost internet service, and the first place to go to find out is TechSoup. Students can also be eligible for low-cost, refurbished computers through some programs.

Paul Rogers