Unit 4: Current Educational Technology

Educators Use Website

           The first website “Educators Use” has lots of great learning tools that enable faculty to develop their own tool box for educational development.  I found two articles that are interesting and kind of related to each other. The first one is “Design thinking: Theory & practice.”  Design thinking is not about technology use only or teaching someone how to think; design thinking is “a proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results” (Corcorran & Scott-Webber, 2013, p. 5).  It does not need a designer to design thinking, complex problems that require innovation leads people to design high level thinking and use that design as a guide for practice. The process of designing learners’ thinking passes through five steps (empathizes, define, ideate, prototype, and test).  These step go along with the core elements of the instructional design theories that focus on experimenting and testing the results for more effective learning, such as “constructivism theory.”

            In the class room environment, “empathize” means that educators need to understand the needs and the learning desire of their students.  “Define” means that faculty is responsible to frame problems in a way that makes them as opportunities for creative solutions. “Ideate” is the step of generating a range of possible solutions. “prototype” step focuses on communicating the core elements of solutions to others in the same group. The final step in the process of designing thinking is to guide learners to understand what works and what doesn’t work to improve solutions.

           

            The second article entitled “adapting eLearning for mobile: Learning from wonderful mistakes” also talks about how to design new way to enhance eLearning using mobile instead of making the process more complex.  Because using desktop for eLearning is a different experience from using smartphone. Clothier (2014) stated that “rather than quickly jumping to adapt your eLearning modules for mobile, think of ways you can supplement the eLearning you have rather than trying to duplicate it on a small screen. Having eLearning on the desktop and something different on mobile to support that eLearning is more powerful than duplication of content” (Para. 1).  With the advanced technology, there is always a lot that faculty need to learn in order to enhance the learning of students. Learning new ways also comes from mistakes, so that mistakes can be a way to understand what works and what does not.  Trying to switch eLearning from computers to smartphones is not an easy task, which might lead to some mistakes, but these mistakes can be learning experiences instead of source of stress. However, designing learning on smartphones requires certain instructions.  The author mentioned 9 Levels of adaptation of eLearning for mobile:

1. Replicate the existing content as is and have it be accessible on a smartphone.
2. Duplicate existing content and have it be viewable on a mobile device using responsive or adaptive design techniques.
3. Adapt the textual content for mobile, keeping the existing graphics.
4. Adapt both the textual content and the graphics for mobile.
5. Convert content to a video or videos.
6. Incorporate the content into a quiz or knowledge check.
7. Completely redesign the content for mobile.
8. Create supplementary or supportive mobile content for the existing eLearning content.
9. Create a learning game from the content.

References:

 Corcorran, S. &  Scott-Webber, L. (2013). Design thinking: Theory and practice. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/design-thinking-theory-and-practice

 Clothier, P. (2014). Adapting elearning for mobile”: Learning from wonderful mistakes. Retrieved from http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1498/adapting-elearning-for-mobile-learning-from-wonderful-mistakes

Atomic Learning Website

Atomic Learning provides an online technology training for educator who teach at higher educational level.  Their online tutorials can be accessed by universities to educate faculty, staff, and students on how to use and apply variety types of technologies that have been designed to improve learning.   Atomic learning has such interesting case studies that provide instructions and explain the proper use of technology to enhance learning. The first case study that I reviewed  entitled “Shaping college curriculum with online videos,” which talks about the importance of switching world document to audio-visual. Technology becomes a part in the educational process; therefore, the demand to develop learning materials that can be viewed in different ways is increased.  Both educators and learners usually view videos when they buy new device in order to understand how that device or certain software works.  However,  in terms of teaching and learning using technology, there is a high demand for technology training from students and staff. Therefore, the goal of Atomic learning is to provide wide technology training resources that are easy to use online. These training materials provide easy to use instructions that help to design learning using technology (Stange, 2013)..

            The second case study that I reviewed talks about “utilizing atomic learning to flip the college classroom.” Educators find that flipping classroom learning technique is more dynamic and interactive that the traditional learning environment. Educators also find positive impact of new techniques on the learning outcomes, so flipping classroom environment is recommended to make learning process more productive. I still remember that Dr. Korvic presented flipping classroom in the conference about two years ago and she clearly explained how effective the learning would be with the new learning environment.  However, the challenge is that traditional students do not have computer skills that enable them to navigate the change in the learning style. Therefore, Atomic Learning tutorials were provided to improve students’ computer skills. In the schools that review these learning tutorials, the level of students’ satisfaction was high and students learned where to find help when they need it.  Leitgeb (2013) reported that Atomic Learning is pivotal to the class’s success, because using these tutorials helps to create an environment that improve collaborative learning, which leads to increase student satisfaction about using new learning environment, such as flip classroom.

References:

Stange, M.(2013). Shaping college curriculum with online videos. Retrieved from http://blog.atomiclearning.com/highed/case-studies

Leitgeb, R. (2013). Utilizing atomic learning to flip the college classroom. Retrieved from http://blog.atomiclearning.com/highed/case-studies