Final+Exam

//** Final Examination **// //** Respond to the following item on a new page on your individual wiki [Call you new wiki page: "Final Examination"]. Your response must be supported with appropriate citations, links, and multimedia [videos, audio, images, presentations] content. All web reference must be linked to the site, all multimedia content should be embedded on your page, and all print media must be cited. **//

//** During this class, you examined a number of Web 2.0 resources through the Richardson book. Using your current situation, discuss each resource read about with the potential uses in your employment including the pros and cons of its uses. Examples within your answer will strengthen your answer and the resulting credit you earn. Opinion without support will result in a lower grade for your examination answer. **//

As an adult education teacher, computers are a scary topic for most of my adult learners. Just using PLATO is a hard concept for my students to grasp. So when reflecting on using the items we learned about in the class, I may have more cons then pros. Is blogging by adults on the rise? I would say no but, I found that I am wrong. In a study done by Pew Research Center //“…40 percent of adults age 30 and older used social media sites in 2009, although among that group, blogging activities increased to 11 percent from 7 percent three years earlier.” (Evangelista, 2010)// This shows that blogging is becoming popular with adults. I like blogs and vlogs but with the little amount of computer experiences most of my students have, blogging would be difficult for them. If blogging is introduced and we could spend the time needed on crafting their blogging skills I feel that this would be a great tool for my adult learners. This would give them a format to vent and give me a format to get a better understanding of their problems. For studying this would also work, I could provide work to them through a blog. The only thing stopping the community I teach in is money. Most of my students cannot afford a computer even a older model, only time will tell if the blogging trend will hit the adults in the inner city of Saginaw. Wikis are something that I could use as an adult education teacher. I see setting wikis up like PLATO and making assignments on a wiki for my students. The downside to this is taking the time to teach them to use the wiki. Don’t get me wrong teaching is the profession I am in but, most students getting their GED want to be in and out as fast as they can. This is why paper and pencil learning is used mostly. After watching the video “Wikis in Plain English” I found that maybe this concept may not be as difficult as I thought. I could spread learning out farther than I thought I could. This could be a great tool and know that we have computers in our school, I think that this could be a great resource media type="custom" key="11613826" Let’s face it older people like watching the news (and me too), so what would be better for an adult learner then an RSS feed of their favorite topics. I dabble with current events in my classroom and have never thought of using an RSS feed for the students to discuss current events. For the students this would be a great way of getting their reading level up and showing them that by doing an RSS feed //“is like creating your own personalized online magazine that only contains articles you are interested in.”(Rawsthorne, 2011)//. media type="youtube" key="0klgLsSxGsU" height="315" width="420" I thought it was great using Delicious and putting together a helpful list of great web pages. I did not see though how it would be useful in my area of education, until I really thought about it. The web can be a scary place for first time users and when it comes to finding good sites to use to study for a GED, they are hard to find. So much and so little time. Then it hit me, using social bookmarking would help so much for my students and would give them a way to get out the traditional paper and pencil studying. I have no cons for this, I think that I will start using it. To show the importance to my students and why I am using it I would show the following video. media type="youtube" key="HeBmvDpVbWc" height="480" width="640" On-line photo sharing is a great thing but, I cannot find a use for it in my realm of education. I could use a sight like Flickr to use as a way to show historical events to my students as a photo recognition assignment. I realize that this could open up a large verity of social media by using on-line photo sharing but, I still have little use for it. This slideshare on social media would be a great tool to show my students to get using sites like Flickr.
 * Weblogs: **
 * Wikis: **
 * RSS: **
 * Social Bookmarking: **
 * On-line photo sharing: **

Adult Learners Photo By: South Ayrshier media type="custom" key="11613870"


 * Podcasting: **

“Podcasts solve some leaner-centered problems typical of adult learners.”(Hopp, 2008) I agree with this statement that some learners would take so much from using a podcast in class, especially those that are auditory learners. For the students in the other field of learning this might not be the way to go. I’ve noticed that most of my students are visual learners and less into listing to me ramble on. So in this case a video podcast would come in useful to my my students. I can see this as a great tool to present topics to my students and to be able to hit all some learning styles that are represented in my classroom. The following slideshare shows the advantage of podcasting with adult learners.

media type="custom" key="11614256"


 * Live Streaming: **

Distance learning is a big topic in adult education today. I myself have not had to do anything with distance learning so far in my career but, I can see where live streaming and distance would go hand and hand. As of right know we use PLATO as distance learning but, I feel we could do so much more if we used something like Skype to deliver lectures or help students study for their GED. I found a video from Andrew Gunadie a student from MIT that puts a comical spin on distance learning. Watching this video made me see some more reasons that students at my school would benefit from live streaming. Two of the topics that hit me hard were the facts that classes can be oversized and less attention is spent on some students. This could lead to a student dropping out and this is something I have seen happen at my school. Another was that some students just get tired of the school setting. This is also something that I have seen at my school. media type="youtube" key="uZk-WdYHkoc" height="360" width="480"\


 * Social Networking: **
 * Photo by:** Pingdom, 2010

When looking at the following picture I stand corrected. I did not realize that so many of the age group that I teach uses social networking sites. The age groups I am looking at is 25 to 65, I know that is a large group but this is the group that I teach. The 19% (45-54) was the biggest surprise for me. Call it narrow minded but, I have a hard time seeing a 54 year old hanging out on Facebook for a large part of the day. Is social networking something useful for me? No, but the I know other adult education teachers that use social networking for their classroom and seem to be utilizing it in a positive way. The best way I could use social networking for my situation is by using it for retention of students. We have issues with retention (like most schools) and I could see my school using something like Facebook for retention issues.