Mobile Learning Technologies To Enhance Adult Learning

         This week while I was researching mobile learning technologies, I came across an app that might yet prove to be the most important app for all adult learners to have on their mobile devices!  I was so excited when I read about it that I wanted to shout, “ I hit a jackpot!” or “I discovered a goldmine!”

Lumosity

         One constant struggle with aging is the decline in memory power, flexibility, attention and brainpower.  According to Mather and Carstensen, “the most widely acknowledged psychological change with age is the decline in cognitive processes, especially memory” (Mather and Carstensen, 2005).  I think this is a wonderful app for adults to have, to improve brain performance and cognition.  Lumosity (www.lumosity.com) is an app that has games to tease the brain and enhance memory and attention.  It is a web-based personalized training program that tracks changes in users’ performance.  The exercises (which are in the form of scientific games) were designed by neuroscientists to improve core cognitive functions.  Lumosity is the product of groundbreaking collaboration between researchers who are neuroscientist, clinicians, teachers, and academics from all over the world.  The collaboration was done through the Human Cognition Project (HCP) (Grant, 2013). 

         The best part is this app (the basic version) is free!  All it takes is 5 minutes everyday and the performance is tracked.  Core cognitive functions like, memory, attention, speed, flexibility and problem solving skills can be tested.  The user can choose which functions to work with.   For adult learners spending 5 minutes everyday in the morning or sometime during the day as part of taking a break, can prove to be beneficial in the long run.  (An enthusiast like me signed on immediately checked off all of the tests and I am going to do each one of them.  It was fun since all it seemed like was playing games.) 

         Lumosity allows you to track your performance and they even have an interactive map that shows user performances (through score) by each location in the United States.  Location data comes from the players' IP addresses, and scores are aggregated to the city and metro level.  Lumosity has 261,767 followers on Google+ alone and 40 million subscribers! (Kaiser, 2013).  Instead of playing mindless games, playing the brain games on Lumosity is a good way to keep the mind sharp through brain workouts!   Sharp brains can aid better learning in adults.

         I see this app as a potential “warm-up” app for adult literacy classrooms, where all learners can log into their Lumosity apps in the beginning of class and do the 5-minute brain workout to trigger the brain into action for more academic endeavors!  Lumosity can be the quick neuro-energy boost to the adult learner!

         The next mobile app that caught my attention is Digg (www.digg.com).  Digg is the best place to find the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet.  It is a news aggregator with an editorially driven front page that feeds selected stories form science, trending political news and viral ones that have captured the attention of social enthusiasts.  Users discover, share and recommend web content to Digg.  Digg users can vote up (dig) or down (bury) the news feed.  Many websites now add a Digg button (a man with a shovel).  Incidentally another popular news sourse site, Reddit, was copied from Diig!

         Another part of Digg that has gained a lot of attention is Digg Reader which is similar to the recently closed down Google Reader.  Technology oriented news junkies were devastated and have moved in the droves to Digg (Delp, 2013).  The web interface of Digg is minimalistic and will be very easy to follow for busy adults.  Users will be able to organize the news feeds into folders like education, politics, and technology or save it to read later.  They can also share the news they read on Facebook and Twitter or follow certain news and newsmakers through the RSS feed.  An iOS app can help users keep up with news on the go.  There is no need to sign up to read unless the reader wants to dig or bury!  The news feed also tells you the source of the news; where it was first published.

         Digg is going to be a wonderful app in an adult literacy classroom.  The learners can be asked to quickly update the class and discuss one trending news from Digg.  If this was a class happening today (September 24, 2013) the most shared story in the past 18 hours would have been the one that reads: “The Newest Chinese Luxury Item: American Surrogate Mothers”  Imagine the kind of discussion that can be spurned with this kind of a news feed!  This one news feed is enough to have a class debate on current affairs.  Further activities for Digg users would be to share the news read on Digg with their friends in their social networks and observe how big it gets.  This in itself is a great study to see how social networks can make mountains out of molehills! (Delp, 2013).

References:

Delp, J. (2013) Staying connected with Digg Reader.  Retrieved from: http://www.jeffdelp.com/2013/07/27/staying-connected-with-digg-reader/

Grant, R,. (June, 2013).  Lumosity analyzes brain function of 40M people to push neuroscience forward.  Retrieved from: http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/20/lumosity-analyzes-brain-function-of-40m-people-to-push-neuroscience-forward/

Kaiser, T,. (May, 2013) Lumosity: Does it Work?  Retrieved from: http://www.dailytech.com/Lumosity+Does+it+Work/article31612.htm

lumosity_logo.jpg vistaalamemoria.blogspot.com/2010/05/... Crawled on 2010-05-13

Mather M, Carstensen LL (October 2005). "Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory". Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) 9 (10): 496–502. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.08.005. PMID 16154382.