The
emergence of the Internet as an open forum, open to all enthusiast, be it
learners or creators, has resulted in the sudden explosion of educational
technologies for educators and learners.
As Richardson aptly put it, “We are no longer limited to being
independent readers or consumers of information, as we’ll see, we can also be
collaborators in the creation of large store houses of information”
(Richardson, 2010). This is definitely
an exciting time for educators to learn and incorporate technologies into their
teaching routines. If we do not do this,
or are reluctant to do so, we might lose the interest of the learners/audience
as these are kids who were either born during the conception of the digital
world or are being born into this already digital world. Our students think differently and since
their lives are so intertwined with the digital world, it is no surprise that
they expect the digital world to be a big part of their learning. If we educators are stuck in our own time, do
not equip ourselves with the emerging technologies and incorporate them into our
lessons, our learners will be learning outdated information from outdated
educators! This is certainly recipe for
disaster, as we will lose the interest of our audience. However, teaching adult learners to buy into
digital learning may be, on the other hand, a big task by itself for adult
educators. Adults who tend to be more
intimidated by technology may feel uncomfortable exploring the digital medium
and may want to restrict themselves to paper and print materials and be in a
seated environment. The beauty and
increasingly so, is the ease of use of the educational technologies that are
becoming available now. Educators can
easily convince their adult learners that digital learning or reinforcement at
least, is the standard norm these days and definitely so in the future. Incorporating them into their lives would be
a big step towards the 21st century learning environment.
What is Flickr?
In
this edition, I will be sharing two multimedia resources that I think all
educators can and should incorporate into their routines to enhance content
delivery. The first multimedia resource
that I would like to talk about is the digital Web-based photography portal
that has become very popular among educators.
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application that is
secure as well (www.flickr.com).
What is also very useful for educators is that many of the Flickr users
have made their work available for use under the Creative Commons license,
which “is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright" (www.creativecommons.org), where the only requirement for use
is that the user acknowledges and credits the creator for his/her work and does
not use the sources for profit. Best of
all, right now this portal is free for limited use.
Why use Flickr?
Since,
Flickr has the ability to store, sort, search and share photos online,
educators can tap from the vast numbers of photos in all categories and themes
and use them to enhance content delivery.
In the month of July 2013 alone, about 62 million photographs were
uploaded (www.flickr.com).
Flickr also offers educators the flexibility and ease to create lessons
that are interesting and captivating using their own authentic photographs or
use some form the huge database already available.
Ways to use Flickr creatively
Flickr
photographs can be best used to promote and build visual literacy skills in
learners of all ages. These photographs
can be used by all teachers but are particularly successful in areas like Language
Arts, Social Studies, Science, Photography and Arts. In language lessons, a single photograph can
be used with writing prompts or for free writing, be it creative, imaginative,
descriptive or persuasive. Two photographs can be used to compare and contrast
and a series of them can be used for storytelling projects or in the storyboard
creations. Flickr allows learners to
annotate certain parts of a photograph, which would be a great exercise for
vocabulary learning and review.
Another
great feature of Flickr is the ability for learners to develop online stories
about images where they can write story lines in the comment area of each
photograph known as Flicktion. Flickr is
also a great resource when teaching geography using the Geotagging
feature. Photographs can be geotagged,
where each photograph form the Flickr collection has links to the geographical
location through Google Earth where it was taken. Students will get an instant education in
geography through this feature. Flickr
can also be used to create a virtual field trip and improve student and teacher
presentations with visual imagery (Jakes, 2007).
What is Podcasting?
Podcasting
is making a series of digital audio and video files. Once these podcasts are made people who sign
in with a podcatcher can regularly follow podcasts broadcasted. This is like making and airing self-made
radio and television programs to audiences who sign-up to watch. Ben Hammersley first made the term podcast
famous in the Guardian newspaper in a February 2004 article (Wolf, 2013).
Why use podcast?
The teacher or the student can use
Podcasting for many things. Teachers can
make announcements through podcasts, and students can do collaborative work by
creating a podcast. Podcasts can also
be a place to go to when someone is absent or someone else needs a review or
reinforcement. Students can also listen
to other podcasts and analyze them or criticize them. A teacher can post famous speeches in a
podcast and make it available to students to listen to and comment and analyze. Students can then create their own podcasts
to provide a counter argument or point of view (www.edtechteacher.org).
Podcasting Applications
Spreaker (www.spreaker.com) is one of
the most easy to use podcasting application.
It is free too!
Podcast Alley (podcastalley.com) is
podcast lovers portal! It has the best
podcast directory and top 10 podcasts.
Podomatic (www.podomatic.com) is
another easy to use and free podcasting application that is well like by
podcasters.
http://edtechteacher.org
has more than 10 ways to use podcasts in the classroom. Several of these strategies can be adapted to
be used with adult learners.
References:
Richardson, W.
(2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other
powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Press.
Wolf, M. (2013) Nearly a Decade, a Few
Books and a War Later, Ben Hammersley Still
Most Known for Single Word: Podcast.
Retrieved from: www.forbes.com
www.concisetraining.net mediatree.jpg www.concisetraining.net/ Crawled on 2012-12-13
www.concisetraining.net mediatree.jpg www.concisetraining.net/ Crawled on 2012-12-13
I really appreciate your point about expectations of using technology in learning. What works, and is expected, by the "now" generation may be totally foreign to older adult learners. Applications such as podcasting and Flickr are prime examples. My daughter, who is age 29 uses these applications regularly and is very familiar and adept at using them. On the other hand, my mother who is 77 scoffs at even the suggestion to use such technology. It is so important for the adult educator to be fluent with any technology they may endorsing in the learning process. They have to be able to keep up with the advanced user (the 29 year old) as well as the reluctant learner (the 77 year old) who may need specialized individual attention.
ReplyDeleteThanks AZ! We, as adult educators, need to keep up with technology so that we can encourage both the eager young adults (like your daughter) and the skeptical older adults (like your mother). Older adults need to first understand that technology is not going to 'break' and if tinkered with long enough patiently, it can be mastered or at least become manageable. Thanks for your comments.
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