Technology Resources - Week 8

         Honestly, these are real exciting times to be an educator!  If willing and ready, a present day educator can make the lessons very engaging and meaningful by including technology.  Technology has rendered its presence in no other times like now!  It is only going to get better.  Focusing on just three technologies was very hard.  There are so many great ones out there that have been introduced by my colleagues, but I finally chose three that I thought would be especially beneficial to the adult learners that I would be working with in the future.

1) NeuroRacer (http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/page74.html)

Lili introduced this great memory and cognition building game.  Voice of America calls this game “a memory video game for the elderly brain” (Weaver, 2013).  The scientists from University of California, San Francisco, who created this game, purport that by playing a multi-tasking game, seniors can enjoy great neurological improvements over time.

         Players use a hand held game to race a car on a projection screen.  Then, signs begin to appear.  Some signs are important and they need to follow the lead, and some signs are not important and need to be ignored. The aim of the research is to see how well seniors can multi-task.  They found that seniors who played the game 3 times a week were able to strengthen brainpower for 6 months (gazzleylab.ucst.edu).

         This will be a great game for older seniors who want to be engaged in life-long learning but feel that they do not have the memory power to do so anymore.  I would recommend it to my older adult learners as a way to sharpen their brainpower and get prepared to continue their education.  I also see myself using this as a warm-up activity before regular class starts for older adults.  Playing this game would prepare them to stay focused and act as a “wake-up” call for the slumbering inactive brain!

2) Top Hat (http://tophat.com)

         Top hat is a student engagement and response system that is a mobile app. This was my colleague Christian's find.  This mobile app can be used by the educator to ask questions, start a conversation, launch demos and tournaments.  Students can use their mobile devices, like laptops, smartphones, ipads, ipods and other tablets to respond in real time and provide instant feedback through polls, quizzes and open-ended questions, unlike clickers that can only handle multiple choice questions. There are seven different question types that educators can use, set homework on this platform, and also use it for grading and reporting.  Top Hat is currently being used in 350 universities worldwide (Lardinois, 2013). The system also allows the educators to upload PowerPoint Presentations and also share resources, all online.

         I could use this app in class during lessons to check student understanding and engagement.  Since almost all students, including adult learners have mobile phones handy, this would be a great resource to have and prescribe to.  While educators do not have to pay, students are charged $20 per semester or $38 for five years. 

         Another way, I can use this resource with adult learners is to use this tool to set up homework and group collaboration online.  This would enable group collaboration outside of classroom.

3) Cowbird (cowbird.com) “a library of human experience”

         This wonderful story telling and story sharing website was my first mentioned by my colleague, Marie A.  Cowbird is a storytelling tool that allows users to combine photos, include audios and text to create long lasting and poignant stories.  The creators of this tool’s mission is “to build the world’s first public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live as a part of the commons, available for this and future generations to look for guidance” (cowbird.com).

         This is going to be a great resource in the adult education world, as oral digital story telling is going to help record the many personal experiences that adults have had in their lives.  I could use Cowbird as the platform for adult learners to narrate their journals.  Imagine what a fantastic collection of personal narratives this would be to the young relatives of the adult learner?  Recording these narratives is going to be very helpful to adult language learners in brushing up their speaking skills. 

         Cowbird sounds to be like the Oral History Project that the National Public Radio (NPR) has been carrying out for a long time, only this is better since there is also visual included.  I could combine photography and oral narratives to teach language acquisition.

         While there are many resources to excite an adult educator and learner, there are none that can complete the education as a stand alone tool!   

References:

Lardinois, F. 2013. Top Hat Monocle Launches Freemium Accounts for    Classes With Fewer Than 30      Students, Changes Name to ‘Top Hat’     Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/09/top-hat-      monocle-launches-freemium-accounts/

Weaver, C. Voice of America. 2013. NeuroRacer: A Video Game for the Elderly Brain.  Retrieved from:          http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/article/1753452.html