Digital Citizenship

Be Internet Awesome is a Google open curriculum to teach about internet safety and the nine elements of digital citizenship. These resources are for everyone, and are designed to best serve families, educators and kids. All Be Internet Awesome resources are accessible globally. The site provides resources for families to use at home together and for educators to use within their classrooms.

Common Sense Media has a two programs that provide educational resources and games to teach about digital citizenship, “Digital Compass” and Digital Passport. Digital Compass is a choose-your-own-adventure interactive game developed with sixth- to ninth-graders in mind. Students step into the shoes of one of eight characters to experience the twists and turns of daily digital life. While Digital Passport is designed to teach students digital citizenship skills by using fun, interactive web-based games, videos, and modules. When students master levels that are based on  digital citizenship topics, they work their way towards earning their digital passports.

Open Education

Open education is an opportunity for people to receive education without restrictions. It is a philosophy on how people should produce, share and build on knowledge. The theory is that everyone should have access to high quality education, through resources and experience. According to the United States government, educational opportunities should be available to all learners, stating on their educational technology page, “Creating an open education ecosystem involves making learning materials, data, and educational opportunities available without restrictions imposed by copyright laws, access barriers, or exclusive proprietary systems that lack interoperability and limit the free exchange of information.”

Khan Academy is one source of open education. Their mission is to provide a free, world class education to anyone, anywhere. Founded by Sal Khan, an English educator, in 2005 to help his cousins, Khan Academy provides online materials to cover subjects ranging from math and finance to history and art. In addition to programming or coding resources. Sal has produced over 6,500 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, originally focusing on mathematics and science. Sal holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard.

Coursera, founded in 2012, by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller is an online learning platform that offers massive open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and degrees.

Their mission statement indicates that they empower learners to advance their careers, further their studies, improve their communities, and change the world through the world’s best learning, experiences. Courses on Coursera are taught by top instructors from top universities around the world.

Games or simulations

Games or simulations are ideal ways to motivate learning, increase active positive engagement, allows learners to learn by doing, and expands learning beyond the classroom.

Kahoot is an example of game based learning . Kahoot, is a student-response tool for all platforms, It  allows teachers to run game-like multiple-choice, , polls, sorts and open ended questions  quizzes. Teachers can create their own quizzes or find, use, and/or remix quizzes made public by others.  Questions, along with answer choices, are projected onto a classroom screen while students submit responses using an internet-connected device (computer, tablet, or phone). There is a Classic mode, which has students playing as an individual, or team mode which allows teams to play together. The quizzes can take place in real time, or be done in Challenge mode which enables students to take quizzes within a set time frame, such as for homework. The energized, game-like atmosphere comes from the use of bright colors, suspenseful music, and points awarded for response accuracy and speed. When using the mobile app on a personal device, students can see their past results, pause/resume individual quizzes, and complete homework challenges.

G-Suite for Education is a set of tools created to empower educators and students. The tools bring all areas of education together in order to make it seamless and easy to utilize.

Under G-suite for education educators can create lessons, do administrative tasks, challenge students, conduct virtual meetings and present lessons to students through mobile learning or thought virtual meetings. G-Suite offers, Email, a Calendar, cloud storage, a presentation, word processing, and a spreadsheet program and a survey program. In addition, G Suite offers a cloud based smartboard called Jamboard.

Another, mobile technology that can enhance adult learning is Microsoft One Note. OneNote, is a digital notebook that provides room for multiple subjects and areas. In addition, it allows others to collaborate with you in the same book. OneNote allows you to be organized, tag important things, annotate, insert mixed media, clip and save items from various places on your computer or the internet, share with others or collaborate.

Social Networks

According to Khalil Alsaadat, “technology and social media have presented significant tools for adult learners to learn and advance continually. The use of social media can improve adult learning outcomes and academic accomplishment. Social media is increasingly proven to be beneficial in adult learning and has a huge potential for adult education.”  Two examples of social networking technologies that will enhance adult learning are, YouTube and Linkedin

YouTube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos. You can also create and upload your own videos to share with others.

There are a number of reason for Youtube’s popularity:

1.     It houses a slew of videos. On average, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so there's always something new to watch!

2.     There are all kinds of videos on YouTube—adorable cats, quirky cooking demos, funny science lessons, quick fashion tips, and a whole lot more.

3.     It's all about user-generated content. Instead of videos from major TV networks and movie studios, you'll find amazing and creative videos made by people just like you. And YouTube isn't a one-way street—you can jump in, record and share your own videos, and become a part of the community.

YouTube’s main functions are:

Users can search for and watch videos

Create a personal YouTube channel

Upload videos to your channel

Like/Comment/share other YouTube videos

Users can subscribe/follow other YouTube channels and users

Create playlists to organize videos and group videos together

Lastly, YouTube is a great resource for learning and adult learning. It can be used to create an eLearning community, it generates and promotes online discussion, it is ideal for mobile learning, it allows for microlearning, it encourages the development of note-taking skills, it enhances comprehension of complex concepts.

LinkedIn and Linkedin learning is a social networking technology that is the world's largest professional network on the internet. It is used to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career. LinkedIn Learning is an educational platform that helps learners discover and develop business through courses led by experts.

Application and Multimedia Resources

        Two applications or multimedia resources that have the potential of enhance adult education are augmented reality and iTunesU.

Augmented reality or AR is the technology that allows one to superimpose, sounds, images, videos clips, etc. onto the world as one sees it; like an overly. For example, the game Pokémon Go uses augmented reality to place 3D images in one’s reality. AR is looked at as a futuristic technology, however, a form of it has been around for years. The heads-up displays in many fighter aircraft go as far back as the 90s showed information s about altitude, direction and speed of a plan and only few years later they could show which objects in the field of view were targets.

            In the past 10 years, a number of labs and companies have created programs and built devices that give us augmented reality. In 2009, the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group presented SixthSense, a device that combined the use of a camera, small projector, smartphone and mirror. The device hangs from the user's chest in a lanyard fashion from the neck. Four sensor devices on the user's fingers can be used to manipulate the images projected by SixthSense. Today, many social media outlets have augmented reality features that allow their user to create images with various objects superimposed into their reality. One popular social media outlet that provides various augmented reality features is Snapchat.

            Within education, most importantly adult education, augmented reality can enhance adult learning by giving learners an opportunity to learn and practice various skills without actually having the item present. For instance, a medical student whose studying to be a surgeon can practice surgery using AR and can reset the program if a mistake is made. This prevents having to find, let’s say a heart to use. Once they use the real object and make a mistake they will have to find another one to use. With AR this obstacle is avoided.  

iTunes U is a multimedia resource  which is a dedicated section of Apple's iTunes Music Store that features educational audio and video files from universities, museums and public media organizations for free download to PCs and mobile devices. iTunes U allows a visitor to search, download and play educational content in the same way that they can manipulate songs, podcasts, television shows and movies. Participating institutions include Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Melbourne, Texas A&M, MIT, Yale, Trinity College Dublin and many more. I addition, iTunes U also delivers programming from American Public Media, PBS, the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian. Material can be either be watched directly on the PC or synchronized onto a portable media player for mobile learning. Educators can use the service to upload coursework and lectures for easy distribution on a platform that students are generally already competent navigating.