I enjoyed this module.
It gave me the opportunity to look through and revisit many online tools
that I’ve been interested in or have used before. I looked at Twitter, Scoop.it, Diggio,
Facebook, Prezi, and Voicethread. I also
delved into Pinterest a little as wells as Edmodo and Learnist. All of these sites provide services and tools
that could be very beneficial to education.
Adults learn differently than adolescents and need to have clear
goals. It helps if the tools are
intuitive. From my experience teaching
adults, the more they have to learn to actually use the tools, the more
difficult it can be to gain buy in. I’ve
found that most people that I interact with use or are familiar with
Facebook. Even my grandmother uses
Facebook. I decided to spend my time
exploring all of Facebook’s many tools and features. About a year ago I created a group on
Facebook hoping to get a writers together to share writing and give
feedback. Well it didn’t work out, but
it did give a vehicle to explore the tools that Facebook offers. It really is impressive. I started to see many feature that full blown
LMSs offer. File uploads, messaging live
and asynchronous chat and discussions.
Video and photo sharing and video calling are all present. I am really excited. Facebook offers so many possibilities for
adults.
I think that the biggest advantage for adult learners is
ease of use and familiarity. Adults,
when in a comfortable place learn better.
Facebook gives them that comfort—that familiarity. It gives them the tools they need to succeed.