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Technologies to support learning

Technologies to support learning

The amount of technology in classrooms is increasing every year. Here, adult education is not an exception. In this chapter, a deeper insight will be given in how technology could address the problems described in the scenario and how these could be solved.

There are different technological aspects to be considered, one could look at the photography side itself. Every student has to have a camera in order to participate in a photography course. These cameras are just one side of the technology, as photography these days does not end with making the picture and sending it to the developer. With the development of digital photography, photo editing and authoring has taken a big part of the time used on finishing and developing a photograph.

Apart from the creation and processing of the images, a lecture consists of more things that might want to find their shift to an online environment as well. Taken this into account, possible solutions for the scenario and the proposed solutions above could be taken into account.

Internet Forums

An online forum as an addition to the possible learning environment already found at the educational institute can be used to support reciprocal learning amongst the students. Whereas learning environments more allow for self-direction and individualized adaptation/creation of content and instruction, social software use is often centered on collaboration which could benefit reciprocal learning (LeNoue, 2011).

The strength can be found in creating an online forum-like place where a combination of teachers input/reflection and student questions/content could be put on - this could also be the main way of communicating outside of the classroom. Like any other learning environment already used, but then tailored for photography. Creating such platform allows both novice and advanced students to be aware of each other's progress and work. The teacher can use the board to coordinate assignments, create different difficulty levels for the different students and comment on the work delivered.

Using a forum also supports the asynchronicity of the availability times. One student might be at other times available to work on a task compared to another student. If they would incidentally be paired up together, this would not stop their cooperation, since it can be done online and asynchronous.

Since photo editing tools are pieces of software that stand on their own it is hard to create a certain collaborative tool. Also, depending on the type of task, different tools are used. Creating a new photo editing tool for the purpose of such a combined class would not be advisable.

 

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