NEW TECHNOLOGIES

INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, new technology, as a tool for adult learning has increased steadily. It can both deliver content and serve as a multipurpose communications tool. Educatiors are increasingly using technologies, such as websites, CD-Roms, powerpoint and email. Adult learners can be helped by technologies because they are flexibile, provide access to expertise, let learners who cannot meet face to face discuss on line facilitate discussion among learners who cannot meet face to face, and empower learners. Of course the technology on its own is not enough. Teachers and educators need to take care to work with technology to suit needs of learners. Every day technological tools are developing more exciting new capacities to assist learning.

Here are some of the main capacityof technologies for Adult Learning (Burge and Roberts 1993).
- motivation (reward/punishment)
- learner dirceted
- task orientated
- takes account of learner's readiness to learn and includes prior learning
- takes account of learner's personal circumstances
- takes account of personal learning styles
- is flexible and accessible

How to be successful in adult learning
There are 3 critical success elements to be successful.

1) Training programs should build on learner's own preferred way of learning, their experineces and motivation. Not all learners learn the same way.

2) learning should be goal-based. Training programs should be comprehensive.and include needs assessment, trialling and evaluation. This has been termed 'complete-loop learning' which 'relies heavily on a model of pre-testing, design, delivery, and posttesting'.

3) Programs should use technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the training delivery process.

cd1......Technology tools let learners be part of developing exercises, tests, examples, and so on. New technologies help learners be aware of their own learning styles and offer them ideas for ways to adapt materials to suit their own learning styles. A cooperative learners may, for example, benefit from studying with a partner. This can, of course, be accomplished on line. Learners can test one another and compare notes. Introduce them to Mind Maps which will help them translate information that is presented in a linear fashion into patterns that are more conducive to whole- brain learning.

......mediacd

As has been overviewed above that new technologies are important for adult learning because adult learning is very diverse and covers a range of needs, ages and locations. This means that flexibility of delivery of education through internet and information technology can be important tools for adult learning.

This website will present the four new technologies: websites, e-mails, powerpoints, CD-Roms and show how these are now used and how they can be used for adult learners.


1. Websites

Adult learners generally wish to find specific information and knowledge that is relevant to their immediate needs. While many adult learners think that further education would benefit them, often they are not interested in the formal academic system. Adult learners commonly are working or raising families and do not have the time and energy to enroll in a traditional long term course. They are also often interested only in specific information that meets their immediate needs for instance, career development, work related learning, hobbies, interests, and self- improvement (Tennant, 1997). The new information technology, namely, the Internet for Web-based learning provides educators with many opportunities to address these needs.

The World Wide Web (WWW) can be used to deliver instruction via the Internet. Using the Web, together with other new information technology tools, educators can build a virtual classroom to bring learners together for interactive education. There are many reasons why the web has provided learners with a useful and popular means of instruction. Learners can readily access internet. Internet and IT tools supports flexible storage and display . Internet and OIT tools provide a simple way to publish work, including multiple media elements.

Teaching via the web has great richness and potential to meet the needs of adult learners. The WWW can provide learners with a 'virtual library' as well as a 'virtual classroom' and a library that includes not just text documents but graphics, sound, video and virtual environments.

The web provides flexibility in terms of learners location, speed of learning and the time available to them. Instruction can now be highly interactive using multimedia. Learners can now benefit from instruction that meets their personal needs, active learning, gives rapid feedback, allows simulation of real environments, and also from faster and more effective teaching.(McManus, 1995).

The WWW can certainly assist learning and meet the needs of adult learners. In addition, electronic media are not only means to deliver instruction but they can help the process of learning. Research shows certain media are particularly suitable for specific learning tasks, learning situations, and learners' characteristics. The web is not always effective in educating users. Many researchers state that the method of using media based learning is more important than simply choosing an attractive medium for the delivery of instruction. Instructional design is very important for effective learning. Many educators think they can just transfer teaching and learning from the classroom to a computer, without modifying their approach and do not achieve results.

It is very important to develop strategies for learners to learn. Learners needs and research into what helps them learn must be the foundation of WWW use in L&E. Passive teacher centred learning can be found on www as well as in classrooms. The materials must be developed to meet the needs of learners with different learning styles and at different levels of skill. So now, we have realized why and how the World Wide Web can provide new opportunities to deliver instruction over the Internet. We have discussed how the web-based technology has great potential to meet adult learning needs by providing personalized interactive computer multimedia instruction. We can see different methods and techniques have been delivered through the Web.

Finally, we can conclude that the World Wide Web Provides new learning opportunities for Adult Learners in a variety of learning styles, as long as it is used in a sensible way on sound pedagogical principles.
























2. E-mail

E-mail - is a communication tool which gives interaction with lecturers/teachers/ community of interest/community of practice Electronic mail, stated simply, is a text-based cross between a personal letter and a telephone message. Computer conferencing ("Usenet NEWS" on the Internet) is a text-based cross between a newspaper and an asynchronous town meeting. Interactive Telnet sessions allow users to directly access programs running on remotely-located computers, such as searchable information databases, and use them. FTP sessions allow users to access and copy large files of information from remotely-located computers.The followings are typical capacity of E-mails for Adult Learning.

In practice, teachers could use electronic mail to share learning activity ideas with other teachers in other cities, states, or countries, or help your students to share information for a project that they are completing collaboratively with students in other locations. Teachers could use computer conferencing to participate in a group discussion of current educational issues with other teachers with similar interests, help students to review and respond to other students' writing, or participate in a group simulation activity. Teachers and learners could search bibliographic, scientific, literary, or lesson plan databases located on computers anywhere on the Internet with interactive Telnet sessions. Teachers and learners could also acquire full-text versions of children's books or other historical, legal, or technical documents with non-interactive file transfers, or FTP sessions.

Person-to-Person Contact
E-mail account, once acquired, will have a unique Internet address. Although the forms of Internet addresses vary, they are constructed similarly. Let's take a look at my Internet address as an example. It is:
cho_bkk1@hotmail.com
Each part of the address is separated from the other parts by either a . (usually called a "dot") or a @ (usually pronounced "at"). In the example above,
cho_bkk1 is the username or account name,

Curricular Infusions
Electronic mail is probably the most well-explored telecomputing tool in instructional contexts at all levels. It has been used for projects ranging from comparative culture studies to foreign language practice to writers' workshops to scientific data compilation and analysis, helping students to collaboratively explore everything from folk games as reflections of culture, to grammatical rules, to the use of metaphor in original poetry, to the severity of pollutants in different places along a common river. Excellent examples of powerful ways in which electronic mail can serve as an interactive learning tool in many different disciplines.


3. Powerpoint

PowerPoint is widely used in education areas because Powerpoint is an essential part of modern workplace training and management, including graphical material help to clarify and reinforce the learning. Break up long blocks of text and make use of charts, graphs and diagrams as alternative (or complementary) ways to present concepts.

Using PowerPoint in Learning and Teaching
Many teachers find it useful to post their PowerPoint documents on the web so that learners can access these documents easily from anywhere or at home. With the new accessibility legislation in mind it is important to remember that although there's nothing wrong with posting the documents in their original format, we must ALSO post an HTML-based version to ensure maximum accessibility.

Still, posting the original file is the easiest way to publish the content to the Internet, and it gives the most faithful representation of the slide show author's content. There is no reason to discourage posting the original file as long as an HTML alternative is provided.







4. CD-Roms

CD-Roms are interactive learning tools including graphics, animation and audio, normally accessed via CD-Roms or LAN and used for fundamental level, overview or prerequisite training. Multimedia based Learning (MBL), video and short articles (SA) can be delivered via this media. CD-Roms Provide opportunities, suggestions, and resources for independent learning. The design and graphics used on the CD-Roms give an adult look and feel lifely, and reduce the feeling of being treated. The adult learners from vary academic ability levels would be using this software effectively. As CD-Roms includes an interface, graphics, sound effects, narration, and video, they could effectively interac by the combination benefits of independent study and supervised lab work though allowing the user to control the rate at which information is presented while still proceeding through a lesson. CD-Roms benefit adult learning with flexibility and allow the adult learners to experiment, explore and learn more through environmental simulation.
For example, the CD-Roms ESL for self-study motivates learners to practice more speaking, including extensive exercises for pronunciation which learners can learn easily and also imitate the manner of articulation by listening and looking at the monitor.

In concluding, as has been described above that new information technology has many special characteristic suited to the needs of adult learning. Most importantly new technologies offer flexible learning convenient to the the adult learner's diverse lifestyles. Web-sites, CD-Roms, Powerpoints and E-mails offer great possibilities for interactive teaching and learning, for assisting presentation and storage of information and for flexible learning.

However, educators must be aware of weaknesses as well as strengths of new technologies. Educators should try to make sure that the technologies they select are appropriate. Knowing how to integrate new technologies into curriculum is a critical skill for teachers. It is not possible to simply transfer a curriculum designed for classroom to the internet. Although new technologies have many special capacities, it is the educator who is responsible for selection and designof learning systems based on sound androgogical principles.

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