learning online discussion

The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL - US) Technology Discussion List is hosting a discussion about Learning Online. You can sign up here.

The Discussion starts with these questions:
How does the field of adult and family literacy go forward with online learning, and what does it take?

Heidi Silver-Pacuilla then asked the discussion participants to
"make a graffiti poster today with thoughts about how the world/your world has changed in the last two years and what is impacting our work. Post words and phrases to add to the list started below."

Here is how people responded:

• rapid changes in technology
• expanded uses of cell phones, PDAs and other mobile devices
• greater need for services, fewer resources

• The policy proposal by the adult learner organization,VALUE, that adult education programs help adult learners who have difficulty reading to use technology for "auding", that is, to have text read out loud so they can get information from text, even if they cannot (yet) read it
• Continued proliferation of mobile phones, especially more web-accessible cell phones
• Continued (slow) expansion of online learning for adults and online professional development for adult ed teachers
• More young adults in adult ed classes, many of whom are (more) comfortable with technology than their teachers

• digital divide alive and well
• lack of affordable access to tech
• increase in social networking

• There is a very wide range, among adult education program managers and adult ed teachers, in levels of buy-in towards & encouragement of online opportunities / online development expansion.

• Elimination of technology trainers (and other trainers as well) in the FIRST round of cuts at a time when that technology training (and other training)is most needed.
• With conference travel being cut way back if not completely, and face-to-face trainers being eliminated, online delivery of training will become more critical, yet the technology trainers who would be 1) most likely to deliver that instruction and 2) be the ones to train teachers to be able to access that instruction are the first to go!

• A lot of adult education programs are blocked from access to the Internet by the policies of local school districts, community colleges and correctional facilities. The reason most often given in planning meetings at local agencies is that students will access sites considered inappropriate by taxpayers and private funding sources.

• The digital divide is growing for our adults. If you are rural and have mountains, unless you invest in a satellite dish, you can't get a signal regularly. I have a wireless card that is occasionally good. I'm awaiting, and have been for several years, broadband over power lines (BPL). It is a new technology that is starting here in Nelson county, Virginia. If it works there will be a viable alternative for the mountainous rural people. It will be half the monthly cost of a wireless card - affordable for our students.

• People who are peers, such as different adult ed program managers, or different adult ed teachers, can hardly bully nor beg their colleagues into "coming on board" with online opportunities. Neither bullying nor begging is appropriate. So only "the willing" folks are on board, or gradually coming on board, or learning.
  
• Adult Ed teachers are very often way ahead of their program managers in their knowledge of / uses of / willingness to experiment with online opportunities. Again, these people are relatively powerless to "force" change, no matter how much "online expertise" they may personally have, or wish to gain / impart to others.
  
• What kinds of gaps are we seeing developing when it comes to online teaching and learning opportunities? Generational? Length of career? Personality factors? Fear and embarrassment / humiliation factors? (I am hearing a lot of people say, "I am very far behind in the technology domain, and I don't want to reveal my weaknesses and lacks to X group [my peers, my students, my teachers]."
  

• How to assess “distance learning readiness” among adult literacy students (all levels). Being computer literate is one skill set but being distance learning ready is another skill set altogether. How do we prepare our students for distance learning opportunities?
  
• What distance learning models are most effective for specific learning styles and preferences among adult learners?
  
• What is the importance of creating a sense of community among online students in both synchronous and asynchronous online learning environments? How is a sense of community best created in an online learning environment?
• What tools are most effective in facilitating learner/instructor and learner/learner interaction?
• How to effectively address the reluctance of and/or inability of both instructors and administrators alike to keep up with new and emerging technologies and/or to effectively integrate them into instruction. (Using technology in instruction is not necessarily the same as integrating technology into instruction.)
  

What would you add to the poster? Do you think that literacy teachers in Canada are facing similar changes in similar ways or is it different here?