Learning Anytime, Anywhere

Learning Anytime, Anywhere
By: Fletcher, Tobias, and Wisher

Of course as teachers, we hope that our students learning to occur anytime, anywhere. The ultimate goal of the ADL initiative to make learning accessible to everyone is a great idea, but will it truly reach all types of learners. With the increase of technology, it does make it possible, but this type of learning anytime, anywhere requires more of the self motivated and guided students. The idea of making instructional materials accessible through digital, sharable and downloadable files is something in the near future that will help helpful to those students who cannot meet in a face to face setting for a period of time.

Let’s take for example, many of our students are out with the flu and some students are missing up to a week of school. If these material where available online and accessible to download, these students and parents will be able to access and see what their students are missing and what they can do to help. Teachers are always worrying how and if some of these students are able to catch up, but if these material were available to access, the question comes back to the students by wondering if they have the self motivation to access these material to catch up with the rest of class? Another part of the article that caught my attention is that learning may take place on handheld devices. What I found interesting about these handheld device, such as the I-Touch, when the students in our school found out we have I-touches in school, they wondered why we would have them in school. They didn’t know why we would buy them for school, because you can’t access anything on it. If students were able to complete their journal writing on their blog from their I-touches at the beginning of class, instead of writing it on a piece of loose leaf, how many more students would be interested on completing this task. However it comes back to where they would use these devices at and if they were able to access websites, not blocked by the school. If these ADL environments are used an important issue that should be addressed is internet safety and proper researching skills, because I find so many students not knowing how to researching using the internet, and plagiarizing they information they find.

I know that ADL is based more on the constructivist classroom, but what they need to work on is how it can be used successfully in the classroom before it is used outside the classroom. These ADL learning environments should not be set up for learners to fail, but to succeed. Personally I had a bad experience with distance learning class especially with the teacher facilitator role and extraordinary amount of work that went the class. Yes, giving the responsibility back to the students and putting the learning back into their hands in a goal of the 21st century learner, but how much is too much?