Assessed Activity 7.1 (2016)

This blog post will explore the field trip to the log cabin and the technologies that were involved in this field trip.

The mobile device which I used in a Samsung Galaxy Mini, which runs the Android operating system.

Given the location of the field trip and the technologies being used, there were a few issues which we ran into. One of these was using mobile devices running on 4G to stream and record through Adobe Connect. Because of interference with the internet connection, we found that the audio which was being streamed to those watching via Adobe Connect was extremely laggy, being about 20 seconds behind real time.

Another issue was to do with the quality of the video, when recording and streaming through the iPad, the video quality was very low and grainy, whereas streaming through a smartphone seemed to produce a better quality video, but better quality may have also resulted in a larger amount of data having to be sent and therefore more lag.

As I attended the field trip in person, I wasn’t following the streaming content, but upon watching the recording of the video stream back, I found that the video was extremely low quality and laggy, and that the sound quality was almost inaudible – which would have made it very difficult for those watching remotely to follow what was going on. This goes to show that while the digital learning technologies are constantly advancing and developing, they still very much have there limits.

 

Assessed Activity 2.3 (2016) Challenges

One of the biggest challenges for ubiquitous and individualized digital learning technologies is the reliability and availability of the technology itself.

In my own experiences of using digital technologies in a learning environment, many of these technologies rely on a stable internet connection to function, and on occasions when the internet is down or not responding as expected, a lot of digital learning technologies become redundant and unusable. This is a challenge which will need to be kept in mind when designing learning technologies, that they need to operate in a way which is consistent to the type of internet that is available.

In discussing this topic with my sister, who is studying to become an early childhood educator, she talked about having classes in computer labs and how students would often end up being unable to access their computer accounts and that half the class time would be spent trying to fix this issue. I personally had this same experience recently over the Easter break when I found that my EIT online account had suddenly stopped recognizing my password, with no prior warning. This led to me losing valuable time which could have been spent working on assignments, when I was instead trying to contact people to get the issue sorted.

Likewise, the availability of the technology can impact class learning – for instance if some students have access to the technology and others do not. In class situations where students are to bring their own devices, you can end up with a wide range of devices, depending on their affordability. This means that educators need to be able to able to use all of these devices and provide course content etc which works on a wide range of platforms.