Educational Technologies

            Online education continues to grow due to its low cost, high accessibility, and flexibility (Staff writers, 2013). Open education offers the learner an opportunity to interact and collaborate with people from all over the world who have common interests.

            The first open educational technology I explored was iversity. The URL is: http://www.iversity.org. It is a European platform that was started in October 2013. It is free and open to everyone. It offers courses in several languages, has over 600,000 participants in 63 courses from 41 partner universities (Wikipedia, 2015). This platform offers instructors and students a convenient place to set up their courses and work groups (Staff writers, 2013). The iversity platform can offer a place to share ideas within your university or with other people across the globe. Professors can use Open Courses to share what they are teaching in their classroom with others. Open Courses offer classes by esteemed professors from around the world that allow people to interact and collaborate with each other. The developers of iversity believe that MOOCs will change the way we learn and teach (Staff writers, 2013).

            The second open technology that I explored was iTunesU. The URL is: https//:www.apple.com/education/ipad/itunes-u/. iTunes U is a completely free medium through Apple iTunes application where universities and colleges can offer courses to anyone who wants to take them. Over 800 higher institutions from all over the world provide classes and content to iTunes U (Breed, nd). iTunes U is easy to download and easy to navigate the app. You can browse by subject, by school, or by popular downloads. The content is directly delivered to your mobile device through lectures, videos, PDFs, or books. After downloading the content of the course, the learner has complete control over how they process the content (Breed, nd). They can learn at their own pace, and decide which mobile technology they would like to learn on. Downside of iTunes U is that there is no degree credits offered or not a discussion board to communicate with other students in the course (Breed, nd).

            The reason I chose these two open education technologies is that they could be downloaded on to an iPad and my students could take advantage of this app without having to go on the Internet to be exposed to courses that they may not otherwise get to take.

            Examples of how I would use this technology would be to have the men at my facility be able to take courses from colleges or universities that they would never be able to attend or afford to go to.  Also, I would use these programs to improve literacy skills and allow the men the freedom to learn at their own pace and independently of the instructor.

 References

Breed, M. (nd). What is iTunes U? Free college courses from top universities. Retrieved  from Money Crashers website: http://www.moneycrashers.com/what-is-itunes-u-                              university/.

 iversity (2015). Retrieved from Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org

Staff Writers (2013, March 28). The next generation of online learning platforms. Retrieved from Online Universities.com website: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2013/the-next-generation-online-learning-platforms.