Individual Assignment 1 - Evaluation of 3 Learning Environments or Education Technologies

Three learning Technologies I will be evaluating are as follows:

Articulate Storyline

Three Positives

It is easily understandable and usable by teachers and students. Courses can be published on multiple formats, HTML5, Flash and mobile devices. Students can learn at their choice and convenience.

It makes learning very engaging for both teachers and students. It has great features like Intuitive user interface, slide templates, huge collection of characters with poses, expressions, triggers, slide layers. It is a complete package which allows teacher to assess, quiz students.

Demos, free tutorial, community interface makes it possible to for user to adapt to it quickly and consider the software in new challenges.

Three Negatives

It is expensive. Many organization/ schools might not be willing to spend additional resources. In towns/cities with low internet and computer penetration, it becomes kind of handicapped.

Also, in countries like India, smart phones are used by minuscule number of people, which makes storylines use further limited.

Although language translation feature is available, but it is limited to Korean, Chinese and Japanese. I could not get information about other languages. To increase the usability of the software they must add more languages.

Wallwisher.com

Three positives

You can make notice boards, teach, post links, discuss on the site is very easy and simple manner. It is very simple and easy for both teacher and student to use.

No need to download on installs any software. Thus can be used from shared computers, mobile devices etc.

Software is completely Free to use. A lot of organizations/schools which are low on budget can use this as an additional tool to engage students.

Three Negatives

Lot of creativity and thought will be required from the teacher to engage students or else learning can get compromised. This could lead to failure of the intended purpose.

There is no conclusive evidence or research concluding that wallwisher.com created positive impact with regard to learning.

There is no walllwisher community , which I believe makes it unsustainable for long run, as community means peer to peer learning which leads to new ways of using the medium for learning. Usability of wallwisher .com seems to be limited. In case inventors want usability and sustainability of the product, they must add more tutorials, community spaces, to invent and reinvent new ways of using the same in the field of education.

Adobe

Positives

Adobe tools have been used for learning since long time and have credible history in education domain.

Lot of highly rich multimedia content makes final output very interactive. Lot of tutorials, community spaces exist for adobe tools which makes it really sustainable as

teachers can lot of ideas to create content n new varied ways.

Negatives

It is a bit complicated to use adobe tools and require special training. Teachers specifically need to spend time to understand and explore adobe.

It is expensive to use as there is fees attached to usage. Internet access is required for the usage of the tools.