Innovation in EdTech: Hacking the Challenges of Digital Education

Discover how technologies in the digital sphere are transforming education and come up with futuristic solutions to the trials of EdTech.

Introduction:

Create inventive ideas to expand the future of online education: 

Through this course, you’ll be introduced to promising educational technologies, and how to investigate issues around teaching with technology. This covers subjects that educators and institutions are facing worldwide.
 

Tackle the challenges of technology in education:

As you study digital transformation in education, you’ll uncover the obstacles that come with education in the digital age and reflect on the skills required to create and deliver effective and engaging digital learning. You’ll learn how to detect and create resolutions to these challenges using design thinking techniques and tools.

Utilize technology to improve schooling and learning: 

This course is intended to prepare you to join other learners and experts in digital education in an online global attempt to create, organize, plan, and pitch ideas that will enable students to gain effective knowledge building skills from digital learning. You’ll recognize techniques that empower learners and put them at the heart of the digital education revolution.

Pioneer the future of EdTech:

This course will facilitate potential specialists to kickstart and expand their preliminary ideas and plans, and also allow those primarily interested in discovering the future of digital education to learn more.

What topics will be explored?

•    Digital education challenges
•    Digital Education Action Plan 
•    Digital education technologies
•    Digital education teachings
•    Digital competencies – for educators and learners

Method of learning: 

This course is intended to be self-guided in nature. You will be able to learn at your own pace. 

What goals do you wish to achieve?

Once you complete this course, you will be able to: 

• Define how digital transformation is impacting education and discover the major concerns that must be confronted to ensure a secure educational future. 
• Detect ways in which you can confront some of the trials concerning education, and better define ‘learning of the future.
• Understand the different stages of digital education.
• Shape and organize a productive pitch.
• Find solutions to challenges of digital education in the future.
• Empower yourself and students to understand the importance of digital education in Pakistan and help prevent the stagnation of online learning in its current form.
• Understand the importance of Blended Education (traditional schooling methods combined with modern technologies)

Is this course for you?

This course is specially designed for anyone who wants to learn more about technology and its role in teaching. Additionally, the Digital Education Action Plan and Digital Education Challenge Areas. This includes students, teachers and educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and other education enthusiasts.

Your learning, your rules: 

Learn at your own pace of study and study as quickly or slowly as you like. Explore through a mix of videos and some reading material. 

This crash course will help expand the scope and abilities of trainees and potential education consultants. Moving on, the course provides all the learning material needed to improve and satisfy the requirements of being an education consultant. 

Course Learning Objectives:

Once you have successfully completed this course, you will be able to

• Define educational technology's role in supporting the virtual environment.
• Identify and evaluate existing and emerging technologies for online education.
• Use online tools and assess learning activities.
• Research, evaluate, and employ open content in online education.

Features of the Course: 

• Ungraded learning activities and discussions.
• Optional readings.

The transition to online learning is, by far, one of the most major shifts ever seen in the history of education. No longer is learning restricted by a schedule, limited to seats in a classroom, or at the mercy of scheduling conflicts. 
Although distance education is not new, online learning—the “new” independent study—has renovated the educational environment all over the globe. It has the immense potential to make access to learning materials more equal, especially as compared to the advent of printed material.

This module focuses on the function of educational technology in K-12 virtual education and focuses on three topics:

• The responsibility of educational technology in the K-12 online classroom
•  Key categories of technologies available for K-12 online education

The cases and the applications of the technologies that we will be discussing have a K-12 blended or online setting in mind. Finally, we assume that students are able to gain access to the several technologies mentioned. Access to technology is a societal issue because of extreme inequality that exist in terms of both devices and internet connectivity at local, national, and international levels. Needless to say, much work remains in improving access for all students.

 Reading 1: 

 

The Role of Educational Technology

Students are coming to class much more civic-minded than ever before. Students today are immersed in technology and want to apply the same technology they use socially to their learning. Technology today is a part of everyone’s life therefore it makes sense to use it in education not only as a teaching/learning tool, but as a way to help students prepare for life in a global, technology-connected society.

Students are also very feedback-driven. They want to know very quickly how well they're grasping new ideas and more broadly how well they’re progressing in their courses. Feedback supports both a growth mindset and standards-based grading, and students see feedback as an important element of the learning process since it allows them to repeatedly demonstrate mastery while maintaining their own pace. What makes it easy to deliver feedback? Technology.

Another characteristic of today’s students is that they want to focus on material that is purposeful, authentic, and relevant. Students can sense when a particular activity has no purpose or relevance, and they can quickly lose interest if the content they must study is not applicable to their lives. Additionally, students today are highly visual. After spending a significant amount of time engaging with social media and watching video content, they have grown to expect their media experiences to be of high quality both visually and aurally.

The students of today are technology natives. Many of them are accustomed to multiple devices and multiple environments, and they adapt quickly to new and changing technologies. They quickly decide which technologies they want to try and which ones they want to continue using, but despite their facility with technology, students still face learning curves with technologies they don’t use on a daily basis, which includes educational technologies such as learning management systems. Learning online often involves such tasks as scanning and uploading documents, and converting files to different formats—activities that are not part of social media or gaming. Students often need extensive support when beginning to use online learning applications. In general, however, the fact that students are comfortable with technology does make it easier to use educational technologies for teaching in an online classroom. 

Teaching online does not absolve you from having to know learning theory and pedagogical practices for online instruction. Technology must support this pedagogy, not detract from it. Online learning must be collaborative with students taking part in a robust online learning community built upon both synchronous and asynchronous activities. Students naturally want to make connections with their peers and with their teachers. Consequently, online classrooms must at a minimum support two levels of student engagement:

• Connection and engagement with the content
• Connection and engagement with the teacher

This type of multilevel engagement places students at the active center of learning—they are not passive recipients of knowledge but active participants interconnected with their teachers throughout the learning process. Students even contribute to the design of their own learning pathways based on mastery, which means that once a student masters a particular subject, they can move onward to more advanced topics. Indeed, online education lends itself readily to this style of learning—self-paced, adaptive, and constructivist. This approach is in stark contrast to conventional educational thinking, which instead of mastery has embraced academic terms, pacing geared for the “middle” student, and seat time as indicators of academic achievement.

Technology has the ability to solve many problems in personalized learning while at the same time forcing educators to reexamine how students’ progress through the material they are learning. Throughout the world, a movement toward personalized, mastery-based learning is under way. If a student shows evidence that they have learned something, why must they remain “behind” fulfilling seat time or academic term requirements? Technology can be instrumental in providing students with a variety of advanced learning opportunities using open-source resources and apprenticeship models that allow students who have mastered a topic to probe that topic more deeply.

A significant amount of research has demonstrated that technology has actually improved learning outcomes. Aside from these formal studies, the best research is that which you can perform with your own students. Teachers have a sense of what works and what doesn’t in their own classrooms. More broadly, you can use formal research results to support your own classroom decisions and supply ideas for designing, creating, and implementing engaging and effective online learning experiences.

In addition to understanding why you should use technology, it’s important to consider when you should use it. Technology must be used intentionally and strategically to provide your students with materials or experiences that otherwise would not be available. This is especially important in virtual education since technology must take the place of a physical classroom. Of course, even in blended learning situations you want the online component to be as rich and engaging as in fully online courses.

Technology should also be used when it improves feedback and assessment. Keep in mind, however, that while some types of assessments do lend themselves to technology, others do not. In general, many online assessment systems are well-suited for quick formative assessments that let you check how well your students are learning. You can allow students to retake those assessments multiple times, which fosters continuous improvement and a growth mindset because those assessments are typically not graded. Of course, you must provide your students with relevant feedback based on these assessments so they’ll know specifically where they need to focus their attention. Used strategically, technology can help students develop their skills and continue growing.

Reading 2: 

 

In this section, we’ll discuss and compare three different categories of educational technology: learning management systems, communication/collaboration tools, and assessment tools (including gaming).

Learning management systems (LMS), sometimes called course management systems, provide comprehensive features for organizing and delivering content as well as managing communications (including chat, messaging, and discussions), assignments, and grading. LMS technology has improved over the years starting out as virtual messaging boards  eventually evolving into the all-encompassing course delivery systems of today. Through the use of a modern LMS, institutions can offer many courses with many teachers to a very large number of students. In addition to built-in functionality, an LMS allows teachers to incorporate external educational tools to enhance the learning experience. 

Assessment tools in the virtual classroom can take many forms. They can be formal or informal and used for almost every type of assessment including those that are performance-based. In most LMSs, the assessment creation, feedback, and grading tools are very robust. Typical assessments include computer-graded quizzes (usually multiple-choice), teacher-graded assessments (which can be subjective as well as objective), and even game-based assessments in which healthy competition among students can promote a growth mindset. Whether part of an LMS or an external tool, assessments can be designed for students to demonstrate mastery while maintaining course integrity through assessment banks, exam versioning control, and equivalent alternative ways of demonstrating mastery. The underlying theme associated with virtual classroom technology is the recreation of an engaging live classroom session completely online. This is critical for full-time K-12 students who need to be surrounded by a robust learning community in order to thrive. Teachers need a place for administrative tasks, direct instruction, grading, and providing feedback.

Students need a space for collaboration and discussion. An added benefit of many LMS platforms is that they can track what students are doing online, which can help teachers identify learning activities with which students are having difficulty. This allows teachers to fine-tune their teaching and address specific concepts or topics that are the most challenging for students. Overall, when used to their fullest extent, virtual classroom technologies can offer complete learning solutions that encompass both synchronous and asynchronous modalities.

Optional Discussion 

In this module, we discussed and compared three different categories of educational technology: learning management systems, communication/collaboration tools, and assessment tools (including gaming). While these technologies can offer complete learning solutions that encompass both synchronous and asynchronous modalities, they can also bring up new and challenging ethical issues and/or privacy concerns for students.

• What are some potential ethical issues and/or privacy concerns that you think of with using educational technology in an online classroom? How might you, as a virtual teacher, mitigate these potential risks? 

Reading 3: 

 

• Learning effectiveness
• Functional and technical requirements
• Accessibility

We’ll explore the use of objective criteria as the basis for decision-making and discuss processes for not only selecting technologies but implementing them as well. We’ll also look at privacy considerations for K-12 students.

Learning Effectiveness

Technology must facilitate learning—not distract from it. Technology that frustrates students by adding layers of complexity or technical issues that students must overcome only adds stress to the learning process and should be avoided—especially if rich payback in terms of learning isn’t forthcoming. On the other hand, if the technology consists of a fun game or cute animation tool, the risk might be worthwhile if only for the benefit of introducing “something different” to liven up a lesson. However, if that activity does nothing to improve learning, the teacher should question whether it should be used in the first place.

Functional and Technical Requirements

In a world with many electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, etc.), it is important to choose educational technologies that work well on as many of these devices as possible and, in the case of web-based applications, on all the major browsers. A technology that provides full functionality only on some devices or browsers limits the abilities of students who don’t possess those devices or browsers to perform well in their courses. Students with the “right” devices gain an advantage over those who don’t have those devices. Some students will be persistent in their quest to resolve technical challenges—perhaps their teacher is “tech-savvy” or their school has a good tech support team—while others may have parents who can help them resolve their issues. The rest will likely find their online experience to be frustrating at the very least. It should not be a requirement to have extensive technical resources at one’s fingertips, however, so choosing educational technologies that are device- and browser-agnostic is of critical importance.

Accessibility

Students come with a wide variety of abilities, so teachers must think in terms of technologies that allow all students to benefit educationally as best as possible regardless of any specific needs they may have. All educators must have this at the forefront of their thinking when selecting technology solutions.

Once a technological tool is deployed, it’s a good idea to evaluate it after it has been in use for a period of time. A tool might be very appealing at first, but if it becomes an administrative burden or requires teachers to invest a significant amount of time in its use, it may make sense to discontinue its use and search for a better alternative. Of course, if the tool’s educational effectiveness is in doubt, it definitely makes sense to search for an alternative. Having a systematic process for evaluating new technologies after a period of use allows teachers and schools to learn from their mistakes and avoid potential problems in the future.

Reading 4 :

 

This module focuses on the functionality and usage of learning management systems for creating online learning environments in K-12 virtual education. We start with an overview of learning management system (LMS) technology and explore the basic features and functions that are found in most standard LMSs. We also discuss digital content management—including organization and storage—from the perspectives of both the teacher and the school. We then look at student privacy issues and discuss the LMS in the context of both student and parent experience. Throughout the module we introduce best practices for using LMSs most effectively. As the name implies, a learning management system helps manage a student’s learning.

LMS platforms are used for a wide variety of purposes ranging from simply posting announcements and school newsletters to hosting a comprehensive online learning experience that includes student enrollment, digital content delivery, and grade processing. Teachers can use LMSs to supplement their face-to-face teaching or to “flip” their classroom so that direct instruction takes place online and class time is devoted to interactive learning activities. At the extreme end of the spectrum, teachers can offer fully online courses with no in-person meetings needed. The following readings discuss the various features and levels of quality that are found in most standard LMS platforms.

Learning Management Systems Best Practices for Using Learning Management Systems

School districts adopting learning management systems must have a strategic and intentional process for selecting, implementing, planning, and supporting those systems. This is necessary to ensure that best practices are employed and that capacity building opportunities are made available to teachers, students, and parents. Best practices revolve around four areas:

• Evaluation and selection of the LMS
• Training
• Professional development (including identifying teacher leaders)
• Administrative support

Gamification and Game-based Learning:

This module explains how digital games have evolved in K-12 online education. You've undoubtedly looked at the usage of games in education at some stage in your career. Physical games are used by teachers in face-to-face (physical) classrooms to encourage students to connect with one another and develop socializing skills. Students may learn about the implications of their decisions through simulated real-life circumstances and fictional scenarios. Games, in general, are a fantastic tool for teachers of all levels to engage their students and boost learning.

Games have a distinct significance in the virtual classroom, and there is significant debate over whether and how to utilize them. Do we mix a physical game with a video game to create something that works well in the virtual classroom?  Educational games may be played on a tablet or smartphone, as well as on a more sophisticated gaming device. Students enjoy games, and they may learn a lot from them. Now, exactly what they're learning is debatable, but there's a lot of evidence that games may help children learn everything from interacting and problem-solving to very specific concrete abilities. It's critical to consider how we may improve our own virtual education by including some of the most recent games and using gamification.

Gamification is the process of converting game-like elements into a method for accomplishing learning objectives. Students are able to include the "fun factor" into their learning using digital technologies in a way that allows them to express their creative energy while still moving learning ahead. The only method to verify how much learning actually occurs is to collect data as proof of learning. Students will gain if evidence reveals that gamification is driving learning ahead. Gamification benefits students if there is an increase in community-building, friendly rivalry, and enthusiasm linked with live classrooms or digital content. It’s fine for students to do something they enjoy since they can still learn from it. Students may cooperate with one another and develop their teamwork and social skills by playing video games. Students may develop and play their own games using web-based tools like Minecraft and Scratch. Encouragement and promotion of interaction, as well as increased student engagement, are some of the advantages of employing games in K-12 education. Games do not have to (and probably should not) be very competitive. Learning should be its own reward, and the teacher must monitor students for signs of stress or frustration that may arise from playing games. Rather than having students compete against each other, it’s better to have them self-monitor and work toward earning badges or digital stickers as evidence of their achievements. Learning badges are a powerful way to do your own gamifying, particularly in a virtual space. Many of the learning management systems in virtual learning environments have integrated badging tools. Students can be individually rewarded or can choose to be publicly rewarded as they're working through activities. This allows students to "collect" badges in the same way that they would stickers in a typical classroom, culminating in a collection or "leaderboard" that may be shown privately or publicly at the conclusion. Students, especially in a virtual context, must not just cover information, but also engage with it and have something to show for it.

The phrase "blended learning" refers to the process of teaching students utilizing both online and in-person learning activities. In a blended-learning course, students could attend a regular classroom class given by an instructor while simultaneously working independently on online components of the course outside of the classroom. In this situation, in-class time might be substituted or augmented by online learning experiences, and students would learn about the same topics online as they would in class—i.e., the online and in-person learning experiences would complement and parallel each other.

Blended learning, also known as hybrid learning or mixed-mode learning, has a wide range of design and implementation. Blended learning, for example, may be given by a few instructors in an existing school or it may be the dominant learning-delivery paradigm around which a school's academic programme is built. Video-recorded lectures, live video chat logs and other digitally enabled learning activities may be a student's primary instructional interactions with a teacher, or video-recorded lectures, live video and text chats, and other digitally enabled learning activities may be a student's primary instructional interactions with a teacher.

In other circumstances, students may work alone at home or elsewhere on online classes, projects, and assignments, simply meeting with teachers on a regular basis to check their progress, discuss their work, ask questions, or receive support with challenging subjects. In other circumstances, children may spend their full school day in a typical classroom, but they will spend more time working online and independently than receiving instruction from a teacher. Again, there are countless possibilities.

We may define blended learning as a combination of conventional and digital tools that are used in a way that helps learners learn more effectively. They make better use of their time and accomplish more. As we've seen, it may take numerous forms, and you'll want to be clear about the benefits it can provide. As a result, we'll look at a variety of scenarios in order for all attendees to show how blended learning may benefit both learners and teachers throughout the profession and education sectors. You are well-versed in the characteristics of classic instructional technology.

So let's start with a question: what are the characteristics of digital technologies that make them so vital for student success? These are the major ones for learning and teaching– they store information and data extremely effectively; you have access anywhere you want it; it can deliver material in a number of media formats; and it can respond to what you need based on data you enter. Consider this course as one basic method to look at value for learners. What exactly are we doing? Without digital technology, it would be impossible. It's a good thing to have efficient storage. It means we can offer digital copies of films, animations, and documents at a fraction of the cost of their physical counterparts.

And if we want to update a video, we just reshoot a few minutes, save it in the same location, and link to it– no manufacturing, no shipping. Then we can make these materials available to tens of thousands of individuals for the same price as a session for only 20 people. That is why MOOCs (massive open online courses) may be offered on a shoestring budget. You may organize your calendar anyway you like, viewing videos or reading articles whenever you want without having to work to a set timetable. As a result, it is adaptable for the student.

Multimedia means having video to demonstrate how blended learning works in practice, giving you a clearer idea of how it may work for you. It's frequently better to grasp a graphic by hearing the tutor's voice go through it than reading about it. A multimedia plus remote access solution offers digital learning to any classroom, field trip, or study room at any time. Now we've arrived to the most intriguing property. We've always utilized technology for storage– like paper, dictionaries, and libraries– or for simple access– catalogues, indexes, content lists– and for varied media– books, films, maps, diagrams, and so on– for the objectives of teaching and learning. Nothing we've had previously, however, has been able to respond to you on a personal level.

Computers take the information we provide and analyze it before deciding what to do next. You've used that attribute to choose which activity to perform, to interrupt a video, to investigate activities for later in the week, to browse the Wiki, and to complete the interactive exercises thus far in the course. And this gives learners power over enormous volumes of material in a manner that physical technology can't. The interactive activity also does something else: it provides feedback on your selection regarding which item to choose. This is what personalization entails. As a result, all of these characteristics of digital technology work together to benefit the student in a variety of ways.

There's this one thing where everyone in the class can take the quiz at the same time, then all of the answers are sent back to the instructor, who can then see who did what, who replied what, and which answers were accurate. As a result, we may anticipate blended learning to increase student outcomes. So, when we combine the simple qualities of digital technologies– storage, access, multimedia, and personalization– with our traditional approaches, we should be able to create a potent learning cocktail. What are your thoughts? Is it possible for it to work for you? When you see others accomplish it, it's simple to see the potential, but is it practical for you in your situation?

EXERCISE

This will help you get a stronger grip on what blended learning is all about. 

Reflecting on this exercise, did it change your perceptions of blended learning from what you knew already?
Exploring perceptions of blended learning

We’ve looked at five of the benefits of blended learning – flexibility, active learning, personalization, learner control, feedback.

Use the prompts to think about some learners whose engagement needs to be improved. Make brief notes on one simple example of how you would use digital technologies to give each of these benefits to the learners you’re thinking of.

There are no right/wrong answers, but this will help you prepare your contributions to the discussion.

Question 1

Can you suggest a technology-based activity that uses ‘flexible access to learning resources’ to help learners engage?
See Feedback for Question 1

Question 2

Can you suggest a technology-based activity that uses ‘active learning’ to help learners engage?
See Feedback for Question 2

Question 3

Can you suggest a technology-based activity that uses ‘personalization’ to help learners engage?
See Feedback for Question 3

Question 4

Can you suggest a technology-based activity that uses ‘learner control’ to help learners engage?
See Feedback for Question 4

Question 5

Can you suggest a technology-based activity that uses ‘feedback’ to help learners engage?
See Feedback for Question 5

Feedback for Question 1

Here is one idea:
Get learners to search the internet to find the answer to a very specific question before a f2f session, and compete to see who gets the best answer.

Feedback for Question 2

Here is one idea:
Ask learners to work in small groups to develop a slide to present to their peers, which explains what could go wrong in a procedure/technique/skill they have just learned about.

Feedback for Question 3

Here is one idea:
Give the learners access to a relevant image database they can search to find suitable illustrations for some work they have to hand in.

Feedback for Question 4

Here is one idea:
Ask each learner to browse YouTube to find a good video that’s relevant to the topic they are currently learning.

Feedback for Question 5

Here is one idea:
Prepare a multiple-choice quiz using a question you have put to learners previously. Use their previous wrong answers as the choices, along with the correct answer, and ask your learners to pick the best one.

Reading 5:

 

We now have a better understanding of the teacher's perspective on how blended learning benefits their work. We're now hearing from students, who have a different viewpoint than professors and trainers. Because they were born into the digital era, we realize that our kids' technology expectations are shifting. It is, without a doubt, a part of their lives. However, we must keep in mind that this does not imply that they understand how to use it for learning. They can read, but as we all know, it does not imply that they can learn from a book. As a result, it is up to instructors and trainers to figure out how to best assist our learners in making the most of technology. We need to figure out how to assist them in learning from their iPads because they are unable to do so on their own. So, starting with the topic of flexibility, we'll look at some concrete examples of how blended learning has aided learners in many ways. We hear a lot about how digital technology allows us to learn anywhere, at any time. Well, it's great, but we've had that technology for almost 600 years.

Books are extremely adaptable. They may be used at any time and in any location. There was also paper, which was a crucial technology that transformed education and the way people learned.

Because it must fit around extended working hours, as well as family and friends, the time you spend studying must be extremely efficient. Another concern is isolation. Learning is challenging, and the ability to study alone is a talent that must be acquired. We all know that learning can't be done in a vacuum. It's a social process as well. Books and films are useful, but they don't provide social interaction.

Blended learning is applied in a variety of ways, including:

• To add more types of active learning to the classroom experience
• To increase the learning activity by utilizing current digital resources
• To utilize online learning to help students prepare for class or on-site work so they may make better use of their time
• To help them in following up on what they did in practice by using online learning.
• To make it easier for students to study while working, allowing them to be more time efficient

In terms of blended learning, smart boards have a lot of potential since they truly engage the students. The advantages of blended learning, in my opinion, are enormous for both students and instructors. It's a matter of being able to raise their Continuing Professional Growth (CPD) so that their professional development may be increased via the usage of learning technologies for instructors. They have the ability to alter their teaching methods. It offers them the chance to go through the resources they have on hand, update them, and make them more intriguing.

The advantages for students are that they enjoy a far more fascinating and engaging experience in the classroom. They're no longer merely passive students. They are actively engaged in their own learning. They can participate in the production of materials, they're interacting with their classmates and the staff, and they feel more responsible and empowered in their own learning. They're also more technologically literate than they were previously, which means that when they're looking for work, local and national companies will receive the skill set that they're looking for from our students. I think it's great for learning since we can document things with images or videos. We can track our progress, and it's sometimes easier to perform things digitally rather than by hand.

Online Learning Environment: 

The OLE is an online software programme that gives students restricted access to course-specific learning resources. OLEs are utilized to provide a variety of tools and course-specific information to today's learners. Making your course simple to browse by arranging information by week, subject, or activity may have a significant influence on the learner's experience. This can also assist learners customize their learning experience. Each module or course will have its own section, which you may customize and organize based on the curriculum design and learning objectives. Learners will be more engaged and excited if information is broken down and overly long pages are avoided.

All content on the OLE is accessible 24 hours a day, including music, video, photos, and links to other websites. Setting milestones in the progress of materials can help you manage access to them. Make sure to give materials in accessible formats and popular file types so that learners may open and alter them in their own tools so that they can get the most out of their content.

The OLE is not designed to be a passive learning environment. A large component of it involves interactive exercises and learner-generated material. Students can retake tests after reviewing the information in the online course. Consider how these tools will be integrated into the curriculum design.

OPEN TOOLS 

The goal is to assist you in:

• Recognizing a variety of open technologies and their applications in blended learning.
• Thinking about the advantages of open-source learning tools.
• Considering the usefulness of open-source software for writing, presentation, activities, and collaboration.

Multimedia production:

We will want to give opportunities to students to develop multimedia as we expand the quantity of the multimedia, we employ to assist their learning. This might be done as a part of the learning process or as a kind of assessment. Multimedia production and sharing will be critical in a student-centered curriculum, where learners contribute learning materials and activities just as much as instructors and trainers. In order to construct multimedia assessments, you'll need to be able to supply learners with a variety of publicly available tools. When choosing multimedia products to recommend to students, there are several factors to consider, including availability and accessibility. 

Many learners will have access to a mobile device (for example, a smartphone or tablet) with a built-in camera, or they may possess a digital camera for multimedia output. These can frequently be sufficient for producing HD video, and video editing has become much easier thanks to the availability of free software. The difficulty arises when attempting to make the completed movie available to other students or professors. In this scenario, a video-sharing network like YouTube or Vimeo might be effective, especially if students utilize the privacy settings to limit access to certain people. You might be able to set up a system where students can upload movies to your VLE or a multimedia management system. Audacity is a strong audio editing programme for producing audio resources.

Both instructors and students can benefit from screencasts, which are recordings of what is happening on a computer screen. You may ask students to film a screencast of themselves executing a task on their computer, and this could be used as the foundation for an evaluation to determine their proficiency with a certain programme (example; using a software tool to complete an activity). Cam studio is one of a vast variety of 'screen capture' solutions available.

Presentation tools:

While many people are acquainted with Microsoft PowerPoint, instructors and students may also use a variety of other web-based applications to make interesting and interactive presentations. Prezi, for example, is a simple and free web-based programme that lets users construct multimedia-based tales for presentation and collaboration. Google also has a presentation tool called Google Slides in its toolkit, which may be used to create basic presentations by a person or a group. These are both excellent resources to recommend to students when they are required to do a presentation as part of an evaluation.

Collaborative writing tools:

On the web, there are two types of collaborative writing tools: tools for a group to use privately to produce papers together (e.g., Google Docs) and systems that allow everyone to contribute to and edit texts (e.g.; Wikipedia or Mediawiki). Based on the learning result, you'll need to carefully consider which tool is best for your students. By altering the privacy settings or utilizing them within a VLE, they may be used for both public and private writing, as is typically the case with these versatile tools (e.g.; a VLE wiki tool).
Reflective tools

Often, you'll want to encourage your students to maintain track of their personal and professional growth, which they may share with tutors, classmates, and even employers. There are a variety of tools available to help with this, ranging from simple blog tools (like WordPress or a VLE-based blog tool) to sophisticated portfolio platforms (e.g., Pebble pad). Blogs are great for reflecting exercises because they may be as simple (simply text) or as complicated (a website with video, text, links, and comments, for example) as needed.

Collaboration tools:

Through the use of video conferencing capabilities, we can increasingly mimic a small group teaching setting. Google Hangouts and Skype, for example, allow up to 10 individuals to participate in a synchronous video conference with screen sharing and comments. These tools, which include presenting (through screen sharing) and conversation, are highly useful for small group lessons (through video and comments). This application can help learners who require flexibility to participate in learning sessions when they otherwise would not be able to. Similar functionalities are available in other collaborative programmes such as Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate; however, they need a license.

Interactive tools:

Using digital technology, there are several approaches to promote involvement in the classroom or other learning environments. Users may utilize a variety of methods to answer questions, leave comments, and share information from their mobile devices, laptops, and PCs. Many teachers have had success using interactive exercises (such as quizzes) during class using programmes like Socrative, Poll Everywhere, and Nearpod. All of these technologies provide real-time findings that can be shared with learners for immediate feedback, and they may be quite useful for measuring learning.

Social tools:

Many students are familiar with social networking platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for social purposes, but they may also be very helpful in the classroom. Many educators utilize Facebook pages and groups to create online learning communities for students to express questions and conduct discussions about learning (with or without the presence of a teacher). Twitter is also widely used in education to share information (through hashtags), do research, and hold discussions. Social media technologies are simple to include into your OLE (e.g., a course Twitter feed).

Open tools are free, open-source software that you may use to collaborate, share, create, and present content in any way you wish. And anyone may use these tools at no cost. It's also good to get into the habit of producing more engaging and collaborative content. They might be smartphone applications or web-based, which means they can be accessed directly from a browser. It all depends on what you expect from them. WordPress is now a blogging and website-building platform. It's all done over the internet. You may also establish a website to store, display, and distribute many of these free tools. It acts as a type of host for the content. And I use it as a fulcrum to pull everything together and convey it to the students. It is not required that you use WordPress. It's being used by several universities as a virtual learning environment. Others use it as a supplement to their online learning environment. Others just delegate the task to particular teachers and tutors.

There are a few open tools that instructors have discovered to be quite beneficial for presenting and collaboration. Prezi, in particular, is one of them. It's a presenting tool that's a little different from the others. Prezi allows you to be much more creative. It's a blank canvas where you may hang photos, YouTube videos, or other media. Audacity is another useful tool. You may also make a sound file with Audacity. It's a really basic tool to work with. Record may be pressed using only one button. So, all you have to do is speak into a microphone and record your message. But it's effective because it can be shared with anyone, and instructors have found it really beneficial for summarizing what's been spoken.

The Google Docs tools are another collection of tools. You may set up a word processing programme, a spreadsheet, or anything else similar to what you'd find in a typical office suite. It does, however, make it very easy to share and cooperate. There's a feature called Google Hangout within Google Suite. And, for lack of better words, that technology allows you to make video conferencing. You may engage with individuals all around the world while presenting, conversing, discussing, and exchanging ideas. You can also email papers back and forth between each other from there. There's a lot of teamwork going on here. They may write tasks, chat about them, and discuss what they're doing. Padlet is one of those free tools that every instructor who sees it loves.

You establish an online place, an empty space, and others fill it with their remarks, like a virtual Post-It note. That's all there is to it. It's a really simple process. They just double-click the spot once you've made it, and they may make their comment. It's quite simple to use, but the possibilities are limitless. They might be utilized at the start of a session, at the conclusion of a session, or in the midst. Also, if they uncover anything outside the classroom or workshop, they may bring it back in, and you can build up a collection of written or visual material from the students to use in future sessions or to post online. 

Link is a free application that allows you to deliver information in a clear manner. As a background picture, you just submit an image. You can construct hotspots inside that image, and those hotspots can include interactive content. As a result, it may be some text. It's possible that it's a video. It's possible that pictures are involved. It's possible that it's a sound file. It might be a sound file created with Audacity. So, it becomes a multimedia image, not just a conventional 2D image, somewhere in there. Teachers have utilized it to truly engage students in spotting items, explaining topics in greater depth, and delving further into the theory. The image can then be uploaded to the VLE, WordPress, or any other medium. So now we have a plethora of open-source technologies. It's also worth taking a glance at the cloud. The term "cloud" refers to online resource storage. You save your presentation, or your materials, or your assignments, or whatever it is, in the cloud rather than on your computer. As a result, it's now available on the internet and can be viewed from anywhere.

This allows the instructor to be as flexible as they wish in terms of where they work and with whom they work. They may also share the content directly with the students, eliminating the need to send big files.

The flexibility of blended learning and open technologies allows you to dip in and out of different sorts of learning experiences and tactics. As a result, there are still discussions in the classroom. You still have a lot of writing to accomplish. Whatever it is, you still have posters to make. Within it, though, you have the technology to improve it, support it, record proof, and show the content in various ways.

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: 

Learning and teaching materials that are freely available online for anybody to use are known as open educational resources (OERs). Full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, videos, tests, software, and any other tools, resources, or approaches used to enable access to information can all be found in OERs. Small units of OER (e.g., animations, films, podcasts, etc.) are typically the most appealing to educators from both a re-use and creation standpoint, since they are easy to incorporate into current classroom or online learning activities. To improve self-directed learning opportunities, many teachers incorporate OER content within teaching sessions (e.g., classroom sessions, practical courses, workshops, seminars) and/or give connections to OERs via the VLE.

Why use OERs?

There are many benefits for educators and learners which can arise from creating, sharing and utilizing OERs in student education:

Student experience: By providing students with access to media-rich materials or resources that particular staff or institutions are unable to supply, proper OERs can enrich the student learning experience and help to address learners' specific needs.
 

Digital literacy: It is a vital and helpful skill to assist students in finding, critically evaluating, using, and referencing high quality and relevant open educational materials.
 

Efficiency: OERs have the potential to save a lot of money and effort.

Communicating in the digital workplace:

• Online communication (also known as 'netiquette') - how to use email properly, use the ideal tools for the job, and adjust to your audience.
• Self-presentation — being aware of your online persona and maintaining control over it.
• Staying current through notifications, RSS feeds, blogs, social networking, and online communities.
• Job hunting — how and where to look, and how to follow up.
• Online teamwork — collaboration tools, protocols, and how to make it work
• Sharing — how to share, what to share, copyright, ownership, and obligations.

We have seen a number of ways in which digital technology allows education and training to give greater flexibility in the following areas:

• Time and place: Learners can study from home, at work, or while travelling, as well as at their place of learning, using online materials and activities.
• Learning speed: Learners may manage digital materials, so they can view a video, listen to an explanation, or take a test as many times as they need.
• A wide range of learning methods: They can conduct solitary work, join online social groups, or create their own mix of digital, physical, and social learning in addition to the diversity provided by the teacher.
• Emphasis on content: By encouraging learners to conduct their own web search for generic ideas or approaches, they may be contextualized to local or particular interests or requirements
• Differentiation: With a wide range of student needs, the teacher or trainer can employ assistive technology and open educational materials to provide digital help tailored to each student's needs
• The educator's time management: The teacher or trainer can divide their time between face-to-face and online learning to provide whole-class, small-group, and/or individual support.

We must be careful not to misinterpret the educator's 'time flexibility' as 'time elasticity.' This is a crucial issue in the successful implementation of blended learning. In the mistaken belief that moving online saves money, the consequences on teacher workload are usually neglected in educational planning and policy papers. It can be, but only if it is handled in a long-term, inventive manner, which it is rarely.

The demand from stakeholders such as learners, businesses, and government force us to utilize flexible learning.

• People expect to be able to work, learn, and study at any time and from any location.
• There is a rising interest in customizing learning experiences and measuring success using new data sources.
• As technology improves its ability to analyze data and provide analysis, community colleges will place a greater emphasis on teaching students critical thinking, creativity, and other soft skills.

In conclusion, online learning is beneficial to the students, tutors and the institution offering these courses. We would therefore recommend that Online Learning should be implemented on all learning platforms and institutions and more research should be constantly carried out to make Online Learning an effective and efficient tool for all students within Pakistan.