Day 1
At present I am not engaged in any form of mlearning, but from participating this week’s activities I have come to the realisation that Mobile learning is a great way to supplement teaching and learning and it poises to provide opportunities to do much more to enrich the learning experience as it is convenient to both teachers and learners, it is portable, compatible , engaging and fun. While we have so many positives, the potential limitations of mlearning devices lingers considering that they are machines. Some of these include,
- The small screens of mobile devices which may cause a strain on the eyes
- Battery life/charge of these gadgets
- Many time hardware platform are not compatible which makes it difficult to develop content for all.
- It can be difficult to manipulate large and moving graphics
- Devices can become out of date quickly since technology is advancing so rapidly
- Poor bandwidth may result into limited access.
Mlearning extends the teaching and learning spaces beyond the walls of the traditional classroom but these are some points to consider before we delve into this new learning trend.
Keisha
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Everton Walker 9:58 pm on November 15, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Keisha,
I must agree with you. I am not impressed with those small screens and the other factors mentioned for meaningful learning to take place. In some cases, certain video format cannot be played as the mobile format doesn’t support it. Without those considerations properly sorted out, I wouldn’t get into mlearning at this time. As it relates to recording audio, videoing and all the other great benefits, it is very useful. However, size and availability to students would be major problems in my current situation.
Everton
David William Price 11:38 pm on November 15, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for your post.
While it’s common to compare mobiles to PCs in terms of screen size and battery life and power, the question is what mobiles do that is unique rather than how are they crippled in comparison to bigger devices. Their unique strengths provide some pretty different ways of “meaningful learning”…. learning that is guided within the real world rather than delivered as a package. How do you think you might use that kind of situated, authentic, guided learning in the real world to replace traditional, sit-down and read/listen learning?