For me to adopt m-learning for my own teaching and learning, the major hurdle is our server situation as well as our Internet. We would need to be able to have widespread WiFi, and we should have our own dedicated computer / server system. Right now, we are tied in with Health, which can cause […]
Continue reading Day 4 – What Would It Take… Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles – One problem in performance could be spelling. – Students could, with their device, both look up proper spellings as well as do exercises to help them with their spelling – ones geared towards the patterns / specific things they’re having trouble with. – The mobility of the device allows students to check their spelling […]
Continue reading Day 3 – A Wee m-Venture Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Interesting venture idea.
How might you use mobiles to make learning and assessing spelling collaborative and contextual?
In China, one study shared a mobile amongst youngsters to teach Kanji. They played games that required handing the mobile around, drawing, interpreting, giving clues, etc. How might you use similar concepts for your venture?
What about spelling in authentic contexts? Collecting examples of spelling errors with pictures/video. What about looking at root causes behind spelling errors (differences between dialects such as text-speak such as RUOK? IM GR8, ad-speak and sign-speak such as drive-thru and donut) in order to draw distinctions between different types of culture. What about using audio or video capabilities to capture lingo or even the way people pronounce words (the Canadian OO in about for instance). If we spell phonetically… that spelling can change radically based on local dialect or pronunciation.
Collaborative and contextual? I could see students sharing responses / ideas on a text to check for spelling, or using messages I sent them which were purposefully botched. I would see it happening in short, punchy chunks of text or individual families of words / sounds (“shun” sounds, suffixes, etc.).
I find Koole’s framework to almost be a bit naive in its scope. I would argue that the framework applies equally to all computers, mobile or not. I understand that mobile is always there, but the pervasiveness of computers is ever-present. For example, I don’t need my own mobile device to have the immediacy: I […]
Continue reading Day 2 – my m-learning devices Posted in: Uncategorized, Week 11: Mobiles
Great comment.
1. The Koole framework can be applied to other computing devices, but I don’t see how that negates its value for mobiles. Have you ever read “The Design of Everyday Things” by Norman? As simple as frameworks may be, it seems that designers don’t use them when they design. It’s fun to read reviews of mobiles and tablets coming out and see how they have amazing features, but they aren’t that usable.
2. Authenticity and collaboration are potentials for m-learning that don’t seem to be leveraged right now. It seems that imagination is required to break out of expectations that learning requires drill and kill, masses of reading, or classroom use. It seems the affordances of mobile really get lost for some reason, perhaps because it’s far easier to try to do what we’ve done before, even if the context has changed.
3. This is interesting: “However, the issue that grabs me is that I think the smartphone is not necessarily contextual, and I think it can lead to very shallow (ie not meaningful) outcomes.” Please elaborate. I;’m thinking of augmented reality being highly contextual… and GPS… and even the motion sensors in mobiles… can you explain?
4. “I could say a lot about this, but suffice it to say that the wrong analysis is easily made when we rely on people that have conflicting interests, or simply a lack of knowledge in learning theories.”
This is painfully true. Even in my domain, you can call yourself an instructional designer without having any formal training whatsoever. Designers I’ve interviewed range from former English teachers with no training, to people with certifications from a week-long course, no Masters and Ph.ds specialized in instructional design. Even within our own department, people who have gadget fetishes tend not to discuss the con-side of technology use. In the Clark (methods) vs Kozma (media) debate, I am firmly with Clark.
The issue is really how do the affordances of mobile enable more interesting methods! Not how does the new media improve engagement with the same old tired and often ineffective methods. The problem is developing good apps is extremely costly. I would like to see mobiles leveraged as a way of using the real world to teach and exemplify concepts. If you want to teach science, don’t rely on the tiny screen of a mobile to replace a textbook, a lecture, or an experiment. Instead, use the mobile to guide a learner through conducting experiments and observations and collecting data to put their learning into practice.
What do you think?
re: 3
I think your examples are contextual, but I’m not sure that his how m-learning often makes use of device functions, if barely at all. Most mobiles are predominately media/web utilized, this is clear. Now, that certainly doesn’t negate the framework or the potential, but at some point we do have acknowledge the reality (I’m not suggesting that you are not!). I’m certainly no expert on this, but the vast majority of m-learning uses I hear about through my PLN (anecdotal) come down to very menial tasks. There may be context, but the meaningful learning seems forgotten, or perhaps never thought of in the first place. I’m talking about tasks that probably would never be considered if it was pen and paper, all of a sudden gain traction because it can be done on a device.
In addition to the above, I do believe there are separate contextual problems. This comes down to byte-sized information given out and consumed in small chunks at a time. It’s a type of reductionism where context can easily be lost. I’m sort of thinking that context is often created through synthesis, and synthesis is lost in bit-by-bit consumption of knowledge. I’m sort of thinking of these ideas while typing, so I maybe off-base. I imagine there is some truth to what I’m saying though.
As both you and I allude to, the real issue is how to leverage the m-device for m-learning. Clearly this is through communication capabilities, as this is where our current m-devices excel. I also like your idea as a scientific data collector – I can see this taking off as wireless technologies expand and the usb port fades away into obscurity.
cheers
Doug
I have to agree that the affordances of mobile are not used in m-learning people are talking about… but it was the same in early e-learning and there are still many people doing “page turners” instead of more interesting things like this simple but effective concept:
http://elearningexamples.com/connect-with-haji-kamal/
The byte-sized learning proposed for mobiles is about refreshing and coaching within authentic contexts for stuff already learned more thoroughly elsewhere. A mobile might guide you through heuristics to push your learning through application and evaluation and creation.
I don’t really see mobiles as a replacement for laptops and classrooms. I don’t share the excitement of gadget freaks about having every new gadget replace everything (I suspect that kind of logic is used to justify the expense for early adopters!). Instead I see mobiles as part of a set of tools, a particular tool that allows for leveraging different learning theories. As you mentioned before, you have to know the learning theories in order to understand which tools are best for which approaches!
First of all, I just want to say thanks to the mobile team as you have pulled together a wealth of information on the subject of m-Learning. It’s impossible for me to get through all of the content, by this I mean following and reviewing all of the linked in information, so I’m glad it’s […]
Continue reading Combined Mobile Answers Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Thanks for the comprehensive post.
As for learning languages, I share your pain. I think we often try to do too much and we stay at a very superficial level. My own efforts to learn Japanese have not made me a speaker. The issue is I learned a lot of vocabulary (although a lot of it was highly esoteric, a bad design decision!) but I didn’t practice it in authentic contexts. A proper mobile resource might help scaffold me before and during conversations… beyond a simple phrase book.
Corporate is late to the party with mobile. My own talks with a multinational about their mobile strategy show that it is very much in progress and there are few mature service providers available who can scale solutions on a global basis. Content is focused on performance support, meaning it’s highly domain-specific. Content can also be highly culture-specific given that major corporations have distinctive cultures. This means their content is pretty much beyond our reach… it’s designed in house for in house use. The multinational I spoke with however indicated they are focusing on providing performance support and knowledge refreshment for use in taxis and waiting rooms… when professionals are just about to meet clients and solve problems or explain complex regulations or other requirements.
I wouldn’t worry to much about being stale-dated. Corporate focuses on a chosen lowest-common denominator to ensure they will work over a broad set of devices. Churn in hardware and operating systems updates doesn’t help corporate sales… it drives their IT departments crazy– how can they support everything? It seems the idea of buying everyone a device may be dated… employees have their own devices and want to use them.
Very cool that you tried development! No Canadian cities??????
Hi David,
I think you are right about the language learning in an authentic setting and the mobile application could help a lot – if designed well. I went to Japan for two weeks with my Japanese friend and her family and I was speechless for most of the time because I felt pretty overwhelmed. I would have loved to have a mobile app to help decipher phrases. Even being able to punch in the menu items would have helped so my friend didn’t have to order for me most of the time.
I agree about the content problems in the corporation and my venture project for this course has been focused on researching possible approaches to the challenge. Particularly the metadata which is needed to expose the company specific content in order to take advanatage of it in e-learning applications. I think that the web has really taken off with the concept of folksonomy and something like this is needed to replace the metadata management platform in place in the corporate world. This would mean getting the employees involved in update and maintenance where now there is currently mostly corporate control to ensure standards and accuracy. Which you have to wonder, why bother if there is not content or if the content is so out of date because the limited resources can’t keep up.
Very good point about not needing to worry about the stale datedness of my devices with respect to the corporate enviornment. You are exactly right. Corporate IT hates change and they can’t possibly keep up with the demands of such rapid change.
As for the development – You’re right! No Canadaian cities – these are the training files so you can tell it’s a U.S. software training company! I am using it as a base for my demo as part of my venture program that won’t have anything to do with geography 🙂
What, when, where and how are you doing m-learning now? I use my mobile device, in particular my iPhone, mostly for web browsing, social networking, emailing, and posting and modifying WordPress posts. Three Math classes I’m currently teaching have a class blog. Whenever there are things I need to modify, I use the WorPress app […]
Continue reading [DAY 1] What, When, Where and How…? Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Wow, it seems you’re quite mobile. You say “I spend most of my day outside”…. that’s quite different from a majority of our posters who spend most of their time at a desk with a computer.
It sounds like the convenience of your mobile lets you keep up with work through the student blogs. How many of them use mobiles to post questions or do other learning activities?
Sounds like the Bible app serves as a performance support… and you can “share” your mobile in your meetings by having it guide discussions. Very cool!
How might you integrate a more mobile-supported learning model (being out of the classroom and roaming) with your students? Math is everywhere… how might it be made an authentic experience?
Hi David,
I also spend half of my day at a desk with a computer as I’m a teacher. But considering that it’s usually 9 or 10pm when I arrive home due to other work and activities I do, my iPhone is always in my hand.
I don’t know if my students use mobiles to post questions/comments, but emails I receive from them are sent from their mobiles quite many times.
You raised a great question at the end, but I haven’t come up with good ways/methods to integrate a more mobile-supported learning model, especially for math. I personally think that Math is one of the most difficult subjects to teach when it comes around technology. Most of the apps that I see target young children so you can only acquire basic math skills. I think more apps targeting high school students should be developed in order to help students maintain their attention span.
Deb
I remember what exciting me most about calculus was the real-world applications for it… I could calculate the terminal velocity of a penny dropped off the CN Tower. ok, that does sound a bit weird and that doesn’t excite me 20 years later, but math problems are always about real world issues… and I think mobiles are a potential way of scaffolding people through recognizing, confronting, re-enacting, and experiencing those problems and their implications.
m-Learning Device The current mobile device that I use is the iPhone. I am consistently blown away by its capability throughout my day to day life and how it makes things considerably simpler. I have used my iPhone for courses in the past. I find that like Koole notes, it allows for the learner to […]
Continue reading Day 2 Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Very interesting.
You talk about authentic learning and real problems. How has your mobile changed the way you use what you’ve learned in the “real world”? I mean beyond re-reading material and actually applying it, coaching or guiding yourself with the mobile?
How do you think you might share your mobile in groups for learning activities? How might you use it for collaboration? How do you feel about “staying connected” to material through reading and commenting on this blog while you’re on the move and taking breaks at work?
Hi David,
When I mention using the learning in the real world, it is because the content (that I have interacted with an learned with) is at my finger tips. When I look at introducing e-learning in our organization, I am able to pull out the cube analysis in our boardroom and add value to the discussion by providing a framework that I am familiar with to the discussion. It is only because that analysis was available to me that it was able to enhance the discussion. Does that make sense?
I am not sure I understand that second question regarding sharing my mobile. It think the essence of the mobile is that it is a one-to-one device where the learner can focus on that which applies to him/her specifically. In terms of collaboration, again, the learner can focus on what is important to him/her, while still having available (from anywhere)( these other incredible resources in colleagues. Mobiles give us not only a library-in-the-pocket, but essentially people-in-the-pockets.
Kristopher
Nice follow-up.
You give a great example for both of my questions.
First, you use your mobile as a performance support to help you apply what you’ve learned within a problem situation (a cube analysis).
Second, you “share” the mobile in the sense of sharing that information with a group of people in the boardroom. You could easily pass it around so people can see the diagram of the cube. I’ve had people pass me an iPad with a decision-making matrix on it as a PDF. I’ve read articles about people learning languages (Kanji, English) on mobiles they either share within a family, or share within a learning group where the learning activity requires passing the mobile around.
The mobile is small and easy to share. It’s a tool groups can interact with… a tool that can guide and scaffold interactions, much the way you used your mobile to guide and scaffold a cube analysis in your boardroom.
Hi all, Currently I use my mobile phone for school in a variety of ways. I find that much of the MET program focuses on interacting with our colleagues, which requires a degree of connection. Luckily, due to the nature of the program, we are all fairly well connected and skilled at using the technologies […]
Continue reading Day 1 Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Hi Kristopher,
I also use my mobile phoen for school. I recently added the ETEC 522 blog as a favourite to my iPhone and it’s been very handy as I can have easy access to it anywhere I want.
Deb
Very interesting… your mobile helps you make the most of your “waiting time”.
One of the tricks I’ve adopted to eliminate frustration when “waiting” for people, is to never actually “wait”. Instead I ensure I have something to do. When people show up, it’s a pleasant surprise.
I find a similar experience on the metro. My commute is 30 mins. If I work on my iPad or my MacBook Air (doing readings, grading assignments, or sharing my iPad to draw pictures with my partner) time flies by.
I suspect mobile would do the same for me. During my prep for this week I’ve found that mobile (beyond drill and kill) requires a whole different way of thinking about learning. If I used my mobile to record my audio thoughts rather than waiting to get home, I’d capitalize more on my ideas instead of forgetting them. I’m not sure why I don’t take more pictures of things that interest me to share with others… some of it is how to transfer the images to the computer. I’m not sure where my old cable is.
Mobile offers a lot… it seems most of us are waiting for an easy solution that makes everything magically happen, at an affordable price. iOS, Android and the cloud seem to be making that happen. Some of our posters note that they have 6GB data plans and seem comfortable with the pricing.
It’s probably time for me to explore this a little more deeply in my own life.
Hi Kristopher
I have never thought of the idea that I could use my phone to interact with my classmates in this course. Thank you for sharing your ways of using your phone. It was very informative. It is clear that technology can allow us to use our phones for many tasks apart from mere communication (audio).
Hi all!
I have also found one of the dangers of mobile technology (and m-learning somewhat formalizes this) is creating a no-down-time feel for us as learners. As learners we need time to reflect, the see things differently, etc. By having our learning constantly in our pockets for that 4-minute wait time, we might create a high-octane tunnel vision that doesn’t allow for ‘smelling the roses’. My screen time in the past year has been outrageous. Between school, work, and pleasure it is way to high. I found myself turning on the TV when I was cleaning just so I didn’t have to focus too much on the task at hand. Where is the room for creativity and reflection there?
Thoughts?
Kristopher
PS: David– get into Photostream with iCloud (free with the updates)– it automatically drops any photos taken on your iPhone or iPad and drops them on the computer when connected to a wifi connection…
Great comment!
Mobiles can take us beyond our traditional notions of learning. They can prompt and guide reflection in authentic contexts… for me, reflection is about “Hm… how do I actually use this concept? How do I put it into practice? Where is it being used in the real world… or how might I apply it to real world problems?”
It seems to me the mobile would be a perfect way of prompting and scaffolding that kind of reflection. I really don’t see mobiles as great conduits for doing a lot of reading and exercises… but as performance supports for deeper kinds of thinking and application and evaluation… yes!
Breaking things down into bite size and prompting us to apply them to the world around us, or to situations where we can use them… I think that’s their greatest potential.
Thanks for the tip about Photostream!
What one change would you require to adopt m-learning for your own teaching and learning? I believe that m-learning definitely has a place in educational settings, however I do not see this being implemented in classrooms anytime soon. There are several reasons I feel this way and believe this style of learning may be better […]
Continue reading Day 4- To m-learn in education? Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Interesting points.
1. Cost. What do you think of sharing mobiles? A Chinese study gave a single mobile to a group of learners. The mobile guided them through various games to learn to read and write Kanji. Mobiles are also commonly owned.
2. Standardization. This is a real issue. What do you think of choosing a reasonable lowest common denominator? Consider how Janala and Urban Planet English are teaching using simple SMS and ringtones. Even the simplest cellphones are sophisticated enough to play simple games. Similar graphics and prompts can be used to scaffold learners through activities and refresh their memories of what they’ve learned.
3. Data plans are an issue… but why would students by using their mobiles at home? Why wouldn’t they do their homework with their computers? Mobiles are about being mobile… out in the world… Apps are one way to ensure you have a program you can use as much as you like without requiring further data transmission… or limited data transmission.
4. Time. This is a huge issue. The ALPS project determined that it made a lot more sense to set up mobiles for people instead of expecting them to do it. Similarly, a major multinational found that some people had never downloaded an app before and had a lot of trouble figuring it out. As for monitoring students… why would this be any more of an issue than if students choose to daydream or doodle on paper (favourite time wasters in my day) instead of learning? Isn’t managing distraction is a skill students need to develop?
5. I notice a real bias to the classroom with K12 teachers. How does your thinking change if you focus on the mobility aspect of mobiles? Using mobiles out in the real world… away from the classroom and from home?
Hi Jeneca,
The cost to implement m-learning in schools is one of the major deterrent. The cost of a mobile device is very expensive which does not include internet connectivity. Also many mobile users will need to buy Apps for their phones in order for mlearning to be meaningful and effective. Thus the cost of mobile devices is major factor that can affect the growth of mlearning in financial stressed world.
I’m not sure what things are like where you live, but in Canada there are many service providers who provide mobiles for free if you sign up for plans. Plans range from very basic to expensive.
Internet connectivity is a nice to have feature… but not essential for m-learning. Photography, video, audio recording and texting are all popular options. You can do a lot of learning with simple apps. Many apps are either a couple of dollars or are free.
Mobiles themselves can be shared… or can be purchased refurbished… or donated by carriers because they are returned and old.
I’m encouraging an optimistic opportunity-focused perspective in line with our “ventures” focus…
For DAY 3 I decided to add onto m-learning and have discussed the problem, solutions and challenges m-learning is currently facing… Describe a problem in teaching/learning/performance…. A reoccurring problem I see in classrooms is the lack of technology being used to teach students How do the affordances of mobiles help […]
Continue reading DAY 3- Adding to M-Learning Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Interesting points.
I think this bit is interesting: “are constantly purchasing devices that are not being used.” One of the key issues with mlearning is that so many people already have the devices, and that even simple devices offer most of the same affordances (albeit without the bling factor). Schools don’t have to buy mobiles. I believe I read an article where a service provider created some special deal to supply simple hardware to students. Given the share ability of mobiles, it’s not even necessary to have one mobile per student. Mobiles can be used in group learning to scaffold, coach and guide. This approach was used in a Chinese experiment for teaching learners Kanji.
I also found this interesting: “education world is not yet ready to jump into mobile solution learning, especially in the classroom” There are two ways to look at m-learning. One is any learning with a mobile device. THe other is learning while roaming around in the world. The roaming around concept means that mobile learning is an extension, not a replacement, a way of connecting what is learned to how it’s being used in the real world.
What do you think?
You have cited some very important point. It seems like several educators have technophobia, I am still seeing several teachers avoiding the use of technology in their class. During the second teaching practicum for student-teacher at my college, I supervised eleven practice teachers which appeared to be afraid to use the technology in class. Only two of the eleven students who supervised used technology in their teaching exercise approximately 35% over a three week period. This reinforced your idea that our educational world is not yet ready to jump into mlearning.
Interesting point… but is anxiety over using technology something we expect people to resolve for themselves, or is it something we help them resolve through exposure, discussion and “play time” with the technology?
Mlearning can be viable market option for many institutions that provide distance learning. However there a few challenges of using mobile phones need to be addressed so as ensure that mobile to grow in the learning market. These include: 1. Cost- Most mobile phones that allow internet connectivity are very expensive. Also the internet plans […]
Continue reading Day 4 Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
Conroy, I agree with all points. First, consider the cost. An iPod for example may not be affordable for all students and of course the screens are generally too small to use sophisticated applications or to read quantities of text. I really hope this will probably change in future versions as this can be a huge deterrent in the teaching and learning process.
Keisha
These are all great points but they raise some pretty important questions.
Why do mobiles have to be expensive? Even simple feature phones offer most of the same affordances as the high-tech smartphones.
Why do they need Internet connectivity for mlearning? Apps require a single download, perhaps over WIFI or even over a PC connection. Apps allow for unlimited use without constant data transmission.
There seems to be a focus on using mobiles for reading. Why is doing a lot of reading necessary for learning? Mobiles can provide bite-sized refreshers of previously-learned information, guide or coach learners through using what they’ve learned while doing activities in the real world, capture data like photos audio and video (even my ancient cheap feature phone does this).
32GB seems like acres of room to me. My iPad has plenty of apps and barely uses a few GB. A simple feature phone is able to store plenty data in far less space. Comparing storage requirements for desktop applications to mobile applications may cause some confusion about hoe much space is required. Most of that space is used up by video.
Hi David,
Thank you for the feedback on my post. I find it very informative.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m not advocating the concept. I found researching the topic helped break down a lot of my own misconceptions about m-learning and opened up some pretty interesting opportunities to stretch my thinking… opportunities being the key focus for “educational ventures”.
Hi Conroy,
Projector pen computer image
I agree that the inbuilt projector would make life a lot easier for mobile users when it come to typing and to increasing the screen size. I got really excited over a year ago when I saw the SixthSense presentation on TEDtalks, but now I’m wondering what happened to this wonderful, useful technology.
I kind of suspect somewhere in an Apple lab, designers are working on a solution to make use of digital projection for the iPhone 5 (let’s face it, they have always been leading the smartphone innovation wave, and it isn’t like Apple doesn’t have the money to buy out Pranav Mistry’s company). It seems, however, that Google (Apple’s rival) has already got their hand in the cookie jar with this innocuous post on sixth sense. Probably will be another year before we see any further development.
Kyle
Before you publish your posting, please make sure that you select a category (eg. Introductions) as well as assign some meaningful tags (keywords).
David William Price 1:15 pm on November 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Creating a centrally-controlled system does bring up a lot of issues with IT.
What about leveraging the affordances student-owned mobiles already have instead?
mcquaid 11:42 am on November 20, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think it’s a good idea to some extent. It brings some issues into the fold (especially with privacy and things like photos / videos), but I can see it helping some students in some situations. One major downside is that they wouldn’t be able to access their files on the school system. Everything would have to shift to the cloud. They would all have to have their own data plans, then, too (and many of the families in our school wouldn’t be wealthy enough to provide students with devices let alone good plans).