How have our 523 explorations made you feel about the future of mobile learnign and how it might impact your career? Remember that our course scope includes emerging trends in social, open, flexible and mobile learning, so you are welcome to blend how and where you believe influence will occur.
Please share your thoughts, and take the time to peruse and recommend especially important thoughts contributed by peers.
INSTRUCTIONS:
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I think this question is existential in a way that it is impossible to predict. What dies it mean for a new thing to be a threat? Industries change, and things become obsolete. The whale oil industry, encyclopedia’s, and many other things were once exceedingly common, but are now mostly gone. Teaching has existed for thousands of years, and so long as there are new things to learn, we will still need teachers. However, I do believe mobility has the ability to alter what it means to teach. Students can learn anywhere, and that may mean a physical classroom to meet up in does not last forever, but if we learn to incorporate mobile learning, and teach mobile technology, then I think this new tech is more an opportunity than a threat.
I think, in the education field, mobility can be both a threat and an opportunity to my career as a teacher, depending on how I approach it. On the one hand, if I am not adaptable to change and cannot keep up with new technologies and trends, then mobility could threaten my career. If I am unwilling to take on new challenges and adapt to new teaching environments, I (and my students) may be left behind as the education industry shifts and evolves.
On the other hand, mobility can be an opportunity for my career growth and advancement. If I am willing to embrace mobile and open devices for learning, I may be able to access new learning opportunities that offer more challenges, and career advancement possibilities. Mobility affords new skills and experiences that can make me a more competitive and effective teacher.
For mobility to be an opportunity I am required to step out of my comfort zone and learn new ways of accessing and processing information. In today’s digital age, mobile and open learning is becoming increasingly important, I think particularly in education. Educators who are willing to learn and try new technologies using mobile and open devices, in my opinion, are likely to be more effective teachers, as it provides them with a broader perspective and more “tools” in the toolbox.
After finishing this course, (and through the learnings of many other MET courses) I am now convinced that more than ever that mobile and open learning is indeed the way forward. If I am willing to adapt to new technologies and learning methodologies, collaborate with others, and seize new learning opportunities, mobility can open new doors and propel my career forward.
I think that everything in extremes can be a threat, but we can also work towards it becoming an opportunity. When it comes to our careers as teachers, mobile technologies can be a bit daunting. How can I keep ahead of everything in order to be able to incorporate it into my teacher? Moreover, will it replace me?
When I think about my own exploration into things – topics of interest, when I’m lost and need help doing something, and sometimes when I need advice from other parties – I always check things on my phone or my laptop. I like having a world of information at my fingertips. I like being able to decide what is useful to me and what isn’t. I like to think about what might be accurate versus what I maybe shouldn’t trust as a source. With all of this information, how could I not want the same for my students? I would like to equip them to use the information at their disposal wisely. I think the future of mobile learning is unknown, but it is too important not to embrace and explore.
It’s hard to imagine that Mobile Technology would be perceived as a “threat” to my work as not only has it made things more efficient in general (I can multitask, stay updated on alerts on the go), it actually has opened up more possibilities and options as to “how” I get my work done. Productivity apps and collaboration tools have their uses while communication is much faster with instant messaging which definitely helps with all aspects in my work. In addition, it also allows students to learn from different perspectives which enhances their understanding while aiming to be more inclusive in general. The fact that I don’t need to be glued to a desktop computer in my office to work is a big plus as in general, I’m quite optimistic about the future of mobile technology and how it can continue to improve our work, studies and daily lives. As for education, I think guidance is key as there needs to be a proper plan/structure to guide all users on how to get the most out of Mobile Technology while avoiding pitfalls which could lead to detrimental outcomes/threats.
I am stuck in the middle. Although I believe mobility can be both a threat and a possibility. I believe we as humans need to understand our dependence on technology and make a clear expectation of when those two are colliding too much. However, the possibility for educational opportunities for those who can’t be present in a physical classroom outweigh the possible threats of over-dependency.
As a language tutor and educator, I believe mobile technologies are a great addition to learning languages. I don’t think learners should rely solely on mobile learning to master a language, but eventually, we will reach a stage where we can rely on technology to learn anything we want. Currently, mobile learning offers language learners to be immersed in the desired environment, communicate with people who speak the language, and improve pronunciation through speech-recognition technology discussed in the course. I also came across “pronunciation anxiety” and how mobile technology can support and aid learners who experience it. Mobile learning is still in its infancy, but the future is promising.
Before taking this course, I didn’t see much educational potential of mobile technology within my teaching practice (K-12 learning). Perhaps similar to the experience of my peers, mobile technology and (traditional) teaching environments do not seem to go together – phones and tablets are seen as distractions and are often removed from learning environments. Further, although virtually every student owning a smartphone, teachers do not often capitalize on their educational potential. This course has equipped me with many “tools” to add to my teaching toolkit, but most importantly, helped me reduce the stigma of mobile technology in traditional learning environments.
I would say opportunity, most certainly. I currently work as an educational technologist, evaluating and selecting technologies for online learning environments. In this course, we’ve explored unique ways in which mobile technologies, such as AR, can be used for learning and the future is promising. In my view, the development of mobile technologies and their integration with education will make possible learning experiences that can be more engaging, accessible, and meaningful. For us, that is instructors, learning designers, and educational technologists this means exploring new pedagogical approaches that could enhance and transform learning. I think that the development of mobile technologies presents lots of opportunities in most industries. Of course, they also could mean the end of certain industries and professions. We’ve seen that happening throughout history with the advancement of technologies and I think the best strategy is to innovate and find ways of adapting to change. Education will not end, but it will certainly continue to evolve in methodology as technologies enable new pathways that are more efficient for the development and experience of students.
This course truly enhances my knowledge in mobile learning and has positively impacted my career vision by exploring many opportunities in the future. Open learning or mobile learning could impact education and many other industries. Using smartphones has become a habit in our society, and social interactions are happening from face-to-face to virtually online. Thus, mobility will become one powerful platform for learning and many other functions for future innovations.
First of all, has nobody else pointed out the typo in the post title here?
Second, mobility is a career maker and will continue to be for me into the foreseeable future. Let me elaborate. My career as a Robotics specialist has been defined by the idea that electronics and programming can be in the hands of every student. The means of this for me are heavily reliant on mobile apps and, probably most importantly, mobile hardware. Ten years ago I could not imagine that my students would be sitting around class learning to code on their phones and then connecting those same phones to the Bluetooth drivers on the robots around the lab to program them too. My explorations during ETEC 523 have further emboldened a thought that I’ve been seeing pieces of for a few years now; we aren’t done developing in this realm. As hardware continues to get faster and sensor innovations become ever more sophisticated, the need for education around understanding what mobility means for our teenagers will be more and more important. As I’ve said in my A03, I believe that we are on the precipice of another revolutionary tech in mobility and as an education system we better be ready to adapt as whatever it is demolishes some of our school-based norms and structures.
Opportunity Continued….
As for my career, I see opportunity outside of the classroom to create tools that will facilitate students learning outside of the brick and mortar system. I have been trying to create a prototype pitch for just such a product during our course. My goal is to create a prototype and pitch to potential investors to help me bring my idea to reality.
After this class I will be looking for ways in the classroom to have students try using a mobile device to do some learning outside of 9-3 or the physical building.
Opportunity!
I see an opportunity for learning to start happening anytime and anywhere. I see an opportunity for forward thinking educators to give students learning opportunities in the field. As well, I see opportunities for blended learning where students take learning from the field and share out back in the classroom.
I see opportunities for new entrants in the field of mobile learning to create new ways for students to contextualize their learning. And I see how students with various needs/learning styles will be able to connect to learning in new ways that are better for them.
Finally, I see how the new normal post pandemic can help move education out of the traditional brick and mortar monolithic complex and further down the spectrum towards individualized and open and context aware.
I see mobile learning as an opportunity in my career as a biology and math teacher. Mobile devices are here to stay and their capabilities keep expanding, so along with this comes more teaching and learning opportunities. As an educator, it will be important to keep up and harness the technology that my students are using in their daily lives, but also to think about expanding the learning beyond the classroom and making use of outdoor spaces, mobile collaboration, flipped classroom models, and mobile apps for helping students organize and reflect on their learning. This might feel threatening for some educators; perhaps the ones that insist that we ban smartphones entirely in schools. In reality our role is the same as it always was – help students to learn in the best ways possible.
Mobility I see as a form of opportunity with networking. ESL professionals are part of professional organizations at the provincial and national level. Typically these individuals only meet during conferences and professional development workshops. With the situation of the pandemic resulting in the need for online emergency teaching, it means that these professional networks need to connect with mobile like they have never done so before. My experiment consists of my practicum in an attempt to co-ordinate a mobile lesson plan using Figma with the help of 2 organizations over 3,500 km away from each other. I should know more this week, but if it works, it will change the way LINC programming is delivered. Wish me luck.
As an elementary teacher, I see all kinds of opportunities offered by mobility. It allows learning to become more flexible, and more relevant. For instance, the opportunities offered by 5G networks and mobile AR mean that place-based and on-site learning can be enriched in many ways. Students can experience engaging content from a mobile device that allows self-paced learning in the relevant environment. I have often seen students just going through the motions during field trips, but mobility can offer them so much more to work with. Mobility also means that young students can do more of their learning outside the classroom, taking advantage of outdoor spaces to explore big concepts and move while taking part in learning activities. It is an exciting time to be a teacher, as many new mobile opportunities are opening up in education.
I think we can be tempted to see mobility as a force all its own and not a tool, which, I believe, is a mistake.
All forms of education stumbled through a transition to online learning, some of it mobile, in 2020 and can now benefit from some hindsight. Just because learning was put online doesn’t mean it was done well. In the same vein, I’ve come to realize through this course, that just because technology can make learning more mobile doesn’t mean the learning is done well. In order to teach well educators, designers, researchers, content creators, and the like will need to be around to steer the ship. Mobility may change the way we work and where we work, but education will still be about people helping other people construct knowledge, at least in some way. As a communications consultant and early childhood educator, I see mobility offering up new ways to share knowledge but the process of education will still be knowledge sharing between people.
Well said Lyndsay!
Regardless of medium, it has to be done well.
I have been able to work from home since mid-March. For someone who used to commute four hours each day to and from campus, mobility in this sense was certainly much appreciated…
Everyone in this thread has contributed great points — I will try not to just repeat whatever has been said already.
I work for a faculty which facilitated in-person online exams even before COVID — we gathered students in large lecture halls, and had them bring their own laptops. We set up exams in Canvas so that students would not have to write on paper, and so that instructors would not have to mark on paper either!
Since then, we have turned to remote proctoring solutions which record student webcams, microphones, and screens. Some of these cannot be accessed from overseas, so we offer alternative solutions including other software or video conference invigilation. Post-secondary students will be learning — as well as writing high-stakes exams — from anywhere in the near future with courses going online — even out of the country! That is unprecedented mobility in higher education.
Mobility is certainly driven by the increasingly powerful devices and systems available to us nowadays. I think the real excitement though — especially for my job as someone who supports faculty members — is in how mobility has so much unexplored or untapped potential. In W12, my movable feast group looked at mobile usability — one of the underlying themes in the research was that we should not design mobile experiences as just “traditional” ones on smaller screens. The mindset should be to create something brand new, something that can stand alone.
The message we have been nudging instructors with is this — pedagogy and teaching methods will, and should, change. Using mobile technologies to replicate past learning experiences for students is not enough — it is time to discover, innovate, and redefine to create something new which caters to the times!
Normally, I’m an enthusiast and early adopter of new educational technologies, but for years I have been skeptical about mobile learning. As an academic advisor in higher education, I was concerned about the challenges students would face working with learning management systems on tiny screens, the cost to purchase and operate mobile devices, the accessibility and usability of online resources, and the limited coverage footprints. Since starting this course, three things have changed my mind.
Looking back to my first post in this course on Mobile Perspectives, I see that my mindset was still entrenched in the innovations and developments (i.e. 5G, Big Data, Cloud Computing, BlockChain and AI) that were poised to change the industry of eLearning as a whole. Back in May, I still hadn’t made the connection that mobile learning, in and of itself, is a medium of learning that will be as impactful to education as the laptop was to research. Our early discussions around mobile technology, mobile education and mobile culture opened my eyes to the magnitude of the possibilities. I was guilty of seeing mobile learning as an exciting novelty that would be “really cool” if the technology ever took root. I can now see it has many roots, and it is, largely, the social friction that accompanies change that is tempering its growth.
The mobile feast presentations convinced me that mobile education is already well-positioned to bring about significant change in how we learn. Everyone’s efforts to produce useful and informative mobile-first OER’s taught me that the hurdles this medium faces are not solely situated in the pace of technological innovation but in more human factors such as design, social interaction and tradition. This is where I am starting to recognize the value of this OER library this course is generating.
Lastly, in researching and delivering my own predictions for mobile learning, I learned that (and thank you to the discussion reviewers for pointing this out), some of the most impactful innovations come from unexpected players during times of disruption. This is particularly thought-provoking for me, as a public service employee at one of Canada’s largest learning institutions during a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty. To quote my classmate, Jamie Ashton, “21st-century learning is going to be all about situated learning, authentic learning, distributed learning, contingent learning and personalized learning… it’s going to act as a whole new realm… mobile learning means learning controlled by the user” not by institutions. This means my industry needs to pivot if it is to stay relevant in a mobile world.
I’m going to mostly re-iterate what others said but I also don’t see mobility as a threat to my profession and teaching as a whole. During COVID we were online for three months and then able to return to the classroom full time with no issues. We used Moodle and Zoom to do the online learning and the teachers reported liking Moodle and hating Zoom classes. Moodle made it easy for the teachers as it helped them stay more organized. I’d already witnessed many teachers embracing mobile usage in terms of sending and receiving assignments which led to some teams almost never using paper in their classes and drastically reducing paper usage as a whole. The use of mobile and Moodle simply made it so that students who were absent from classes were still easily able to stay informed.
The long-term implications of mobile excite me with the AR/VR that could be used but if anything, COVID really proved to me that kids/teachers still crave the social aspects of school and I don’t think anyone can effectively replicate the in-person experience through mobile education. I’d never seen our students so excited to return to school as they were after three months of online learning. Two of the most productive weeks we’ve seen immediately after our full-time return to the classroom.
It took a while for my brain to shift toward thinking about mobile learning as something more than using mobile tech in the classroom or as an extension of the physical classroom, but something that occurs outside of formal K-12 or post-secondary education. Inspired by the contributions of my colleagues and this course, I will be able to further explore mobile learning from this unique perspective. That being said, this course has taught me that educators must be mobile-conscious when we design instructional materials, and we must consider accessibility. The majority of our students are using their mobile devices as their computing device, and the best solution we have is to design for this in mind. I have been seeing a lot of online teaching plans and tidbits from Twitter and folks I know, and a lot of K-12 visions of online learning just doesn’t make sense in the context of students who are using mobile devices to access their coursework if most of it is synchronous. I have been sharing resources with others in an effort to advocate for designing for mobile learning.
As far as open learning, I still feel like there’s a lot to learn and discover here. There are a lot of considerations to think about in the design and how people access open educational resources. The main impact I can have is sharing resources I’ve created or discovered, as I think they are under-utilized in education.
I definitely see mobile learning as an opportunity to enhance education and take education beyond the walls of a classroom. In the short term, I see an emergence in AR/VR technology for education that will help students visualize abstract concepts and gain new understandings. In the long term, I see 5G changing how schools build connections within their community and around the world. If it is a sign of the start of the 4th Industrial Revolution, then it could shift the way we teach, where 21st century skills become the main focus and a large influx of technology takes place in education systems.
I don’t feel that mobility threatens my career as a teacher as there are many intangibles that teachers offer that technology can’t, such as building a trusting relationship with students. Mobility will help me enhance the learning experience for my students and provide engaging activities to motivate them to deepen their learning.
Since I’m working in assessment, I see mobility in a different way. I believe students will be taking exams from their own home in the future. The ongoing health crisis has pushed many technology companies to look at better ways to proctor exams online and this push will lead to significant improvements in the polices, products, services of this niche market. In the language assessment world at the peak of the pandemic, students were temporary allowed to take their test from home while interacting with an examiner in an online setting. This was totally unprecedented and was made possible by two changes: moving the exam to an online platform and authorizing students to sit for the exam at home. I expect that this experience will have fundamental impact on the nature of testing and assessment. With better online proctoring products, I see no reasons why students should be allowed to take the test anytime anywhere as long as they have portable device and access to reliable internet connection. Most exams will be automated within the next 5 years and raters/teachers won’t be needed to assess and evaluate students. With 5G and better proctoring products, this transformation is to be expected and might be here sooner than we anticipate. Unfortunately, many people especially in assessment would be made redundant.
In my career as a web developer, mobility has meant increased efficiency, especially during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. For example:
Scenario #1: Leading training sessions with staff on using the content management system
– Mobility with Zoom (video/screen sharing calls) means I can continue to provide training and technical support while working remotely.
Scenario #2: Website updates, communications with stakeholders
– Mobility with our mobile-friendly website and backend means I can make updates on the go. I was able to post a press release, announcing urgent hospital policy updates on my smartphone, while waiting in line for groceries.
As a student in this course, I’ve previously commented on the challenge with choosing an app from the plethora of options of available. If I had a physical representation of all the apps I’ve tried, tested and dumped, it’d look like a cyber junkyard. I think mobility becomes a threat, when we’re no longer mindful of its use and practice. Nonetheless, the diverse range of A3 projects presented opportunities in mobility that I didn’t encounter before. From voice-activated technologies, NFC-enabled checkpoints to educating people about data privacy, mobility overall has a clear place in our future.
Mobility has made my life easier. These days the use of electronic devices has made many features or activities accessible. Especially with the current pandemic, mobility has really helped us on how to manage our daily lifestyle differently. The different OEr presented throughout the course gave me an insight into all the possibilities that mobile technology and education can do. We are not allowed to go out, but with the internet and a mobile device, we can somehow still get access to what we were doing before the quarantine. The pandemic has provided me with an opportunity to review all the possibilities that mobile has provided me with. Career-wise, I believe that it has made it easier. I no longer need to commute and carry all the paperwork around. Communication with students and coworkers is almost virtual, I rarely need to make a call. Everything has been digitized and I am getting used to this new way of working. I just wonder once the quarantine is over, will I get used to the old ways of non-mobility.
On the Mobile Forum this week, we’ve seen many compelling projects and discussions centred around how mobility will shift traditional schooling – Learning on the Go by Jamie, Is Schooling Still Necessary by Yi, Has School Taken Too Much Control by Adrian, just to name a few. What kind of future will mobility take us to? Does mobility mean rejecting our older educational model entirely? Or does it mean more powerful control from the teacher’s end? Many of us have agreed that schools won’t go obsolete, but will definitely be transposed to adapt to the new sociocultural contexts. As an educator, I see more opportunities than threat.
I don’t think mobility will ever be a threat to my career as a teacher. To reiterate what was discussed earlier on the forum: traditional schools will not become obsolete but will be fundamentally changed. Physical schools exist for many reasons. Some skills and subjects don’t lend themselves to an online format. For example, courses that require more hand-on experiences or use of certain equipment, skills like socio-emotional and networking… Also, some of us mentioned the dual/multiple purpose of schools. Besides academics, schools provide childcare, especially at the elementary level; schools are also a place where kids develop friendship and sense of belonging/community. Binal has raised a really great point: maybe flipped classrooms will become the norm.
As for the role of an educator, I think all of us have agreed upon the shift from sage on the stage to guide on the side.Teachers will no longer be holders or dispensers of “knowledge”, but designers who cultivate inquiry, develop skills and facilitate personal development.
Gee’s view (2011) is quite applicable in this context: “The purpose of education arguably should be based on a broader global concept of ‘citizenship’ which engages people in ‘sharing abilities to learn, teach, listen, and collaborate’ as they work together to solve the problems they face together” (as cited in Turvey and Pachler, 2016, p. 116). Without a doubt, as educators, it is our job to prepare lifelong expert learners in this mobile age.
References
Turvey, K., & Pachler, N. (2016). Problem spaces. In N. Rushby & D. W. Surry (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology (pp. 113-130): John Wiley & Sons.
Hi Ceci,
I also believe that teachers won’t be replaced by machines or that traditional school will become obsolete. However, I think this prediction might be true mainly for primary and middle schools. I do foresee major reshuffling in the instruction delivery mode of education from the high school level. Young kids will still need school and teachers not only for learning new knowledge but also for fostering their emotional development. Schools and teachers help students transition from their home to the workplace and make sure that they are conditioned to function and integrate properly in the wider society. Schools train the next generation of workers and this starts from the students’ very first day in kindergarten.
As students get older, they will demand more autonomy and independence and the new technologies would enable them to study wherever and whenever they want. They won’t be confined within the 4 walls of a classroom and learning won’t have to happen at a designated place or time. I expect a significant uptake in online courses and more students will be looking for alternative ways to educate themselves and acquire certification in their field of interest. Already we are seeing the growing popularity of MOOC and its potential. Universities will have to adapt and seriously rethink how to best cater for their future students’ needs and suit their lifestyles. I see more educational technologies being deployed in the form of AR and VR to create virtual classes to provide hands-on and practical knowledge and skills. Tests will be fully automated and I wouldn’t surprised me to see more virtual universities in the future allowing students from all corners of the world to join classes online.
Hi Pascaline,
You’ve raised so many thought-provoking points. There is a strong possibility that online learning will become the norm for higher education, and we’re actually moving towards that direction. However, I still think it is too early to start that at high school level. I might be wrong. You mentioned that tests will be fully automated, and in your post above you said, “raters/teachers won’t be needed to assess and evaluate students”. I foresee that with technology tools strategically deployed, exams will be given online effectively in the near future. I also understand that AI can be used in grading standard essays, with the precondition that the AI system is given a large number of examples with the ‘right answer’ or the best human judgement, which it will then attempt to replicate. Do you think AI can be trained to grade more advanced papers in literature and philosophy?
Mobility to me means learning on-the-go and beyond/across walls. As others have mentioned, leveraging technology to prepare our students for the world of tomorrow and jobs or professions that don’t yet exist, is a challenging but exciting prospect. The A3 especially helped me define what I think the future of education with AI looks like – and I envision classrooms and teachers supported and aided by AI rather than taken over or led by it. As a high school Chemistry teacher, I think I see mobility and emerging mobile technologies helping teachers differentiate education better, make flipped classrooms the norm, focus on skills rather than content, successfully manage mixed-ability, mixed-age, mixed-experienced students in one “classroom” and employ resources that are current, relevant, engaging, and immersive.
I completely agree with Binal; mobility is going to open up more avenues for students to learn and experience. Our A3 assignment really showed me that as we enhance both the administrative and educational aspects of a school with technological advancements, the school will leave the old factory style model behind and move towards a place of experimentation and facilitation. Now we just need a Delorean with a flux capacitor to get there…
When I started in this course I didn’t have much knowledge of what how I could effectively incorporate mobile technology into my primary classroom. I think this course has given me the skills to feel more comfortable using this tech with my younger students. I have known for awhile that my students know quite more about mobile technology and were ready to use this technology to support their learning. I was grateful that I took this course while we were still conducting online learning with our students. From discussions to the tasks, it was all interesting and helpful. Moving forward, I feel more confident that I can use what I have learned to implement a classroom where students can use mobiles and tablets to learn with.
There are many opportunities to develop and harness mobile technology in my career as an educator. We have already seen in the development of this course, just how plentiful the opportunities already are and where this mobile technology can possibly further take us in the near future. Optimistically, I see many opportunities that are available but the opportunities need to be adjusted depending on the age and grade level of the classes we teach. The ability to take learning with you anywhere and anytime is a great thing for education. Tomorrow’s learners shouldn’t have to leave their learning at school. I think we can all see the opportunities that lie with mobility in our careers. How we can enhance, improve and be a part of restructuring our classrooms and schools is an exciting place to be in.
There are of course threats such as being overwhelmed with the amount of mobile opportunities, or the time to learn the new apps, and implementing them can cause some reluctance of mobile use in our classrooms. However, I also see one bigger threat that is lurking in the background. This threat is that our government doesn’t fully see the potential that mobile technology has to transform education and they fail to make the necessary moves to make this type of learning a reality in our schools. If this happens, Canadian education will get left behind and this will not be a good thing for Canadian society. The move to a fully mobile education experience will cost money and the government will have to fully embrace the movement and put up the money to make it happen.
Mobility in general, is a way of life for many and not a fad anymore. With a billion developers putting out various apps, programs and web apps for these devices, we can say that we are all connected and live in a cloud. We all have access to the same knowledge shared globally as everyone else. So one can assume that we all learn together since all the information is laid out for us. The old textbooks are done away, replaced by current just in time learning. It is easier to learn math, correct spelling, have AI help us, and plenty of helpful apps to provide on the go learning. We are not only able to learn quickly, but retention speed is increased and better comprehension helps everyone build a critical mind. This is the opportunity.
The threat arises when we do not structure the knowledge in a way that is easier to adopt, to learn, and to assimilate into our minds. This digital noise is overwhelming for educators to curate and provide meaningful resources for students. The question arises, how can our brain handle this information overload, especially young minds. We can all move to a next generation of learning but we still need to condition our minds so that we are able to still think for ourselves and be curious, without depending too much on outside influences that technology will eventually bring. We can supplement mobile learning with human teaching and learning which is evolving rapidly, but we have to be conscious of the effects it has our future and how accessible it would be.
For my career, accessibility in online learning is important and making sure that everyone has the right to learn equally. There is a gap and I hope to have mobility bridge that gap in some way and we already see that happening. There are always pros and cons with any technology and new trending pedagogies and blending them may help shape a new era of teaching and learning for not just students, but learners across the age groups.
I’m a bit conflicted still at the term mobile learning itself as it still carries a lot of baggage I feel tying it to a mobile phone. While the mobile phone has so far been one of the most impactful and versatile mobile tools that can connect to learning. While we’re seeing increased access to quality learning resources, and a democratization of knowledge and learning opportunity, the interface itself is still sorely lacking. I was surprised at just how mobile “unfriendly” so many resources still are, and tapping out text with my thumbs, as fast as they have gotten, still feels cumbersome.
As for the future of mobile learning, I see it as an opportunity to be able to carry your learning with you wherever you go, freeing up learners to be able to come together as needed from wherever they are, and allowing for the concept of the “classroom” as a physically shared space to dissolve away even further. As a school leader in educational technology, I feel like I have a unique opportunity to attempt to guide schools towards a more learner-centred approach which I believe is inseparable from the concept of mobile and open learning. With that said, I think that schools, with their set timetables, spaces and instruction are on the way out so I am excited to be a part of the process of repurposing schools. To think more carefully about why we come together, and what kinds of learning don’t require us to be in the same space, or proceed at the same time. Applied learning in the field while remaining connected to a vibrant learning community is my dream for the future of mobile and open learning.
As a designer, increasing mobility in education means more opportunities and more challenges on the design side of education. When you throw mobility into a digital experience, you suddenly have to consider so many more facets of a user’s experience – for example, are they reading on a bus where their phone is jiggling around and harder to read? Are they using your app in bright sun, where it can be harder to see a digital screen? Are they working in an atmosphere prone to distraction? Mobility throws a wrench into many of our assumptions about online learning – we can’t guarantee that students are engaging from desktop computers in quiet rooms at home. As a designer, I really enjoy the challenge of thinking of all these use cases and trying to design an experience that will be adaptive for everyone on the go.
Overall, it’s been great in this course to engage with so many different facets of mobile learning and add this new awareness to my vocabulary as a designer.
Throughout this course, I have seen connections to my professional practice. During the movable feasts each week, the various aspects of mobility came to the forefront. There are many different apps and programs that I can take away that directly impact my career as an online teacher. I have new and exciting ways to connect to my students and easily embed them into my course shells. I have a new appreciation for 5G, mobile games and podcasts in education. Each of these topics will enhance mobile learning without crossing over and entering the social mobility realm of my students. I feel there should be an effort made by teachers to keep education and social media separate. This is a delicate line to see when discussing mobile learning; however, I believe those lines should remain so that there will be less confusion between personal and professional mobility in the future. I think mobility is an opportunity; however, I can quickly see how mobile devices have become an extension of one’s self. It this a threat to the live/work balance? If work and social are focused around mobility, how does one differentiate themselves from their device?
I always struggled with the notion of an 8-5 in an office. Between wanting a lifestyle where I could do a 15 min yoga break if I wanted it, and hoping to avoid hours of transport time, mobility was always an ideal future for my career.
Now that technologies and infrastructures are so much more supportive, it becomes a viable opportunity. Furthermore, there are far more platforms and technologies that allow me and my co-workers to collaborate on projects whilst not being in the office today. From Google Suites to Keynote collaboration to Wetransfer, working together whilst apart is increasingly realistic. There are clearly still some challenges to overcome for “true” mobility, rather than just a work-from-home model, to be possible but the future looks very bright.
In terms of the work I do, which is designing and building digital educational environments and materials, the future of mobility is very exciting. What we will be able to offer instructors and students is so filled with opportunity and variety that there are enticing and promising options for any project or educational goal. This is thrilling, and this course has given me a lot more practice and insight to weave back into my workplace as well.
So, mobility in the future is good for me from both perspectives in my career. Both from the viewpoint of my own life and workstyle, as well as the solutions and projects I will be able to help educators with in the near and distant future!
I’m leaving the course with a greater appreciation of how far mobility has come and the fact that it really is every-changing. I foresee that our idea of mobility which is so strongly linked to the use of mobile devices as we know them will change drastically in the next decade as we stare down the prospects of brain-computer interfaces now almost becoming a reality. More and more I think our idea of mobility as being this idea of an additional item in hand that created a phantom limb will shift towards something that becomes a very real integrated function of ourselves. It sounds futuristic but I think this is where were headed and if that is so, now more than ever we need to seriously be rethinking our old factory style of teaching that is still so prevalent. There will be no need for such schooling systems and our focus will be forced to move towards what many of us have already brought up and illustrated in the OER’s- creating spaces for students to not master content knowledge but far more application based skills. This impacts my future career directly as I will need to make sure I am prepared and have already started implementing this re-focusing or I risk not preparing my students adequately for their future careers.
I started this course with a goal of how to manage students’ smartphones in the classroom and learning about stimulating and engaging pedagogy that leverages smartphones in the classroom. As a result of the explorations in this course my belief now is that smartphones have become students’ constant digital companions and like body parts, and that students’ smartphones are an ever present tool that can be used for learning. Therefore, my goal is to transform my practice to teaching surrounded by my students with their smartphones in their hands. For me, mobility is an opportunity.