A lot of attention is given to how to improve formal education. My project examines the overlooked informal education scene and how it might look like in the near future with the help of mobile devices, Geofencing, smart wearables, and 5G. I have summarized my research in a podcast, a form of delivery that is well suited for mobile devices as people usually listen to them while on the move.
References
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Hi Ying,
What an interesting way for geofencing application. When I started listening to your podcast, I didn’t understand how this technology could be utilized in education, but I liked that you listed some examples of how it could be used. There are many times that I go out with my daughter where she asked me a “why” question (she’s five). Believe or not…sometimes I actually don’t have good answers, and she will tell me “Mom, just look on the internet”. It would be good if an application could recognize where we are and provide us with learning points on the go!
Emily
Hi Emily,
What a cute application for my idea! Yes, the app that I am envisioning would certainly answer your daughter’s questions! Thank you for listening to my podcast.
Hi Ying. I like this idea a lot — in particular, the way that it combines two existing-but-improving technologies (geofencing, push notifications) and one concept (informal learning) to create unique and personalized educational experiences.
The earliest example of geofencing I’ve heard of was a prototype system developed in the 1980’s at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in which employees could be tracked throughout the complex by means of an electronic badge, and their location information used to trigger context-specific events. The example I recall was that if you were an employee and you walked past a telephone that suddenly rang you should pick it up — it’s for you!
Our phones are constantly pinging GPS receivers, cell towers and wi-fi nodes anyway, and with all services running our phones typically know where we are with a resolution of a few meters (and if our phone has a compass, it even knows which way we’re facing!) so surely that’s already sufficient for these purposes.
I’m also a huge fan of informal learning, both as an educator and a learner. It’s funny to me how being told to read a book, even on a topic of interest, feels like “school work”, but I can happily look something up on Wikipedia, then jump from link to link to link until it’s suddenly 2:00 am and I’m reading about the development of the Bathyscaphe. Do I retain all I read? Does it help me in life? I don’t know, but thanks to the many informal learning opportunities on the web I would guess I’ve learned several times more “stuff” in the second half of my life than in the first (which naturally featured plenty of formal learning) and without actually trying to learn. Creating opt-in, customizable, personalized, context-aware, multimedia enhanced learning experiences using the technology that’s already in my pocket would be an easy sell for me.
Obviously privacy would be a concern if we’re sharing our locations, and certainly this would present more opportunities for others to try to capture another bit of our valuable attention, but those are soft problems that I think we could work out. Who would create these educational moments, and to what end, is another question, but I think your podcast included good “pre-buttals” to those questions, so all that’s left is for someone to do it!
Hi Sean,
Thank you so much for liking my idea! I, too, think this might be the next logical and natural step. Seems like every piece needed already exists, someone just needs to put it together. I agree with you on the volume of stuff we learn simply by being curious and looking things up. I look back at my childhood and all the random stuff I knew. Privacy for certain will be an issue, but I think it’s more in the in the sense of what data (not just location) might be collected about us and who would have access to that. It would also be too easy for ads to sneak into such an app because that’s how apps currently generate a lot of their income. Wikipedia runs on donations, but I am unsure of how successful that is. I seem to remember multiple occasions when the site has asked for donations because it was running low on funds.
“Pre-buttals” – love it. Thank you for teaching me a new word!
Hi Ying,
Thank you for the explanation of geo-fencing and its many potential uses. I think that the dog fences are wonderful but didn’t realize that there were so many uses beyond that. Informal learning and the idea of goal-oriented vs. non-goal-oriented is not something that I have considered. Is the goal-oriented distinction about the intentions of the learner or the teacher? I’m wondering if I seek out information, for example asking a friend about the flowers I encounter on a hike (or reading about them on my phone), is that informal learning because no-one was planning to teach me about that, even if I am intentionally learning? If a teacher has a tangent discussion based on a question that comes up during a class, is the learning that occurs considered informal since the student is not intentionally learning but is just interested in the topic? I’m just thinking this through and wondering about the line between informal and formal learning…
Your idea reminds me a little bit of the headsets at some museums and sites that have recordings of information about a certain topic (“press 9 to learn about this statue”). I actually like those and love the idea of having access to that sort of information as I wander, it would be great for traveling and exploring new places. I am interested to see how something like this will develop and the potential for having something share relevant information with me without me having to seek it out. I wonder if there could be ways to sync the information being provided with the people that you are with so that it is not isolating but providing points for discussion in the real world.
Hi Janice!
To me, the distinction between formal and informal learning is that the learner has a lot of choice in the informal learning. Your example of asking a friend about flowers is informal learning. You are interested in flowers and you took the initiative to ask your friend for more information. Your interest in flowers had nothing to do with a course that you are taking. You may end up looking up additional resources by visiting Youtube. All of these actions that you take to learn about flowers, you took on your own to pursue your own interest. I think the prime example of informal learning is when a student visits Science World or the aquarium. They learn by interacting with the galleries and displays in a way that they have decided to, not in a way that a teacher has decided to, and certainly not with worksheets! You may have noticed that at Science World, a lot of the galleries don’t come with instructions. This is so that a learner can freely explore in their own terms. Science World does have educators in the galleries that sometimes tap students and go, “hey, you want to see something cool?” just to increase engagement further. Informal learning is largely unstructured. Learning in classrooms is formal learning because a teacher has spent a long time organizing all the ideas into lessons, worksheets, etc. The 60 min of class is planned for every minute. To learn about flowers, you did not spend time making a unit plan for yourself. You are simply going where your curiosity takes you and learning along the way.
The museum recording is exactly where I got my inspiration for this project from! In museums 30 years ago, the displays had a button that you’d press to hear more information. This information was impersonal because of course, if you arrived at the display after someone else, you’d be forced to learn from the middle of that audio. Maybe 20 years ago, the button turned into a headset and a small device that you could sign out and carry around with you. Now, museums are leveraging smartphones and the wifi network to push the content directly to us. I think that the next step is making the world be the museum because the objects and spaces that we can learn from are not limited to just those inside of museums. The buildings themselves, the land, and the environment that we move through every day all have things that we can learn from.
Regarding your comment on how to get information without seeking it, I envision that this technology will be like Youtube where there will be channels that you could subscribe to. Let’s say you travel to Japan for a visit. You might subscribe to a tourist/culture/landmark channel so that as you walk/drive through Japan, you would receive audio/AR interactives where relevant. If you are traveling with a friend, as long as one of you had such an app, you could share the information for a discussion. There would be a large collaboration opportunity with such an app too. I imagine that the content would be created and curated by groups of people, much like the Wikipedia model. The content would constantly be kept up to date.
Thank you for taking an interest in my idea!