Category Archives: D: Mobile Technology

In recent years mobile technologies has become the focus of my professional life and a passion. I believe that mobile technologies mark then next big evolution in education and that pedagogy and practice need to change in order to fully realize the potential of mobile learning. Instant access to information on a portable device allows the learner to move beyond the physical confines of the classroom and continue their learning in meaningful ways. The ability to author high quality content with little technical knowledge makes mobile devices one of the most user-friendly and important developments in education. Students can now create high quality video, author content, upload and download directly to their device – concepts which would have been very difficult just 5 years ago. Collaboration, especially through social media provides students and teachers with new platforms to continue the learning that happens in a f2f environment.

However, in many ways education is struggling to keep up with the innovations that are provided by mobile devices. Too often schools are bound by mobile device policies which prohibit the use of devices in the classroom. I find it ironic that schools ban the device that students use most in their lives, one would think that educators would try to leverage the device to make it an instrument to support learning. In addition, the perception of many educators toward mobile technologies create a negative atmosphere around the use of technology in the classroom.

Over the past 5 years I have developed and implemented a 1:1 iPad program in the CORE (grade 7 and 8) department at my school. Currently we have 250 students with 15 staff members using the iPad as their primary learning/teaching device. This program required a change in the teaching ‘culture’ at my school. The iPad forced teachers to rethink what they had been doing in the classroom and what the goals of their teaching was. This ahs been a difficult experience for some teachers – it is easy to blame technology, ‘it is a distraction’, ‘it takes too long’, ‘that’s nice, but how can I use that in my classroom?’. For many it was the realization that we hare preparing students for a very different world then in the past. For many, they will work in careers that don’t yet exist. It is our job to teach them the skills that will make them successful in that future – and mobile technologies will be the instrument that they use more often then any other. Educators need to move away from traditional notions of knowledge retention, and move to a teaching style that promotes collaboration and creativity. The ability to work in teams and problem solve will be 2 of the greatest skills students can have in the 21st century. The role of the teacher too needs to be redefined. No longer are we the keepers of knowledge, it is impossible to think that we have the answers to all questions. Teachers are now facilitators, people who create opportunities for learning to take place, give guidance and direction when required. IN the age of mobile learning, teachers and students are equal partners in the learning experience.

What is the position of your workplace regarding the use of mobile devices in the classroom/for learning? Who is allowed to use mobile devices: teachers, students? What for?

My workplace is an elementary school (Grades K-5). The school encourages the use of iPads but there is no provision for smartphones and tablets for students. Additionally, the grade 3-5 students are in a 1-to-1 Mac program, while the K-2 students have access to a laptop cart and a computer room with PC computers.

Teachers are asked not to use their smartphones in the classroom. Video and photos of learning should be taken with the class cameras or an iPad. However, many teachers chose to disregard this rule since their phones are already synced to upload files automatically to the school Google Drive.

Students use the iPads for a variety of learning experiences: from educational apps (across all subjects) to creating movies with iMovie or animations with the app iMotion and a variety of other purposes. My students are currently in love with the game Pet Bingo for practicing operations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

What are the obstacles?

The obstacles that we face are minor. The school has a limited supply of iPads, and they must be booked in advance. There are no iPads that belong to an individual classroom.

The second obstacles are the memory size of the iPads. Since the devices have a large number of apps on them, there is little storage space for videos. When students create movies using iMovie the Photo Album usually needs to be erased first to have enough space to record the videos needed to make an iMovie. Additionally, at the end of each month, all iPads have all photos deleted.

Are there any success stories?

Success stories are numerous. In my Grade 2 classroom, our third Unit of Inquiry was about technology. The summative assessment was for the students to make an instructional video using iMovie to explain how to use one of the apps that we had learned during the Unit. It is quite interesting to watch the planning, recording and editing ability of students who are only 7-8 years old. The assessments were well done overall. We watched the series of instructional videos in a film festival atmosphere to celebrate our learning and as a way to peer assess each others work.

How does the use of mobile devices change the way we teach and learn?

Mobile devices offer so much to teaching and learning. From choice to self-paced study/ review, a mobile device can assist in giving differentiation in tasks and assessments thus our school is able to address some of the factors of motivation that the Ciampa paper discusses. Students are now creators rather than workbook or worksheet completers. This is just the tip of the mobile device iceberg.

References

Ciampa, K. (2013, 08). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82-96. doi:10.1111/jcal.12036

In the healthcare setting, mobile devices have become a useful tool for clinicians/students to look up information/terminology they are not family with on-demand. The issue is whether clinicians/students will take less time to try to problem solve the question in their own minds before seeking the opinions or answers from the internet.

In terms of who should be allowed to use mobile devices it is not clear cut. In the hospital setting it seems managers are the first to be provided with them. Although, currently I see much more often clinicians bringing their own smart phones where ever they go at work to surf the internet or text friends during weekly patient rounds if they are not discussing their own patient at that particular time. I am wondering what would the response be if managers prohibited the use of mobile phones in team rounds except for doctors and managers. There are many co-workers with young children and their rationale for keeping their phones so close by is for emergency situations with respect to their kids or elderly parents. I feel that is reasonable to allow; however, many of us managed before without mobile phones. With respect to the use of tablets/Ipads they have become more popular tools for rehabilitation. In the our patient and family resource center they have Ipads that can be used by patients and family. The trained medical librarian and volunteers assist visitors with using various health related apps that may augment the therapy they are doing in clinic. For example, more apps on brain games and stress/relaxation techniques are being used so that patients have more choice to find activities that are more interesting to them. I make a point to introduce the patients to the patient and family resource center so that they can search out additional information based on their own level of curiosity. The applications on the mobile devices provide patients with a level of both sensory and cognitive curiosity (Ciampa, 2013).

Only a few years back I recall a patient care manager who was notorious for having her buried in her Blackberry during patient team rounds and only looked up when the mention of “delayed discharge date” was mentioned. She did eventually get let go from the organization but the reason is not known to anyone. This example goes to show that if a patient care manager is suppose to be seen as a leader to direct reports they must lead by example. Do these devices make people less present and focused mainly getting through all their emails?

Teachers and students should be allowed to use mobile devices but the issues is how to you monitor what students are actually doing when they are on their devices. In the education or healthcare setting it must be relevant to their current work. Another obstacle is choosing the manner in which the mobile device will be used such that the student/patient that has the oldest device can still participate fully in the learning. If this is not considered careful then a wider digital divide may become evident.

I think the biggest change in the use of mobile devices for learning purposes for the MET program personally has been the flexibility to log into this course wherever you are and quickly find out what the discussion questions are for the week, save it in a notepad offline and have it available to revisit anytime. This flexibility allows greater time on task and one to reflect greater on their responses. Mobile devices have also advanced with so many different mobile applications that are multi-modal with sounds, tactile interaction and high definition videos. These variations allow the device to reach more learners who have different learning styles and physical/cognitive abilities.

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

My primary teaching role is with grade 5 students in my own classroom environment. Additionally, I have the opportunity as a Learning Leader to work with other teachers or in an administrative capacity for a small portion of my work week. My experience with mobile devices is specific to both environments.

In our school, all teachers have an iPad. The philosophy of this investment was the belief that  teachers having ubiquitous access and shared learning experiences were more likely to integrate this type of technology into their classrooms in meaningful ways. Just after the purchase, we had a change of administration. This led us down a completely different path and professional development was shifted in a new direction. Teachers continued to have access but significantly less support.

Students have access through a mixed computer cart, half iPads (10) and half computers (10). Teachers sign out the cart on a individual need basis, with no present blocks of time or length of study requirements. Generally, the same handful of teachers consistently use this technology week to week, while other teachers have never been on the sign out sheet.

My challenge in the implementation process was to explore multiple ways to use the iPads. We wanted as a staff to identify highly engaging apps that did more than have the student follow a game such as Starfall. My partner Learning Leader and I were able to create a variety of projects which were then presented to staff and replicated at PD. For example, we created the Halls of Hogwarts. Each teacher created a Comic page (previous PD) introducing themselves to the students. We then taught the teachers how to use Aurasma an Augmented Reality site to bring their pages ‘to life.” They linked the page to a video recording, welcoming the students to the school. This project worked very well at the teacher level, but lead to limited replication in classrooms with students.

I was highly fortunate to be chosen to pilot a class set of Chromebooks. While maybe not exactly a mobile device in the sense of a phone or tablet, they are highly transportable and use app based programs. This was a huge success. Students having one-to-one access at all times during the school day afforded us opportunities for just-in-time learning and personalization of the resource. During my weekly time out of the classroom, a supply teacher covers my class. She couldn’t believe the difference in their behaviour and on-task time after receiving the Chromebooks. She was impressed with the level of engagement and the quality of the products they were producing. I found it especially helpful as we began to access Google docs frequently with the students. I even was able to leave an assignment for them, on a day I went to PD, and ‘observe’ their progress on my break at the workshop. 

The following are some examples of how we undertook projects in each of the motivational areas outlined in the Ciampa article (Ciampa, 2013).

Challenge- School wide use of Mathletics, an online learning platform that is customizable to student ability and support in class learning objectives. Students advance at their own pace, feedback is immediate and results are recorded for the student and teacher. New challenges become available as the student improves their skill.

Control- During a study of Literary Devices, students were asked to represent their topic i.e. alliteration or metaphor, using any representation platform. Almost all chose a digital representation; video, comic strip or digital book.

Curiosity – Cognitive curiosity was accessed during our debate unit. Students used a variety of digital sources (Youtube, websites, simulations, etc) to explore complex issues. The unit culminated with a debate on whether animals should be kept in zoos. Students brainstormed categories and worked together via a Google doc for their research. Each student was responsible for a specific topic but could also add information to someone else’s topic. When the final debate came, all students in the group were knowledgeable on each topic and developed a debate script collaboratively.

Cooperation -My student teacher used the Book Creator app for math. She was working with a group of students with identified learning disabilities in math. In partners, they explored the types of triangles and angles associated with each. They created a digital book that documented their learning along with examples of each in the everyday world. Working together led them to justify their ideas and check it against the reference documents. The evidence of learning was especially evident when after the unit was complete, several of the students continued to point out real world examples.

Competition- Interestingly, the greatest example of competition was with the typing program. A small group of students became highly competitive with their previous accomplishments and challenged each other to advance the levels. They began to practice at home and have typing competitions during indoor recess.

Recognition- When learning how to use the Chromebooks, we began to use an Experts board. Each time a student acquired a new technical skill or knowledge of an app, they added the skill to the board along with their name. This way, if another student wanted to learn that skill they quickly could discover who to ask for support.

Overall, the mobile device implementation was highly effective for those who tried. I believe much of our classroom success came from knowing we had continual access to the technology. Students would use the Chromebooks whenever the need would arise in the day which was different for each student. For example, some students chose to read websites instead of paper books in individual reading time, while others followed online stories or books we did not have in our library. Our biggest obstacles are sharing access, time and support for teachers to learn and explore the technologies, wireless access gets overloaded and can become painfully slow and networking problems with the server or student access. 

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

This is a longer one so if you decide to wade through it, I’ve broken it up with some sub-titles.

K-12 Context

The schools I have worked in recently have had various policies regarding the use of personal mobile devices in the classroom. As for mobile devices in general, I am seeing them increasingly use of laptops, tablets and, on occasion smart phones, being used by both teachers and students (the former often being provided by the school, and the latter being personal devices (BYOD) and more often at the secondary level. I have permitted students to use their personal smart phones, but see this as rarer as many teachers are concerned that the phones might be being used for purposes (I.e. social networking and texting for non-educational purposes). Where I see less use of mobile devices, it is usually as the result of teachers not yet comfortable with their own level of knowledge about how to use them for educational purposes, or teachers being in schools with limited tech resources or support

Generally, the use of tablets has been seen as supporting educational purposes for some of the very reasons cited in the Ciampa (2013) article; they support some individualized learning in the form of students being able to access information at their own rate, they are used for educational games, or for providing teachers with targeted feedback in large group discussions (i.e. students answering multiple choice questions or indicating levels of understanding about a concept. In addition, I have also seen more mobile technology used to support students who need to access written information differently (i.e. audio).

In some case, I have had colleagues suggest that if just information is needed, it is more helpful to let students use mobile technology. The teacher can then spend more time helping students apply their learning, make connections to other learning, and develop deeper understandings. I think that this is one way that the increased use of tech is changing the way we teach.

However, I have also seen teachers who are resistant to the increased use of tech for a variety of pedagogical reasons. One of these is the fear that students do not know how to think critically about the information they are so easily able to access. This has led to an increased focus on helping students develop their critical thinking skills by teaching them ask critical questions about information they access on-line.

In addition, I have had colleagues who resist the integration of mobile devices because they do not feel comfortable with their use, or just do not see their use as enhancing the learning environment. In some of these cases, I hope the these teachers think about the opportunity for reciprocal teaching to occur in their classrooms (such as is also mentioned in Ciampa (2013), but in other situations, what is being done in the classroom already achieves the same benefits that Ciampa indicates were possible with the tablet use in the study such as differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, timely and effective feedback, encouraging students to measure their progress against their themselves (and not against peers).

Adult Learning

In adult courses I have taught, the use of mobile devices was widespread, but usually limited to students using their laptops or tablets to access readings, makes notes, or create written assignments.

In the workshops and sessions I facilitate, there is regular use of mobile technology. Participants frequently use tablets of laptops to takes notes, or use tablets of smart phones to take pictures of parts of presentations to save for future reference. In addition, these devices are frequently used to tweet out information or idea they want to share with their on-line communities.

Re Ciampa’s “Learning in a mobile age: an investigation of student motivation” (2013)

On another note, I think it important to share some thinking about this week’s reading. I have some concerns with some elements of Malone and Lepper’s (1987) taxonomy of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for leaning (as outlined in the article) and I think linking these couple of elements to the use of mobile devise actually detracts from any argument that mobile devices might be helpful in some learning environments. Supporting the element of “recognition” as a motivator for learning speaks to an understanding of learning that detracts from supporting students to become self-motivated, life-long learners. Yes, there is a desire that many people have for others recognize their achievements (and for some people it is a prime motivator). However, to include this as a positive motivator for students in K-12 can be significantly problematic. We run the very real risk of endorsing recognition as a reason for learning, and if that I internalized, then when the recognition is absent, the learning desire is diminished.

I have seen the use of competition in games situations be beneficial for some students; however, emphasizing competition as a positive motivator seems to be a product of a highly individualistic perspective that does not foster cooperative or collaborative learning. I do need to clarify that my issue is with an emphasis on direct competition – not with indirect competition. It was a relief to see that anecdotally, the students seemed to value indirect completion with themselves, rather than direct competition with each other.

We need to be careful about some motivators, even ones that some people see as effective at changing student behaviours. At one time, corporal punishment was used in Canadian schools because it was seen as an effective motivator for student behaviour . But of course, we have learned since then that there are better ways to help students learn how to manage their behaviours.

Our Class Blog

I am wondering if it is the emphasis on “recognition” that spurred the inclusion on the class blog of the “leaderboard”. When I saw that element on the blog, I was surprised. It seems to run counter to a constructivist, collaborative learning environment. Yes, I know that there are no nefarious intentions with rating people’s posts, but if the goal is to learn with and from each other, then I wonder if that that should be our focus – not providing ratings. To me it is akin to a classroom teacher putting a summative mark (“A”, “B”, etc.) on a student’s paper without providing any real substantive feedback. Unfortunately, when things like this are included in learning environments, they resonate (to me) of an emphasis on individuality and competition – not cooperative learning.

Now, having said all this, I also understand that other people will have different perspectives, and will be able to articulate benefits to such interactions. Yes, there are benefits; I do not argue this. But with every decision we make for our learning environment, there are also potential disadvantages. I can imagine that as we create on-line learning environments for our students we will have weigh these decisions carefully.

Jo

In our small, rural, community school we have no set cell phone policy. Students are allowed to bring devices to school and use them during their free-time. However, they are not allowed to use the school’s wifi. There are no restrictions set on teachers though in the past I have felt judged for using it during meetings. I have just made it a point to talk to people about how I use good docs and evernote to record important things and have them sync across my devices.  In the classroom setting, teachers make their own rules.

We are lucky in that we have enough shiny new macbook airs for each student to use one. Therefore I haven’t really gotten into the use of cellphones. The lack of wifi for students is also an issue and will most likely not be resolved as our internet is already quite slow (I tried to get them access last year and was not allowed). About ¾ of my high school classes have cell phones and the rest at least have an iPod. I have used them as digital readers and to run a few educational apps like duolingo. However I think that there is so much more that could be done if I could get around our infrastructure issues (maybe a petition for them to put in the fiber optic cables?). I also worry about the texting that goes on as it is near impossible to know if they are working on their cell phone or texting a friend. I am definitely the most technologically progressive teacher in our school so I think I would have to pave the way to more mobile technology in class. I am interested though. One great thing about the MET program is we get to reflect more analytically about our practice. I often feel inspired while doing an assignment or reflection. I think I will head off to school tomorrow and develop an assignment for Snapchat because my students love that right now. I want students to create a snapchat story to interpret a challenging scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ll try to do that this week and let you all know here how it goes 🙂
While there isn’t that much happening in my community, there has been some mobile learning happening within the territory. The communities in the Yukon come together for REM (Rural Experiential Model) and offer week long workshops for students. One offered this year was the Social Media experiment. They unblocked all of the social media and had a group of students acting as reporters, with their devices, visiting the different workshops. They also encouraged all the students there to tweet, facebook, and snapchap about the REM with their devices. The teacher’s goal was to prove that social media could be used for educational purposes. He wanted to create a case for schools to unblock social networks and encourage teachers to incorporate them into their lessons. While the networks haven’t been unblocked, I think the experiment was a success. Students worked very well with their devices and and the social media group created a final documentation of the event here: <https://sway.com/3iUeAdmd9vbieogQ>

I was excited to see Ciampa’s (2013) mobile technology and motivation article as a reading for this course as I’ve used it as a major source for a paper in ETEC 511, as well as an influential model for my research proposal in ETEC 500. This reading is a great indicator for seeing how mobile technologies can impact student motivation for learning and involvement in the classroom space, as well as an exploration of pedagogical growth and how reciprocal teaching can occur between students and adults in a learning community.

My school context is likely an anomaly when compared to other public schools who typically wrestle with the “technology cart” issue. My elementary school was the first in the district to purchase iPads, and of course, we initially had them in a cart and they were wheeled around to share across the school. Teachers also got iPads around the same time and were encouraged by administration to take them home and “play”. Apple ID and passwords were no secret; anyone could download anything within reason that they wanted to try, paid apps included. Some teachers got really into using them and they booked them out all the time. There was increased interest when administration offered to purchase even more devices. As a result, we ended up hosting the first two 1:1 iPad classrooms in the school district, one at the Grade 2 level and one at the Grade 5 level. Those teachers were not young, but experienced, with over 20 years and 30 years of service, respectively.

The remaining devices were filtered into classrooms across the school as even more were purchased by our parent group and administration. (Keep in mind this was a major focus of our school’s mission and vision over that time period – we weren’t made of money; we made sacrifices in other spots and we’re a small school of only 10 classes.) Each classroom “pod” (2-3 rooms around the same grade levels) had access to anywhere between 10-15 iPads. Some pods opted to split them up so they always had a smaller group in their room to access at anytime. Total autonomy was given to how this was done and it seemed to result in very successful and laid back collaborations around device bookings.

Over time, the types of activities that have been done with the iPads have shifted. I have witnessed (and helped along, as a coach) teachers who were predominantly using iPads with their students for highly directed and predictable work such as memory games or math drills. When these teachers began to blog and use social media with their students, there was a shift in the value of student-created work vs. students consuming content in order to better provide an accurate window into the learning community. As a result, students were encouraged to be more self-directed, ask and research their own questions on a topic, engage in online commentary, and connect with experts over media like Twitter (I.e. Olympians, authors, etc.). Kids started creating Genius Hour projects and screencasts talking about their thinking and learning out loud – great artifacts for teachers as both formative and summative assessment pieces. I saw students shift from being told which apps to use to getting to choose them on their own, developing their understandings of technical workflows and pathways (saving to the cloud, importing from camera roll, etc). And, of course, parents absolutely RAVE about the classrooms that use these tools because they get to see far more into their child’s day than ever before. There were and are many positives that we have seen through mobile technology integration in our community.

Of course, it’s not all roses and rainbows in a mobile-enriched school. Management is a major issue for our school with so many devices. Sometimes things don’t work and teachers need to set aside a device or move on to Plan B right in the middle of a lesson. For example, we’ve had issues with individual devices and ghost storage, where the device will appear with maxed storage, even though there is no reason for it to do so, resulting in students unable to save their work. The major downside to mobile technologies is that you need someone around who is able to troubleshoot these issues and provide solutions to students and teachers who work so hard to integrate them. What you don’t pay for in print materials, you might end up paying for in human resources. The support provided to Natasha in Ciampa’s (2013) study is no joke; so far as I’ve seen, it’s necessary for ongoing success of mobile integration.

With all that being said, we have seen a wonderful shift in our learning context that will hopefully continue in years to come. It’s not always perfect, but it’s always growing. This is all thanks to supportive leadership, teachers who are willing to work hard at professional development, students who are open to supporting teachers while they (both) learn, and a parent community who is very open to us taking a crack at technology integration and digital publication with their kids.

References

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf