[Live blog]
Beyond Mobile Learning - Mike Sharples
Informal online networking - e.g. social networking sites (MySpace, Bebo)
Many useful skills implicit in social networking - communicaiton skills, networking, teamworking, online research etc.
Conflict with formal education - disruptive devices (e.g. PSP in lecture room), disruptive sills - informal networking, knowledge sharing
Reaction lifecycle in schools/HE- ban the technology, welcome it, manage it
Tension between informal networked learning and formal institutional learning.
Djanogly City Academy at Nottingham - school built around mobile technology. Middle school; 11-14 All kids have tablets, wireless linked to data projectors. NO interactive whiteboards! Plasma screens to displat students' work. Spaces for small group/informal learning. Technology stays at school (no laptops go home...)
Learning with portable technology (PSP in classroom) or learning across contexts (learning across time, space, context etc.)
Mobile learning phase 1 -
ebooks, classroom response systems (voting etc.), datalogging - focus on handheld technology
Phase 2 - learning outside classroom (learning in multiple contexts), interaction between formal and informal learning
Mobile learning - what works
- classroom response systems
- laptops/tablets (increasing suppport for wireless in e.g. lecture rooms)
- SMS alerts (considerable scope for delpoyment in e.g. Kenya where widepsread availability of mobile phones, if not fixed telecoms network/widespread computer availability, unreliable surface mail). Good for co-ordination and management.
- SMS revision questions (BBC Bitesize)
[Several examples of simple group working using mobiles in classroom setting. A question that concerns me, as with classroom response system, is where do you get benefits by virtue of using the technology instead of 'traditional' techniques - hands up, verbal group discussion???]
Just handing out PDAs doesn't work. Communicaitons are important.
Third phase - beyond mobile learning - trying to look beyond the gadgets to
Contextual & ambient learning
Mobile learners, designed learning envts, informal learning
Mixed reality learning -
e.g. MyArtSpace (making school museum visits more interesting).
Problem with school visits is: often no pre- work, no post- work. Visit is standalone activity.
Combination of personal (mobile phone), physcial space (gallery/museum), virtual space 9online gallery.
e.g. pupils visit gallery/museum (e.g. D-Day museum, Portsmouth - problem oriented learning (e.g. were D-Day landings a success))) and collect info relating to a particular topic and log it with 3G phone. Presentation using collected info/exhibits when back in school.
Exhibits are tagged - exhibits can be adding to personal collection by using tag via mobile to add exhibit to personal online collection.
Pupils become curators, creating their own interpretations.
Contextual learning - learning across contexts
Delliver appropriate content e.g location ased guides
Activity in context - e.g. datalogging
Services in context (commercial driver for many of these - e.g. location aware services)
Customised content/interfaces
Context may be a dynamic and historical contstruct.
Make links/connections between physically removed artefacts in museum by walking between them. Mobile devices can prompt those translations in space/physical movements by the visitor.
Location aware devices can deliver appropriate content for particular locations (via GPS) sa well as promote the user to move between locations.
'Heads up' not 'heads down' interaction - 'walk up and listen' audio.
[Mobile device should enhance the experience and add value to an exhibit, not describe explicitly what the user can obviously see.] Tell the story behind the exbiti. Point out things you wouldnlt see unless they are pointed out to you.
Ambient learning
DIgital artefacts to augment envt and enable learning - large public screens, virtual graffiti
Design/develop 'technology enabled learning spaces' (e.g. do more than the blue plaque)
The Future:
- lifelong learning support: need to design a mobile lifelong learning envt, not a mobile office environment which is how e.g. a laptop is typically set up.
- environments that teach about themselves
- location based social networks
- Wide area educational gaming (e.g. in Japan, mobile phone cells contain treasure items, users have to visit cells to coolect treasure, and then they can share it. One side effect is that this is affecting e.g. commuter routes as well as encouraging people to visit locations off the normal tourist trail.)
I thought this was a really interesting talk. Mike Sharples is the Nottingham uni leader for the joint bid to the Technology-enhanced Learning programme. Let's hope the bid is successful and folk from the ICT Dept can get involved.
Tony, you asked about the benefits of classroom response technologies. One benefit mentioned by university student users in lectures is anonymity. They are much more willing to ask or answer questions, or give their views, if they are not 'exposed' to the teacher and other students. I imagine this applies to children in classrooms too. Plus the technology can immediately collate students' inputs and plot charts etc. Also it might be more fun!