Mobile Learning : Mobile Nomads
Sep 8th, 2006 by admin
Ask anyone whether they own a mobile phone and I could almost guarantee you that 80 percent of all replies in Australia would be in the affirmative.Thats based on three years of me asking that very question of workshop participants, conference delegates and students all over Australia.
The implications educationally speaking, to me, are obvious however I’d like to expand on why.
The mobile phone as a term in itself denotes that its primary purpose is for mobile based communications both to and from others. If we examine the device itself we soon realise that it is a clock, generally has calendar functionality ( programmable ), almost always has a calculator, alarm function and a host of other very basic yet important functionalities which can be harnessed for educational purpose.
We would also have noticed that we’ve stopped wearing watches, carrying around calculators,cameras and setting the trusty alarm clock. We would have probably also noticed the obsessional behaviours of young and old alike in ‘needing’ connection, desperately searching for status bar servicing notches in regional areas and sleeping with the phone on
twenty four hours a day.
That’s where the misconceptions of its disruptive technology status steps in.
In some instances these devices have intruded into peoples lives so much that it has had a remarkable ( detrimental ?) affect on communications of even the most basic forms.
Recently we’ve also be made aware of its inherent subversive portal modality - the case of the primary school student downloading and distributing pornography to other students in the school setting. Lets take a step back to that basic functionality though. Given that there are a host of ways in which a student could achieve set tasks using the calender, calculator and clock functions of the phone, perhaps we could could consider the concept of an always-on classroom.
Scenario One
This is the idea that students are encouraged during discrete times of the day to use their ‘phones’ in ways which best suit a range of activities. During other times in the day students would be required to have the phone on discrete or the flight mode.
Scenario Two
Students are actively encouraged to use their mobile devices ( notice the shift from ‘phone to ‘device’) to record, document and upload their findings using the advanced features of their phones including the camera, voice note taker, video camera and SMS out / in. There is no cost in using these aspects of the device and if you look around the learners setting these days you’ll be suprised at the level of technologies that one or many of your group possess and use regularly.
Scenario Three
Students are credited using a range of options to enable them to interact with learning experiences on / off campus and either in real time or asynchronously. The user ( notice the shift from ’student’ to ‘user’ ) is encouraged to participate in learning experiences which requires an advanced interrogation of the MMS capacity of the phone, video and photo blogging capacity of the mobile device and perhaps even the wi-fi, bluetooth, infra-red and GPS capabilities of their device.
Scenario Four
Peer to peer networks. The networking of mobile communication devices in hubbed clusters, swarming in learning pools, descending into learning experiences as mobbed groups. Constructing m-portfolios inter-fed with servicing updates, subscriptions and portal access to mobile web 2.0 online environments.
Scenario four is closer to where the generations of now who are tech. savvy are operating. The architecture of the mobile phone / device is similar yet remarkably more intutive they might say than that of your average PC.
Therefore, in my opinion, we are beyond peering into this with a ‘fad’ questioning attitude or a case study mentality or a position paper focus…..we need to be actively examining this in earnest each and everyone of us.
I empathise with those that say they struggle with the screen size, cant see how we could read slabs of text through a phone or have difficulty sending a cogently synthesised SMS message to their children telling them to come to the dinner table.
Jokes aside, mobile learning will only have uptake in its truest form if we honour the fact that mobile ubiquitous computing is an integral part of our elearning domain, that students dont care whether you sending them an SMS or a digital short story in MMS format ( just as long as your sending / receiving something ), that ebooks dont fit into phones, that the ‘C’ in ICT is precisely that - communication.
A first step in honouring that students of all ages hold the technology of the future in their own hands ( both young and old ) is in carefully considering where you place yourself in the context of the always-on classroom. Are you the type of educator that states that phones are banned entirely from your classroom, or are you the type of educator that allows SMS messaging and the odd game tom-foolery or do you not subscribe to types and tell them to turn it on first - when they walk into the room ?
Mlearning ready ? When was the last time you sent an MMS file to one of your students ?
Better still……just imagine it……..what would your role be in my classroom, that has no walls or chairs, where on the move learners are communicating, building, conferring and
conferencing within a global and mobile web.
How will you become a participant in their learning, facilitating networked ecology lessons for mobile learners, listening and acting instinctively ?
How will you understand the electronic working domains of your learners as they move into an increasingly mobile workforce field ?
We are all becoming mobile nomads.
Or…..are you already mobile ready ?
Because we can.
Alex Hayes
A/ Project Officer
NSW Learnscope