Mobile Learning Series

This four-part series co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning examines in-depth the evolution of using mobile devices for learning, from practical teaching tactics to shifting school policies and cultural changes.

* How Teachers Make Cell Phones Work in the Classroom
* Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools Will Old Teaching Tactics Work?
* More Schools Welcome Cell Phones in the Class
* Augmented Reality, Coming Soon to a School Near You

RECENT POSTS

How Teachers Make Cell Phones Work in the Classroom

May 10, 2012 | 1:23 PM | By

Erin Scott

A.P. Chemistry students use their cell phones to answer their teacher's question.

When we talk about using cell phones in class, we’re not just talking about using cell phones in class.

The idea of mobile learning touches on just about every subject that any technology addresses: social media, digital citizenship, content-knowledge versus skill-building, Internet filtering and safety laws, teaching techniques, bring-your-own-device policies, school budgets.

At its core, the issues associated with mobile learning get to the very fundamentals of what happens in class everyday. At their best, cell phones and mobile devices seamlessly facilitate what students and teachers already do in thriving, inspiring classrooms. Students communicate and collaborate with each other and the teacher. They apply facts and information they’ve found to formulate or back up their ideas. They create projects to deepen their understanding, association with, and presentation of ideas.

Guide to Mobile Learning

This is part four of a series exploring mobile learning co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning.

Other posts in this series include:

In the most ideal class settings, mobile devices disappear into the background, like markers and whiteboards, pencil and paper – not because they’re not being used, but because they’re simply tools, a means to an end. The “end” can be any number of things: to gauge student understanding of a concept, to capture notes and ideas to be used and studied later, to calculate, to communicate, to express ideas.

WHEN IT WORKS

In Ramsey Musallam’s A.P. Chemistry class at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco, cell phones are a natural extension of the way he communicates with his students.

As soon as kids walk in, Musallam sends out a text blast through Remind101, asking them a challenge question that’s related to the day’s lesson. “First person to tell me the units on K for a second order reaction gets chocolate,” he types and sends off. His students know he does this regularly, so they’re constantly anticipating the question during the day, in and out of class.

“Sure, that’s kind of cute,” he says, admitting that it can be seen as gimmicky. “But more importantly, in my mind that’s saying, ‘You’re carrying around something that I can contact you with.’ It’s a fun ways to stay motivated in our day, which can be pretty dry sometimes. It’s a chance to think about what we’re learning outside the context of state testing.”

“I want it to be as rich and as visual as possible. I want them to see things, not just know it.”

Once the class settles in and things are rolling along, the steady hum gets louder when kids are excited or working together, then quieter again when they’re working out problems on their individual little whiteboards (to be clear, these are not digital).

Musallam constantly walks around, sending out directives – “Write the answer on your table!” ““I Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, cell phones, mobile, Mobile Learning, Mobile Learning Series, Remind101, texting in class

Augmented Reality: Coming Soon to a School Near You?

April 20, 2012 | 10:46 AM | By

ARIS

In “Dow Day,” an augmented reality game, middle school students walk the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus using mobile phones to view footage of Vietnam war protests that occurred in the same campus locations.

By Sarah Jackson

David Gagnon is talking to a group of educators about how to use mobile devices for learning. In his work as an instructional designer with the University of Wisconsin’s ENGAGE program, Gagnon has given this workshop many times. But these days, he says, things are starting to change.

“How many of you are currently using an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch?” Gagnon asks the teachers, who are participating in a webinar through ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education.

GUIDE TO MOBILE LEARNING: This is part three of a series exploring mobile learning co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning.

Other posts in this series include: Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools, Will Old Teaching Tactics Work? and In the Digital Age, Welcoming Cell Phones in the Class.

What happens next demonstrates how the availability of communications technology has grown exponentially in recent years: 89 percent of this group owns a mobile device, and they want to know how to use it in their classrooms.

“Two years ago, when we would do a workshop with 20 people, we would have to bring 10 devices. Now,” Gagnon says, “the 10 devices sit in the front of the room, and everyone pulls out their own. It’s just amazing.”

As schools’ acceptance of mobile tools such as smartphones and tablets becomes more widespread, educators are struggling with how to incorporate them into current teaching models. Experts say schools need to get beyond the technology cart—treating these tools as accessories that get wheeled in and wheeled out an hour later—and educators need guidance on how to change their teaching practices to take advantage of what mobile learning has to offer. Yet examples of what these new pedagogical models might look like are hard to come by.

Gagnon and his team may be able to help. As the minds behind Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling (ARIS), they’ve developed an open-source mobile learning platform educators can download onto an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to create place-based and narrative gaming activities that can be incorporated into classroom curriculum.

For example, Chris Holden, an assistant professor in the University Honors Program at the University of New Mexico, and Julie Sykes, an assistant professor of Hispanic linguistics, used ARIS to create the game “Mentira.” Designed to help Spanish-language students learn in a real-world context, players talk with real people and virtual characters while visiting the Los Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, ARIS, Augmented Reality, Mobile Learning

More School Districts Welcome Cell Phones in the Class

April 6, 2012 | 10:11 AM | By

Innovation in ISD

No longer afraid of giving kids access to the Internet, a growing number of school districts are developing digital media policies that emphasize responsibility over fear.
By Heather Chaplin

Since early 2001, every school accepting federal funding for discounted Internet access through the government’s E-rate program had to do two things – block “harmful” sites and create an Acceptable Use Policy.

The mantra of schools back then was pretty simple: Keep it out. The standard approach to this government mandate, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), was to build the equivalent of walls, fences, and moats to keep kids from the web.

“It’s a historical hiccup in the history of learning,” said Rich Halverson, a learning scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the lead researcher on KidGrid, a mobile app that helps teachers study and analyze student data. “Here we had the most sophisticated advances in the history of learning banned from schools out of fear.”

GUIDE TO MOBILE LEARNING: Part two of a series exploring mobile learning co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning. The first post in this series: Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools, Will Old Teaching Tactics Work?

Fear was definitely the word you heard when talking to school administrators – no doubt partly because in the age of the Internet, 2001 was a long time ago, and the Web was still unknown territory for plenty of people back then. Also, all it takes is one student downloading pornography and sending it around the school, or one case of sexting that makes it in the news, for a school to find itself in serious hot water.

But recently – in the last two or three years – something has changed. Schools seem to be getting over their fears and want to bring the Web and social media and all the attendant digital tools into Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, CoSN, Internet filtering, Mobile Learning

Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools, Will Old Teaching Tactics Work?

March 30, 2012 | 11:05 AM | By

Getty

Just a few years ago, the idea of using a mobile phone as a legitimate learning tool in school seemed far-fetched, if not downright blasphemous. Kids were either prohibited from bringing their phones to school, or at the very least told to shut it off during school hours.

But these days, it’s not unusual to hear a teacher say, “Class, turn on your cell. It’s time to work.”

Harvard professor Chris Dede has been working in the field of education technology for decades, and is astonished at how quickly mobile devices are penetrating in schools. “I’ve never seen technology moving faster than mobile learning,” said Dede, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

That’s not necessarily surprising, given that a staggering 80 percent of teens have cell phones. This penetration of mobile devices in the consumer market has also wrought what Dede describes as a “sea change” in the education landscape.

“People are talking about this being an inflection point,” said Elliot Soloway. Soloway is a professor at the School of Education at the University of Michigan, and a longtime proponent of mobile learning. “It feels like something major is about to happen. It went from a silly idea, to, ‘Of course it’s inevitable.”

“I’m petrified that we’ll apply new technology to old pedagogy.”

The most recent data available is from 2010, and indicates that 62 percent of schools allow cell phones to be used on school grounds, though not in classrooms. But both Dede and Solloway, who are closely involved in coaching schools on how to use mobile learning techniques, said a lot of progress has been made in just the past couple of years.

“What I’m hearing from schools more is that they’ve eliminated policies restricting using mobile devices for learning and they’re interested in developing mobile learning programs as fast as possible,” Dede said. “We’re going from districts fearing it and blocking it off to welcoming it and making it a major part of their technology plan. We’ll be surprised if a significant portion of districts aren’t using mobile learning inside and outside of schools soon.”

More than 1.5 million iPads have been deployed in schools. That’s not counting school-supplied non-Apple devices, or the most ubiquitous device of all — students’ own mobile phones.

Classroom uses for iPads and cell phones are vast and varied. Some schools are replacing print books for apps that feature videos and interactive quizzes. Kindergarteners are Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, bring your own device, BYOD, Mobile Learning, personalized learning