Presentation: Javier Nadal, Executive Deputy Chairman of Fundación Telefónica

There are few technologies, if any, that have been so quickly adopted as Information and Communication Technologies, in general, and mobile telephony, in particular.

And it is very worth noting that this adoption has not happened in the same way around the globe. Different regions, cultures, communities have and are using mobile telephony in many and very different ways. Thus the need to do thorough research in this field, and see how mobile telephony can empower and develop communities and individuals.

Manuel Castells, sociologist, director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and author of the book.

The three things people value the most are Health, Education and the ability to communicate. And if we consider Education as Communication, we can narrow the priorities to just Health and Communication.

That is why ICTs are such a powerful phenomenon, with pervasive and fast rates of penetration and adoption. And the more important is a phenomenon, the more the need to perform research on it, to analyse it, understand it and, if needed, affect its path.

The book is not a descriptive one, but an analytical one, taking data from Telefónica and CEPAL-ECLAC to be able to perform econometric regressions.

Main conclusions of the econometric analysis:

• There is a proven, statistically significant, systematic, positive effect of mobile phones upon economic growth, especially in poorest countries and especially in poorest regions.
• Inequality is neither increased nor decreased because of mobile technologies. Mainly because adoption rates are so high (circa 80% in general) that any strata of society does have access to mobile telephony.
• There is an impact of mobile phones decreasing poverty.

This last statement is especially proven by the qualitative analyses performed in the book (see below the case studies), which show:

• A positive impact on employment. As many people work autonomously, thanks to mobile phones they can get jobs/works done without the bounds of more rigid organizational structures.
• People find employment more quickly thanks to disintermediation of the job market.
• Increase in security — and the feeling of security — of people: distant communication reduces exposure to different kinds of violence and hazards.
• There is an increase in the autonomy of people, but at the same time increasing the connectivity amongst people and increasing the feeling of community, of a common identity. But not any autonomy, but “secure autonomy”.

If we take the context of schools, it is clear that the educational system is lagging behind the evolution of technology, and educators and policy-makers should definitely rethink their teaching strategies and leverage the power of mobile techonology and mobile (i.e. ubiquitous) access to knowledge [I personally disagree with Castells that laptops at school should be replaced with mobiles: I believe the problem is not the device, but the educational model].

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: despite the high rates of adoption and, thus, the lack of impact in quantitative terms on inequality, what happens in qualitative terms? Are we witnessing evidence for the knowledge gap hypothesis? Castells: absolutely. What we see is that technology adoption is not affecting inequality, but social inequality does affect unequal technology adoption (e.g. poors not accessing broadband). Nevertheless, the inequality of mobile adoption, or the inequality in communications, is not as important as socio-economic inequalities, and that is a very important fact.

Q: how is it that people spend relatively so much in communications instead of “food”? Castells: the main reason is because it is worth it: mobile phones have an impact on employability, for instance, and very important too, on socialization, which, at its turn, has an impact on employability and inclusion in general. That’s why: communications are of crucial importance nowadays and do have an impact on each and every aspect of our lives.

Q: is there a different impact depending on e.g. gender? Castells: there is, but not because of the gender factor, but because the gender factor already made a difference in the “real” world. For instance, in the Peruvian Andes markets are set up by women. Thus, the impact of mobiles on those women was higher than on men, but not because of their gender, but because of their important role on the local economies.

Book Review

The book performs a thorough and deep analysis on how mobile technologies have had an impact on Latin America, both at the economic and social levels. After two initial chapters depicting the framework and context, the book goes on estimating the quantitative impact of mobile telephony on economic growth and poverty alleviation, then moving onto mobile usage in rural areas, social businesses for e-inclusion, technology appropriation and usage among youth.

The table of contents is as follows:

1. Introduction: Mobile communication and development in Latin America in the XXIst century; Roxana Barrantes Cáceres, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Sebastián Ureta.
2. Socio-economic context and ICT diffusion in Latin America; Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Andrea Molinari, Javier Vázquez Grenno.
3. Estimation of the contribution of mobile telephony to growth and poverty alleviation; Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Javier Vázquez Grenno
4. Mobile telephony in rural areas: case study in Puno, Peru; Roxana Barrantes Cáceres, Aileen Agüero, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol.
5. Mobile telephony and inclusive businesses: Proyecto SUMA in Argentina; Hernán Galperin, Andrea Molinari.
6. Appropriation and usage: case study in Brasil; François Bar, Francis Pisani, Carlos Seabra.
7. Mobile youth culture in an urban environmetn: case study in Santiago de Chile; Sebastián Ureta, Alejandro Artopoulos, Wilson Muñoz, Pamela Jorquera.
8. Synthesis of results and conclusions; Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Hernán Galperin.

More information

• El móvil ayuda a crecer en América
• La telefonía móvil contribuye más al desarrollo económico en América Latina que en los países de mayor PIB

Closing remarks — VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development
Julià Minguillón, UOC.

See also

• Slides of the presentations
• Photos of the seminar

www.flickr.com UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning 7th International Seminar UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning photoset

Round Table: Social and Ethical Issues in Education Technologies
Jill Attewell, Steve Vosoo, Matthew Kam & John Traxler. Moderates: Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3, UOC)

Social entrepreneurship?

Eva de Lera: What about social entrepreneurship?

John Trexler: there does not seem to be a lot of activity in social entrepreneurship in the field of learning. Maybe other models, like free schools in the UK would be a better option if we are talking about education.

Matthew Kam: it depends on the definition of social entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship is doing something that benefits your community, we may find some. And some of this deliver pretty good education.

New colonialism?

Emma Kiselyova: Can we do more wrong than good?

Jill Attewell: I’d rather use technology enhanced learning, not e-learning. This way, what we are doing is not creating something new from scratch, but enhancing something that already existed.

Steve Vosloo: how carefully is too careful? Sometimes going “too” carefully may imply losing lots of opportunities.

John Trexler: It is OK to go as quick as possible. The problem is that reflections need their own pace, and we sometimes take decisions on flawed reflections.

Motivation

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: What are the conflicts between formal and informal education? What is the role of motivation in this apparent dichotomy? Does it have to be informal to motivate? Is that good or bad?

John Trexler: It depends on what we understand by motivation. Motivation has sometimes been “triggered” by just pouring money or free devices in the users’ hands.

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: Indeed, motivation should come from other channels rather than — or added to — technological ones, like organizational change, institutions, etc.

[I personally wonder whether we might be "crowding out" formal education for too much focusing in informal education].

Success and failure

César Córcoles: How do we know which projects are successful and which a failure? And which ones are more likely to succeed and which others to fail? What is the tolerance to failure?

Matthew Kam: One of the problems is that most of the projects do not count as scholarly research, which means that many resources (especially human) are automatically kept away from being applied in many projects. On the other hand, most funding goes to successful projects, even if some failures may imply interesting lessons learnt that could be applied to following projects.

What infrastructure

Carlos Fernández: What about one-cellphone-for-all (the style of OLPC)?

Manuel Castells: the matter is that almost everyone already has a mobile device, and thus is why many projects address mobile phones.

John Traxler: this is the story again of the ideology behind the technology.

Jill Attewell: people in poor areas want the same devices as everyone else and they want the same features.

Julià Minguillón: the OLPC project failed because it never was an educational project. It never had the educational community in its design, teachers were not trained, contents were not created, etc.

Educational institutions

Ismael Peña-López: if industrialization — with its flaws — brought education to everyone, why do most educational projects keep on circumventing educational institutions instead of strengthening them? Why so much focus in informal education?

Matthew Kam: agreed. Nevertheless, there are many aspects of informal education, gaming, etc. that could contribute a lot to improve and bring a wind of change to institutions [which I in turn agree too].

Manuel Castells: indeed, most schools are not about education and empowering the kids, but about politics. Nevertheless, if change is to be made, institutions definitely have to be an important part of it.

Mobiles for Learning in Africa…. Too Good to be True?
John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton, UK

Technology should address three kinds of problems, in this order:

• Problems that are difficult;
• problems that are impossible; and
• problems that are inconceivable.

This in part means that solutions may not be extrapolated because most problems aren’t (mainly because of their context-dependent nature).

We also have to be aware that all technologies have embedded ideologies, and in this specific case contain embedded pedagogies. This might put in danger pre-existing (to our technological landing) learning communities or learning systems, communities or systems that may be fragile compared to the steamroller power of technology. Bottom-up developments are here replaced or impersonated by outside-in developments.

A deeper look at the local context, institutions, needs should be taking place. We’re looking at the sewer and the seeds, and not at the soil.

John Traxler quickly highlights here several examples of m-learning, open and distance learning in Africa. One of these projects is about an SMS-enabled Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) [which reminds me of an exchange of tweets that some of us had long ago about creating "FrontlineSMS:Edu"].

Learning technologies in mobile scenarios
Magí Almirall, Office of Learning Technologies, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain

In ancient Greece, learning was a collective activity, and a pedagogue was usually a slave that walked along with you to help you in understanding the world. These are the roots of mobile learning: collective knowledge sharing with no boundaries of time or space.

A set of projects were designed to adapt mobile learning scenarios from a user-centered design (UCD) perspective

It is very important keeping the user in mind when designing a learning initiative (at the technical and also at the non-technical levels).

The project consisted in analysing how users (UOC students) were studying online and, after that, 6 projects to adapt the learning process were designed to improve their learning experience:

• My Way: that adapted content to be delivered in many different supports, like audiobooks (including Daisy for visually impaired people), videobooks, ePub, MobiPocket, etc. The idea leading the project is that the best learning content format depends on the scenario.

• Annotation: this project allows including Layers to your own content. Layers organize your activity, can be shared, sent to the student, etc. Learners will define uses that we may not imagine, test and observe it.
• Mobile Classroom: a project to put your virtual classroom on your mobile phone, but selecting only what makes sense on a mobile phone. The idea behind the project is bringing the student the alerts they might need at the appropriate time.
• Mobile widgets: content and services from the online campus are created for the iPad interface, campus mobile, campus e-book, etc. so that the most relevant campus services are accessible in these mobile devices. The idea is to bring the same information for any device… which at its turn is quite a challenge, as devices are many and new ones appearing each and every day.
• Foreign languages self-assessment: Mobile scenarios need more interactive contents, that’s why language teaching has a more interactive approach (quizzes, self-assessment activities) in the mobile scenario in comparison with a stationary scenario, where other kind of more static content can be displayed.
• Campusproject.org: the goal of this project is to connect the virtual campus with any kind of platform, service, content existing on the Internet and bring it into the virtual campus. Interoperability is used to connect with other institutions, to expand the own learning tools, etc.

Discussion

Steve Vosloo: How is content processed or developed to be adapted to any format? A: If content is written in DocBook, then translation to other formats is almost straightforward. On the other hand, people’d rather have video formats for their small devices, and would rather have iPads for content, as they are more friendly that other screens.

Ismael Peña-López: Most projects here presented were about content-student interaction. Are there any projects that deal with person-to-person interaction? A: There are two ongoing projects in this line. One is called Speak Apps and it is about adapting the Tandem platform to the mobile world. The Tandem platform enables students in differents parts of the world to team up and study foreing languages, the languages being respectively foreign or their native ones. Another project is adapting the Langblog platform for mobiles.

Requirements and opportunities for the development of a mobile learning strategy in emergent countries
Claudia Aparicio, Fundación Telefónica, Colombia

The situation in Colombia: 85% internet access in public education, mobile market penetration of 90%, 1 computer per 21 students, techer’s e-learning uses are still low, teachers haven’t broadband access at home, the monthly income for a teacher is US$ 600 in average. So, what could be the impact of using mobile technologies in this context? How can m-learning help in overcoming these challenges?

The other part of the context is that people already use SMS to get news and WAP to access remote tools. This has boosted a positive attitude towards Information and Communication Technologies. SMS have reduced the costs of communications and advanced services have brought communities closer.

Notwithstanding, there still is the challenge on how to apply these tools and the positive attitude into the educational arena.

A strong point is converting the teachers from consumers into producers. A combination of a web authoring platform + tutorials can enable the teacher to produce their own leaning materials, make them more personal, reduce costs. The project (the platform) will work either through SMS, WAP and a web portal.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: What has been the involvement of the education community in the project? A: Telefónica Foundation has been in constant contact with the community. Indeed, the Educared Colombia community is already very active and has been eager to participate in the design and testing of the project.

Iolanda García: Is it SMS/WAP an alternative to broadband? It may not, but it actually is in many places (e.g. rural areas) where broadband is not accessible. In these places, teachers download online materials on their phones to use them in their classrooms, where no-one (but the teacher) has access to the Internet.

Analysis of the m-learning practices in Telefónica regarding its different stakeholders: Employees and Families, Customers and Society
Carolina Jeux, Telefónica Learning Services, Spain

Nowadays, almost everything can be mobile learning, as there are multiple devices that allow mobile connectivity, not only cellphones. Mobile learning can provide efficient, scalable and consistent training throughout all the organization.

Some corporate training applications of m-learning are: mobile content in products and services, languages, simulators, motivations process through SMS, MP4 content for pre and post sessions, authoring tools (teachme) that implements content for mobile phones, etc. Indeed, there are circa 1.5 million hours of learning every year at Telefonica, which increasingly implies that learning is part of one’s job.

When the trend is to move from a common Learning Management System towards a Personal Learning Environment, m-learning makes even more sense because it allows for higher degrees of personalization, even if this means losing some control on the whole process.

Carolina Jeux here presents several initiatives that her company has run on m-learning, some of them gorgeous as the training of 60,000 postmen of the Spanish Mail through their PDAs, the creation of ESTELA, the Escuela Ténica de Telefónica Latinoamérica, etc.

Discussion

Q: What are the profiles of the people that localize or create local content? A: They are normally natives of a specific country/culture, because it is not about translating content but really about localizing.

[Here follows a debate on net neutrality, openness of corporations, open educational resources and the relationship of Telefónica with these concepts which I'm neither able nor willing to reproduce because I have strong feelings on the topic].

Promoting Interaction and Engagement in Education and Training by use of iPod/iPhone
John B. Stav & Gabrielle Hansen-Nygård, Sør-Trøndelag University College, Norway

A student response system (SRS) is a group of technological products designed to support response, communication and interaction. The teacher can e.g. create a quiz and the students can answer it on their mobile phones.

One of the reasons to use such systems is that if asked orally, the students might end up not raising their hands at all to provide an answer to the question (including endorsing the proposed answer by just raising their hands). This way, anonymity allows more participation.

The system also fosters collective work, as questions can also be proposed to be answered in groups. In this case, students gather and debate about the correct answer. Involvement is also a good part of it. Indeed, involvement does not end in the most active part of the participation system, but also in its closure: the teacher is pressed, after the question or problem has been answered by the students, to provide a correct answer and a thorough explanation for that answer.

The SRS is not intended to substitute the teacher but to complement and enrich their classes. In fact, many times the system is used to “wake up” the students, to force a change in the pace of the class, to collect (tacit, indirect) feedback on how the class is going.

Discussion

Several people point at the fact that using the SRS implies the possibility of being really flexible in the way you teach, adapting your teaching in real time depending on the feedback. This may sometimes not be possible, sometimes may have a negative effect on tight schedules and, in any case, it demands more preparation for the classes, which is not bad (on the contrary), but it’s definitely time demanding.

[NOTE1: This session was a demo of the Sør-Trøndelag University College student response system].

[NOTE2: I can here think of the Berkman Center Question Tool].

Mobile Phones and Language Literacy in Rural Developing Regions
Matthew Kam, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

When analysing what the user is doing with technology, it is very important to have a multidisciplinary approach.

Needs and problem statement: fluency in “power language” (e.g. English), public schools in developing regions (e.g. India) are not succeeding, 101 million primary school-age children do not attend school (36M in South-Asia, 39M in Sub-Saharan Africa).

How can cellphones make education more accessible through out-of-school environments? Can game-like exercises provide an enjoyable learning experience? Can one learn anytime, anywhere without disrupting work?

The project began in India in 2004 with 10 rounds of fieldwork (adding up to more than 12 months of fieldwork). Since 2004 and during that time, there has been several rounds of pilots that included needs assessments, exploratory studies in slums and villages, feasibility studies again in slums and villages, testing, classroom and out-of-school studies and controlled studies.

A classroom study deployed throughout 2008, three times per week, after-school program at a private village school, demonstrated significant post-test improvements on spelling skills, with learning gains correlated with grade levels.

MILLEE project

Another out-of-school pilot study focused on the use of cellphones in children’s daily lives over an extended time. The participation in the study was voluntary. m-Learning consisted in cellphone-based game when “working” in the fields to improve English literacy. It was a task-based language teaching, with an instructional sequence around tasks. Much of the methodology was already out in the market (do not reinvent the wheel), so best practices in 2nd language teaching were analysed and more than 50 design patterns where distilled to be applied in the own project.

On the other hand, it was also analysed what were traditional Indian villages games like, how were they different from existing Western videogames. Thus, 296 game design patterns where documented, identifying 37 non-tribial differences. At last, educational games were designed on purpose and based on traditional village games.

Access to electricity was a major issue, and the average user could use the mobile phone for learning during 2:23h per week. Social environment was also an issue, as some kids had to hide the phones away from their parents or brothers, had maintenance issues, etc.

The average participant covered 46 new words over 16 weeks of unsupervised usage of cellphones. At this rate, each participant is expected to learn 150 words in a calendar year. Benchmark is 500 words, given good learning conditions. The problem is that during the first 8 weeks, the rate of number of new words completed is very high (up to 40-65 words per week), while the rate falls to under 10 words per week for the rest of the weeks. So, the novelty effect has a very hight attraction power, but it ends up fading out.

This project has been now on a scaling-up phase with a Nokia grant that enabled the extension of the pilot to 800 low-income children in 40 locations.

A major challenge for this project is not scaling in quantity, but also in quality, making it advance towards the acquisition of advanced literacy skills. The project is now being designed based on Chall’s stages of reading development. On the other hand, one size fits all approach does not scale, which implies quite a complex deployment strategy.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: Has there any research been made to analyse the fading out of the novelty effect? Any ideas on how to extend it? A: There are two strategies to extend the novelty effect. The most evident one is, of course, to include more and more novelties along time. This is, usually, not economically sustainable, as content production is very expensive. On the other hand, introduction of more and more novelties might be misleading. A second way, which is not actually extending the novelty effect, is to make the games more engaging. This is the strategy the project is taking and that is why a game designer has joined the team to specifically focus in this aspect.

Eva de Lera: Why not using bigger devices/displays that allow for more users at the same time that the tiny cellphone screen? A: There is not really a single approach. There are many experiences on several users converging on a single device, like the multi-mice PC. On the other hand, engagement in language learning often depends on oneself being in charge of his own learning, and being in control of the game. But, yes, definitely, there is not a single path.

Carlos Fernández: Why not using less multimedia-intensive learning games (e.g. quizzes) with lower requirements of adoption and, especially, with lower power/battery requirements? A: This is already done, but it also has a trade-off with engagement, so it is difficult to tell where the balance is.

Q: How far can we go on in m-learning for language literacy? A: It depends. It certainly can go really far, but we should definitely consider (i.e. do not forget) the role of the teacher. Thus, maybe the upper end of m-learning should more be about teacher training rather than direct student education. Talking about individual vs. group activities, the shortcomings are not obvious; sometimes individual use is better.

More Information

• Cell Phone, The Ring Heard Around the World.
• MILLEE: English Literacy through Games on the Third Screen.

The “Mobile Game Based Learning” Project
Thomas Putz, Project manager at Evolaris Next Level, Austria

The project project aims at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of learning in the target group of people in the age of 16-24. To do so, games were put into the equation by means of a free software platform called mGBL – mobile Game-Based Learning.

The main idea was not to port some PC-style gaming platform into mobile phones (neither PDAs, nor gaming devices). Games should be geared around real life communication, intertwined in daily lives. The learning concept had to be mapped to the game style, embedded naturally in the game.

Game 1: Fastest First!

The game had two different parts: a first one where knowledge was checked, a second one where the game took the approach of a simulation where that knowledge had to be practically applied.

Game 2: MOGABAL

This game has a multiuser version where several players can play the same game. The game has also quizzes, but is much more visual and the various choices have no immediate reward but a link to a subsequent level.

Game 3: Get Real!

This was a server side game where collaboration was a key issue. Indeed, a planning part was also included in the game, so it was not only about “doing” but also about “wanting to do”. Communication was really enhanced and was enabled by texting, with MMS, etc. The game had also a very interesting online-offline combination of activities, including QR codes that could be transmitted via the mobile phone to the game, and there enrich the information about e.g. a building by means of other sources.

Game 4: Digital Economy

The game consisted in finding and mapping e-business initiatives in the city.

Conclusions

The students actually learnt the contents related to the syllabus/curriculum, with a stress on cross-curricular competences; they got new digital skills; teamwork and cooperation skills were also improved, including social skills, self-confidence, etc.

Discussion

Q: Is it true that first the game was developed and then the it was decided what its applications would be? A: Absolutely. The reason was that the game applied different pedagogical theories or methodologies, and these actually came before the games themselves. The practical application, though, of such methodologies did come later.

Q: How many people participated in this project? What is the best way to reach everyone? A: It is definitely not a way to reach everyone to focus on the state-of-the-art devices that are the latest to come to the market. It is preferable to target less powerful but more popular devices that everybody has access to and, more important, whose usage has become widespread in terms of mastering their technical possibilities.

A Blended Mobile Learning Model-Context Oriented (BML-CO)
Fernando Moreira, Associated Professor at the Universidade Portucalense, Portugal

There is a difference between “traditional” mobile learning and “real” mobile learning: the real thing requires not only migrating content from one platform to the other one, but a change of attitudes, methodologies, goals, etc.

In-class use of mobile technologies: Students:

• Focus their learning on areas of weakness.
• Diminish misunderstanding.
• Enhanced learning.

In-class use of mobile technologies: Teachers:

• Identify sudents’ misconceptions, challenges.
• Adapt teaching practices.
• Enhanced assessment and feedback.
• Enhanced teaching.

The problem, though, is that we have theorized about traditional learning, e-learning, blended learning, but not m-learning. Thus, we need a pedagogical theory for mobile learning, and one that takes into account the different types of content that a mobile device can display and how this content should be made available to students.

To do so, context is very important. Bahaskar defines context as any information taht can be used to characterize the situation of learning entitites that are considered relevant to the interactions between a learner and an application. In other words: when, where and why.

A recent investigation by Bahaskar himself shows that audio is mostly used when walking, video when being stationary and photo while in group. Related to the place, video is more used at the classroom or hotel, etc.

The context will also define the technological constraints and/or the associated costs of a specific m-learning model.

m-Learning contents will be based in short texts that will indicate the theoretical concepts that will be studied, practical examples and statements of problems to solve. Image/video will be mostly tutorials and audio be used in small podcasts.

The m-learner is not stationary, so the content has to be adapted to their changing situations.

The model uses Moodle with the Mobile Learning Engine extension.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: Is the blended mobile learning model compulsory? If yes, how do students feel about having their teachers constantly “invading” their own lives/cellphones? A: The model is compulsory, but we’ll have to wait until the end of the implementation to know about the level of acceptance of the learning model by students [it is made clear later that this is (a) but an aditional layer which actually makes mobile access non-compulsory and that (b) students decide whether to join the model or not].

Julià Minguillón: What if people do not have hi-tech cellphones? A: Everything in the course/model can be followed either on an m-learning basis or an e-learning basis.

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: What happens when mobile devices are not used on the move, but from fixed places? Evidence shows that mobile devices are actually “portable” devices that are carried on from one place to another one and then used there, not in itinere.

Q: What kind of content is it used? A: The idea is to produce new content for the students taking the m-courses.

Julià Minguillón: Why using an LMS and not a social networking site on top of the system? Why using a centralized system that hinders the advantages of decentralized learning that m-learning provides? A: This is definitely a possibility. In its first phase, the LMS will be chosen because it is a more familiar and controlled environment, but the future is totally open.

Integrating technology and pedagogy in the classroom
Miguel Nussbaum, Universidad Católica de Chile

We have evolved from classroom where students were passive to classrooms where students ask for more interactivity — especially where they have notebooks in their desks. So, what does it mean to change the classroom dynamics?

Still, in many classrooms the participatory literacy has not yet been reached. So, even if the computers have been introduced in the classroom, still lots of thing remain unaltered.

Collaborative or participative learning is based in two issues:

• The social network, where learning actually occurs. There is an interchange of knowledge amongst children, there is a collaborative construction of knowledge. And technology is there to support the social network, to make it work.
• The role of the teacher is to support the groups that are learning together. Thus, the teacher has to have the tools to perform this supporting task.

[NOTE: the conference was made remotely and the connection crashed, so these are just the notes of the first minutes]

Mobile Learning in rural environments and development countries
Dolors Reig, Consultant & editor-in-chief at the ICT – educational weblog El Caparazón, Spain

The Internet is not about empowerment of new leaders, it is about the empowerment of everyone (Levinson).

The context of m-learning is changing: the penetration of the feature phone and the penetration of the smartphone is converging and the latter could catch up with the former by 2011 Q3 according to Nielsen. Today, 14% of total web traffic comes from mobile phones and for 70% of 16-25 youth mobiles are the most important media.

Of course, the context in which education takes place is also changing and the system is in a dire crisis. There is an increasing trend towards open social learning. Clay Shirky states that there is a cognitive surplus, a social surplus and a creative surplus in collaborating and creating collectively.

The social web is definitely boosting the upper stages of Maslow’s pyramid. And the social component is now more important than ever. This rising social component is having a positive impact on education: it is now more easy than ever to get information and, indeed, to get answers to one’s queries. The web is a research, knowledge platform. John Seely Brown states that mobiles are curiosity amplifiers.

The digital divide is increasingly a participation divide.

Discussion

Eva de Lera: How much are institutions an obstacle to m-learning by trying to replicate the “ancient” methodologies to mobile phones? How much is it about technologies and how much about pedagogies? A: Yes, we should adapt the pedagogies and methodologies to the new devices, but not only the devices, but the new paradigms that the new platforms imply.

mLearning in Africa: Lessons from the m4Lit project

Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation, Cape Town

m4Lit project is about mobiles for literacy, a project set out to explore the viability of using mobile phones to support reading and writing by youth in South Africa.

South Africa has an excellent mobile infrastructure, with good mobile coverage and relatively cheap mobile data plans.

Most people in South Africa do their reading at school, but 51% of homes have no books at home, there is no leisure in reading. Thus, reading activity is really low, which has a negative impact in literacy as a whole.

The project created Kontax, a mobile novel (m-novel) was written and published in September 2009 on a mobisite and on MXit. The story, called Kontax, was published in English and in isiXhosa. Readers were invited to interact with it as it unfolded – teens could discuss the unfolding plot, vote in polls, leave comments, and finally submit a written piece as part of a competition for story sequel ideas.

The project got more than 63,000 subscribers, +28,000 aged 11-18 and 27,000 aged 19-24. That is a lot of youngsters, but not all of them where. On the other hand, not everyone read the whole story, but only 17,200 did, of which +7,000 teens. Nevertheless, this are astonishingly high reading figures for South Africa.

Findings

Most digital writing takes place on mobile phones, but it tend to be short, like SMS.

Most reading took place on mobile phones or on paper.

Word-of-mouth was the main channel by which people came to know about the project.

The isiXhosa became very popular, especially in relationship with the presence of the language in written literature in South Africa.

The pilot project became Kontax 2, Kontax 3, Kontax 4 and then Yoza, a mobisite that brings content (literature) to mobile phones. Even Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, on the public domain) has been uploaded to the site for it to be read on a mobile phone.

Some topics (youngs, romance) work better than others on mobile phones. And we find that people do comment on the works and even enter in a “dialogue” with the characters of the novels.

Lessons learnt:

• Mobile is a content monster. People wait for more content to read.
• Mobile content is instant. And people will participate, comment, engage in conversations.
• The readers never sleep, they connect at any time to the website. Content is read anytime, anywhere.
• The platform matters: to create one’s own platform is hard. It is better to use someone else’s platform that has already caught in the market.
• Interest is difficult to maintain.
• Audience is fickle, fans are loyal. Fans left lots of comments and spent many time on the stories.
• When reading becomes “snacky”, it is hard to make it sticky. You’re waiting for the bus, you read; when the bus comes, you quit reading: you have to take this context into account.
• You might end up with something you didn’t expect.

The economic sustainability of the project is definitely an issue. Either you partner with a funder, or you embed your project in the educational system so that, in mainstreaming it, diffusion becomes more easy and straightforward.

South Africa is book poor, but it is mobile rich: Africa’s e-readers use mobiles as their Kindle.

Open questions:

• What are the effects on non-English mother-tongue speakers?
• To what extent will teens allow “us” to occupy “their” space?
• Who is excluded from the mobile Internet?
• When reading becomes “snacky”, what does it do to concentration abilities?
• There is a distance and conflict between mobile literacies and school literacies. This needs to be explored and better understood because mobile literacies are so pervasive in young peoples’ lives (Walton, 2010). What do we do with this?

Discussion

Q: Was there any criticism for having people with their eyes stuck on a small screen? A: Not at all.

Emma Kiselyova: When the project is over, what’ll be next? A: The main goal now is looking at sustainability options. These options range from other sponsors, ads in the stories, etc.

Gardner Campbell: What is going to happen with the generated content? A: Everything is online and it is available for everyone and under an open license.

Q: Wasn’t it possible to stablish agreements with book publishers? A: It seemed that their tempos were really slow. Q: But, nevertheless, now that the project has shown success, a second contact may be advisable. A: Maybe, but there still is the issue of affordability of content. For now, content has been freely available on the net. If it’s put behind a paywall, audience may decrease dramatically, and the goals were not making money, but contributing to increase literacy.

Interesting round of comments on “texting literacy” here. On the one hand, some people state that young people underestimate their own literacy or their own language skills. On the other hand, there is also the debate whether “texting” can be applied anywhere and whether there is a need to teach the critical skills to be able to tell when this text-speak is appropriate. Personally, I’ve always thought that e-mail and SMS is not written language, but transcribed oral language. We should address the issue from this standpoint of view.

Mobilising technology for learning – lessons from MoLeNET
Jill Attewell, LSN Research Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning, UK

MoLeNET is a deliberate attempt to move mobile learning from research and development and small scale pilots to major implementation. MoLeNET has sponsored 104 projects with 40,000 learners.

A definition of mobile learning: The exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning. So, it’s not only about mobile phones, or small PCs, but a much broader concept. And it is not also about improving teaching, but also about improving learning, learning outcomes, the learning experience itself.

The project was mainly addressed to adult learners, which have it difficult to be trained at the workspace (money and time costs, availability of courses, etc.) but have a dire need to be trained. Mobile learning could provide better access to technology at work, quicker completion of theory elements, a more enjoyable assessment, better tutor/learner communication, higher levels of student engagement, etc.

Another main target of the project was young people, with high unemployment rates, dropped out of the educational system, NEET (not in education, employment and training). Potentially, mobile technologies are mastered by youngsters and can thus be a tool to help approachability to NEETs. Indeed, learners feel better supported and more part of a community, though this would not mean overcoming the worse attitudes towards learning.

Measuring impact

The project performed several assessments in order to gather evidence on impact: practitioner-led action research, project manager reports, surveys, etc.

Mobile learning can improve:

• Attendance, retention and achievement.
• Teaching and learning and assessment processes.
• Flexibility, relevance, realism, personalization.
• Learner engagement, quantity and quality of work.
• Support of work-based learners.
• Support of learners with disabilities and/or learning difficulties.
• Encourages self and peer assessment.
• Improve and maintain focus and attention.
• Anywhere, anytime.
• Just in time, just what I want.
• Quick reference to check information on the net, to access online applications.
• Individual and collaborative learning.
• Creating, sharing and using multimedia.

Impact on teaching

• Learners work more together.
• Learners are more independent.
• More learners led activities (and less teacher led activities).
• Visual and aural learning becomes more important.
• Kinaesthetic learning becomes more important.
• More learning outside of the classroom.
• More learning outside of the college building.
• Deeper learning.

What made the programme successful?

• Capital investment.
• Shared cost funding.
• Online knowledge and resource sharing.
• Staff development.
• Mentoring.
• Practitioner led action research.
• Supported project.
• Local champions, that work along with the teachers.

Discussion.

Steve Vosloo: How can the project work without the local champions? What if the project is rolled out top-down? A: Information and support for the teachers is crucial. It is also very important that people (i.e. teachers) have resources (not only money, but also time and other kind of resources) to experiment, to try things, to do things “wrong”, etc. Teacher education is crucial for m-learning adoption.

Q: Was it easy to engage big telcos? A: No, it was not. Big mobile operators did not seem to share neither the approach nor the “thrill” of the programme. They may like it, but they would not get involved. Maybe because of the failure to see how to monetize the project. This may be changing though.

Ismael Peña-López: We have been presented many positive impacts of m-learning. I wonder what is the marginal contribution of the m- over the e-(learning). All things equal, what is the difference between m- and e-learning? A: Flexibility and immediacy, not being rooted in the place, are doubtless the most important ones.. The student can respond to situations very quickly. Indeed, desktop technologies do not fit very well in some specific workplaces (e.g. a fast-food restaurant, a mine). And it is not only about responding, but about acting too: sometimes taking a snapshot or a short video footage may be part of an assignment and this can be done just-in-time with mobile technologies, and much more easily than with desktop technologies.

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: What are the best topics that can be used in m-learning? A: Mobile devices track everything and everywhere. Any educational methodology that implies recording, taping, gathering data all around is one that will make an intensive usage of mobile technologies and thus leverage all the (specific, singular) possibilities of the device.