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]
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
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.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
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.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
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.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
Other applications such as Fish Detector (Kenya), developed by Pascal Katana, and which detects fishes accoustically
Creation of jobs through crowd-sourcing (e.g. txtEagle, which allows people to complete simple tasks via mobile via SMS and get compensated for it, that is, people get paid to work by SMS)
Tangaza (“broadcast” in Kiswahlili) that allows users to send voice to several receivers
M-Kulima (“farmer” in Kiswahili) allows buyers to store and retrieve information about the milk market via SMS. Of course, its application is not bound to milk, but can be applied to many other markets.
Waññigame allows children to recognize numbers and learn to count
M-guide for toursm, by Strathmore University: the user takes a photo of an animal, the photo is sent to a server that recognizes the animal and sends the information back
M-Word for learning
How to create innovative culture? Transferring skills and knowledge through mobile boot camps, sharing ideas and encouraging students to brain-storm in groups, mentoring students and liaising them with experts in this field, creating of a research and open-learning atmosphere.
Eva Domínguez: mobile phones are a revolution in fields as Education (m-learning) and Journalism, especially citizen journalism.
Jessica Colaço stresses the experience of Ushahidi regarding journalism and citizen journalism, how it is used for transparency and accountability, etc.
Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana points to the distinction between people that use technology on a compulsory basis or as a personal option. In higher income countries, technology is compulsory: you “have” to use the last gadget. This is not the case of lower income countries, where people seek benefit (or profit) in technology.
Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana: In what languages are mobile applications and services? Jessica Colaço: Normally in English, most of the times also in local languages.
Lev Gonick: the mobile platform is a much more crowdsourcing fitting platform to create educational content.
Carlos Miranda: it’s good that mobile phones are kept simple (no video, no cam, no anything). The “intel” is outside, it’s the people. [how strongly I disagree…]
Paul G. West: how to deliver mass-education via mobile phones? [unanswered question; what a pity, I would have loved to get that answer].
Marc Alier: if applications have to be developed, how are they distributed to a larger amount of users and other developers? Jessica Colaço: normally, SMSs are broadcasted with the instructions to find and/or install the application, as providing a URL is not usually a good solution (though still a possibility).
Susan Metros: what is the power of mobile operators? do they listen to their customers? Jessica Colaço: increasingly, customers “come in” the design of applications and services.
Sílvia Bravo: are mobile phones helping Africa to “emancipate” and “be Africa”, or just leading the path towards a copycat of richer countries? Jessica Colaço: the good thing of mobile phones is that they have been adopted at a so-grassroots level that there is no aim to copy, but to be.
