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25 benefits of mobile learning
Fig.1. Mindmap on mobile learning
Is learning support by text messaging mobile learning?
Must it be a smart-phone. I would have called taking an Apple Classic into the garden on an extension cable and using it in a cardboard box to shield it from the sun as mobility of some kind – indeed development of the use of laptops in the last 15 years has been mobile and in 1997 I shot a training video for the RAC on a roadside device called ‘hardbody’ that was a navigational tool to locate the breakdown, a database of parts, a diagnostic for fault finding and fixing and a way for customers to pay.
The prospects for and possibilities of mobile computing have been known for a long time.
Getting them into the hands of students has taken longer as prices have fallen and broadband made readily available.
Was a cassette on a Sony Walkman mobile learning, or more recently is something from iTunes U on an MP3 player mobile e-learning? Yes, surely if its function is educational or it is resource tailored for a specific module.
Fig. 2. From Agnes Kuklska-Hulme’s inaugural lecture on mobile learning at the Open University.
- Convenience and flexibility – the university in your pocket. Ditch the folders, files and print outs.
- Relevance – situated
- Learner control – mine (personalised Apps, choice of phone and case …)
- Good use of ‘dead time’ – on the bus, train, passenger in car … in bed, in front of TV, on the loo or in the bath.
- Fits many different learning styles – short burst or lengthier intense periods
- Improves social learning (i.e. Communicating with peers and experts)
- Encourages reflection – easy to take notes (audio as dictaphone or text)
- Easy evidence collection – photos and audio (screen grabs from online research), tag finds.
- Supported decision making
- Speedier remediation – instant
- Improved learner confidence
- Easily digestible learning – where ‘chunked’ though this should be a choice where content has been suitably prepared for web usability.
- Heightened engagement – feeds alerts that can be responded to in a timely fashion. Makes synchronous and quasi-synchronous forum feedback possible.
- Better planning for face-to-face – organiser, contactable 24/7 (almost)
- Great for induction – keeping in touch, easy to ask questions, familiar, universal and everyday.
- Elimination of technological barriers – basic, intuitive, commonplace.
- Designed once then delivered across multiple platforms – responsive design (using HTML 5)
- Easily trackable via wifi – and GPS
- Cost-effective build
- A means to recoup money
- Technology advances with Apps
- Technology advances with interface, voice command and other tools.
- Everything in one place, including TV, radio, podcasts, photo gallery …
- Assistive technology – add a micro-projector, wifi-keyboard, sync to other devices such as tablet, laptop and desktop, augmented learning …
- Replacement technology – starting to replace money, already replacing cameras, MP3 players, address book, organiser, games console, remote control, torch, dictaphone … pen and paper, art pad …
(In part from Dr Chris Davies, Head of the e-learning research group, Oxford, Prof. John Traxler, Prof. Of Mobile Learning (2011 )
Click to access Mobile_learning_NHS_Research_Report.pdf
(last accessed 10 Dec 2012)
Related articles
- Mobile Learning is about Self-Actuated Personalization (classroom-aid.com)
- 12 Principles Of Mobile Learning (beyondanalytics.wordpress.com)
The use of video in e-learning (part two)
‘How’ and ‘Where’ you show your video content has become part of the brief.
It makes a difference in terms of the audiences and potential audiences that can be reached and the way in the which your content could, if you wish, be reversionsed and used in different ways (hopefully, under the right Creative Commons) with links back to you.
On your website, whether on the intranet or for external viewing where it can be shared and discussed.
It can also go out as a channel in its own right. At the broadcast end I recently saw what some of the content going out on Channel Flip. Today you can have your own channel. If you have appeal to an audience and can attract enough viewers advertisers will sponsor your content.
E-learning has become far easier to mange and distribute with platforms such as present.me for video, but also specialist mobile e-learning platforms like GoMo from e-learning specialists Epic.
The right content may be used in qualifications too.
Put on YouTube your content can be embedded within other people’s content while you can take advantage of detailed analytics, not least viewing behaviours.
Do you have an idea for a mobile- learning project?
Mobile Learning Challenge
If you are interested in mobile learning here’s a challenge from IET colleague Prof Agnes Kukulska-Hulme – co-author of some of the material in mobile learning (Week 19 of H800 of the Masters in Open and Distance Education).
Search ‘mobile’, ‘m-learning’ or ‘agnes’ here for my notes from the last 18 months if you are interested in having a go?
Perhaps some of us could work together and give the winnings to an educational charity or towards producing an idea?
The International Association for Mobile Learning (IAMLearn, http://www.iamlearn.org), in collaboration with Epic (www.epic.co.uk), is proud to announce the Mobile Learning Challenge.
The Mobile Learning Challenge is searching for innovative and visionary solutions for learning using mobile technologies.
Practitioners, students, and young researchers are particularly encouraged to contribute their inspiring and visionary concepts. Specific technical skills are not required for participating!
Full details here: http://www.iamlearn.org/competition.php
The first prize
The winner of the Challenge will receive £1000 (one thousand GBP). The winning solution will be presented to the mLearn 2011 conference audience either by the winner (if present at the conference) or by the President of IAmLearn.
This prize is co-sponsored by IAmLearn and Epic.
The second prize
The runner-up will receive a prize of 5 years’ free membership of IAmLearn.
Deadline for Submissions is Wednesday, 14 September 2011 24:00 GMT.
Please circulate this news through your networks and forward to anyone you think might be interested. We hope there will be many exciting submissions.
Best wishes. Agnes
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme,
President, International Association for Mobile Learning.
Holiday illness
Down with something hideous and find myself on antibiotics. Want to be studying but haven’t the head for it, not academic papers.
This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.
As an asthmatic I wonder if the kind of videos I used to produce as interactive Apps might be of value?
Watch several movies, the wonderful ‘Barefoot in the Park’ with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, the TV movie on the rise of Hitler with Robert Carlyle and ‘The Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain’ with Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald.
‘The Rise of Evil’ is historically accurate though somewhat eager, understandably, to ensure that Hitler has no redeeming points. I’d recommend it as viewing alongside the two volume biography by Ian Kershaw.
‘Barefoot in the Park’ which I must have seen on TV in the 1970s drew me into the wonders of a stage play making it onto the big screen. I also admire the way five days of sex is handled by showing newspapers being put outside their hotel bedroom door every morning. I thought Paul put his shoes out to be polished, another film?
Incisive forum threads in e-learning
Go here, do this.
As if you don’t get enough insights on e-learning from fellow MAODE students, I’ve found this group in Linked In virbant, engaging and essential.
Go see.
Use of storytelling in elearning
Once upon a time …
Did you here about …
Three men went into a bar …
Stories and humour work.
In the 1980s for a training film that told a story you went to Melrose for humour you went to Video Arts.
Video Arts were at Learning Technologies. I went to their presentation twice. Everything they are doing I applaud. They are reinventing themselves.
Melrose fell 15 years ago (or so). The market couldn’t sustain the expense and somehow we always find ways to tell a new story. Whereas comedy never changes. All Video Arts need to do is to re-shoot with fresh actors on a fresh set.
Meanwhile I do Epic No.2 too.
I don’t need convincing that stories work.
Get up to make a presentation and you will hold your audience if you say, ‘a funny thing happened to me on the way here …’
You are about to tell a story (or a bad joke), but hopefully something true, or convincing.
With a child ‘once upon a time … ‘ can lead to anything you like. As a parent you make up bedtime stories and you find a way to keep them awake.
(Which is why my wife long ago banned me from bedtime stories. Too exciting, too long … kept them awake).
So to the value of Storytelling.
I love the way Epic handled the BBC Guidelines challenge.
I have a copy.
How would I describe this fat, pack A5 arch-lever file manual of don’t and don’ts and more don’ts?
(I’ll dig it out and take a picture)
It’s about as engaging as a brick wrapped in last week’s Sunday Newspapers.
Trainspotting for creatives?
Coming from advertising you see that a story can be told in 30 seconds.
I was on Kit-Kat. ‘Have a break. Have a Kit-kat.’ This was the era of epics in microcosm, classic adds such as ‘Middle of the road.’
Ask. Do ask.
‘Like all good learning we’re going to be interacting.’ Said Naomi Norman.
And we did, to a degree.
I love the science. I cannot get enough on how the mind retains and uses information.
is not rocket science, it is obvious. Human kind have spent far longer sitting around fires telling tales than watching TV.
Academics in education recommend the use of narrative.
‘Stories are the method by which people impose order and reason upon the world.’ Fisher. (1987)
‘By framing events in a story it permits individuals to interpret their environment, and importantly it provides a framework for making decisions about actions and their likely outcomes.’ Weller. (2009:45)
‘Narrative … is a useful means of imposing order and causality on an otherwise unstructured and unconnected set of events, but it also means that some detail is omitted in order to fit into the narrative, and other factors are only considered in the limited sense in which they can be accommodated with the narrative.’ Weller (2009:48)
* spontaneous inclination to engage in a dialogue with material
* to improve some form of organisation upon it
* to make comparison with it
Bruner (1996.97)
But what I look forward to is the story.
As I boy I was sent to boarding prep school.
The ‘dormitory captain’ an older boy who supervised Ihe younger ones (i was eight) would tell a ghost story.
I could still tell ‘the Monkey’s Paw,’ or ‘The Mist,’ or the ‘Broken Stair.’
I’ve been telling stories every since.
REFERENCE
Bruner, J.S. (1996) ‘Frames of thinking: ways of making meaning.’ In Olson, D and Torrance, N (eds) Modes of thought. Explorations in culture and cognition, pp. 93-105.
Fisher, W.R. (1987) Human communication as Narration: toward philosophy of reason, value and action.
Weller, M. (2007) Virtual Learning Environment. using, choosing and developing your VLE.
P.S.
More on Epic in due course. I’ve found a second page of notes. In the meant time yo can contact them yourselves:
Mind Bursts 