Mobile Learning

After a quick look at the table of contents of the assigned book, Herrington et al. (2009), I found myself attracted by the term “Storytelling” in the title of Chapter 4:

4: Early childhood education

Digital story telling using iPods

Ian Olney, Jan Herrington and Irina Verenikina

Having said that, a voice in my head called “enough of this Digital Storytelling business”!!! Being the selected technology for my project, the term is dominant in my previous posts of Module 2. Therefore, I thought I’ll select something else for a change. I ended up printing the following chapter:

3: Adult education

Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources

in adult education

Anthony Herrington

Surprisingly, when I started reading the chapter that night (Herrington et al., 2009, p.28), I discovered that the aim of the research was:

“… to evaluate the technological and pedagogical affordances of using a Smartphone (combined mobile phone and personal digital assistant) as a data collection tool to create digital narratives or stories …”

I thought I must be haunted by this topic somehow for some reason! This was another emphasis on the importance of the potential that Digital Narratives have in the field of education, that I personally strongly believe in by now. My fear of boring colleagues by the continuous discussion of the same topic again and again throughout my posts got suddenly slashed by the curiosity of knowing more about the utilization of mobile phones in this context.

Shortly after handing out the Digital Narrative Assignment Outlines as a first intervention in Module 2 project, I received many queries from the students on the possibility to use their smart phones in capturing media for their Digital Narratives. Although not previously thought of this as an option, I found myself strongly objecting to the use of smart phones for this purpose. My reasons were very much related to the expected limited quality of produced media. Herrington (2009, p.33) discusses the limitation in more details based on his students experience in developing teaching episodes using smart phone captured media:

-        Incompatibility of video format among smart phone and PCs

-        Mobile image aspect ratio and that used with the video editing software

-        Resolution in low light situations

-        Audio recording difficulties

-        Lack of video zooming capability in smart phones

The second intervention of Module 2 project was a learning opportunity that I never mentioned before in my PGCTHE published reflections due to time management considerations. This was another assignment for a totally different course in nature than MIS, that is Leadership and Teambuilding. Unlike the first assignment that was based on group work for the DN component and individual for the Discussion component, the L&TB assignment was totally individual and had a report component rather than a discussion. The students were asked to develop a “Personal Leadership Portfolio” of reflections based on series of self-assessments given throughout the course. In addition, the students were requested to produce a DN describing their personal leadership skills and motivational strategies based on the achieved learning from the self-assessments and the overall course.

During the second intervention this different group of students made the exact same inquiry that their fellow students made during the first intervention, which is the possibility to use mobile phones to capture the required media. Unlike the first response I provided the first group, I found myself encouraging the second group to use their smart phones for this purpose! I actually never noticed the contradiction until I read the assigned reading for Module 2 this week which made me stop and think for very long time before documenting the main points that came to my mind.

The implicit rational that made me take different stand from using mobile phones for media capturing in each scenario was mainly the nature of the assignment objective. The MIS assignment created a formal learning opportunity for the students to collectively discover as a group the opportunities and challenges that “Enterprise Applications” bring to an organization in the authentic context of a case study. The formalities of communicating with professional organizations employees often at the managerial levels, the sensitivity of shared information, and the privacy requirements surrounding each case study gave the whole experience a formal approach. This implied a lot of planning due to the limited chances for filming and the required minimum level of professionalism in the presentation of the final product.

The L&TB assignment on the other hand created a less formal individual learning opportunity for the students to deeply reflect on their own leadership traits and skill using different day-to-day situations. Herrington et al. (2009) provided various descriptions for scenarios where mobile capturing is recommended for opportunities it offers:

-        Portability and ease of use

-        Recording spontaneous moments

-        Smartphone can be seen as less intrusive

The scenarios described by Herrington et al. (2009, p.134) matches to a full extent the nature of the L&TB assignment:

-        Real world contexts that have personal meaning

-        Educational or purely lifestyle content

-        Learners are mobile across topics, space and time

-        Less formal and spontaneous contexts

The clarity on the criteria to guide selecting the right media capturing tool in various DN assignments was the most important outcome of this reflection task. Moreover, various enhancement ideas were generated and got then filtered by the proposed “design principles for mobile learning” discussed in the 13^th Chapter of the same book. Those ideas can be divided in two categories: Assignment Structure, and Supportive Pedagogies. Both are discussed next.

Assignment Structure

Two new criteria are found relevant and as a result will be added to the Assignment Marking Scheme: Storyboarding, and Tips & Tricks.

Storyboarding is to be developed in the planning phase of the assignment. This is to guide the students’ effort while developing their DN. The content part of the current DN marking scheme provides a logical sequence for the storyboard. There is however a gap in the mapping of the sequenced concepts to the most effective presentation media.

The sharing of best practices on the use of technology plays a vital role in the success of DN assignments. Therefore, rewarding students for sharing Tips & Tricks on the best use of technologies would contribute to achieving this objective.

Supportive Pedagogies

Formative assessments to produce DN on very specific concepts, present it in class for discussion. This would prepare the students for a summative DN assessment by providing opportunities to evaluate the whole concept and mechanism of presenting their learning in DN format. Moreover, the formative assessments will automatically put the students in a position of evaluating their own skills from many other aspects of their studies.

Facilitated DN workshops to allow the students of edit their videos in the class, while the teacher float and check for any important technology Tip or Trick that can be useful for the rest of the class. The students are then given the chance to share the Tip or Trick during the session.

Assignment blog to be administered for the purpose of sharing technical Tips & Tricks.

References

Herrington, J., Herrington, A., Mantei, J., Olney, I., & Ferry, B. (Eds.) (2009). New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education. Wollongong: University of Wollongong. Available: http://ro.uow.edu.au/

Herrington, A., (2009). Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education. In J. Herrington, A. Herrington, J. Mantei, I. Olney, & B. Ferry (Eds.), New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education (pp. 28-35). Wollongong: University of Wollongong. Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/