Comments on: Strengths of Mobile Learning http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/06/29/strengths-of-mobile-learning/ An Online Reflective Journal on Mobile Learning Practice Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:07:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Mobile Learning » Mobile Device Supported Situated/Networked Learning http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/06/29/strengths-of-mobile-learning/comment-page-1/#comment-34 Mobile Learning » Mobile Device Supported Situated/Networked Learning Sun, 09 Jul 2006 23:47:55 +0000 http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/06/29/strengths-of-mobile-learning/#comment-34 [...] Marg O’Connell, our department’s resident Educational Design guru, has just posted some of her fantastic thoughts on the use of mobile devices to facilitate and support situated and networked learning on her Educational Design blog.  Her post ties in with one of my earlier posts on the strengths of mobile learning, where I focussed on an example of learning art in front of real artworks, supported by on-the-spot mobile learning resources, rather than from a textbook or slideshow.  Marg’s expertise and experience as an educator means she is fantastic at identifying underlying instructional design issues and strategies, and she’s a brilliant person to discuss new ideas with. [...] [...] Marg O’Connell, our department’s resident Educational Design guru, has just posted some of her fantastic thoughts on the use of mobile devices to facilitate and support situated and networked learning on her Educational Design blog.  Her post ties in with one of my earlier posts on the strengths of mobile learning, where I focussed on an example of learning art in front of real artworks, supported by on-the-spot mobile learning resources, rather than from a textbook or slideshow.  Marg’s expertise and experience as an educator means she is fantastic at identifying underlying instructional design issues and strategies, and she’s a brilliant person to discuss new ideas with. [...]

]]> By: Marg http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/06/29/strengths-of-mobile-learning/comment-page-1/#comment-27 Marg Tue, 04 Jul 2006 06:27:59 +0000 http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/06/29/strengths-of-mobile-learning/#comment-27 Hi Leonard, I've been thinking about the strengths of mobile devices and their potential for teaching and learning and I'm struck by what I see as two key strengths: 1) the enhanced possibility of learning in-situ (think situated learning here), and 2) the nature by which one can connect (think networked and distrubted learning). I like your example of the art classes which illustrates this situatedness! :) To situate learning is to <blockquote>create the conditions in which participants will experience the complexity and ambiguity of learning in the real world. Participants will create their own knowledge out of the raw materials of experience, i.e., the relationships with other participants, the activities, the environment cues, and the social organization that the community develops and maintains (<a href="http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-3/adult-education.html" rel="nofollow">Stein 1998, para:2</a>).</blockquote> If we are to design for such experiences how might it look using mobile devices? We should consider the need to integrate four key areas of content, context, community and participation in order to do so. On the other hand, I'm not too keen on setting up binary opposites though. 'Bound' learning does connote chairs and tables bolted to the classroom floor, but these are differences inherent in the settings, rather than seeing the relational differences I suppose. I guess you could imagine the bounds of learning and teaching as referring to our own restricted thinking (staying within our bounds perhaps?! ;) )... What I reckon is worth discussing is the interactional relationship we have to our settings that mobile learning offers, that is indeed inherently different to other versions of e-learning. We can be immersed in a setting (such as your illustration of the art tour) – and still remain <em>embodied</em> in a place and time. E-learning, more generally, usually sees us undertaking cognitive journeys and become disembodied as we do so, while we virtually travel the world via our desktop computer. We pull information to us in this case yet cannot bring much of the physical 'other'-world to us, so we are dislocated (or perhaps co-located?) from our settings. Imagine being in a dusty Italian art gallery with a 7” x 7” framed work of Da Vinci right in front of you and your mobile device playing you an audio story of the life of Leonardo! That’s quite a different experience than viewing a website with an image of the real artwork and some streaming audio telling you of the man’s life! I'll continue with more thinking down the situated and distributed learning line somemore! cheers, Marg Hi Leonard,

I’ve been thinking about the strengths of mobile devices and their potential for teaching and learning and I’m struck by what I see as two key strengths:

1) the enhanced possibility of learning in-situ (think situated learning here), and
2) the nature by which one can connect (think networked and distrubted learning).

I like your example of the art classes which illustrates this situatedness! :)

To situate learning is to

create the conditions in which participants will experience the complexity and ambiguity of learning in the real world. Participants will create their own knowledge out of the raw materials of experience, i.e., the relationships with other participants, the activities, the environment cues, and the social organization that the community develops and maintains (Stein 1998, para:2).

If we are to design for such experiences how might it look using mobile devices? We should consider the need to integrate four key areas of content, context, community and participation in order to do so.

On the other hand, I’m not too keen on setting up binary opposites though. ‘Bound’ learning does connote chairs and tables bolted to the classroom floor, but these are differences inherent in the settings, rather than seeing the relational differences I suppose. I guess you could imagine the bounds of learning and teaching as referring to our own restricted thinking (staying within our bounds perhaps?! ;) )…

What I reckon is worth discussing is the interactional relationship we have to our settings that mobile learning offers, that is indeed inherently different to other versions of e-learning. We can be immersed in a setting (such as your illustration of the art tour) – and still remain embodied in a place and time. E-learning, more generally, usually sees us undertaking cognitive journeys and become disembodied as we do so, while we virtually travel the world via our desktop computer. We pull information to us in this case yet cannot bring much of the physical ‘other’-world to us, so we are dislocated (or perhaps co-located?) from our settings. Imagine being in a dusty Italian art gallery with a 7” x 7” framed work of Da Vinci right in front of you and your mobile device playing you an audio story of the life of Leonardo! That’s quite a different experience than viewing a website with an image of the real artwork and some streaming audio telling you of the man’s life!

I’ll continue with more thinking down the situated and distributed learning line somemore!

cheers, Marg

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