Mobile Learning

School of Educational Studies,
La Trobe University

Ubiquitous Computing: technology should ‘disappear’ – be an enabler, a medium, rather than an issue (or a problem). But this is not the same us ‘ubiquitous learning’… rather, it’s a necessary pre-condition for ubiquitous learning.
-Permanent
-Accessible
-Immediate
-Interactive
-Situated

Trying to get people to use technology to develop their thinking: re-arrange ideas, debate with others, engage with new information and perspectives.
-Multiple perspectives
-Multiple Authors
-Rapidly changing thinking
-Multi-modal Representations
-Move easily from one program to another
-Ability to communicate easily with others

3 primary schools, children aged 5-12 years of age; 2 secondary schools; children aged 13-18
- Biggest impact on students who had done little or no work previously due to literacy skills.
- From a student pserspective, you can make a mistake on a PDA and it’s impermanent: can be erased

==Example Learning Activities==
Collaborating using Bluetooth (Inspiration Concept Mapping software)
-Working collaboratively on multimedia materials
-Taking notes, making audio recordings
-Researching using mobile web/wireless
-Reading documents, writing articles
-Doing interactive quizzes or exercises
-Watching animations and simulations in media player
-Reflective logs
-Creating media
-Listening to downloaded materials,
-Software packages (e.g. dictionary)
-PowerPoint
-Important to guide the activities.

Science Centre contexts:

Anne Kahr-Hojland, akh@dream.dk

‘Ego-Trap’:
- Stimulate young peoples’ interest in science
-improve learning setting at the Experimentarium by prompting reflective processes

-BYO Mobile Phone
-Connect via WAP/GPRS
-Experimentatium calls user’s phone with a quiz
-’Augmented Reality’ – the user takes the main part in a game which is determined by the physical setting they are in.
-Get a series of ‘character’ phone calls; user needs to make decisions: they can follow one character over another, There are cues to take physical action – e.g. go to different rooms, do different tasks or activities (exhibits).

Denise Bressler

Call a number to get more info on various animals; SMS to get a wallpaper of various animals; interactive exhibits using mobile phone/texted information.
-Extending the experience – getting people to think about what they’ve seen, even after they leave, e.g. people create an image, which gets sent to your phone.
-Camera Phone challenge: take pictures throughout the museum to satisfy the challenge. Once you’re in the database, there can also be a ‘weekly challenge’ to participate in.
-Informal science education is a natural fit for m-learning
-But very little m-learning research is happening at science centres
-Problems with telecommunications companies: data, cost, etc.
-Problems with varying handsets, more than telcos?

Manager, Nokia Multimedia, Finland (but speaking from personal opinion today, not Nokia’s)
charlie.schick@edubba.com

=Topics=
- Mobile Lifestyle vs Mobile Computer
- Emerging Markets
- Fusion of Mobile and Internet

=Mobile Essentials=
Most personal technology is the phone: wallet, keys, phone always carried by people. Collects memories, messages, photos… part of our life, part of our lifestyle.

People use: Camera, alarm, calendar, media gallery, messaging.

Nokia research: 80% of calls made to just five people.

Not just about mobility, but about convenience – many people use their mobile even when a landline is available.

Mobiles penetrate where computers and internet do not. e.g. Brazil.

=Mobile Computing=
Two hands, two eyes, lean forward, flat surface, stationary, broadband, big screen…

=Mobile Lifestyle=
One handed, background, interruptive, individual, essential, ubiquitous, untethered, freedom, focussed

=Emerging Market=
-3 billion worldwide
-1 billion have no PC
-Global awareness
-iPods haven’t sold 100 million across their whole product line; just one model of Nokia, the (basic) 1100, has sold more than 100 million items… just that one model.
-smartphones are a tiny minority of all mobile phones owned/sold.

=Ingenuity=
-Fishermen
-Phone Ladies (human phone booths!) http://seeingisbelieving.ca/cell/dacca
-Micro Loans
-Remittances

=Mobile and internet fuse=
-THE social networking device
-Web on phone?
-Phone on web!

=Trends=
-Me and mine
-Aggregation
-Mobile?

=Learning=
-Every moment
-Every place
-Physical and digital
-’Tribal hubbub’/flow: Can connect to REAL people to get information, rather than repositories of information, e.g. asking a question on Twitter or Facebook.

Advisory: more conceptual and theoretical than most other presentations.

=Contemporary environments of learning=
In new social model of learning, learners become consumers? [I would have thought learners are becoming creators?]

=Affordances, characeristics and potential=
-Technologies as ideological tools which embody social values? NOT neutral?
-Growth in social networking capability, shift from broadcast to content generation, a decentralisation of resource provision.

=Socio-cultural impact=
-Digital devices are becoming a prosthesis for some users… What’s the impact on learning if the devices are taken away?
- Seeming fracturing of identities, membership of multiple user groups and attendant lack of shared cultural experiences. Subcultures and indovidualised social and cultural experiences.

What is learning?
- Proliferation of prefixes! Do they denote different kinds of learning? No – denote different a difference in condition and environment.
- Semiotic approach: a cloase connection between ‘meaning-making’ and ‘learning’. Learning is change – transformation of what is encountered as well as of the learner.
- Onus on the learner to make sense of information and transform it into (their) knowledge.
- Mobility in this sense: The individual is always ready to be a ‘learner’ and to turn the environment into a site for learning. Continually in a state of incompletion and moving towards completion; mobile not physically but conceptually/semiotically.

M-learning application:
- Should guide students towards development and contrasting of their own ideas
- Should connect with the classroom

MyArtSpace – students acted as curators of their own museum visit which they then explored in the classroom. Convergence of physical, virtual and online spaces.

Teacher sets an ‘enquiry topic’ – e.g. ‘What was the role of women during the D-Day landings,’ or ‘Was the D-Day landing a success or a failure?’

At the museum, students were lent high-end Nokia phones (N80). Students could use phones to ‘collect’ an object… phones automatically collated the collected materials – automatically sent to a website. Could see who else collected the same object, make notes etc.

(Shown video of students at D-Day Museum).

Students thinking about ‘evidence’ collected at the museum. Students edit some of the photos.

==Lifecycle Evaluation==
Micro-level: Usability Issues
–Technology usability
–individual and group activities

Meso Level: Educational Issues
–e.g. learning experience as a whole
Macro Level: Organisational Issues
–e.g. what happemed after?

Organizational Level
What was suppsed to happen? What did happen? What’s the difference? A summary:

The technology worked surprisingly well. Automatic sending to websites, took about 5 minutes to get acquainted, with some minor usability problems, students liked the technology, and students enjoyed the experience more than their previous musem visit. Students indicated that the phones made the visit more interactive, and engaged better with the learning task.

==Usability Factors==
+ Appropriate form factor – mobiles worked well
+ Collecting and creating items was an easy and natural process
- Mobile phone connection didn’t always work: some ‘black spots’.
- Text annotations weren’t always connected logically (with photos, for example)
- Integration of media with presentation tools not quite perfect.

==Educational Issues==
+ Supports curriculum topics in literacy and media studies
+ Encourages meaningful and enjoyable pre- and post- visit lessons
+ Encourages children to make active choices in what is notmally a passive experiences
- teacher preparation: teachers didn’t always understand the experience and run appropriate pre-visit lesson
- Where to impose constraints: straucture and restrict the collecting activity, or learn from organising the material back in the classroom
- Support for collaborative learning didn’t really work

==Organisational Issues==
+ Museum Appeal
+ Student engagement – students spent longer on a MAS visit 90 mins vs 20 mins
- Problems of museum staff engagement
- Business model? Maintaining phones, messaging, data charges…

==Future==
The developers, SEA, has developed a commercial service, OOKL.

Issues around taking photos in a museum… glass reflection… curatorship? Protecting materials? Copyright?

Cost of transfer of data? Unlimited wireless transfer plans being taken up by museums.

Sharing depended on the teacher: could look at each others’ presentations, post-visit.

Installing the java applet to different phones proved too difficult: too many different models.