Monitisation : Education

Does monitisation of mobile learning = the re-socialisation of the curriculum ? More cool sites and great networking opportunities.

Moblogging

Some quotable quotes from 2005 when we were all bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Blackall, Leigh 2005 :

” A while ago, people in the TALO eGroup were discussing how moblogging seems to carry little evidence to being a powerful teaching and learning tool, simply because at the moment it is mostly being used as a social tool…

It just occurred to me, while I was trying out moblogging to Flickr that perhaps proponents of the ‘moblogging doesn’t have much to offer in education’ thinking are mistaken when trying to find examples of ‘moblogs for specific educational contexts and outcomes’. If only because it is a clear example of trying to make the new paradigm fit the old…

You know all those ideas of life long learning, learning in life, life is learning, holistic learning and otherwise age old fights to get education to recognise that learning happens everywhere – well moblogging is part of that everywhere. So if you truly can’t see the educational contexts and outcomes in moblogging, then you’re understanding of and educational context is too narrow and old school.

Even if all a student uses moblogging for is little more than documenting social aspects of their lives, such as a photo of self sitting in class, photo of friends at the canteen, photo of teacher picking nose, then they are all examples of that person building an identity and personal affiliation around their learning context. If a teacher can inspire moblogging’s use in assignment work and research – then great!

But sticking with the personal social use for a moment, if educational organisations, individuals, teachers aren’t willing to accept the whole student (and their everyday moblogging) into their teaching contexts, then they are restricting how much ‘real life’ a student can bring into the classroom, therefore taking away motivation, relevance, and the importance of social settings in the school, not to mention opportunities to understand more about the people they spend so much time with…..”

Kylie Rowsell 2005 :

” Having worked with heaps of kids on this moblogging thing, I have a fair
bit of faith in it. However, we all know that we should select our tools. We select the ones that work, that are easy to use and that we like.

I get very frustrated at didactic folks saying “You’ve GOT to use THIS
thing I found”. Its not respecting the person at the other end – how can I recommend a tool without knowing the nature of your work?

As such, only some will like moblogging. Only some kids will like it. In my experience, the results of moblogging are much ’softer’ that ‘normal’ units of competency. The information, computer, internet and social literacies are really
engaged. Folks forget they can’t write too good, or that they don’t like
computers. The barriers (like a good facilitator) disappear.

But each group is different. Different tools work on different groups. One group recently completed end of year surveys, which are handed out by the Adult Basic Ed teacher. Of the whole year, of all the topics covered and assignments etc, the
thing they liked best was the 3 hour moblogging session. Over a whole year. 3 hours.

The blogs were awesome – I feel a longer term moblogging ’subject’ (4
lessons over 4 weeks) would do freaking wonders for this particiular
group. I can see a gazillion other applications. I don’t think we have any really good, educational examples of ‘hard’ outcomes in a moblog from the engageme project.
I think some of the moblogs created during this project are not moblogs
to show as examples of educational moblogging. I wish I had a teaching position so I could get some going. We as facilitators have learnt an enormous amount about how to make moblogging ‘work’ in our context. If only I knew then what I know now!

It is our responsibility NOT to overwhelm our peers with our latest
‘thing’. Rather to recommend something (only one at first!) that might open the
IT doors for them. Asking someone new to understand moblogs in one minute is going to make their brains melt, in many cases (as they are overworked and under
pressure, like many of us). ……”

mlearning : more definitions

Which one of the following do you think I authored ?

“….Mobile learning otherwise known as ‘mlearning’ is learning that is complemented by the use new and emergent mobile communication technologies such as mobile phones, personal data assistants, handhelds, wearable devices or laptops. …..”

“….Mlearning acknowledges social computing as a participatory, interactive and valid form of e-learning incorporating new and emergent mobile communication technologies. “

“…….Mlearning at its extreme, is the ability to receive learning anywhere, anytime and on any device; it in a sense represents a coming together of eLearning systemswith mobile – and in particular handheld – computing.”

“…..mLearning is about learning in the environment, community and workplace, and about learning directly in the course of real world engagement and in real world time frames.”