TxTMe Project
In 2004 as a fledgling lecturer in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Western Australia whilst running the 'Learning Legends' project at Swan City Youth Services I was invited to participate as a lead practitioner in a mobile learning research project.
"...The project recognises that mobile phone use has become a pervasive communication tool among youth culture, and has aimed to develop recommendations and guidelines for VET providers on using this communication technology to support a sustainable learning culture with disengaged youth. Specifically, the project sought to find new ways to engage, motivate and sustain lifelong learning skills for these learners. The project tested the hypothesis that m-learning strategies and mobile phone technology motivates and supports the retention of disengaged youth in learning programs and facilitates the development of lifelong learning skills through supporting collaborative, networked learning environments. The overall goal of the project was to integrate readily accessible mobile technology into a vocational learning environment for the benefit of disengaged learners."
The project involved a number of initiatives using Nokia mobile sponsored by Telstra and also online mass SMS texting portals. Students were given credit and were encouraged to engage with the project researchers.
"...There are multiple audiences for this New Practice:
teachers and trainers who work with 15-19 year olds
teachers and trainers who wish to engage disengaged youth
organisations who wish to implement mobile learning
teachers, trainers and organisations who wish to undertake professional development in area of mobile learning
Resources
The project has developed the following materials:
A set of recommendations and guidelines for VET providers that provides specific and practical strategies, for practitioners to utilise mobile phones as a teaching and learning resource.
Three case studies that clearly outline the qualitative results of the m-learning trials with three separate student groups.
Recommendations for the establishment of infrastructure needed to support the use of m-learning.
Guidelines for Professional Development for practitioners.
At the time of this post publication the project page was available at the Wayback Machine due to the consistent data genocide demonstrated by the greater AFLF project who have subsequently deleted the original project content - go figure!
So, I've taken it upon myself to scrape what I can from the project and republish it here with all the correct attributions.
TxTMe Project Documentation
