This week, a student pal brought up the topic of mlearning. As I've posted on my blog for some time now, I too feel that there has to be some learning (edtech) opportunity for mobile devices when an estimated 80% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own cell phones, as reported in the linked AP article by Allen Breed. However, there are challenges and pitfalls everywhere you turn – from opening up the walled gardens to the dark side of cell phone use that is causing schools and other institutions to ban cell phones, as in Milwaukee, New York City and Akron. These barriers are making mlearning advancements difficult, if not impossible. Cell phones are seen as a means to cheat, distract from classroom activities, call in reinforcements during a fight, bully other students, facilitate contact between pedophiles and children, etc. As I am not in the k-12 trenches, I am not well equipped to enter this debate. However, I do feel that it is worthwhile to consider the comments in the article by Steven Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He notes, "To virtually every technology there's a good side and a bad side. And
in a really short time span here, we've seen the good side and the bad
side of text messaging". He further notes that in the bad side examples, technology made it easier for the bad guys, but "it was not responsible for the conditions underlying those messages … these were social
problems."
What concerns me most about this debate is that we seem to be addressing social problems by shooting the messenger (the cell phone), rather than trying to understand what we don't understand about this technology. Unfortunately, the digital divide between the students using cell phone technology and the adults making decisions to ban the technology is massive. This divide was never more apparent to me than after I read the first article in the January / February TechTrends, a publication of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology. The article by Don Descy entitled, "IM set to talk with you with text" was a primer for readers (presumably non-millennial educational communication and technology EXPERTS) on the difference between IM and text messaging and how one can BEGIN trying these new communication technologies. By writing THIS article in THIS publication, Descy seems to affirm my belief that the communication technologies that whipper snapper millennials use extensively (the article notes that over 500 BILLION messages were sent in 2004) have non-millennial edtech EXPERTS largely baffled. This begs the question, how can a group of EXPERTS devoted to educational technology possibly grasp and advocate the positives (or find sollutions for the negatives) of technologies that they have never tried? And these are the EXPERTS … what about the moms and dads and others in the community who aren't the edtech EXPERTS? What frame of reference must they have about this topic? Until we build a bridge over this massive divide, is there hope for mlearning?
I'm an educational technologist, and I have a particular interest in m-learning (see my blog at http://mlearning.edublogs.org). I've owned a mobile phone since I was 19 -so I've had one for 11 years – so I have been, myself, an extremely literate mobile phone user for longer than my entire professional edtech life.
I've kept up a great deal of currency and interest in mobile technology through my girlfriend, who's 20. She has a phone bill about 3 times mine every month, and seeing as I work with mobile technology as a profession, and she only uses her mobile phone "socially", that's pretty impressive. But she does give me a great deal of inspiration and direction about about how our young adult learners use this technology. Their need for mobile, social connectedness; their treatment of their mobile phones as an expression of their individuality; their sharing of viral media and interesting SMSes; their preference for SMS and IM over email.
I also subscribe to a number of mobile technology blogs – some of which have very low "education" value, but which I maintain as constant updates on mobile technology and youth culture. This approach to understanding m-learning's capabilities and limitations has been so successful for me that those feeds are now kept separate from my other m-learning blogroll blogs in a folder called "inspiration". The insights that can be gained from young people talking about how *they* use mobile technology are far richer than I could gain from reflection in isolation.
Finally, I run regular workshops for other educators on m-learning. I often research special aspects of mobile learning for particular requirements or educational situations, and having to discuss my ideas with other educators means that I need to maintain a thorough understanding of all aspects of mobile learning – educational, technical, social, and cultural. Being aware of this need to maintain currency in the fastest growing and changing area of current information and communications technology is a constant driver to learn more.
Until today I hadn't really thought much about mlearing. I am a teacher in the K-12 trenches and would love to find educational purpose in teaching mlearning to my students. I think administrators would be more open to the idea of mlearning when they are shown how it could benefit their students. I also think it would be valuable if the adults would make better efforts to experience the technology before they are so quick to ban it.
I teach eighth grade in Dunlap, Illinois at a middle school and we do not allow students to use cell phones in the classroom. As a matter of fact the student cell phones will be taken away if they have phones out during the school day. Not only do phones ring when students are carrying them, but we hear them in lockers. The maturity level is not there for the students. Teachers have caught students taking pictures and sending them to others in school. I have not found this, but do not want my pictures of my assessments all over the school. One student was taking pictures of a teachers backside and sending it. Unless teachers and students have traning and a plan for cell phones in the classroom, I don't think it is a good idea right now. In the future, possibly I could see using the internet, videos, and photos, but not when it is still new that students are "playing" or cheating with the phones. Not all students have cell phones available anyway.
Your blog hit my radar a couple of times this week. Once via a link from a blog in my blog roll and another from a fellow student in my Instructional Design program. I appreciate your comments and look forward to following your ideas on mlearning!