Mobile Learning Isn’t Just Making Materials Mobile Accessible

Today I went to the doctors. She gave me a prescription and a coupon for it; however, the coupon had to be activated on the web. I pulled into the pharmacy parking lot, left on the radio, grabbed my phone and started surfing. I was able to activate everything on the phone, go into the pharmacy and get the great discount. The website required that I click through a few pages, fill out a form, etc. Although I definitely needed my zoom button, I was able to navigate everything with relative ease. Thankfully, the information they wanted was not “too” much, it didn’t take me “too” long, and I was happily on my way.

This experience got me thinking about all the stuff I’ve been reading and thinking about in terms of mobile learning. In most cases when I’ve talked to people about mobile learning we’re talking in terms of the technology. Specifically, we talk about what mobile devices the students are using as well as how do we enable our web-based materials to be accessed by those mobile devices. Instead of thinking in terms of the technology, today I got thinking more in terms of the pedagogy.

If we are going to design mobile learning in a way that really engages students and facilitates learning, we not only have to think about the technology, but about the environments and circumstances in which they are using those technologies. Specifically, we need to be thinking about developing assignments that are for “on-the-go” and assignments that require “sustained thinking.” And/or, we need assignments that can easily be paused and then picked up again (so obviously we’re not talking about timed quizzes here). So the context I’m interested in here is not so much physical, as it is temporal. What chunks of time will students give themselves for mobile learning? I guess the physical matters as well, who/what will be around distracting them at that time. For example, when I’ve done podcasting I’ve had more than one student talk about listening to the podcast while cooking dinner.

For example, I was thinking it would be easy for my writing students it would be easy for them to do online/digital reading “on the go” because they can just bookmark where they stopped. At first, I though, but writing can’t be done this way, writing requires bigger chunks of time. But I know better...what I realized is that I wouldn’t want to write using my mobile device. I know others don’t mind writing lengthy texts with their thumbs; however, I don’t “write” on my phone. But then I thought, oh, I could be drafting this blog idea (yes, the one I’m typing writing now, that I was thinking about in my car while I drove) with iPadio. And iPadio would then do the first draft transcription for me! Hey...this could be GREAT online activities for my writing students. I can’t wait to suggest it to them in the fall. And I’m setting up iPadio for speed dial on my phone tonight!

All of this to say, I’m looking forward to more thinking and discussion about the pedagogy of what mobile learning is/will look like to be successful for both teachers and students.

January 05 2010 | Posted in