Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

The future is bright ... the future is Apple green. Now if they would just be a bit more generous with the contract and when free wi-fi in the UK is as available as it is in the US then I'll trade in my iPodTouch for the iPhone.

I also like what ST says about good teachers teaching but there has been research by the Institute in London (I'm searching for the reference) which indicates that teachers with "interactive" WBs are more likely to be in information-transmission mode rather than working towards a constructavist approach in the classroom.

I would guess that as ST laudes the EFYS assessment (and I give 3 big ones myself for this) before we move into behaviourism and transmission model for the rest of school eternity and begin doing the SAT and GCSE shuffle so we should be pushing a constructavist model. Thus getting kit into the hands of the kids is key here.

I also sit on the, they've got kit, let's get them using it group. Anyway back on the classroom track. Very few classroom still have fixed desks and I don't know about you boys and girls but I was always moving the tables in my classrooms. We had rows, groups, pairs, courtroom, monastic, debate, no table sitting on chairs, no table and no chairs sit on the floor (!) and every other combination in my teaching room (and even occasionally in my lab when I was teaching science but the lab benches were bolted down). So this is nothing new.

Perhaps the real key to the mobile classroom is to think about this meaning not always being in the classroom so using forums, wikis, blogs etc... as asynchronous tools as well as the classroom based stuff. You see where I'm going but it's 23:25 and I'm beginning to ramble!

Paul

I've been using my iPodTouch now for a few days and it is just peachy. If you've not played then the screen is amazing, tunes are great, photos are stunning and the little features such as the light sensor and the motion sensor make surfing on wi-fi amazing on a small screen. It's not cheap but it is wonderful.

Of course the technology will mean a change in teaching styles.

(i) It means that the boundaries between teacher and learners will blur and, at the risk of clichés, there will be more collaborative learning
(ii) The ease at which learning can become both personalised and personal will mean a fracturing of task and task-delivery.
(iii) The nature of assessment will have to change (see comments in other threads)
(iv) Anytime, anywhere, anyhow learning will mean that teaching will also cease to happen only when the students and the teacher are co-located (as happens already so much in HE [as an ex-OU lecturer this is very true for me])

To misquote Churchill this is not the end of schooling as we know it, it is not even the beginning of the end but it might be the beginning of the beginning. The current UK secondary pedagogic models of learning and teaching are build solidly on the teacher in a classroom for an hour with 30 students. This is no longer a model that holds water given the change in social, technological and economic circumstances of the C21st. Hold your hats it's going to be an exciting but rather rough ride.

One last thing (!) The concept of 'teacher' is also someting that is going to have to change. Look to the model of the health service where the idea of 'doctor' or 'nurse' has now fractured into a number of grades. This is what, I believe, must happen in teaching and we will have lead professionals, curriculum designers, lesson delivers, curriculum designers etc... in our schools. This is beginning to happen with TAs and will start to happen soon with teachers.

It is intersting reading this thread. I lecture to a lot of PGCE / ITE students (about 500 each year) and when I evangelise (that's the only word!) about the use of handheld and mobile technology and how we should be encouraging the educational use of the wonderful packet of technology that is mislabed a mobile 'phone' that the majority of our students carry there is an interesting mixed reaction from the 21-50 year old in the ITE classroom. Some are excited and see having a 1-1 ratio of useful devices as a positive thing others worry about the disruptive element. For me the real challenge of devices in the class is to the model of 30-1-1-60, that 30 students with one teacher in one room for 60 minutes that is still the cornorstone of educative practice in the UK secondary system. My hope is that portable and mobile technologies may lead to portable and mobile learning.

Returning to another thread above, like many I wonder about the best combinations of the technology and I can see a wi-fi enable PDA and a camera / video phone as a fine pairing. A wi-fied PDA coming in at about 1/2 of the price of a camera enabled PDA (or the EDA which was demoed at the conference). As was mentioned above you can transfer without too much hassle video and stills from other devices (such as mobile phones) to the PDA.

Gerry. Yes the e-portfolio where students can show their achievement rather than teachers always assessing. This could then include a range of textual. image, video, flash, wikis, blogs, audio etc... evidence than could be referenced against competencies. It could also include individual and collaborative work as well as encouraging reflecting learning. What this does mean is (i) trust in teachers and learners and (ii) the end of crude league tables which encourage the kind of 'cheating' which has meant the end of coursework. Sadly I fear that this kind of model is too sophisticated for the politicians who prefer a crude examination model - but we can but try.

One of the things that has struck me from a number of presentations over the last couple of days is the excitement of the ways that pupils are experiencing learning and how the majority of the assessment system is way behind being able to cope with the way that the HH and the other mobile techs can gather a record of achievement.

Even those presenting have had to have paper based questions scanned onto the mobile tech which could then be written on. So a pixel and stylus rather than a pen a paper but pedagogically no different.

What do we need to do, in terms of evidential outcomes, to convince QCA that there is a different way of assessing learning (given their approach to student centered learning via coursework) and this is NOT the 'paper based' on-line testing that are being enable as this again is pedagogically no different.

Paul

Glad the sessions are being podcast - what about yesterday. Also will the presentations be available as downloads (I guess I'll have to say powerpoints for the Microsoft people) from the break-out sessions?