Welcome to the initial discussion in the course! To help frame the article you read, below is a conceptual framework for mobile learning that came from a conference on this topic I co-hosted with Qualcomm last October (http://wirelessedtech.com/). Mobile devices and other emerging educational technologies often do not achieve their potential because “old wine is put in new bottles.” For example, podcasting is touted as an educational solution, yet almost all podcasts have had limited impact on learning because they use the “teaching by telling, learning by listening” instructional model that characterized educational radio and portable tape recorders in generations past. In contrast, mobile broadband devices can hold “new wine,” such as highly engaging augmented realities (http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=harp) that infuse virtual data and authentic, simulated experiences into real world settings, facilitating transfer of learning from classrooms to life situations. Further, the “bottle” itself may disappear as mobile broadband allows us to have all the powerful supports of classroom learning without the need for constraining education in time and space.
That said, mobile learning poses at least four key puzzles:
- Devices and Infrastructure: How can we best balance educational investments between the classic infrastructure of wired computers and the emerging infrastructure of wireless mobile devices?
- Safety and Privacy: How can we use Internet access and digital student data to enhance education, while preventing various forms of abuse?
- Digital Assets and Assessments: How can we drive innovation in digital learning materials and services when the education market is notoriously fragmented and slow to adopt, and when the strengths and limits of mobile devices for learning are not well understood?
- Human Capital: How can we empower educators and other stakeholders to realize the potential of anytime, anyplace mobile learning through evolutionary, revolutionary, and disruptive transformations that move beyond the model of industrial-era schooling?
Complicating the challenge is that barriers in each area create difficulties for progress in the others.
The article with which we begin our discussion sketches both the vision for mobile learning and some initial problems to confront. Which opportunities mobile learning can provide are most interesting to you? Which initial barriers are most problematic, given your situation? Share your thoughts on Twitter - make sure to include our hash tag #edcmdata at the end of your tweet!
I would agree the educational market is fragmented but I am concerned about new federal "adaptive assessments" which will certainly bring coherence and be a boon to ed entrepreneurs. But will they support personalization of learning and the promotion of innovation/creativity (Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink, Yong Zhao)?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the billing of adaptive assessments is just that - they will provide the opportunity to use formative assessment that can help shape and reshape instruction based on individual needs (e.g. performance on the test). Of course, it's not the actual adaptive assessment that creates learning, but it's what educators do with the data from those assessments - how they design and/or personalize learning to meet the needs indicated by the data. The creativity has to come from the human infrastructure, meaning the educators who interpret and react to the data in an effort to meet individual student learning goals. As educators/admins, do we feel data from summative or formative/adaptive tests provide more opportunity to personalize learning? Here's a nice piece on the topic for those who are interested: Diagnostic testing: new attention focuses on formative and adaptive assessment: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6938/is_4_44/ai_n28504371/
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