Jan 19th - Prof Club

From here to everywhere.
Starting with Civil Engineering Lee’s weekend and ending with a decision to talk about social capital again on Wednesday, my professors’ class was around the world, through history and the future and back within two hours.

I mentioned that we would watch a 20 minute lecture on fora.tv about a topic of their choice, we instead chatted about Obama, the inauguration, hope, President Lee Myung-Bak, the green economy, the creation of the Israeli state, and who Jesus is in Judaic, Christian and Islamic religious traditions before transferring to the English Lounge to watch the Entertainment Group’s video of Amory Lovins.

After watching the video we talked about energy, the environment, alternatives, education and the intelligence of our students who have very different literacies than we do.

Prof Lee Hee Jae kept piquing my interest with small tidbits of info. “Transport” a movie from Ukraine. People dying around Gangjin from the solar energy complex. And how feng shui can help create the new learning spaces of the future.

The objective of a classroom is to gather people to learn together because it is an efflicient and fast way to learn from experts.

The objective of having a teacher is to manage and lead a group within the learning process.

On demand learning with expert access in a personal style that is sticky with a cross section of community members that synergize the learning process.

I think classrooms and teachers may not survive the future since we have finally tipped with Obama being elected. His election, the economic crisis, the fact that the US government has the auto industry by the balls, the mainstreaming and dissemination of scientific and economic realities and inventions, all stack up for a bumpy, but inevitable ride into the next decade.

In five years, I forsee (ok - hope):
North and South Korea reunite peacefully.
China set trends for environmental conservation.
Elimination of nuclear power and warfare.
My earrings being my headset, my bracelet being my wireless, amy necklace being my capture tools, my glasses being my display screen, rings on my fingers being my input tools, and I will add a tiara for my mix with a webcam in it.
Depowering of transnationals.
Emergence of global small business laws.
Transparency required for all public access of spaces and materials.
Freedoms and privileges will have inseparable responsibilities and costs.

IU W505 Mobile Learning Wk 1

STIPULATIVE DEFINITION: All learning is mobile.

I’d like to start with stipulative. In reading Traxler’s article, I found myself making notes about how his definition was too confining for my idea of mobile learning. Mobile – movement. I think our brain and bodies are our ultimate mobile learning devices and we (as a historic and world culture) just want to extend our learning by adding MacGyver-like extensions to our brains and bodies to increase learning to fulfill our needs and interests.

I think all humankind technology has endeavored to be mobile technology. I think books are a type of mobile technology assisting our mobile brains. I think ships and airplanes are mobile technology, extending the mobility of our bodies.

I feel that Traxler’s definition tries to co-opt the emergence of new mobile technology learning devices to support learning institutions which have become obsolete. Traxler’s article presupposes that mobile learning should be incorporated into higher learning institutions and that higher learning institutions are a foundation of learning. In his article he implicitly positions the institution/teacher/class before the learner.

Do schools exist for learners? Or do learners exist for schools? I think these are important questions that need to be asked because I see schools as, in fact, a type of technology. Schools and higher ed are solutions for education (not necessarily learning) in an industrial society. I would venture that schools and learning institutions of the past 100 years or so are aberrations in overall history, just as Todd Rundgren states that our modern music industry is an aberration in the history of music.

Rundgren, T. (2008). Time for the Music Industry to Evolve. The Entertainment Gathering 2008 Monterey, CA, Dec 13th, 2008. Video 26 minutes on Fora.tv. Retrieved on January 18, 2009 http://fora.tv/2008/12/13/Todd_Rundgren_Time_for_the_Music_Industry_to_Evolve .

OSTENSIVE DEFINITION: Mobility learning requires particular critical literacies and creates particular information and social challenges.

For an ostensive definition, I turn to Henry Jenkins’ white paper on “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.” Instead of focusing on the technology, he focuses on the societal elements of learning and the requisite skills to be literate within a world of volatile technological learning apparatuses. As a businesswoman and an IST grad student, I find his categorization more helpful (and hopeful) than the Traxler theoretical discussion on the dissemination of mobile learning within the preexisting higher learning order. Jenkins categorizes problems that learners , educations, families, citizens and leaders are having with the accelerated adoption of participatory culture. His categorizations speak strongly to me as an educator and reflect the problems I witness in my classes, as well as personally in my professional development and graduate student roles.

In short I would emphasize Jenkin’s categorizations as a starting point for my mobile learning definition.

Mobile learning’s legacy to learning and learning theory could be to set discourse limitations to develop a political and pedagogical framework to address three problems within participatory culture:

The Participation Gap - the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.

The Transparency Problem - The challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.

The Ethics Challenge- The breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.
From Jenkins 2006.

Additionally, mobile learning can start obsoleting itself into a regular definition of “learning” by encouraging additional literacies (beside textual) to be included in the definition of what it means to be a critically literate person in today’s world. This definition would always be redefining itself as certain literacies have limited lives.

Henry Jenkins has identified and categorizes the following skills as important for successful practice within a participatory culture. I think these are important literacies to develop, extend and co-opt when designing mobile learning solutions.

Play
Performance
Simulation
Appropriation
Multitasking
Distributed Cognition
Collective Intelligence
Judgment
Transmedia Navigation
Networking
Negotiation

Jenkins, H. (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Retrieved on January 18, 2009 http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2108773/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id=%7bCD911571-0240-4714-A93B-1D0C07C7B6C1%7d&notoc=1 )

Lexical Definition: Under Construction
To bridge the gap between my stipulative and ostensive definitional wandering, I focus now on the lexical. What is mobile learning compared to online distance learning, e-learning, correspondence learning, classroom learning, on the job training, or internships. Using Traxler’s definition that mobile learning is personal, contextual, and situated, I offer a matrix to share my perspective on these types of learning based on Traxler’s definition.


Personal, Contextual, Situated of

Mobile learning
Distance learning
e-learning
Correspondence learning
Classroom learning
On the job training
Internships

I hope to finish this during the semester.


The Cases

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3278625.stm
Testing students by mobile phone (BBC)shows that the methodology of mass assessment of information memorization can be taken to a new level of de-personalization instead of making the information more personal and memorable for the learner to apply in real life. One thing that this case did evoke for me is that we (all people) really are very trusting. We really think that there are testable “right” answers, when in fact we are accepting and supporting a particular way perspective of problem solving and analysis. This is true for everything, even “scientifically proven facts.”

http://www.cer.jhu.edu/index.cfm?pageID=328
HP Mobile Computing In Higher Education (CER – support from HP) disgusts me in two ways. The first is that mobile technology is being used only to support preexisting, prehistoric classroom control and moderately cognitively challenging practice instead of practicing physics to solve problems that the students currently face in their lives or that they are particularly interested in. Too much teacher and assessment focus for mobile learning maximization. The other thing that disgusts me is that this money is being spent to widen the gap between those who can afford/qualify for John Hopkins prestige education and those who cannot. I feel that the curriculum as laid out here is applicable and achievable for junior high and high school students. It should not be spefically the domain of “special” or higher education students.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/TextMessagingtoImproveSoc/44833
Text Messaging to Improve Social Presence in Online Learning (EQ)
I question this statement: One problem with trying to gauge the quality of courses by measuring the amount of cutting-edge technology used is that instructors can never keep up, and students can't afford to buy all the latest technology required for their own learning.
How prevalent is this problem? What studies support? What segments of the population are struggling like this?

I teach language so the interaction element and the affective and cognitive perceived by the learner is a familiar correlate. I find the text message info from the New Mexico study quaint; my students send and receive 10-150 text messages every day. I find that this year is down compared to my previous years (2003-2008). But then the cost is significantly different between South Korea and the USA for text messaging.

I especially liked the narrative about useage. “Prior to the implementation of text messaging during the summer session, students enrolled in the online courses were surveyed to determine their cell phone carriers and if they had text messaging capabilities. Of the students surveyed, 72 percent had text messaging and used it on a regular basis. Of the students enrolled in the courses, 28 percent received text messages for free, whereas the remainder had to purchase a text message bundle or pay up to 10 cents per message. Those students who did not own a cell phone could receive the identical information via e-mail.
I find that the lagger/leader numbers are more important than the study itself. What happens to the 28% who don’t use text messaging regularly? How can only 28% have free text messaging? I think the social system implicit in this study is more important to me as an educator than providing learning to those already enfranchised by mobile learning.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2004/07/64282
Duke Gives IPods to Freshmen (Wired) Ick, another article that makes me feel dirty. I assume that all the faculty also received Ipods. And what’s with the upperclassmen being neglected in this marketing ploy. Truly, this is money over learning in applying technology. Don’t studies show that the younger (and more men than women) already have a strong technological literacy? Why give the Ipods to freshman before upperclassmen? Wouldn’t it have been better to give Ipods to everyone, or the laggers & leaders, or just do a study of those who have and those who have not?

http://www97.intel.com/odyssey/Story.aspx?storyid=264
Analyzing the Aquifer (Intel)
Like the jigsaw approach to sharing knowledge. Like that the students had to take ownership and have boundaries about software.

How were things recorded? Why would those interviewed be impressed?
“When it was time to conduct the interviews, students took along their handhelds and recorded the information. "The people being interviewed were quite impressed with the students and their knowledge of technology," says Poage.

What does this really mean?
The projects became the basis for science fair entries. "Our students did quite well," Poage reports.

Yuck. The article implies that the device is what created the learning. I think it was the proper scaffolding of the learning event, positioning the device within a rich inquiry based learning project.
The teacher was especially impressed by the level of interest the handhelds generated. "It was complete concentration when the students were in the classroom working on a specific assignment. Several times I had students journal for me about how their project was going. This was a sight to behold for a teacher," she says. "It was pure concentration and on-task behavior. You could have heard a pin drop." She even called in a colleague to share in the moment. "I had never had that much participation before."
Inspired by that success, Poage also introduced handheld computers to a class of junior high students. "I have a rather challenging group of students, and they just fell in love with the handhelds. The discipline problems seemed to melt away. Wow, was that nice," she adds.