Mobile Learning in the Classroom? Heck, Yeah!

Everywhere you look these days, the topic of mobile devices in the classroom is up for debate: Is there value in using cell phones and tablets, ipads and android in the classroom? Specifically, Should teachers allow or require students to use mobile devices to achieve learning objectives? If so why? To my mind, the answer is simple. Yes we should. Because, like it or not, we need to. We owe it to our kids. For as theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku asserted in his Keynote address to the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) last month, ”In the future, internet will be everywhere and nowhere." The world is about to change.

Perhaps it helps to look to the past. When the Gutenburg press was first invented, according to the Harry Ransom Center in their website article Gutenburg's Legacy "It has been estimated that there were perhaps 30,000 books in all of Europe before Gutenberg printed his Bible; less than 50 years later, there were as many as 10 to 12 million books." The shift is comparable to what we are experiencing now.

At that time, this rapid advance meant a threat to the powers that be. Suddenly the aristocracy, the monasteries - the Catholic Church - were no longer the guardians, controllers, and shepherds of the flock. Now the sheep could read their own Bibles and come to their own conclusions. Books were suddenly available to, well, anyone. Everyone! At least, to anyone that could afford them, that is. But then, they became affordable.Ye gads! (Censorship was invented soon thereafter.)

Today,some 500 years later, we've gotten used to the idea of widespread access to information. In fact we cherish the notion. With the advent of the internet  we've moved from our comparable world of guardians, controllers, and shepherds of information, to one in which the goal seems to be nothing less than the total elimination of barriers between individuals and information. Access is pervasive and instantaneous, and we are fast approaching the world Dr. Kaku envisions. The use of mobile devices is but the beginning of this transformation.

But what does this mean to education? Just as historian Elizabeth L. Eisenstein noted about the age of Gutenberg, when “Gifted students no longer needed to sit at the feet of a given master in order to learn a language or academic skill. Instead, they could achieve mastery on their own, even by sneaking books past their tutors” so it is today. With the advent of mobile devices, educators must shift their way of thinking, and their relationship to the students, to information, and to the technologies of information.

For example, at my school last spring, we introduced 30 ebook tablets to our library.

Instantly, teachers and students created new and unexpected uses for them.

• Our AP Physics instructor gave her students access to a study guide
• Our Language Arts instructors instantly added 12 copies of an ebook, for a new class reading they wanted to try.
• Our African History teacher had her class access to the Economist, take notes, share them on Google docs
• Our science instructor had her students use them to do research in her classroom, where they could more comfortably collaborate

.

As our experience showed, the real value in mobile devices lies is their ease of access and affordability. “Not every classroom can get a laptop every day, so [devices like smartphones], even if you have to pair up, become something useful for teachers,” states teaching veteran Ken Halla, in a report from the National Educational Association.  

And once the way is opened, teachers are discovering new and exciting uses for mobile devices. Not only can they help support students' academic achievement, better collaboration, more engagement, but they enable teachers to better track students' progress and understanding. As Christopher Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, and  adviser to the U.S. Department of Education's National Educational Technology Plan (NETP)  explains, mobile devices enable data collection, and provide a "cognitive audit trail"  that can show how students think and what they understand.

As we approach the future envisioned by Dr. Kaku, mobile devices enable the use of the latest new information enhancement and access tools, such as QR (Quick Response) codes, Augmented Reality (AR) and with Virtual Reality and 3D. These technologies make information even more accessible, integrating the real world with additional information, and enabling us to experience new environments far beyond our classroom walls.

For example, according to a an Edutopia report by Andrew Miller Instructional Coach at Shanghai American School, QR Codes can be used to create learning stations, provide extension material or enable students to quickly check their answers, and for teachers to track their progress.

As Patricia Brown describes in  EdSurge, Augmented Reality (AR) enables teachers provide supplemental information and additional support for students."For example, jazz up your school’s art show, or make math come alive through videos of students solving math problems--perhaps students can trigger an Aura by pointing their smartphone at a particular equation. You could even attach a trigger image to a Google Form to request time with the school counselor, or make a class picture image on your teacher website trigger a virtual tour of a classroom."

Similarly, Virtual Reality (VR) can enable special needs students to learn social skills such as turn-taking, sharing, listening and taking an interest in others, while Heather Hansman of Smithsonian points out, with VR students can visit the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where “They can look around, and the teacher can share information about things they're seeing.”

These are the ways in which mobile devices can be of help in the classroom. Can we do without them? Perhaps. For now. But as Dr. Kaku points out, this is the future our students will be living in. The world is not just about to change - it already has. And it is our job as educators is to prepare them for it.

SOURCES:

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