Mobile Technologies Are Changing the Way Children Learn

Mobile Technologies Are Changing the Way Children Learn. Several researchers have suggested that we are entering a new era of technology enhanced learning, characterized as mobile learning (e.g., Sharples et al., 2005; Tatar et al., 2003), seamless learning (Chan et al., 2006), and ubiquitous learning (Rogers et al., 2005). Central to these notions is the idea

that mobile technology can be designed to enable children to move in and out of overlapping physical, digital, and communicative spaces. This mobility can be achieved individually, in pairs, in small groups, or as a whole classroom together with teachers, mentors, experts, parents, professionals, and others (Chan et al., 2006). It is assumed that mobile technologies give continuity across numerous learning experiences, facultative youngsters to create connections between what they're perceptive, collecting, accessing, and wondering over time, place, and people.

For example, a child might use his iPhone to chat with a mentor in Second Life about biodiversity while sitting on a bus and then, based on the expert’s suggestions, join in a snail hunt in his local park, take photos with his phone, tag the snails’ location using GPS coordinates, and then send the data, with a suggestion as to what the snails are, to an online Website on biodiversity. The biologists monitoring the site could then send a message back to him verifying whether his identification of the snails was correct and could then add his data to a national database that the child could subsequently show to his biology teacher at school.

 Mobile Technologies Are Changing the Way Children Learn.

There is AN in progress dialogue regarding however this sort of mobile learning will encourage new sorts of social interaction, thinking, or reflection (e.g., Pachler, 2007; Sharples et al., 2008). As shown in the previous example, being able to communicate with others what one is thinking and seeing is an

integral part of learning. Through explaining to others and representing information via various media, children can be made aware of their own discrepancies in understanding, enabling them to revise their understanding (c.f. Chi, 1997). “One way in which learners may gain from working closely on a problem is by being required to make their thinking public and explicit” (Crook, 1994, p. 133). Collaboration can increase awareness, which in turn can enable children to reflect on what they are currently engaged in.

Another concern is whether the focus should be on the technology being mobile or the extent to which the learner is mobile (Traxler, 2005). In some contexts, it's necessary that the activities ar extremely physical; in others, the movableness of the mobile technology is a lot of crucial. For still others, it's the approach the device is employed among a bunch of youngsters throughout a task that's necessary. If children are each given a mobile device, this can promote working by themselves, whereas if they have to share one, they are required to collaborate more.

Several researchers have sought to explain the principles behind mobile learning (e.g., Sharples, 2005). Some have proposed existing learning theories, such as constructivism; others have suggested that new theories are needed. Most studies to date that investigate mobile learning have been based on or informed by constructivist theories of learning, drawing from Vygotsky (1978) and Papert (1980). These propose that we construct knowledge and meaning from our experiences and that this

is best achieved through doing or making things. Another approach has been to solid the theoretical underpinning of mobile learning additional broadly speaking in terms of embodiment (e.g., Marshall and Rogers, 2009; value et al., 2009). Embodiment refers to the interactions and conversations

that happen in our physical and social worlds and provide meaning (Dourish, 2001). 

A focus is on the intricate relationship between perception and action and the way that bodily experiences inform our understanding of abstract concepts. For example, abstract concepts, such as above, below, up, and down are understood through being physically experienced in the world (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Given that mobile learning generally involves acting and act during a physical and social world, instead of constructing things intrinsically, it follows that ideas arising from embodiment might give a additional intensive account.
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