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Thursday, July 27, 2017

Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of Education



Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of  Education
General Word:

I remember six years ago when my then 4-year-old child began using my mobile phone. I was amazed at how comfortable she was chatting to daddy on a phone while shopping at the grocery store. She thought nothing of using this object that had no plugs or wires to hear her father’s voice. Today this same child has a younger sister who not only takes mobile phones for granted, but assumes anything can be a mobile phone. I remember when my youngest was 2- years-old. She would pick up any random object and just begin talking into it. 
Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of  Education
 Description of  Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of  Education :
For my children in suburban Maryland, mobile technologies are now an integral part of their everyday living and play experiences. But this is not the case for all children. Many live in places where mobile technologies are just becoming affordable. Others live in areas where there is no cell phone service at all. And still other children live in places where basic living necessities outweigh the need for electronic technologies. There are extreme differences in children’s opportunities and challenges for learning with new technologies. This book is about mobile technologies for all of these children. 

This book is not about how to make mobile technologies. It is about how to make BETTER mobile technologies for the world’s children. This book is about how to understand the impact that these technologies can have, and apply those lessons to making new learning experiences for children that are more effective, engaging, and expressive. This book will ask you to consider a diverse landscape of research and products to inspire and challenge your thinking. This would have been a much easier book to write if the authors could give you a step-by-step guide on what to build and how to use it, but that just isn’t possible.

 The world is too large, diverse, and messy, and the pace of innovation is just too fast. There are so many technological solutions to consider, so many contexts to explore for scenarios of use, and so many different goals that could support learning. Together this suggests the need for a rich and complex book. This is the book you now read. It contains the work of 43 authors from 9 countries. These authors have diverse points of view, in part due to the disciplines they represent. They are computer scientists, HCI professionals, social scientists, educational researchers, non-profit or NGO leaders, academic and industry researchers and practitioners.
 Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of  Education
They are people making change in their organizations. They work in developing countries and industrialized nations, in war-torn areas and established centers of commerce and peace. They consider the use of mobile technologies in classrooms, homes, outdoors, and public spaces.  And the “mobile technology” that they consider spans a wide variety of  platforms—including mobile phones, GPS systems, laptops, game controllers, mp3 players, book readers, and even pen-based computing. This diversity  in perspective, experience, and technology is critical in understanding future new directions.

Developing a mobile theory of learning:

Existing applications for mobile-learning tend to employ design and evaluation principles taken from traditional or e-learning theories, which results in mere “mobile versions”  of established tools. This design approach fails to take into full account the distinct aspects of learning through mobile technologies. The potential for mobile technologies to contribute to lifelong, dynamic, contextualized, and social learning rests on the establishment of principles that highlight and exploit the specific characteristics of learning with mobile technologies. 

Numerous researchers have called for a learning theory specific to mobile technologies that will allow for effective assessment, instructional strategies, and design of mobile applications (Klopfer and Squire, 2003; Zurita and Nussbaum, 2004; Naismith, Londsale, Vavoula, and Sharples, 2004). A theory of mobile learning should encourage an authentic, collaborative experience in addition to allowing teachers the opportunity to be more efficient and responsive to the needs of learners of various backgrounds and capabilities (Rodríguez, Nussbaum, Zurita, Rosas, and Lagos, 2001; Attewell, 2005b; Scanlon, Jones and Waycott, 2005; Cobcroft, Towers, Smith, and Bruns, 2006). 

It should also ensure that mobile applications taken “off the shelf” and those specifically designed for educational purposes can be evaluated using similar standards. Some researchers have advocated for a conversational approach to creating a mobile learning theory, suggesting that mobile technologies encourage learning that is social, autonomous, and continuous. Others have added that a framework must incorporate socioconstructivist and lifelong learning theories while taking into account learner mobility, the ubiquity of mobile technologies, and informal learning environments (Sharples, 2005; Sharples, Taylor, and Vavoula, 2005). 
 Mobile Technologies Are Now An Integral Part Of  Education
The skill sets, design principles, and practice exemplars outlined in this book can also provide insights into how we might further develop theoretical approaches to support the next generation of mobile learning. It is a critical matter; only once educators and designers understand how we might effectively use these mobile devices to support learning can they be used to their full potential.


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