Cellphones & school: A great mix

Today, two views on mobile learning: that of an 18-year-old social entrepreneur and school-reform activist in Georgia and that of a research guest-blogging at O'Reilly's Radar....

If you have any doubts about mobile learning at school, I have two suggestions: 1) Take about 5 minutes to watch college freshman Travis Allen of Fayetteville, Ga., demonstrate how iPhones can be used in school, from classroom applications to keeping track of homework to student-teacher-parent communications in a video on YouTube, and 2) check out the iSchool Initiative, a nonprofit organization Allen founded as a "partnership of students, teachers, school administrators, and software application developers" designed to help all parties "comprehend each others' needs" and help students themselves advocate for the intelligent use of technology at school.

It all started, Allen says in his blog, when his parents got him an iPod Touch for Christmas of 2008. Now at Kennesaw State University, he says the Initiative has "three primary objectives: raising awareness for the technological needs of the classroom, providing collaborative research on the use of technology in the classroom, and guiding schools in the implementation of this technology." He's not alone. See, for example, this tutorial on YouTube from Radford University in Virginia showing teachers step-by-step how to create a quiz on the iPod Touch so the class can take the quiz and together go over the results in the same class.

Why cellphones, not textbooks?

Qualcomm has been looking into just that question, funding field research such as Project K-Nect in rural North Carolina, where remedial math on iPod Touches has helped students increase proficient by 30%. Writing in Radar, Marie Bjerede, Qualcomm's vice president of wireless education technology, says the project has turned up four reasons why it helps to teach with cellphones:

1. Multimedia in their hands. Each set of math problems starts with a little animated video showing how to work the problem. "You could theorize that this context prepares the student to understand the subsequent text-based problem better. You could also theorize that watching a Flash animation is more engaging (or just plain fun)," Bjerede writes.
2. Instruction is personalized. So "students need to compare solutions" not answers. "How did you get that" replaces "what did you get?"
3. Collaborative math. "Students are asked to record their solutions on a shared blog and are encouraged to both post and comment. Over time, a learning community has emerged that crosses classrooms and schools and adds the kind of human interaction that an isolated, individual drill (be it textbook or digital) lacks and that a single teacher is unlikely to have the bandwidth to provide to each student."
4. Unanticipated participation: "Students who don't like to raise their hands use the devices to ask questions or participate in collaborative problem solving [with blogging and instant messaging]. There appears to be something democratizing about having a 'back channel' as part of the learning environment."

Related links

A teacher's iPod Touch proposal (to her school tech director) is linked to in this blog post about her – Sonya Woloshen, a new teacher who uses mobile and other technologies in the classroom but whose focus is on "the meaningful engagement of students ... learning transferable skills and teaching each other as they learned," writes blogger and Vancouver, B.C. vice-principal David Truss. Here's another educator's blog post about Sonya, including a video interview with her about teaching with students' "Personally Owned Devices" (PODs) – Hey, it's 2010. They're in their pockets! Sonya says. And stop with the excuses, like, "They don't all have one." They don't all have to; they can share in class; they have splitters that allow five to listen at the same time!

Touchscreen phone data: Gartner says the market for touchscreen phones like the iPhone, Droid, and Nexus One will nearly double this year. It says the worldwide market "will surpass 362.7 million units in 2010, a 96.8 percent increase from 2009 sales of 184.3 million units," and they'll account for 58% of mobile device sales worldwide "and more than 80% in developed markets such as North America and Western Europe."

"The three important lessons banning cellphones teaches kids" in The Innovative Educator blog

Two important studies on this from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York: "Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning" and "The Digital Promise: Transforming Learning with Innovative Uses of Technology."

My last feature on this at the beginning of this school year: "From digital disconnect to mobile learning," linking to some important data and mobile-learning projects and drawing from compelling research by Project Tomorrow

From 'chalk 'n' talk' to learning by doing

You know how middle and secondary school (probably in most countries) divide students' days into subjects? Well, there's a new public school in New York City that divides the schoolday into four 90-minute blocks devoted to the study of “domains,” The Economist reports. They're called things like "Codeworlds (a combination of mathematics and English), Being, Space and Place (English and social studies), The Way Things Work (maths and science) and Sports for the Mind (game design and digital literacy)." The domains, which could be called "courses" and conclude "with a two-week examination called a 'Boss Level' – a common phrase in videogame parlance" – are also videogames. Like courses, they have units of "study," which in this case is clearly a mashup of learning and play. "In one of the units of Being, Space and Place, for example, pupils take on the role of an ancient Spartan who has to assess Athenian strengths and recommend a course of action. In doing so, they learn bits of history, geography and public policy."

The school is called Quest to Learn, and it draws its inspiration from three sources, New York's Bank Street School for Children, the MacArthur Foundation-funded Digital Youth Project I've written a lot about (see particularly "*Serious* informal learning"), and the work of the University of Wisconsin's James Gee, author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy."

The school might draw further inspiration from the new study from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, "Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health," which shows how "increased national investment in research-based digital games might play a cost-effective and transformative role and provides comprehensive actions steps for media industry, government, philanthropy, and academia to harness the appeal of digital games to improve children’s health and learning.

Related links

"Supreme Decision," is the debut game of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's new site, OurCourts.org, with games for teaching middle school students about the US Constitution and courts. The game site's backed by the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University and Georgetown University, according to eSchoolNews. "Though she didn’t get a computer until she was in her 40s, and she doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, O’Connor believes using technology is the way to teach students about the Constitution and inspire a renewed commitment to civics education in US schools."

See also my summer posts, "The power of play" and "Play, Part 2."

Mobile devices 'key to 21st-century learning'

Kids' use of games, cellphones, and smartphones (next-generation, Web-browsing, media-sharing phones), "if carefully managed, could significantly boost their learning," Education Week reports, citing a just-released, 52-page study by a research center based at the Sesame Workshop (formerly Sesame Street) in New York. "Mobile devices are part of the fabric of children's lives today: They are here to stay,” said Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, in a statement about the report. "It is no longer a question of whether we should use these devices to support learning, but how and when to use them." Among the report's recommendations are "investments in research and development aimed at understanding the impact of mobile technologies on children’s learning and development, including brain and behavioral functioning" and "a digital teacher corps that would train other teachers and after-school caregivers to use digital media to promote 21st-century literacy." Here's the Joan Ganz Cooney Center's blog, with links to the executive summary and full report in pdf format.