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

iPod Touches in the classroom

The Salisbury Post tells the story of how a school district in North Carolina got its start with mobile devices in the classroom – in this case, iPod Touches narrower than "a deck of cards," weighing a little over 4 ounces, and putting "the complete works of Shakespeare, movies, a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia, SAT preparation materials, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, USA Today, the Weather Channel and educational games" in the palms of North Rowan High School freshmen's hands. What I found especially interesting in the story the possibility of a spatial element to improving student engagement. One student told writer Maggie Blackwell that it really helps when what's being taught isn't across the room, it's right in his hand, and when it's "right here," there's less distraction, more ownership. The ownership part of that comes from the district tech director, Phil Hardin, who told Blackwell it's not about putting technology in students' hands ("that way, they would just be spectators," he said) but rather how they learn with it and demonstrate that learning (so that they come to "own the knowledge"). They use the iTouches to do research, listen to podcast book reviews, play educational games such as "Word Warp" during class transitions, etc. "One of the first projects the teachers developed spanned all subjects. Students learned about philosophers in history and science. They talked about Euclid and Pythagoras in math and Julius Caesar in English." Everything the students needed was available through the iTouches. Maybe attendance is a measure of student engagement: "In the month since iPods were introduced, absences have dropped 4.6%," Blackwell reports. Tardies have also dropped. The devices are configured to work only on the class network. [See also "From 'digital disconnect' to mobile learning."]

UK teachers union chief: Un-ban cellphones in school

The head of Britain's largest head teachers' union said it's time to rethink the banning of cellphones at school. "Schools should be harnessing the fantastic educational opportunity children carry around in their pockets, instead of banning the phones with their cameras, voice recorders and internet access," The Guardian cites Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, as saying. As in the US, schools in the UK cite the potential abuses of the technology – and the need to protect children from them – as the reason for the mobile-phone ban most of them impose. However, educational technology consultant David Whyley told The Guardian that, "in schools where children were provided with handheld computers with phone and Internet access to use in lessons, teachers have reported very little misuse. His program, Learning2Go, has been in place for five years at 18 primary and secondary schools in Wolverhampton, the paper adds. See also "From 'digital disconnect' to mobile learning."

From 'digital disconnect' to mobile learning

The real disconnect is not the one between parents and kids (that I wrote about last week). "It's the gap between how students learn and how they live! They really want to end that divide," according to Project Tomorrow, the Irvine, Calif.-based nonprofit organization that runs the annual nationwide Speak Up study.

And the disconnect is "alive and well ... and growing," was the finding of the latest Speak Up, which surveyed 281,500 students, 29,644 teachers, 3,114 administrators, 21,309 parents, and 4,379 schools in 868 districts in all 50 states and some in other English-speaking countries. "Students say they 'step back in time' when they enter the school building each morning - despite overwhelming agreement among parents, teachers and principals that the effective implementation of technology in schools is crucial to student success," Project Tomorrow says in its release of last fall's survey.

Cellphones everywhere
The Speak Up study found that about 77% of students in grades 9-12 have mobile phones (55% have access to laptops), indicating that leveraging that installed base by teaching with cellphones would be economical in terms of both time and money.

"Cell phones can be powerful computers. They can do just about everything laptops can do for a fraction of the price. And many students are bringing them to school anyway," says University of Michigan education professor Elliot Soloway.

Still, barriers to adoption remain, including adult biases against technology for "serious" use; a diversity of cellphone products in the marketplace; phones' physical features (screen size, battery life, etc.); and schools' fears about student distraction and lack of responsibility toward the equipment, according to the 2009 Joan Ganz Cooney Center study "Pockets of Potential" (here's my post on the report).

Responsible use the norm
About that last and crucial barrier, though, school districts that do incorporate cellphones and other handheld devices into classroom work find that student engagement and responsible use are actually the norm.

North Carolina math teacher Suzette Kliwer said her students are so eager to use phones in an educational setting that irresponsible use of them has not been a problem. She was one of several educators presenting their districts' experience in a recent Project Tomorrow Webinar on mobile learning. Jeff Billings, an Arizona school district's director of technology, echoed that: "When you engage students and put a pro who can guide them on the instruction piece, good things happen," he said.

How they're teaching with phones
"The mobile device is a case of digital tools at your disposal. It can provide an ultra-portable portfolio" of teacher's and students' work, said David Whyley of Learning2Go, the UK's four-year-old "largest collaborative mobile learning project," focusing on the British equivalent of grades K-6.

A recent story in USATODAY tells how Ohio students in grades 3-5 work with handheld devices. Using educational apps created by GoKnow!, a company co-founded by University of Michigan professor Elliot Soloway, they take and draw pictures, keep journals, write essays, work in spelling, and do math. "Students took the phones on a museum field trip where they took photos, uploaded them to a server where the teacher could view the assignment and wrote blurbs about what they saw," the article says.

Tech coordinator and middle school teacher Samantha Morra in New Jersey put together a program for classroom iPod Touches with which students store, produce, organize, share, and access media such as podcasts and videos, access sources on the Web, take quizzes, work with flashcards, and discuss and collaborate in different configurations of users: one on one with their teacher, in small groups, and as a class. "Students devour engaging, customized curricula when it’s delivered on the iPod. Phones are a familiar and essential part of their lives now, Morra emailed me.

How can ed add value to tech?
Which points to a question I think we all need to be asking: "It is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education, but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future?" That's from Ira Socol at Michigan State University, a comment he wrote in Saskatchewan tech educator Dean Shareski's blog, IdeasandThoughts.org. Think about how education has added value to the book! (See "School & social media: Uber big picture.")

Here's how students themselves told Project Tomorrow they want to use mobile devices to support learning: for communications (email teachers and classmates and access personal Web sites); collaborations (projects and calendars); creativity (create/share documents, videos, educational games); and productivity (research, downloads, and to get alerts and reminders).

Why mobile learning?
In its "Pockets of Potential" review of mobile learning projects in eight countries (schools in some countries are way ahead of this whole discussion), the Cooney Center lists "5 key opportunities in mobile learning." It...

1. Encourages “anywhere, anytime” learning - learning in a real-world context and bridging home, school and other environments.
2. Reaches underserved children - low-cost devices and tech many children already have, especially in disadvantaged communities & developing countries.
3. Improves 21st-century social interactions - fostering constructive and constructivist (collaborative) use
4. Fits with diverse learning environments - highly accessible communication and content-delivery devices
5. Enables personalized learning experiences for diverse student populations and learning styles.

Back in 2006, kicking off the multiyear, MacArthur Foundation-funded, $50 million Digital Youth Project, media professor Henry Jenkins wrote, "Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities." (my post on Jenkins's paper back then).

Related links

CellphonesinLearning.com, a site by author and learning technologies doctoral student Liz Kolb at the University of Michigan – her book is Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education

mLearnopedia.com, created by mobile learning consultant Judy Brown, formerly of the University of Wisconsin

Project K-Nect - a Qualcomm-funded program being implemented in some North Carolina public schools as "a supplemental resource for secondary at-risk students to focus on increasing their math skills through the use of smartphones" (here's the students' blog)

"Where phones in class are ok" at Inside Higher Ed

"Learning curve: Cellphone as teacher" in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"WCSA Mobile Learning K-12," a presentation by Judy Brown in SlideShare

For an online-safety perspective on the gap between young people's formal and informal learning with digital meeting, see "Online Safety 3.0: Empowering and Protecting Youth."

Project Tomorrow wasn't the first research group to flag the digital disconnect. As I mentioned last week, Pew/Internet first wrote about in a 2002 report.

This past summer, Tech & Learning published retailer Wirefly's "Top 10 cellphones for students," looking at affordability, popularity and functionality.