• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Some mobile learning myth-busting

September 4, 2012 By Anne 2 Comments

As I read “5 myths about mobile learning,” I realized how literal we are in our assumptions – and how much we base them on a technology’s physical properties. When you really think about it – or compare the assumptions to the reality – it can make you smile (if you don’t let yourself get discouraged by the resistance these assumptions symbolize). The first few myths educator Nicky Blockly shares reduce “mobile learning” to instruction through texting or using apps while moving around.

“Sure you can learn by looking at vocabulary flashcards on the bus. But you can also learn by watching [or producing] videos on your smartphone on the sofa at home” or in a classroom, she writes. She basically shows how, with these pocket-sized supercomputers, there are very few approaches to teaching and learning you can’t take. Her blog post has a video in which ESL students demonstrate how they conduct video interviews to help each other with pronunciation, vocabulary and presentation skills – videos with which they can get immediate feedback from peers and their teacher. Literalists also think “small device, bite-size content, but in Myth 4, Blockly points out that, sure, “content can be in small chunks, but it can also be authentic, extensive and holistic.” The small bits offered in a lesson plan can link to extensive articles, video lectures, and news broadcasts. Finally, the uninitiated parent or educator sometimes equates mobile learning with purely informal learning. Certainly learning with cellphones and tablets can feel informal and happen outside of school (one of the pluses for many students, parents, and educators!), but it doesn’t have to be informal learning. “It can equally mean access to formal, structured learning, which is carefully integrated into the curriculum,” Blockly writes. Then she links to one Business English teacher’s lesson plan whereby “students work in groups on short presentations of new products, which are filmed on mobile devices both during and after preparation.”

There’s a bonus to this kind of learning too. One way to look at it is “from student engagement to civic engagement to civic efficacy.” In addition to student engagement and fun, students are modeling and practicing digital citizenship and literacy. While learning English, math, history, etc., they’re learning collaboratively, respectfully within a community called a class (in and out of school). There is no better way to teach digital citizenship than to provide students (and everybody else!) opportunities to practice it, and all five elements of it are represented in Blockly’s classes: participation (or civic engagement); positive norms of behavior; the practice of accepted rights and responsibilities (those of the classroom or the school community); a sense of belonging (in the class, in a study group, etc.); and the necessarily blended literacies of social media: digital literacy, media literacy, and social literacy. [See Slide #2 in this presentation I just posted.]

Share Button

Filed Under: education technology, mobile, School & Tech Tagged With: 21st century learning, cellphones, classroom, digital media, education technology, mobile learning, mobile technology, school, teaching

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Phil says

    August 5, 2013 at 7:16 pm

    nice job. Must be bookmarked:)

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Global mobiles: Research | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    November 9, 2012 at 1:49 pm

    […] “Some mobile learning myth-busting” Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Friday, November 9, 2012, at 1:49 pm by Anne. Filed in Mobile, mobile internet, mobile learning, mobile phones, mobile technology, smartphones and tagged global usage data, media research, mobile access, mobile phones. […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.