Paul Kim, CTO of Stanford University School of Education, was a great guest; I wish he'd had more time that evening, but I'm grateful he was willing to step away from his guests as long as he did. As he led us to his Web site, I bookmarked it to return to the project on Mobile Learning Technology. When I returned to site later that evening, two additional projects caught my attention: Visual Mapping and Health Literacy. The truth is, my attention is being grabbed by a number of projects on a variety of topics combining technology and education, and there just isn't enough time in a day, week, month, and year to go into all of them with the depth I'd like to.
The Stanford Education Mobile Learning project has some similarities with the OU Africa Digital Education Enhancement Project (DEEP), which I'll link here for anyone who is interested. In Africa, Mobile Computing Devices are being used to teach literacy, numeracy, and professional development in disadvantaged areas, using content provided through the OU---the Open University which is based in the UK (chartered in 1969). Like the OU, DEEP provides education and training to teachers as well as students.
Mobile devices are in use by other educational programs in Africa too numerous to list here or speak about in detail. The knowledge disseminated by these programs is varied, including traditional primary and secondary education, agricultural information of benefit to farmers, information for herders raising livestock, and health and AIDS prevention information.
The point I'd like to make about all the programs using mobile technology is that these programs have eschewed the traditional computer-based classroom in favor of hand-held computing devices, which should be understood to include mobile phones. Did anyone foresee a time when cell phones would be a delivery mechanism for educational content?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Mobile Tools For Education
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2 comments:
Great post. The progression of mobile learning is unbelievable. As you stated, cell phones can even be used as learning tools now. In Dr. Bonk's class at IU we talked about podcasts this week. I think they truly embody ubiquitous learning...everyone has a digital listening device. We can no "attend class" while working out,riding the bus, or really while doing anything. Learning technology has really come so far in the recent future, I think the key is getting the "stagnant" field of education to use all of these new tools.
Mike
Hey Mike!
Thanks for your comment on the Mobile Learning post. I agree with your choice of words to describe the field of education: "stagnant." I have become so accustomed to using technology (I teach in the field) that I am speechless when I discover someone who is resistant to adopting it. I'm interning at KQED (Public Broadcasting in San Francisco), where we're providing interested teachers with lessons in creating content for Locative Media, which is delivered on a GPS-enabled Palm. If you're interested I can send you a link to a great MIT thesis that details teaching American history using Locative Media.
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