during class, for
instance, to populate shared notes on a wiki. Students asked to collect data in the field are able to use
mobile devices to more reliably capture images,
interviews, and other products for learning.
This is perhaps the weakest of arguments for mobile learning, but the ease of small, handheld devices may lower barriers to engagement raised by powering up laptops, finding paper notes, and the other sorts of minor labor that must be completed before reconnecting with course work. If an idea from class is stored in a student's jacket pocket, along with notes, assignments, and readings, it is more accessible and ready than our familiar stack of notebooks and texts. The scene of studying becomes mobile. What of the value of sitting down to a notebook surrounded by printed texts? The uses imagined by faculty from CTE's summer institute do not replace all of the familiar models and rituals for learning (at least not yet) but instead activate what we believe are effective alternatives to *some* traditional pedagogies.
Here are brief summaries of ongoing projects. In Animal and Avian Science, Mark Varner's students will use mobile devices to capture popular interpretations of scientific studies. Students will interview friends and family and produce for class an analysis of the varying kinds of scientific literacy they encounter. In Spanish and Portuguese, Roberta Lavine's
students will use mobile devices
to listen to and communicate in
Spanish outside of class,
surrounded by the noises of
daily life outside of the
protected quiet of class. In
Kinesiology, Marvin Scott's
students will use mobile devices
to code their observations of
elementary physical education
teachers with Ecological
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Momentary Analysis, and Marcio
de Oliveira's students will use
theirs as
clickers and as flash card devices for studying on-the-go. In English, Liora Moriel's students have generated (and collected) interpretations of Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "One Art," and those readings of the poem from outside class will undergo a secondary analysis. Finally, in Communication, Sahar Khamis's
students are using mobile devices as media consumption
journals, on which they record and annotate their habits
as viewers, listeners, and users of electronic media.
What is significant, here, is that each of these projects takes advantage of the mobility of these technologies and that each begins with critical attention to pedagogy. These are in no way "just because it's there" implementations of devices. We can easily be overwhelmed by an always rapid turnover of technologies, and we sometimes learn to assess their usefulness only long after they've been adopted. Just like pencils and chalk, these tools have no inherent character that improves teaching. Instead, they bring changing applications that can, with thoughtful purpose, be marshaled in support of existing goals for learning.
We at CTE are excited about these projects and look forward to sharing the summer institute faculty’s experiences and findings.
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