Mobile Learning: Why, when, where, what, who and how Mary Mwangi (Ed.D) 2013

Pencil vs. mobile learning The essence of the pencil is that you’ve got it all the time. I can pull it out of my pocket in a moment’s notice; it’s not a big deal. I don’t have to go to a special place. If I’ve got to write something, if I’ve got to calculate something, if I’ve got to draw something to make a point, I’ve got it all the time. It’s a personal instrument, and this is what is going to happen with the digital technology. It’s going to be the pencil of the future. And I mean pencil in the sense that it’s got to be with us all the time to be used when we need it, when we want it, for a vast diversity of purposes. And when we do this, we will find that people will use them in very, very different ways--if we let them. Seymour Papert (Diversity in Learning: A Vision for the New Millennium, 1999)

What and Why? Mobile learning is the use of mobile devices to enable learning anytime and anywhere. Using mobile technologies frees the user from being confined to a building or a particular location. A worthwhile use justify the expenses involved in purchasing the device and internet access.

Video: Thoughts on the state of mobile learning

10 Tips for Designing mobile learning content 1. Create content that is short and to the point 2. Create smaller chunks of context-independent content 3. Design non-linear content 4. Guide the learner to external content where they can catch up or explore further 5. Use Post-It notes, index cards or stencils for storyboarding 6. Use bullets to make contextual information more concise 7. Develop the appropriate learning content or experiences for mobile 8. Realize that interactivity may not be nearly as relevant for performance support. 9. A good checklist could be worth much more than an interactive game. 10. Develop for users (user experience) instead of for device for-designing-mobile-learning-content

“Touchy feely... make it fun make it easy“ Seymour Papert (Hard Fun, 2002)

Planning Questions Does mobile delivery makes sense? Who is the targeted end-users and their contexts ? Will the design meet the specific goals and requirements for the project ? What are the tracking requirements? What about the disconnected mobile user? How is learning taking place ? How is learning supported? What are the limitations of user's data plans and leverage wifi when possible? What are the limitations and capabilities of the technologies involved? What is the Prototype?(start small, think big) mobile-learning-content

Video: Mobile Devices in Teaching and Learning (EDUCAUSE Conversation)

“Stimulate thinking about learning content design and interaction paradigms” (Clark Quinn, in Designing mLearning) 4C’s Content The media that the user interacts with Capture Information gathered either by user intention (taking a picture) or automatically (such as a GPS) Compute Processing information so that it can be more easily understood or manipulated by the user Communicate Several ways to communicate with other users in addition to the phone (talk, IM, microblogging, text messaging, VoIP, etc). 4C’s of Mobile Capability,

Content Students response system Games, animations and simulations QR code Books and magazine GPS Bluetooth and traditional headphone Video conference/chat (Skype…) Video (Neok12, Teacher/School tube) and audio (podcast, mp3) Social media (Face book like Edmodo…)

Mobile App can be written once and deployed to many platform as both a native app and/or a mobile web App. Mobile Apps frameworks Examples of free Open- source framework  jQuery Mobile jQuery Mobile  Sencha Touch Sencha Touch  Dojo Toolkit Dojo Toolkit  Wink Toolkit Wink Toolkit  Jo Jo  DHTMLX Touch DHTMLX Touch  jQTouch jQTouch  Enyo Enyo  BlackBerry WebWorks BlackBerry WebWorks

"You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it." Seymour Papert