Teachers: Are you Ready For Mobile Learning?

Are teachers of today ready for mobile learning in the classroom? Ready or not, the children of today have grown up on mobile devices like smart phone and tablets and are already self-taught before they walk into their classroom each year.

Benefits and Challenges of Mobile Learning
Mobile learning is an exciting opportunity for educators, but in many ways the educators are barely scratching the surface of all that can be accomplished and achieved with the technology.  But with the right amount of training, and the extra time to explore these mobile technology devices and ways to incorporate into classroom learning, teachers will hopefully be able to make strides all across the board in the near future (as opposed to only certain schools and classrooms that are technology and mobile-driven in the country), and be able to instruct the use of the mobile devices in the classroom on a regular basis. (Jonathan Wyle, The Education Technology Blog).

In 2001, Mark Prensky warned us that "our students have changed radically.  Today's students are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach." He went on to to describe how these digital natives are exposed to more and more technology than was ever thought possible.  I believe this is having a serious effect on the way in which our current students learn (i.e. if their current teachers are teaching traditional methods and using limited mobile technology, their brains are not as engaged).  They are used to a fast-acting digital world, not a slow, repetitive text-based world. They will be more engaged in learning when using the latest tech devices from the teachers' interactive and project based learning assignments so that they may collaborate on group projects and have one-on-ones with instructors through differentiated learning. These technical learning devices will enable mobility within the student classroom and facilitate even more active learning for the students -- engaging them and motivating them to learn in group and individual projects and improve their academic statuses.

From Lisa Nielson, the author of The Innovative Educator blog, "When the world outside looks so different from the world inside of schools, what are we really teaching our students?"  They need to be able to adapt to the real world with real life experiences, and teachers must accept the technology instead of resisting.

Best Practices based on Emerging Trends:

• Learning will center on the individual learner's environment rather than the whole of the classroom
• Learners making meaningful connections to resources and contemporaries (collaborations); instructor uses flipped classrooms, project-based learning and digital projects from deep research of the subjects and assignments they're planning so they are able to master and accomplish the program/technology at hand before handing over to students
• Ability to publish their observations, reflections, assignments, collaborative projects as digital media will empower the students to use their resources and gain more independence and empowerment
• This ability of the students to publish their digital media will give them the ability to capture and log life events, which will assist them in reflection.
• Collaboration projects and mobile team opportunities will be enhanced by the training and collaboration of the instructors with their colleagues by sharing information and researching and studying methods of digital collaboration/group/team digital projects.
• Educators will have to shift from being transmitters of knowledge and lecturers to facilitators of these digital projects listed above.  
• Behaviorism: Feedback or reinforcement can be facilitated through mobile devices and technology.
• Situated Learning: Students can take their mobile devices into real life learning environs such as museums, field trips, etc...part of the "real world" experience that 21st Century Learning expresses.
• Support: Mobile devices for students and for educators provide a form of coordination and access to learning resources, news, etc...

This You Tube Video:  Cell Phones in the Classroom:  Learning Tools for the 21st Century

I am a fan of this You Tube video because it shows both sides of the classroom/debate of cell phones allowed in the classroom, yet the benefit of them as well.  With the Simpsons' television clips, it pokes fun at the extreme side of teachers NOT allowing cell phones in classes.





Now is the time for teachers and educators to act on increasing their digital learning skills in the classroom.  Our digital natives and future adults and career-holders of the world are counting on us.


Sources:

Ray Schroeder, editor of the Online Learning Update blog at the University of Illinois 

Clark Quinn, professor, author

M. Prensky, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants," 

M. Prensky, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II

C. Quinn, "mLearning: Mobile, Wireless, In-Your-Pocket Learning," 

E. D. Wagner, "Enabling Mobile Learning," EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, Mobility and Mobile Learning

S. K. Sharma and F. L. Kitchens, "Web Services Architecture for M-Learning,"