Identity affected by Mobile Device Learning? OR Mobile Device Learning affecting Identity?

These two readings were definitely interesting and challenging. The theme that I kept circling back to is identity. identityiconBransford (2006) references Lave & Wenger, as well as a few other researchers in the “New Theoretical Constructs for What Changes When People Learn” section, “that learning involves changes in people’s identities— who they understand themselves to be and who others position them to be” (p. 220). Branford also mentions Lave & Wenger’s “idea of legitimate peripheral participation, which highlights the practices by which newcomers are gradually enculturated into participation in existing ‘communities of practice’” (p. 220). I am actually familiar with Lave & Wenger’s work on communities of practice and find it fascinating. Wenger (1999) says that “a community of practice is a field of possible trajectories and thus the proposal of an identity” (p. 156). Legitimate peripheral participation is just one of the possible trajectories that Wenger mentions in his book. I found it even more fascinating that Wenger mentions that “we not only produce our identities through the practices we engage in, but we also define ourselves through practice we do not engage in” (p. 164). I know I just loaded you with a bunch of deep, thinking references to identity and participation, but what does all that mean? Who defines our identity? Branford mentions two possibilities, “who [the learner] understand themselves to be and who others position them to be” (p. 220). Does that mean our identity is who we think we are, or who others say we are? Or does what other people say about us shape who we view ourselves to be? Wenger (1999) describe identity as “lived, negotiated, social, a learning process, a nexus, and a local-global interplay” (p. 163).Quote-Mimi-Ito

How does mobile devices play into identity? Mimi Ito proposes that “[friendship-driven participation in online learning] is a really important site of learning, the sort of important social behaviors and what it means to grow up in a digital world, and the sort of ways in which kids post, link, forward, comment, create top friend lists. These are all negotiations that are incredibly important to kids growing up today” (DMLResearchHub, 2011). Are kids shaping their identity by how they interact through their mobile devices (e.g. posting, linking forwarding, commenting), or is the interaction from others (in the friendship-driven online space) influencing their identity? And does a positive or negative experience lead kids into messing around and geeking out stages of participation? Collins (2006) states that “the motivation to become a more central participant in a community of practice can provide a powerful incentive for learning. Frank Smith argues that children will learn to read and write if they people they admire read and write. That is, they will want to join the “literacy club” and will work hard to become members. Learning to read is part of becoming the kind of person they want to become. Identity is central to deep learning.” Does this mean that kids’ desire to be “a more central participant in a community of practice” will lead them to contribute more and advance further in Ito’s HOMAGO (hanging out, messing around, geeking out) stages?

How does one’s identity play into the use of mobile devices for learning? Sharples (2009) raises some great questions on technology and the future:

Will the technology become a seamless extension of human cognition and memory? What experiences will people want to capture, and how will they erase them? What is the legitimate sphere of parents, formal education and the state in managing and assessing children’s mobile learning?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but then again I don’t think Sharples does either if he is asking them. I think it’s important to consider identity when thinking about these questions. I think with the advancement of technology, it will one day become an extension of the human mind, and youth will “instinctively” understand how to use it. This idea goes all the way back to the 1960s in Fiore’s The Medium is the Massage, which if you haven’t heard of it or read it, another great suggestion! It is deep, thought-provoking, and oftentimes, a sensory overload. He mentions in it that “youth instinctively understands the present environment—the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth” (p. 9).

And to close, I want to leave you with one last great thought from Fiore (1967) on identity (p. 152-155):

“…and who are you?”

“I-I hardly know, sir, just at present-at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think i must have been changed several times since then.”

References

Bransford, J. D., Stevens, R., Schwartz, D. L., Meltzoff, P. K., Pea, R. D., Roschelle, J., … & Sabelli, N. (2006). Learning theories and education: Toward a decade of synergy. In. PA Alexander & PH Winne (Eds.) Handbook of educational psychology, (pp. 209-244). Mahwah, nd.

Collins, A. (2006). Cognitive apprenticeship: The cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, R. Keith Sawyer.

DMLResearchHub. (2011, August 24). Cultural Anthropologist Mimi Ito on Connected Learning, Children, and Digital Media[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuV7zcXigAI

Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the massage. New York: Random House.

Sharples, M., Arnedillo-Sánchez, I., Milrad, M., & Vavoula, G. (2009). Mobile learning: Small devices, big issues In N. Balacheff, S. Ludvigsen, T. de Jong, A. Lazonder & S. Barnes (Eds.), Technology-enhanced learning: Principles and products (pp. 233-249).

Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge university press.

Mobile Use: iPads in the Classroom & Connecting the World

This week’s readings proved to be fascinating in the breadth of geography covered. The amount of information my brain is attempting to absorb and dissect is overwhelming, which is where a face-to-face class meeting time would come in handy right about now. But that is a discussion for another day, haha! A few themes really stuck out to me, and two of them include the future success of mobile learning and access and use of mobile technology in underdeveloped countries.

The first idea I’d like to pull apart is the future success of mobile learning, as discussed in “Innovation in Mobile Learning: A European Perspective”. Kukulska-Hulme states that “future success of mobile learning in school settings will depend on the preparedness of teachers to adopt mobile technologies in the classroom” (Kukulska-Hulme, 2009, p. 2). He later adds that “an obvious factor influencing teacher perception and adoption of mobile technology as a tool for learning, is ready accessibility of devices (p. 14). There seems to be a contradiction here, that if the future success of mobile technology rests with teachers’ adoption in the classroom, should the teachers not have devices at their disposal?

I wanted to extend this idea to a more current and local example, Huntingdon, PA. My fiancé is a second grade teacher at a Title I elementary school in the Huntingdon school district. The majority of these students do not have their own devices and the in-school technology is limited. ipadClassroomThere is an iPad and Chromebook cart that the whole school shares, so reserving the cart is a feat of its own. She has opted to bring in her personal iPad and has designed “optional” learning activities for her students. She has to call these optional because if they were mandatory, she would be required to provide a device to each child. A lot of these “optional” activities are completed during free time and a few “privileged” kids have been working on these actives at home, even on the weekends! But not all kids can do this because they do not have access to an iPad or computer at home, but the kids that do are so engaged that they are choosing to do this on their own time, using their school account.

This can be traced back to the generational shift that Warschauer and Matchniak (2010) mentioned. “The generational shift of teachers, with more people now entering teaching careers with substantial computing experience, can result in improved pedagogical use of computers…A crucial advantage of one-to-one laptop programs is that they potentially allow all students to work on technology-based research assignments and projects at home, thus helping extend learning time for all beyond the 30-hour school week, a major goal for educational improvement” (p. 214). This idea is not lost to my fiancé. She has expressed her frustrations several times and has been actively seeking out grants to get iPads for her classroom. Game changer?

The second idea, access and use of mobile technology in underdeveloped countries, actually developed in my other class last Wednesday — INSYS 549, Digital Media and Learning, and the readings this week for this class built upon that. We were discussing learning ecologies and watched Sugata Mitra’s TED talk, “Kids can teach themselves”. It’s a fascinating video and if you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it! Basically, Mitra placed computers in walls all around underdeveloped countries, and left. Young kids, usually kids that society has forgot about, figured out how to use the computer and taught themselves things such as audio recording and even started Googling their homework after several months. However, not all countries are going to have a “hole in the wall” computer. According to McKay (2009), “as little as 10 percent of the world’s population is actually online…these newer technologies of communication principally remain the privilege of rich countries” (p. 187). What constitutes being “online”? Is it a wireless connection to a computer? Owning a mobile phone? Pachler (2010) references a report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that proposes “that owning at least a pre-pay mobile/cell phone is a prerequisite to adequate participation in society” (p. 79). If this is the case, that means that only 10 percent of the world’s population is “adequately participating in society”. That’s 6.3 billion people. That doesn’t seem fair.

I have done a bit of traveling in the past five years throughout South America. I’ve been to Peru, Bolivia, and Nicaragua to name a few. In each one of these trips, I spent time at an elementary-level equivalent school or setting: in Bolivia, an orphanage; in Peru, an extremely poor mountain school in the Andes mountains; and in Nicaragua, an after-school program that teaches English to elementary children. Now these are pretty extreme examples, but in each location I thought of the possibilities if there were technology available to these children. As Traxler (2013) pointed out, “mobile technologies and mobile networks can reach deep into remote rural regions and deliver learning to isolated communities” (p. 135). However, Pachler (2010) acknowledges that “a critical point here is that should society decide to use mobile/cell phones for learning, access to the network and internet services needs to become ubiquitous” (p. 75). connect-the-worldWhat if we are closer to this than we realize? I argue that we are. Facebook and Google are trailblazing paths to connecting the whole world to the internet. Now granted, they may have ulterior motives, but nonetheless, it’s happening right now with Facebook’s internet.org and Google’s Loon for all project.

Connecting the world is one thing, powering the world is another. I wish I could say that it boggles my mind that “between 60 and 96 per cent of rural schools [in Kenya] were without any source of electrical power” (Traxler, 2013, p. 131). We can put balloons in the sky and build satellites to deliver wireless internet to remote countries, but how are they going to utilize this without a source of electrical power in their schools? Just the fact of learning that cassette players were still being selected as viable educational resources for teachers opens my eyes to just how large the digital divide is and how major of a problem it has become. I laughed when Kukulska-Hulme (2009) made it point to the reader how many A4 pages could be stored on 128MB of memory on a PDA (HP Compaq iPac 5500) (p. 7). Memory should not be worth mentioning. Why are cassette players still a thing? I really connected with Traxler’s statement that the work of the m-learning community started in an era when mobile devices were expensive, fragile, rare and difficult…it ends in an era when mobile devices are cheap, robust, universal and easy” (2013, p. 138).  Well, I hope it’s not going to end. But he is right that we are now living in a time where mobile devices are cheap, robust, universal and easy. I wonder what research done in today’s world would look like, taking into account everything that we already know. There’s been a lot of talk about PDAs and older Sony mobile phones, but no talk of the powerhouse iPhone or any Android smartphones. How would these technologies impact mobile learning?

References

Kukulska-Hulme, A., et al. (2009). Innovation in mobile learning. (pages 13 through 35).

McKay, S., et al.. (2005). Wired whizzes or techno-slaves?  (pages 185 through 203).

Pachler, N., et al. (2010). Mobile devices as resources for learning. (pages 73 through 93).

Traxler, J. M. (2013). Mobile learning  . . . . distance, digital divides, disadvantage, disenfranchisement (pages 129 – 141).

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds. (pages 179 through 225).

Yardi, S., & Bruckman, A. (2012). Income, race, and class: exploring socioeconomic differences in family technology use. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3041-3050). ACM.

Fluid, Dynamic, & Wandering – Zach’s take on Mobile Learning

Mobile learning is utilizing the affordances of portable technology (e.g. smartphone, health & fitness tracking devices, tablets) to support any type of learning, informal or formal, when on the go. I didn’t agree with Sharples’ (2013) dual definition in that mobile learning is either one or the other.

Sharples, M. (2013). Mobile learning: research, practice and challenges. Distance Education in China, 3(5), 5-11.

Here’s to New Beginnings: Learning about Mobile Learning

One of my favorite ideas from this week’s readings came from Warschauer and Matuchniak (2010) when they were discussing outcomes. An iPhone sitting in the middle of a fire.They referenced Chris Dede’s (1995) “fire” metaphor on information technology, “Just as a fire radiates heat, many people expect a computer to radiate learning. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Rather, as Dede noted, ‘information technologies are more like clothes; to get a benefit, you must make them a part of your personal space, tailored to your needs’ (p. 10)” (p. 201). This is a powerful example of how educators, policymakers, and the general public should view any technology for any purpose. The big question is how do we instill a sense of passion or initiative in learners to take technology and really make it their own. How in a sense, can we add “interest-driven” learning to information technology.

Warschauer and Matuchniak (2010) reference Ito’s two primary categories of online practices, “ ‘interest-driven’ and ‘friendship-driven’ ” (p. 192). These online practices are broken down into three genres of participation by Ito and her colleagues (2010), “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out”. Warschauer and Matuchniak briefly discuss these genres of participation, but do not label them as such. Warschauer and Matuchniak (2010) note that “the majority of youth do not move beyond friendship-driven activities, but the more creative and adventurous venture into interest-driven genres” (p. 192). This is also backed up by Sharples (2013) when he discusses self-directed language learning under personal and informal mobile learning, “these were motivated, advanced learners, who were willing actively to define their own language needs and to select resources, tools and communication methods that would help them.”

I’m currently taking INSYS 549 with Dr. Ty Hollet, Digital Media and Learning. We are currently looking at learning ecologies, interest-driven and friendship-driven learning, participatory cultures (Jenkins), and much more. So as you can see, there is a huge overlap which is really interesting. I think a great way to challenge mobile learning is to look at it through connected learning.

Connected Learning outlined by the Macarthur Foundation

Credit: Connected Learning Research Network and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub

In a nutshell, connected learning looks to combine three spheres of learning: academic, peer culture, and interests. It is supported by and centers around three core properties: production centered, shared purposed, and openly networked. This is an extremely brief overview of connected learning, but I included a great image of connected learning as well as linked to a great DML report that covers this concept in-depth.

I was also really drawn to the idea of “seamless learning” by Sharples (2013). “Seamless learning implies that students can learn whenever they are curious, using personal devices and embedded learning technology to store, share and recall contextualized knowledge, creating an experience of continuity and the ability to switch rapidly from one learning project to another.” This whole definition is great and I feel like I could pick it apart for hours, but I want to focus on the latter ― “the ability to switch rapidly from one learning project to another”. This aligns with one of Jenkins’ (2009) “new media literacies” ― “multitasking, or the ability to scan the environment and shift focus onto salient details” (p. 61). He uses a fascinating metaphor of hunters and farmers to describe the shift in the need for multitasking (as a new media literacy) as our society “transition[s] from an industrial to an informational economy” (Warschauer and Matuchniak, 2010, p. 179).

Historically, we might have distinguished between the skills required of farmers and those expected of hunters. The farmer must complete a sequence of tasks that require localized attention; the hunter must scan a complex landscape in search of signs and cues of where prey may be hiding. For centuries, schools have been designed to create “farmers.” In such an organization, the ideal is for all students to focus on one thing; indeed, attention is conceived of as the ability to concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time, while the inability or refusal to maintain such a narrow focus is characterized as a “disorder.” Yet, fixed attention would be maladjusted to the needs of hunters, who must search high and low for their game. Schools adapted to the needs of “hunters” would have very different practices and might well value the ability to identify the relationship between seemingly unrelated developments within a complex visual field. As we look to the future, one possibility is that schools will be designed to support both styles, ensuring that each child develops multiple modes of learning and multiple strategies for processing information. In such a world, neither attentional style is viewed as superior, but both are assessed in terms of their relative value within a given context” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 63).

I had a hard time with the Pea and Moldonado piece. I felt as if I open up a time capsule that was buried in the ground for over ten years. This article was published a year before the iPhone was released to the public, which in my opinion, is a HUGE game changer. The authors talked about “data synchronization across computers” (2006, p. 432), which today is basically common ground with cloud computing. Jump drives are soon going to be obsolete because of cloud services. One of the eight features that Pea and Maldonado (2006) contributed to “the rise in hand-held use within schools and beyond” (p. 428) is a “stylus driven interface” (p. 428). Up until a few days ago (thanks Apple…), I thought these little guys were toast. I feel as if this feature could now be replaced with “touch screen interfaces”.

References

Dede, C. (1995). Testimony to the US Congress, House of Representatives, Joint hearing on educational technology in the 21st century. Retrieved February 2, 2006, from http://www.virtual.gmu.edu/SS_research/cdpapers/congrpdf.htm

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., & Herr, B. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, geeking out: Living and learning with new media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. MIT Press.

Pea, R. D., & Moldonado, H. (2006). WILD for learning: Interacting through new computing devices anytime, anywhere. (Chapter 25).

Sharples, M. (2013). Mobile learning: research, practice and challenges. Distance Education in China, 3(5), 5-11.

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds. (pages 179 through 225).

Meet & Greet with Zach!

zach

Hello! My name is Zach Lonsinger and I am enrolled in the World Campus M.Ed. in Learning, Design, and Technology. I am currently employed as an Instructional Production Specialist with the College of Nursing at Penn State; however, if you are familiar with the IPS title, I do nothing of the sort. About 5% of my job supports instructional designers designing online courses. My position is heavily focused on multimedia, as I act as the College of Nursing’s Web Manager as well as a few other miscellaneous duties, such as managing Mediasite recordings, mobile webinars via a custom-designed flypack, digital signage, video production, graphic design, a hint of social media, and IT helpdesk tech support!

My interests lean more toward higher education as I am currently a working professional in the field. I was really intrigued with the “Quantified Self” chapter in the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. I have been religiously wearing a Fitbit for almost a year now. On the rare occasion I find myself without it, I almost feel naked – it’s weird. I think there is some great potential in this field, especially in the health education. As I mentioned, I work for the College of Nursing. I work alongside faculty and researchers who are conducting sleep studies and work with dementia. What could the quantified self phenomenon mean for the nursing field? Could an Apple iWatch aid a person dealing with Alzheimer’s by sending daily reminders to the person? Possibly. But I think this has huge potential in education.

I also read the “Games and Gamification” chapter in the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition as well as the “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)” in the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition. Games and Gamification is another big interest of mine. It’s interesting that I chose these three areas of mobile technologies because I have been heavily participating in all three of these areas for a long time (maybe not quantified self for as long, but for as long as it has been a thing). I play games almost on a daily basis. I grew up “gaming” and even consider myself to be a part of the gaming generation.

Lastly, I am interested in digging more into BYOD. A sidenote, I am engaged and the BIG DAY is set for October 1, 2016! Anyways, my fiancé is a 2nd grade teacher. I am always helping out with lesson planning, grading, classroom setup, and much more. I’m always intrigued to learn about the school’s technology, it’s policies on personal devices, etc. I can definitely see myself leaving higher education and working for a school district as the technology person. That has always been an interest of mine. Throughout this semester, I hope to learn more about mobile technologies and how they can be effectively utilized in learning environments, both informal as well as formal.

Now a little about who I am personally. As I said, I am engaged and loving every moment of wedding planner. I actually work part-time as a wedding videographer for Altoona Wedding Video Production, which is amazing. Being able to share that special day with so many brides and grooms is amazing. It has also given me endless ideas of how to plan the perfect wedding! I have an extreme unhealthy addiction to Disc Golf. This past summer has been jam-packed with playing disc any chance I could get. I hope you enjoyed getting to know me a little bit and I look forward to meeting everyone and learning alongside you this semester!