Monthly Archives: May 2016

Lesson 2 Reaction: Mobile Technology and the Cyber Culture it Creates

Mobile technologies have almost completely immersed themselves into everyone’s twenty first century lifestyle.  From smartphones, and watches, to laptops light enough to barely record a reading on a scale society is essentially “plugged in” at all times to the web and everywhere they go. For students this has created their own cyber culture from the way they communicate with others and retrieve information from the environment surrounding them. It is equally important that both parents and educators are aware of this culture in order to better relate to our youth.

Parents may be at the biggest disadvantage as they often struggle to connect or understand what their children are doing online and with their devices. In Yardi and Bruckman’s (2012) article  in which they explore how families of different race, income, and class  view mobile technologies different, they found similarities for all parents in how little most of them know about what their kids are doing online. Most parents would agree that their children spend too much time online and they attempted to limit usage. As one parent mentioned in an interview transcript, ” It got to the point where they would email each other in the same house at the same time ” (3044). Parents are often worried not only at the amount of time their kids are spending online, but what they are doing online as well.

A major component of the cyber culture includes the fact that teens spend a lot of time interacting with their devices, and for some is their primary form of communication. Since most teens communicate most frequently through their devices, another part of the culture that is constantly discussed is the new generation texting language that has resulted. In Pachler’s (2010) article, he writes in a section labeled “Txt speak and new literacies” the debate over using texting language and formal writing and speaking is always brought up. Regardless of what side of the debate you may be on, its clear that students immersed in this cyber culture and utilize this text language in order to communicate with each other. As Pachler tell us, ” young people use new forms of communication which appear to include layers of meaning not accessible by ‘traditional’ language skills alone” (89). Despite its simplicity to formal speaking and writing, the text language still has complexity to it He adds on that the multiple forms of communication lead to, “ways that engage several communication pathways at the same” (89). Many fear this new form of language because it leads to change and a breaking away from the traditional ways of communication. However in this cyber culture that many of our students are now a part of, as educators we need to decide how much we are willing to embrace this language as we rely more and more on mobile devices as learning tools in the classroom. I am curious to hear anyone’s thought or opinions of this matter.

References:

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

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.

 

 

My Definition of Mobile Learning:

To me mobile learning is the idea and practice of using available technology allow learning to take place anywhere at anytime. It also has the ability to enhance, and extend on existing learning by allowing the users to connect concepts in both formal and informal settings. It allows learners and educators access to material that would otherwise be difficult to express or visualize without the assistance of user friendly user devices.

Lesson 1 Reading Reflection

In this week’s reading the three articles provided both a history of mobile learning, as well as glimpses into the future and updates on the current findings and research with the various forms of ML that exist. The idea of Mobile Learning is still a relatively new practice that has some of its origins no more than 20 years ago. Mobile Learning is a constantly growing topic based on the simplicity of the devices to use and the countless features that they offer to the users including: cameras, GPS, internet access, and the thousands of apps available to download on the devices. One of the initial reactions by researchers was the increase in motivation it gave to both students and teachers while interacting with the device. One of the concepts associated with the increase in motivation, was the idea of using the devices for games. Gaming brings out the competitive nature in everyone, children, and adults alike. With the assistance of mobile technologies, learning can take place through games that can be accessed anywhere at anytime.

While reading the three articles, there was one section that particularly stood out to me as s K-12 classroom teacher that had important significance. In the article “Wild for Learning” the author not only explores the benefits of ML for students but also for teachers and administrators. Having a mobile device can allow teachers and administrators to quickly access student records, compare results of students with others, determine the levels of plagiarism in student submitted work. As a teacher however,  I was particularly interested in the idea of mobile technologies having the ability to aggregate across all level of students. One of the scenarios mentioned in this section dealt with the idea of using devices for a classroom response system. Using their devices, student could provide simple and anonymous feedback to the teacher relating to their overall understanding of the material. The teacher could quickly observe that half the class is not understanding based on their responses. Normally students would be too shy and embarrassed to admit to such a notion with fear of their peers finding out. This provides an excellent example of how mobile technologies can be used for educators to assess their own work and determine the effectiveness of their instruction very accurately and quickly.

The last concept that stood out to me came from the article “New Technology and Digital Worlds”. What I took away from this reading was the often ignored fact of how much race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and even gender has an effect on students abilities to access and use mobile technologies. Every student enters the classroom with a different set of experiences and background knowledge. The article pointed out what a gap there was between students with a low SES and their ability to access and use technology. Public schools have done a better job in recent decades with providing all students access to these technologies, but a problem still arises with how they are being used in the classroom. More of the job skill sets in our economy today rely on the ability to use complex communication and higher level thinking. To help students develop these skills, they should be interacting with the technology to develop this skill set. The authors point out that schools needs to utilize the resources they have to add more activities that focus on these skills and less and less lower level ones like routine manual which would include copying and pasting pictures to a PowerPoint. These lower level skills are often being outsourced to other countries for cheaper labor, and are of little value in the 21st century society that we live in.