BAWP TC Pat Dalaney, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and I joined teachers from around the Bay Area on May 14 for a Mobile Learning Summit. We considered the hows and whys of using cellphones – what were being called “mobile learning devices” – in K-12 classrooms and for professional development. This Summit was sponsored by the Pearson Foundation’s Mobile Learning Institute and included presentations by Elliot Soloway and Cathleen Norris, longtime proponents of handhelds in the classroom; Sharnell Jackson, former Chief E-Learning Officer in the Chicago Public Schools; and Tom Greaves, an ed tech consultant.
During the course of the day, Soloway and Norris walked us through a demonstration of software, called GoKnow, they’ve developed for cellphones that include: semantic mapping, animation, and a management system that allows for the pushing and pulling of content onto phones among other things.
I love the idea of putting a computer into every student’s hands (and have since I first heard Soloway talk at the MassCUE conference years ago) and utilizing technology that many kids already have or are familiar with – that is the potential of cellphones, isn’t it? However, a number of teachers brought up great points: Why not instead use netbooks, which are almost as inexpensive and nearly as small these days? Why use proprietary software like the GoKnow demonstrated by Soloway and Norris as opposed to what might be freely available (such as apps for the iPhone)?
After a back and forth about the benefits of cellphones and the GoKnow software, Tom Greaves used an old aphorism to describe the dilemma: If all you’ve got is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. In other words, we should look at the range of technologies available to us to come up with a range of possible uses and solutions to the question of improving student learning. Cellphones may be the answer for some, netbooks for others.
Mark Niecker, president of the Pearson Foundation, also reminded us that in many respects the technology is secondary. What we need to focus on is student learning and providing kids with the skills they need to be productive citizens in our 21st century society.
Cellphones are intriguing as a means to create the 1:1 student-to-computer ratio that I think is vital for schools. But I think cellphones need to be seen as just one of many tools that are available to teachers, employed with a constructivist pedagogy in mind. They should not replace paper and pencil simply to recreate pencil-and-paper tasks. We should use them with our students to foster the kinds of social, web-based participation that we know students engage in with their phones already – photos and videos for citizen-journalist compositions, collaborative microblogs that share information, viral texting to support a just cause.
Soloway called this the “mobile generation.” And, as he said, the time is now to consider the significance of mobile computing for our students and our schools.
