MobiMOOC 2012: Mind the Gap

This morning I completed the second of two online presentations as part of MobiMOOC 2012 (an online, free to access course on mobile learning).

 Initially, when I was asked to do a session on "mLearning pedagogy and learning theory" I thought they had the wrong guy. I have been deeply involved in mobile learning (both envisioning it, and making it) for over 11 years, but very little of that time has been spent in pure theory.

Almost all my time has been spent trying to understand how to REALLY make mobile learning work, in a meaningful and practical way. Not just the theory, but the real down-n-dirty practice. Together with my team we have been building apps / authoring tools / SMS engines / platforms / mobilized content and then using these with hard-to-access learners across the globe, trying to figure out what really does work, and add benefit.

After confessing this to the organisers, it turned out that this was exactly why they wanted our input, so we did a session titled Mind the Gap (or, where mlearning theory meets practice)

This is the ppt we did. There is also a youtube recording of the entire session!



Our main approach was to:

1. explore briefly some of the academic theory, and frameworks often mentioned in mobile learning
2. discuss the challenges in really making use of them, practically
3. work together to propose some suggestions / guidelines
4. look at a few real life examples. Projects my team have been involved in.

Feedback from the online attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and we had an animated debate running in parallel (with huge thanks to my colleague, Jo Colley, for keeping it flowing).

What do you think of the issues, and ideas?

mLearnCon presentation

I have just finished a very enjoyable discussion-filled presentation at mLearnCon – a mobile learning conference in Silicon Valley arranged by the eLearningGuild.

My session was all about helping the mostly US audience look a little wider at international m-learning projects, to see what lessons could be learned for the many current m-learning projects that are starting up right now

See below for the presentation we gave – comments (as always) welcomed

m-learning across the world

View more presentations from TribalSlides

mobile phones: the e-readers of choice in South Africa

Our m-Ubuntu project in South Africa hits the news in USA!

I have blogged about m-uBuntu before – a growing family of schools in South Africa who are using “cell phones” to transform how they teach.

We have been out there a few times, and were very excited to hear it being reported on by “The Word”, a US radio channel who spent a while in Cape Town visiting two great mobile literacy projects there:

• M4Lit – Mobile Phones for Literacy. Young people writing mobile stories. Championed by the excellent Steve, Ana & Marion at the University of Cape Town
• m-Ubuntu – Helping transform teaching in impoverished classrooms, and empower resource-poor teachers.

You can here the recording here: 

Well done the the m-uBuntu team! It is the perfect example of collaboration, empowerment, and shared learning.

- based in South Africa
- dreamt up and managed from Washington
- funding from Sweden, UK, USA
- feet firmly planted on South African soil
- championed by Learning Worldwide (Theo), Duke University (Lucy), Tribal (Geoff & Jess), diGameworks (Jeff) and many other friends

Even the learning itself follows the principle of “u-Buntu”, helping one another to help ourselves. This is not an initiative trying to push unwelcome solutions – rather they are helping the South African Education system rise to the challenge of supporting more students with less money.

m-learning in South Africa

We are back in South Africa again this week, this time working with Spectrum Primary school, and Lucy Haagen (of Duke University) to continue the very successful m-Ubuntu project

Spectrum have been part of the m-Ubuntu project, and working with mobiles for a year already, though this is Tribal’s first visit – what a great group of kids! For a blow-by-blow account of the visit, as well as some great ideas for how you can use mobile devices in your own classroom, please visit Jess’s blog.

m-learning for trade unions

The TUC is encouraging members of all their unions to take learning into their own hands … and onto their own phones!

If you don’t know unionlearn, they are the TUC’s learning champions, encouraging

all trade union members to become learning activists. Not only that – but they have started championing mobile learning!

 

Excellent stuff. When learner champions like unionlearn start embracing mobile learning it is a clear sign that mobile really works!

 

Have a look at their home page – it links directly to on overview of what m-learning is all about, as well as inviting any trade union members to register for a free mobile learning seminar.

Congratulations, unionlearn.

 

Our team at www.m-learning.org are very pleased to be working with TUC and unionlearn on this exciting initiative.

mobile learning in a taxi …

BLOOM-ing marvellous! We are in the closing stages of a great project called BLOOM, which is all about using m-learning in the workplace (in this case, for the transport sector).

Have a look at this great little video of our mobile learning solution being used by Taxi drivers while waiting on the rank (errm … no … not while driving!)

A great example of how mobile learning can help you reach the parts other types of learning can’t

 

Hope you like it – and please leave us comments with your thoughts. We are thinking of releasing a couple of other, similar case study videos if there is demand for them