Tuesday, 4 September 2007
Tensions between personal space and social space in mobile learning
The session on mobile learning by Dr Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Dr John Cook, Professor Tom Boyle, Mr John Traxler was very interesting. Agnes and her colleagues were good presenters.
I did, however, find my personal devil's advocate surfacing. So much of mobile learning seems to be about the devices, and it seems to me that as technology moves on, and converges, we will all have devices that unite TV, phone and computer technology and we will laugh at the days when we tried to deliver learning via SMS.
I've tried to decide on a meaning for mobile learning - or m-learning before - at much length, with others at a conference. In this presentation it seemed to be mostly about the location interacting with the person - and the person interacting with other people's responses to that same location - great for studying the architecture of a building, or an ecosystem on a field trip, but not much use for "studying chemistry on the bus".
I liked the idea of social space as hyper-local - but I'm still not sure about the local emphasis. Am I not m-learning if my wearable computer is connecting me to a seminar on psychology from Australia while I am walking down the road? Not connected with the location but very much mobile learning.
Like Tim Rudd earlier, John Traxler reminded us to think about the future in new ways - not just to design a faster horse (from the quotation from John Ford).
A very interesting and practical symposium.Labels: ALT-C2007, alt-C20071216, altc2007, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:57 PM
