Mobile practices in everyday life: opportunities and challenges for learning

Guy MerchantSheffield Hallam University

When they first developed computers, they didn’t catch on because the screens were blank....

Perspective 1

Were technologies merely objects totally divorced from human praxis, they would be so much 'junk' lying about. Once taken into praxis one can speak not of technologies 'in themselves', but as the active relational pair, human-technology.

(Ihde, 1993:34)

Perspective 2

• Mobile practices have become part of ‘organized nexuses of activity’ everyday ‘doings’ and ‘sayings’ (Shatzki, 2001)

• the mobile phone is ‘subtly insinuating itself into the capillaries of everyday life’ (Gergen, 2002:103).

What is it?

• an over-priced toy?• an intelligent machine?• a fashion accessory?• the next step in convergence technology?• a totem of consumersim?• a basic necessity for 21st century living?

the mobile market (Ofcom 2011)

•64% of UK sales are smartphones•30% of mobile internet users are under 25•16-24s: 52% of media activity is simultaneous•text-based communication is the most popular media activity in the daytime •12-15s: 50% of those with smartphones use them for social networking

Layered networks

‘We may imagine here that dwelling about us at all times are small communities that are unseen and unidentifiable. However, as we stroll the thoroughfare or sip coffee in a café their presence is made constantly known to us. Each mobile phone [….] is a sign of a significant nucleus, stretching in all directions, amorphous and protean.’

(Gergen, 2003: 105)

We use mobiles

• maintaining lightweight contact with friends and family members

• casual entertainment (watching and sharing short movies, photo-albums and playlists)

• arranging both formal and informal meetings, navigation and micro-co-ordination

• capturing objects and events (usually as still/moving images)

• checking web-based information

Classroom ecologies

possibilities for different kinds of learning relationship, different kinds of interaction, different forms and purposes of communication

BUTinstitutions are patterned by established relationships, mediated by sets of accepted schooled practices and instructional routines, which in their turn are powerfully structured by curriculum discourses

The reaction!

Yes, Paul it is an experiment; tinker enough with this country's children's education and you end up with morons; exactly what the lefties want! How better to destroy this country than by allowing total anarchy in the classroom? The result; conveyor-belt system of non-educated , complaint morons who will (on leaving school )want to spend a life time sitting at home playing computer games and texting their mates, who will, if they can be bothered to at all, almost certainly vote Labour- for more of the same!!!- Anon, Haywards Heath, W.Sussex., 14/10/2009 20:57’

The evidence against?

‘technology obsession hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism, and disrupts classroom learning.’ (Daily Mail, 14/10/09)

3 possibilities

1. Understanding information access2. Understanding hyperconnectivity3. Understanding the new sense of space

_________________________________________________________

Mobile literacy ‘ ...how to use these technologies effectively to ensure they end up on the right side of the digital divide: the side that knows how to use social media...’

(Parry, 2011)

3 concerns

1. is the fact that we can do these things sufficient justification - what advantages do they confer?

2. how do teachers manage the potential levels of distraction?

3. which students have devices that are sufficiently nimble, who owns them, and who pays for them ?

Campsmount

• After the fire: no student contact numbers or addresses, no coursework, no VLE....no servers

• Within 24 hrs a Wordpress blog, Twitter feed, Facebook group (1,500 members), and a YouTube video press release (3,000 views)

• Working with donated laptops, iPod touches• Spurred on to extensive blogging, QR codes,

Soundcloud, Coveritlive etc

Some uses

• Photographing notes, experiments, activities (the things you can’t take away)

• Video records of projects or products being tested

• Video, voice and image responses to learning tasks

• Mobile desk referencing• Organising learning (timetables, timelines etc)

Mapping practices• photographing notes,

experiments, activities

• mobile desk referencing

• video records of projects or products being tested

• video, voice, image responses to learning tasks

• organising learning

• capturing objects and events

• checking web-information

• casual entertainment (short movies, photo-albums etc)

• maintaining lightweight contact

• arranging meetings, navigation and micro-co-ordination

think its funny every one that eva went to campsmout wished it would burn down and it did am sad to see it go but am all so well amused i had some gd memorys in that place thats the place that made me who i am and i thank that place 4 that but the fucking irony ey hahahahhahahahahahhahahahahaha hahahahhahahaha

Some questions

• Mobiles can clearly help in organising learning but how are they advantageous in learning?

• What (and whose)devices are most appropriate in different learning contexts (smartphone, iPod touch, tablet)?

• What should we be teaching about mobile social networking?

Mobile literacy

‘ ...teach them how to use these technologies effectively to ensure they end up on the right side of the digital divide: the side that knows how to use social media to band together.’

(Parry, 2011)

In conclusion

• What practices are legitimate/legitimated in learning contexts?

• What constitutes ‘advantageous practice’?