Mobile Learning Blog

Dr. Roland Fryer, an economist who started The Educational Innovation Laboratory at Harvard, is working to make learning more effective. Dr. Fryer conducted a scientific evaluation of many high performing charter schools around the country and discovered five universal, research-based, successful school strategies to make learning more effective:

1. Effective Principals and Teachers in Every School (while getting rid of the ineffective ones).
2. More Instructional Time (An extended school day and year).
3. Use of Data to Drive Instruction (Always be aware of students’ strengths and weaknesses, and when the students don’t learn it, re-teach!).
4. High-dosage, Individualized Tutoring (so every child in the classroom can learn).
5. A Culture of High Expectations for All (no excuses for failure).

Source: “Wake Up! We Know How to Fix Our Schools” by John Legend. October 4, 2010.

This is my last post about the book Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen.

Overall, I’d recommend this book. There are some valid points, in my opinion, that any educational system, teacher or reformer should take note of, including:

• There is the status quo, there is incremental change, and then there is disruptive innovation that causes a breakthrough improvement in learning. This book provides details on how you can implement disruptive change for the better, just like the personal computer disrupted the mainframe. Hint: don’t try to take on the “system” head-on; instead, look for ways NOT to compete with the system…to go around, work with or work underneath the system.
• Children learn differently. Batch training children in all the same way does not make sense, so why do we continue to do it?
• Learning in the future will take place in two phases: 1) computer-based learning will improve, and 2) student-centric technology will be developed that will customize the learning experience to each student’s needs (think Individual Learning Plan customized by the student herself, automatically by a computer)
• Modularity in learning is critical. Instead of a monolithic mode of teacher-led instruction, a new model of peer-to-peer learning — supported by computer-based learning and student-centric technology — will emerge that will allow certain parts of learning to take on a new format that will be more efficient than is currently being accomplished. Hint: think about taking one aspect of instructor-led learning, and moving it online through a game, into a blog, into a physical activity, etc. Try something new to decentralize learning.

Anyone else read Disrupting Class and have any additional thoughts? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

[Photo credit: Hampton Roads Partnership]

I’ve been reading the book Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen recently. While I’m only half-way through the book, it has provided some interesting and thought-provoking ideas about lesson content, pedagogy and individual student needs as they relate to pubic schools.

Christensen comes at the topic of education from a systematic innovation perspective, not an institutional education perspective. His view provides for a unique way of looking at the educational status quo and realizing that true change cannot happen incrementally. In other words, true change for the better most often happens in a disruptive manner.

One of these disruptions, I believe, will be in how we teach.

Christensen cites many research studies and efforts throughout the book — one of which is how learning should be tailored to the needs of each individual student. We’ve all known students that have excelled in class. Is it simply a matter of having a high IQ?

Many studies have shown that intelligence can be attributed to learning preferences. Instead of attributing intelligence to merely high IQ scores, Christensen posits that learning styles that match the instructor’s teaching style can be a significant factor in developing “smart kids.”

Howard Gardner pioneered the multiple intelligences field. Gardner categorized intelligence into eight areas and has shown how people have different strengths and how those strengths can be capitalized on in the learning environment.

• Linguistic: Ability to think in words and to use language to express complex meanings: Walt Whitman.
• Logical-mathematical: Ability to calculate, quantify, consider propositions and hypotheses and perform complex mathematical operations: Albert Einstein.
• Spatial: Ability to think in three-dimensional ways; perceive external and internal imagery; re-create, transform, or modify images; navigate oneself and objects through space; and produce or decode graphic information: Frank Lloyd Wright.
• Bodily-kinesthetic: Ability to manipulate objects and fine-tune physical skills: Michael Jordan.
• Musical: Ability to distinguish and create pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
• Interpersonal: Ability to understand and interact effectively with others: Mother Teresa.
• Intrapersonal: Ability to construct an accurate self-perception and to use this knowledge in planning and directing one’s life: Sigmund Freud.
• Naturalist: Ability to observe patterns in nature, identify and classify objects, and understand natural and human-made systems: Rachel Carson.

I can’t help but think: what if every lesson plan offered something unique and customized for every student? What if teaching the laws of rational trigonometry, for example, offered some students the ability to create a spatial diorama, while for others it promoted physical activity such as a play? Students could then choose the lesson that they felt most comfortable doing, and the end result would be measured in comprehension.

Would kids study more and think it’s more fun if their favorite book or movie characters were integrated with learning materials?

That’s the question I set out to unscientifically investigate this week.

Timed Quizzes for Practice

My daughter turned 8 this year. She started 3rd grade in September.

In school, her class practices basic addition via “rocket math” — timed quizzes to help students master math facts before moving on to the more advanced topics of multiplication and division.

It’s not exciting, but it’s necessary. Practice makes perfect, right?

Combine Something You Need With Something You Love

Hermione Granger, via Wikipedia

My daughter does fine in math, but she doesn’t love the subject like she loves, say, the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. She can spend hours engrossed in the Harry Potter novels, writing spells in her notebook and retelling scenes from the story. This Halloween, she plans to dress up as Hermione Granger, the obsessively bookish cohort of Harry Potter.

A couple of days ago I was discussing with my wife the topic of making learning fun for kids. Over the past year, we have looked at tens, if not hundreds, of great mobile learning apps. Some mix music with animation, others utilize stickers or badges, while still others — for older students — feature social media hooks. (Side note: if I could find a way for an iPad to dispense Silly Bandz, I’d make a killing selling apps!)

While brainstorming, my wife and I thought about combining math skills with our daughter’s favorite pastime: Harry Potter. More specifically, make math practice into a game that features Hermione Granger so my daughter would want to study. (See note on copyright infringement below.)

So I set out on my Harry-Potter-mobile-learning-app quest Tuesday morning.

Now, I happen to be the founder of a start-up educational app business named KnowPro which gave me a head-start on my quest. We’ve developed tens of quizzes on various topics — in fact, we even pay royalties to authors if they write a quiz and use our technology platform, just like book authors earn royalties.

A little more thinking about what in particular would make the KnowPro app technology more fun for my daughter resulted in this list of ideas:

• Hermione Granger’s name and face (played by Emma Watson in the movies)
• Background images to rotate during the quiz
• Harry Potter soundtrack
• Quotes from Hermione
• Surprises for the user (unexpected delights)

Within 60 minutes I had a functioning Hermione Granger app built and installed on my iPad, just waiting for my daughter to return home from school. It contains a database of 169 addition math questions, including all permutations with repetition of numbers between 0 and 12.

Most of the 60 minutes of development time was spent finding images, sound bites and the soundtrack on Google, and customizing them for the KnowPro technology. Luckily, this was very simple based on the modularity of the KnowPro technology.

The (Somewhat) Finished Educational Mobile Device App

And…(drum roll please)…my daughter’s personalized educational app:

Notice the following:

• Hermione Granger’s name and face are used on the springboard icon, and in the main window of the app
• Ten different background images of Hermione rotate during the quiz
• The Harry Potter movie soundtrack plays in the background during the quiz
• Hermione says, “Honestly, don’t you two read?” when an incorrect answer is selected
• A man with a British accent says, “Brilliant!” when a correct answer is selected
• Hermione surprisingly says, “You’ve got dirt on your nose, by the way. Did you know?” — just for fun

Now that I’ve figured out a recipe for what areas of the KnowPro Apps to change, customization can be easily done in about 30 minutes for future personalized quizzes for my daughter. It takes considerably more time to find the audio and visual components on Google than it does to build the app.

The Result: 3rd Grader User Testing

I preset the quiz to 20 questions, and my daughter completed 5 quizzes (100 questions total) before dinner. She then completed another 4 quizzes (80 questions) after dinner, before bed. And she couldn’t wait until morning to take more quizzes!

To see how my daughter is doing, I can go to the “My High Scores” section and review the incorrect answers — the questions she is having difficulty with. In addition, a feature of KnowPro version 3.1 is an Adaptive Learning System that separates mastered questions from those she is having difficulty with, serving more of the questions requiring further practice.

Conclusion

How do you make any 3rd grader love math? Customize the learning experience to include what they love: cats, dogs, pink unicorns, princesses, dragons…you name it.

Apps and mobile devices were cool before this, but educational apps for mobile devices are about to get a lot cooler.

Post-Script

KnowPro is in start-up mode right now, but we have aspirations to enable primary school educators to personalize learning experiences for their students for free. Using a wizard-type of interface, the teacher will be able to customize a number of areas of the app, including content and look-and-feel. Then, teachers could easily install them on the mobile devices in their classroom.

That’s the vision…if we could only convince authors and publishers to license their copyrighted materials for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Note about copyright infringement: The Harry Potter franchise, including the novels, characters, movies and merchandise, are all copyrighted materials of their respective owners and/or licensees. The Hermione Granger math app that was created was purely for individual use. This app will not be distributed, sold, shared or otherwise provided publicly. We respect the rights of copyright holders.

Join the Discussion

A lot of great discussion is taking place on this topic. You can post a comment below, or join the discussion on Hacker News.

Mobile Learning, or M-Learning, has different meanings for different users. Mobile learning is a subset of e-learning, which itself is a subset of education, and has a distinct focus on learning through the use of devices that can be easily carried.

What is Mobile Learning in Real-life?

Here are a few examples:

All of these are example of mobile learning: educational experiences made possible because of a mobile device.

What Mobile Devices are Used for Mobile Learning?

While there is no strict definition, mobile devices are any device that can be easily carried by a student. This includes smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). More specifically, many popular mobile devices include:

• Apple iPod Touch
• Apple iPad
• Apple iPhone
• Android-powered Smartphones
• Android-powered Tablets
• Kno (no relation to KnowPro, my educational app company)
• Cameras, GPS devices, etc.

Learning Experiences of Mobile Learning

As I commented earlier, mobile learning has a number of advantages either as a supplement to or replacement of classroom experiences. Learning experiences may take a number of forms, at a variety of levels:

Individual Mobile Learning

• Original course work: usually in some combination of text, audio, and visual components. May include reading e-books or listening to audiobooks, listening to lectures, watching demonstrations, reviewing assignments.
• Skill practice: writing drafts of papers, recording oral practicing of everything from vocabulary practices to speeches.
• Research: using Internet access to find source content.
• Content capture: taking notes, recording audio/visual content.

Peer-to-Peer or Peer-to-Instructor Mobile Learning

• Posting questions or work products on shared websites, sending files to peers or instructors.
• Sending emails, IMs, texts to peers or instructors to get fast answers to questions, checking on assignments, setting up meetings.

Group Sharing Mobile Learning

• Using social networking sites/shared websites to collaborate with others anywhere in the world.

These same levels apply if you look at the learning experience from the instructor level. The individual teacher can post assignments, lecture notes, and course content so students can access them anytime, anywhere. K-12 and college-level teachers can use mobile technologies to communicate and work collaboratively with other teachers on campus, across the country, or around the world.

The technologies are especially useful to instructors working inside businesses since their “students” are, by definition, mobile, and it is often impossible to get business people together in a room for a learning experience.

mLearning Pilot Project at Franklin & Marshall College

The Franklin & Marshall College pilot project, which took place between May 2009 and May 2010, asked participating faculty to complete a survey. The results can be grouped into four main areas: convenience, increased productivity, connections to students, and usefulness as a teaching or research device. The following conclusions were presented in the mobile learning study:

1. The convenience of a small, highly portable device allowed participants to accomplish many tasks that would otherwise require a laptop, yet in a much smaller, lighter, less expensive package.
2. All survey participants stated that they used their devices while traveling and the devices had a positive impact on overall productivity.
3. The devices provided opportunities for better communication with students and allowed participants to feel more connected to students through a better understanding of mobile devices.
4. Although some faculty discovered innovative uses for the devices that directly enhanced their teaching, many struggled with how to do so.

M

Mobile Learning in the Near Future

Mobile device sales have exploded in the past few years and all estimates project continued exponential growth, which presents a tremendous opportunity for educators – especially as the price of mobile devices continues to decrease.

^{1“Student Achievement Data 2009-2010,” iPod User Group, 2010.
2“Duke University iPod First Year Experience Final Evaluation Report,” Duke University, 2005.
3“Merrill Lynch: Bullish on Mobile Learning,” Kristofor Swanson, 2008.}

I follow Meg Wilson on Twitter because she is an educator who embraces mobile learning. She’s not just a “me-too” type of mobile device proponent, but is actually on the cutting edge of deploying mobile devices in education and is using them for the benefit of her students.

Last weekend Meg presented at the Tri-State Education Technology Conference. While I couldn’t attend, I tracked the presentations by Twitter and found much of the content to be very interesting. (Side note: you can follow one or all of the attendees at TSETC 2010 using this Twitter attendee list.)

In particular, I found Meg’s presentation useful for all mobile learning enthusiasts, so I’ve included it below to promote it further. The presentation is entitled, “Appsolutely Accommodating: Meet the iPad.” A video of the presentation can be seen at the iPodsibilities Blog, as well as the presentation download in PDF format.

Today’s mobile devices can handle a majority of tasks that teachers require and students expect from personal computers (PCs). However, there are many distinct advantages that are unique to mobile devices.

Benefits of mobile devices include:

• Portable: Mobile devices are small and lightweight, and can be easily carried by anyone. Inside, outside, to the library, anywhere.
• Low Cost: As compared to PCs, mobile devices are less expensive. (Note: PCs can usually accomplish many more tasks, such as spreadsheets, that are difficult to perform on a mobile device.)
• Energy Efficient: Mobile devices require less power to run than PCs.
• Connected: Most mobile devices come with bluetooth or wi-fi as part of their standard configuration.
• Rugged: All mobile devices come with a solid state disk drive, rather than moving disk drive, and can handle accidental drops and misuse.
• Personal: No other technology creates such a unique, 1-to-1 feeling with the user than a mobile device. As a result, many teachers have seen greater student engagement with mobile devices for learning.
• Cool: …as in, “that’s cool!” Ask any kid if they’d like to learn on a computer or an iPad/iPhone.
• Delightful: You can touch the screen, manipulate objects, pinch and zoom. You can hold a device in all different directions and even shake it. You can use it on a desk, play with it on the floor, in bed, on the couch or in the car.
• Special Needs: Apps can handle special needs in a variety of manners: language, audio, video, colors.
• Effective: PBS found that an iPod app can increase vocabulary knowledge by as much as 31 percent.¹

What benefits have you experienced? Post your thoughts in the comments.

¹ “There’s an App for That! PBS KIDS® Study Finds Mobile Apps are New Source of Learning”, 2010, http://bit.ly/PBSKids-App, http://bit.ly/CNET-Review.

Image via Wikipedia

Twitter is everywhere. This post is not intended to convince you to sign up for an account, tell you who — specifically — to follow, or the benefits of Twitter.

What I find most useful about Twitter that I would like to share on this blog post are how to find the hashtags that lead to the education-related discussions that are taking place, in real-time, on Twitter.

What the heck are hashtags? I’ll get to that in a moment, but first a little background. [Jump to list of hashtags]

Lurk or Chat, Your Choice

All Twitter discussions are out in the open, available for anyone to partake in — whether you have a Twitter account or not. You can choose to lurk (watch from the safety of your own computer, without participating), chat briefly and never again, or become an active member of any discussion topic and associated community.

For instance, you might be thinking about writing a contract between yourself (as the teacher) and your students for the use of mobile devices, such as iPods, in your classroom. You may have ground rules, etiquette and learning objectives that you want students to read, internalize and agree to follow before allowing them to use the devices.

A quick scan of the discussions on Twitter might reveal a teacher in another school district creating the same contract, which would allow you to compare notes, ideas, inspiration and contracts.

How to Find Education Discussions

Image by Search Engine People Blog via Flickr

How do you find relevant discussions on Twitter? Hashtags.

Hashtags are a community-driven convention (i.e., not specified or administered by Twitter, the company) for adding metadata to your tweet/post.

For example, if I attend a conference on education organized by the fictitious “Education for Eternity” organization, at the beginning of each conference day they may encourage attendees to tweet their thoughts using the hashtag #Ed4Et2010 (they tack “2010″ onto the end of their short tag since they may do the conference again in 2011).

The pound symbol (#) is called the hash, and the one word after it is the tag (spaces are not allowed, but you can use a hyphen or underscore within a tag).

A tweet may look something like, “Attended Dr. Smith’s mobile learning for 4th grade. Kids must sign learning contracts. #Ed4Et2010″. Within these 97 characters, you can see context, an action, and metadata (tag for the conference).

If you had a Twitter account, you could then send a message/tweet to this person and ask them if they received a sample contract, or any other question you might have.

Get to the Hashtags, Already

Below are the hashtags that I read regularly, presented in alphabetical order. They help me stay abreast of education-related discussions that are happening in real-time on Twitter.

#EdApp: Tweets associated with theory and practice of using apps in education. App is an abbreviation for application, as in software application. The filename extension .app means application in Symbian OS, SkyOS, GNUstep and Mac OS X, although most recently apps have been associated with iOS (software for iPod/iPhone/iPad) and even those on websites.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
132 tweets
76 contributors
18.9 tweets per day
60.6% are retweets
65.9% are mentions
62.1% have multiple hashtags

#EdTech: Tweets associated with the theory and practice of using technology in education.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
2,966 tweets
1,299 contributors
423.7 tweets per day
52.2% are retweets
61.0% are mentions
52.8% have multiple hashtags

#Education: Tweets associated with anything education.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
6,559 tweets
2,975 contributors
937.0 tweets per day
25.3% are retweets
31.5% are mentions
77.5% have multiple hashtags

#ELearning: Tweets associated with any type of learning through electronic (“e”) means, such as computers, kiosks, mobile devices, etc. However, the majority of content is associated with computer-based learning and remote study using computers.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
1,197 tweets
547 contributors
171.0 tweets per day
36.8% are retweets
45.5% are mentions
53.6% have multiple hashtags

#LrnChat: Similar to #Education, this hashtag is a contract for “Learn Chat”. It originated as a focused Twitter chat on Thursday nights 8:30-10pm EST started by @marciamarcia to discuss all aspects of workplace learning.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
1,611 tweets
217 contributors
230.1 tweets per day
36.7% are retweets
51.5% are mentions
11.2% have multiple hashtags

#MLearning: Tweets associated with any type of learning through mobile (“m”) devices, such as mobile phones or smart phones (such as the iPhone or Android-powered phones), tablets (such as the iPad), or other hand-held devices (such as the iPod Touch).

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
231 tweets
122 contributors
33.0 tweets per day
58.4% are retweets
71.0% are mentions
49.8% have multiple hashtags

#Teachers: Similar to #Education, but with a focus on the teacher.

Quick Stats – In the last 7 days:
730 tweets
459 contributors
104.3 tweets per day
31.6% are retweets
40.5% are mentions
82.6% have multiple hashtags

Data presented under each of the hashtags was obtained using What the Hashtag?

Note: I want to point out that Twitter hashtags work regardless of capitalization, so following the hashtag #MLEARNING is the same as following #MLearning and #mlearning.

There are many more education-related hashtags that are topic specific, such as #science, #bio, #math, #health, #art, etc. Visit http://search.twitter.com and type in any of these hashtags (such as “#science” — sans quotes) to see related posts and discover hashtags that others associate with #science. (If you search without the hash (#), the results will include any tweets with the specified words.)

Often people will post with multiple hashtags as to broaden the visibility of their tweet. I’ve not found a definitive guide to hashtags online yet, so I often find myself in trial and error mode.

If you have favorite education-related hashtags not presented above, please post them in the comments and share them with readers.

Related Content From Around the Web

Steven W. Anderson, of Web 2.0 Classroom fame, just posted “Twitter Chats Worth Checking Out“. It’s definitely worth a read as well.

TeachersFirst also has a useful post, with videos!

Tony Vincent, of Learning in Hand, shows teachers how to “Refine Your Twitter #edapp Search“.

Students today are always connected and always on. A majority of college students have a mobile phone or smart phone, and within a few years the number will approach 100%. As technology becomes less expensive and more powerful, mobile devices will continue to become ubiquitous throughout all stages of education, from primary to secondary to post-secondary.

Mobile devices are cool. They also allow anyone to interact with information when, where and how they prefer. Couple these two facts together and you can see how mobile devices can play a pivotal role in helping students succeed in learning. But this will only happen with proper strategy and tactics by educators and educational institutions.

Educational strategies for all schools must involve mobile devices. This blog will detail how educators can include mobile devices within their curriculum and pedagogy. Along the journey, we will all learn a great deal about updating education for the 21st century.