Reflection 3: Understanding Individuals' Learning Experience with Mobile Technology
“The effect of supporting teachers during
technology implementation through a community of practice remains an important
area for continued research. Teachers in
the current study were apprehensive and concerned about their own performance
at the start of the study; to have left them to their own devices to learn the
technology and its potential uses may not have generated the same enthusiasm
and success (Tovar, Hansen, & Puckett, 2011).” My focus of this reflection is
on the research that I did for understanding individuals’ learning experience
with mobile technology.
After
reading the study about lived experience two points seems very important to
me. One that the study indicated that students
are actively seeking opportunities for informal learning and use new media
support this, but if they don't like the technology they find something
better. Second, the study considered it
to be important to find the students' preferences for the use of the new media
to be valuable information for the teacher prior to teaching. This seems so simple, but is that simple for
teachers in school districts? Do school
districts have teachers work with the products prior to buying the product? Is
there a pre-test to using the product to make sure the teacher has the skills to
work with that type of technology and figure it out? Is that role of a teacher to figure out the
application prior to teaching?
I
continue to think about this as I further my education in the EdTech
program. We struggle with the same type
of dilemma in my own company. Very often
we have people who know there job and understand it better than anyone but when
you add new technology to their work they feel overwhelmed with the task. We do our best to manage that by providing
training in classroom or online. However,
the outcome is not always perfect because they still have questions. That is why we are on call to answers
questions or walk them through how to proceed if they are unable to complete
their work. I will admit that this is
very difficult to use this as the best situation when they are busy and don’t
have time to call us. I would assume
this would be the same complaint that teachers would have if they had some
onsite to help them with technology. Technology must consider the societal goal it intends
to address, the social environment, the cultural values, cultural norms and
cultural influences of the intended users not to say just the students but the
teachers as well (Male, & Pattinson, 2011).
Could mobile learning bridge the gap between technology and teacher,
teacher and student, and technology and student dilemmas?
The mobile
learning is a trend that is rapidly growing and continues to influence teaching
and learning in the classroom and society in all cultures (Male, &
Pattinson, 2011). The authors, at Open University and Nottingham University, UK explored
a student’s personal inquiry through activities for students and the teacher based
on technology that used scripting. The personal inquiry that was study was
understanding the students’ ability to
ask questions (or hypothesize) about the natural and material world, and to
plan, carry out and interpret the outcome of activities to answer those
questions, based on de Jong’s
definition (see, e.g. de Jong 2006a). The software they focused on for the
study was called nQuire, enables you to design and run science inquiries at
school, at home, or outdoors on mobile devices seemed to achieve teachers
and students own goals (Scanlon, et
al., 2011). The research could be proved
as an exciting new approach of learning for students, but the research is
limited and at this time does not work well for young students’ first learning.
The possibility for students to use products like nQuire and mobile technology
seems to meeting the goals for teachers and students based on the research
findings (Scanlon, et al., 2011).
The
authors, at Arizona State University and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College conducted
a study using handheld mobile technology as a progress monitoring tool
specifically to gather pre-reading DIBELS Initial Sound Fluency data. Three
kindergarten teachers participated and used mobile technology in small reading groups
to strengthen phonemic awareness for fifteen kindergartners identified most
at-risk in their classrooms. Overall findings revealed that participants
including teachers and student need support during the technology
implementation through a social network or community in order to have good
technology integration (Tovar, Hansen, & Puckett, 2011). In light of these findings, future research
should take a closer look at technology integration to ensure teachers
expertise are being monitored just as much as the student especially it’s when technology
is interconnected with in students curriculum.
As I
have stated in a previous course…. “I think a strong component to our
business, is we do require professional development trainings for our
employees. That is part of my job, is creating professional development
trainings for employees to gain more skills to get their daily job done more
efficiently. However, I know it hard to get teachers out of the classroom to
get the skills they need. It too bad, we cannot have Network Trainers for
teachers where they can sign up for classes once or twice a month for training.
I would love to see that are local teachers could attend WebEx’s training on
their computers so they could all be on the same page as we do in a business
world (Hagedorn, 2011).” As I find with
more research this might be more possible with mobile phones. Teachers can learn across the world to become
better with in their own subject matter.
However, as a culture we have to create better environments to stimulate
this new age of learning and not be scared by it. We all need to be a part of the community of
learning and teach each other.
References
Hagedorn, L. (2011, March 14). Teaching
Professional Development Models « Lindy
Hagedorn:
EDTECH Learning Log. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from
http://lindyhagedorn.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/teaching-professional-development-models/
Male,
G., & Pattinson, C. (2011). Enhancing the quality of E-learning through
mobile
technology: A
socio-cultural and technology perspective towards quality E-learning
applications. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 28(5), 331-344.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/964175007?accountid=9649; http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10650741111181607
Scanlon,
E., Anastopoulou, S., Kerawalla, L., & Mulholland, P. (2011). How
technology
resources
can be used to represent personal inquiry and support students’ understanding
of it across contexts. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(6),
516–529. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00414.x
Tovar, A., Hansen, C., & Puckett,
K. (2011). From Paper To Pocket: Using Technology To
Inform Literacy Intervention In A
Kindergarten Classroom. Journal Of Literacy & Technology, 12(2),
2-27.
