This document discusses future challenges for education in the changing digital environment. It focuses on three main challenges: expertise and authority in the classroom; issues around individualization versus socialization; and ensuring learning remains authentic. The document explores how mobile devices can help address these challenges through strategies like giving students more agency in their learning, facilitating learner-generated content, and enabling learning experiences outside the classroom that involve real-world tasks and data. Design-based research is presented as a way to iteratively improve mobile learning approaches through techniques such as enhancing the effectiveness of feedback.
Web & Social Media Analytics Previous Year Question Paper.pdf
Future Challenges for Education: the changing digital environment (BPP University Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, Nov 2013)
1. Future Challenges for
Education:
the changing digital
environment:
the changing digital
environment:
Dr. Kevin Burden:
Senior Lecturer and University Teaching Fellow:
The Faculty of Education
The University of Hull
2.
3.
4.
5. •
indicate work well?
• Does research inform us why and how they work
well?
• Can we therefore design better mobile
scenarios?
• What might these look like?
learning
34. “It doesn’t work if it’s shared because all the good things
that happen, happen because it’s yours and you’re taking
it home and you’re using it and then you’re adapting and
you’re taking the different things. And you’re getting so
used to using it that you can use them across the
different apps and you can have that bit of personal
choice” (Student, Bellshill Academy)
40. Using mobile devices to make learning
more authentic
1. Using the device to replicate professional tools
2. using the device to generate real life tasks using real data
3. using the device in outdoor contexts
42. QuickTime™ and a
Apple Intermediate Codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
Apple Intermediate Codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
49. Using DBR to improve the effectiveness of
feedback
50. “… before I would have maybe sent a worksheet
home and they would just complete it and send it
back to me. But if I put the worksheet on ‘Screen
Chomp’, then they can do the worksheet on ‘Screen
Chomp’ but record themselves while they do it, and
explain what they are doing to me, so I can see
where their understanding is, and I can see any
points that they are not understanding. And I can
also, when I am marking it when I am talking to the
children after, I will be able to give them more direct
and targeted feedback because I will know exactly
where they have gone wrong with things. I think that
has been a big change in being able to do that”
Teacher - Chryston Primary School
51. ‘Making Thinking Visible’
•Use scenarios which encourage two-way feedback
•Design problems which force students to articulate their
thinking processes
•Facilitate students
feedback with peers
•Focus on ‘threshold concepts’ and ‘troublesome
knowledge’
What does this suggest about technology and cognition generally - we are smarter than you think
Extended cognition
Technologies have always done this - extended our cognition
In doing so they have altered changed the way we think - books, for example, encouraged more linear and more abstract ways of thinking than did pictograms
So whats stopping us do all of these thing? - we know what works (by observing) but we know far less about why or how they work and therfore how to replicate them at scale - use analogy
What does it mean for learning in particular and the role of educators
if technology extends our cognition (i.e. it acts as a multiplier) how do we design learning which exploits this?
is it necessary, therefore, to understand more about the technology - i.e. what it is capable of supporting, and in what conditions or contexts?
These are the mobile technologies of their day
These are the mobile technologies of their day
List from previous conference - ??? 2012
delivering more content
iPod research in North East Lincolnshire, 2009-2011
Background to my research into mobile technologies, and tablet devices in particular
Authority:
1. Where mobile technologies are sanctioned within the institution, especially in depolyments which are highly personal (e.g. 1:1) they alter the relationship between learners and teachers/educators
2. Current model of learning is unsymmetrical in many ways:
the teacher owns and controls most of the knowledge or ‘stuff’ which is mandated to be understood/known - Freire’s Banking Analogy (Knowledge is deposited) restricting the ability to think critically
knowledge (or stuff) is consumed by the learner in large volumes but relatively little is produced, particularly with any lasting value (most is ephemeral and quickly lost)
3. Ubiquitous connectivity (which is what mobile learning promises) - challenges this in many respects:
knowledge cannot be ‘controlled’ or rationed in the same way it was when it belonged exclusively to the teachers - scarcity has dissappeared (much as it did with the monks who were previous guardians of knowledge and therefore learning)
not necessary to teach as much content any longer - most of it can be located by students
it is also less necessary to memorise everything any longer - freeing up cognitive space and energy for other things
learners become more independent and less needy of the teacher
they are able to make more choices - agency (where they work; how they work and undertake a task; when they work)
they
when knowledge and information was scarce it was fairly easy to control who had access to it and how it was regulated - these people did most of the regulating (monks, lecturers, teachers)
The volume of information is now vast and scarcity is no longer an issue - with Internet access it is also impossible to police who has access to this information and this, therefore, challenges the traditional authority of the teacher
all of our research demonstrates very clearly how students get considerable more access to technology in school when mobile devices are introduced than they ever did before (see graph)
So what do students use this access and technology for?
1. All of our evidence show two principal uses at this point in time:
research/internet
writing - productivity
2. Interesting - for later - also considerable sharing (look at this later)
Research is interesting - demonstrates a different model of learning - not a banking model (deposits)
Ubiquitous connectivity (which is what mobile learning promises) - challenges this in many respects:
knowledge cannot be ‘controlled’ or rationed in the same way it was when it belonged exclusively to the teachers - scarcity has dissappeared (much as it did with the monks who were previous guardians of knowledge and therefore learning)
not necessary to teach as much content any longer - most of it can be located by students
it is also less necessary to memorise everything any longer - freeing up cognitive space and energy for other things
learners become more independent and less needy of the teacher
they are able to make more choices - agency (where they work; how they work and undertake a task; when they work)
they
Introduces more choices and autonomy for students - one of the emerging themes to date (students have more opportunities to find out for themselves; to be ‘experts’; to learn from experts outside the classroom’
But is it happening (see findings from our study)
For almost as long as we have had schools the relationship between the learner and the teacher has been unsymmetrical in the sense that most of what occurs is about consumption (i.e. of knowledge) not production: why
technical reasons - hard for students to produce anything that would last
technical - hard to share or disseminate to a wider audfience
lack of real audience diminishes the drive to publish - who reads a typical essay
Currently the creative activities, where students are producers, not consumers, are still low but we are starting from a low base and this needs to be an area where teachers re-conceptualise what leanring is and how it is assessed -process is as important as product (you can have both)
Examples of production - student generated content (contexts) - find examples
What are the arguments in this challenge - who will be the expert and production/authoring (knowledge construction)
One aspect of personalisation is customisation - technologies, like the iPad, offer great opportunities to customise learning to the individual
the device itself can be customised giving it a great sense of personal identity (show screens)
like eBay and Amazon the device can start to understand the learner’s preferences and customise resources accordingly (e.g. use of Twitter to send personal details)
some apps are very good at customising the experience of learning (e.g. Beluga Maths)
customisation through books - see iBooks and Bookry widgets
AR = the ultimate form of customisation - what you see is unqiue to you and your learning
Models of ownership - we are going towards a much more 1:1 model
Models of ownership - frequently 1:1 - highly personalised (see models of deployment in Scotland)
The risks associated with individualisations - lack of social contact
But our data does not support this conclusion - at least not yet
1. we were surprised to find higher levels of conversation and collaboration in the classroom than we expected - teachers report it has increased
Important that teachers still design lessons which encourage collaboration and cooperation between learners - when they do the technology actually supports this kind of learning - (e.g. see these apps_)
Three aspects to authenticity, all of which can be enhanced when learners have access to a mobile, networked device like the iPad
1. make learning more realistic by drawing upon professional tools through the device (e.g. a microscope; a wind tunnel)
2. make the learning more realistic by setting authentic tasks which draw upon real data - e.g. Quakespotter; Plane Finder; Sensors, etc
3. Make the learning more realistic by taking the device outdoors and using it to situate learning in real contexts
1 - microscopes, sensors and wind tunnels
2 - demo iPad (Quakespotter and Plane Finder)
2. museum trails/ AR apps/ games (ARIS)
3. Using it in real work-places:
Authentic learning tools - video capture
Situated learning on the job - in the work-place
3. Using the real world as the classroom - Museum of London street app
3. Games based learning in situ - e.g. ARIS
Example of DBR in non educational context - traffic flow and calming