Mobile Learning makes the Boundaries of the Subjects you study mobile too!
Monday, 22 Jun 2015, 20:42
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Steve Bamlett, Friday, 13 Nov 2015, 18:32
Technology-focused changes in pedagogy: the 'affordances' and potential meanings in the term, 'mobile learning'?
Sharples et. al (2005) say that 'mobile learning' is not
just about the hardware devices we possess and the software we access through
them but about a re-definition of learning. They do this by employing a very
wide definition of 'mobility'. For them learner mobility covers the learner's journeys
through both space and time but also between different learning projects and
topics. In short 'mobile learning' is learning that is not fixed and static in
localised space but multiform and distributed across wide expanses of:
Time;
Geographical Distance;
Roles in our life in a specific time phase;
Roles in our life over the whole lifespan
including life transitions (becoming a parent and so on);
Subjects we study;
Use of technologies and 'non-technological'
learning;
And, the projects in which we access learning
formally and informally.
If that is so, learning is not only about 'where' we learn
but what we learn and how 'what we learn' is defined. Academic subjects tend to
have some specific 'standard' forms based on the 'rules' of the academic
discipline. Yet how were such rules and boundaries constructed?
I think Kukulska-Hulme (2012) helps us here by looking at
how mobile learning can and does impact on learning a language. We are used
to thinking of language study as located in rules governing certain
sub-domains, the rules of grammar guiding language syntax for instance. This is
only the rule however in areas of study which are not guided by academic
linguists. Teaching outside linguistics has been hooked on rules for
punctuation, for instance that are often claimed to be commonly misused in
academic essays. In any school or college in English-speaking regions there
will be at most times a conversation about 'students' not using apostrophes
correctly.
But how stable are such rules. It was only in the eighteenth
century that rules for punctuation began to be rigidly codified and considered
as part of a set of principles through which English language use ought to be
organised. This does not mean that it was then or now actually organised like
that. The periodic sentence was the invention of an elite - concerned to see
language as a hierarchical ordering principle like that they associated with good governance in other realms.
Although this grossly oversimplifies. I think that one way in which this was done
was to organise learning around language on canonical examples and rule books
and eventually in static organisations called universities. In universities the standards of 'grammar'
could be located again as a principle to organise others. There is a reason for the name of 'grammar' schools, which were so essential to state education in the twentieth century.
What Kukulska-Hulme shows us is that mobile learning not
only defines where we study language and for what purposes - as we drive our
taxi around Athens for instance - but what we learn, which is now defined by
shifting and highly flexible variants, defined not by 'standard' rules but
local applications. What passes as 'correct' in such circumstances will be very
adaptable indeed to the places, times, roles and so on through which we pass.
What seems to be suggested is that what defined 'language' in the past -
standard rules and lexical categories - will be without function when they are
no longer defined by a single static curriculum. And what are academic
disciplines but boundaries put around knowledge that are policed and maintained
by people recognised (and 'qualified') as experts. This is a wonderful
sentence:
"..., language learning can escape the traditional constraints
of place and time that partly determine existing curricula, which focus largely
on what can be achieved and tested at home or in the classroom” (Kukulska-Hulme
2012:10).
I think it is a wonderful sentence because
it enforces a truth, quite delicately I think, that constraints of time and place sometimes define and
create boundaries around what you are learning - what the topic in itself IS - not
only the locations once thought appropriate to learning. Static learning helped
to construct static rules in other words - a kind of standardisation in
language that is entirely alien to any 'genuine' experience of even a single
language when it becomes subject to mobile learning. As you shift in zones of
time, space, role and subject-matter then the rules change with you. No-one
ever grasps a language really without grasping that.
Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2012) ':anguage learning defined by time
and place: A framework for next generation designs' in Díaz-Vera, J.E. (ed.) Left to My own devices: Learner Autonomy and
Mobile Assisted Language learning: Innovation and Leadership in English
Language Teaching, 6. Bingley, Emerald Publishing, pp. 1 - 13.
Sharples, M., Taylor, J., Vavoula, G. (2005) 'Towards a
Theory of Mobile Learning' - Accessed via link in Study Materials.
Mobile Learning makes the Boundaries of the Subjects you study mobile too!
Technology-focused changes in pedagogy: the 'affordances' and potential meanings in the term, 'mobile learning'?
Sharples et. al (2005) say that 'mobile learning' is not just about the hardware devices we possess and the software we access through them but about a re-definition of learning. They do this by employing a very wide definition of 'mobility'. For them learner mobility covers the learner's journeys through both space and time but also between different learning projects and topics. In short 'mobile learning' is learning that is not fixed and static in localised space but multiform and distributed across wide expanses of:
Time;
Geographical Distance;
Roles in our life in a specific time phase;
Roles in our life over the whole lifespan including life transitions (becoming a parent and so on);
Subjects we study;
Use of technologies and 'non-technological' learning;
And, the projects in which we access learning formally and informally.
If that is so, learning is not only about 'where' we learn but what we learn and how 'what we learn' is defined. Academic subjects tend to have some specific 'standard' forms based on the 'rules' of the academic discipline. Yet how were such rules and boundaries constructed?
I think Kukulska-Hulme (2012) helps us here by looking at how mobile learning can and does impact on learning a language. We are used to thinking of language study as located in rules governing certain sub-domains, the rules of grammar guiding language syntax for instance. This is only the rule however in areas of study which are not guided by academic linguists. Teaching outside linguistics has been hooked on rules for punctuation, for instance that are often claimed to be commonly misused in academic essays. In any school or college in English-speaking regions there will be at most times a conversation about 'students' not using apostrophes correctly.
But how stable are such rules. It was only in the eighteenth century that rules for punctuation began to be rigidly codified and considered as part of a set of principles through which English language use ought to be organised. This does not mean that it was then or now actually organised like that. The periodic sentence was the invention of an elite - concerned to see language as a hierarchical ordering principle like that they associated with good governance in other realms.
Although this grossly oversimplifies. I think that one way in which this was done was to organise learning around language on canonical examples and rule books and eventually in static organisations called universities. In universities the standards of 'grammar' could be located again as a principle to organise others. There is a reason for the name of 'grammar' schools, which were so essential to state education in the twentieth century.
What Kukulska-Hulme shows us is that mobile learning not only defines where we study language and for what purposes - as we drive our taxi around Athens for instance - but what we learn, which is now defined by shifting and highly flexible variants, defined not by 'standard' rules but local applications. What passes as 'correct' in such circumstances will be very adaptable indeed to the places, times, roles and so on through which we pass. What seems to be suggested is that what defined 'language' in the past - standard rules and lexical categories - will be without function when they are no longer defined by a single static curriculum. And what are academic disciplines but boundaries put around knowledge that are policed and maintained by people recognised (and 'qualified') as experts. This is a wonderful sentence:
"..., language learning can escape the traditional constraints of place and time that partly determine existing curricula, which focus largely on what can be achieved and tested at home or in the classroom” (Kukulska-Hulme 2012:10).
I think it is a wonderful sentence because it enforces a truth, quite delicately I think, that constraints of time and place sometimes define and create boundaries around what you are learning - what the topic in itself IS - not only the locations once thought appropriate to learning. Static learning helped to construct static rules in other words - a kind of standardisation in language that is entirely alien to any 'genuine' experience of even a single language when it becomes subject to mobile learning. As you shift in zones of time, space, role and subject-matter then the rules change with you. No-one ever grasps a language really without grasping that.
For practical tips on MALL see:
http://blog.divii.org/what-is-mall-or-mobile-assisted-language-learning/
References:
Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2012) ':anguage learning defined by time and place: A framework for next generation designs' in Díaz-Vera, J.E. (ed.) Left to My own devices: Learner Autonomy and Mobile Assisted Language learning: Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching, 6. Bingley, Emerald Publishing, pp. 1 - 13.
Sharples, M., Taylor, J., Vavoula, G. (2005) 'Towards a Theory of Mobile Learning' - Accessed via link in Study Materials.