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July 05, 2006
Futurelab & Policy Unplugged Event + Mobile Collaborative Learning
I attended the Futurelab/Policy Unplugged Generation@ event yesterday:
Generation@ will provide an opportunity to explore a number of related issues including:* The implications of the extraordinary popularity of social networking websites, what we can learn about how young people conduct themselves in these new digital spaces
* The potential application of social and collaborative software to education and learning
* The idea of a peer-production approach to learning (as found in the open source software scene) and how this could affect the relationship between developers of education resources and users
We did indeed explore these issues. A summary report should be available soon.
I started a small group discussion on 'Mobile Collaborative Learning'. It was an interesting and lively conversation with 20 or so people from a variety backgrounds. I was hoping that we would explore the 'collaborative' component a bit more than the technology (mobile) and the content (Learning) but we did hear about the challenges of mobile user interfaces, the necessity to produce quality content in small bites, challenges of the 'mobile digital divide' and the challenges in the UK of using phones with school age students as they are banned for health reasons!
We were fortunate to have one of Futurelab's authors in our group who shared some great examples of how contextual mobile learning enabled by GPS and other technologies was becoming available (with a new Futurelab tool to be released in the fall). Check out their new publication on 'Social Software and Learning' here. It is a great overview of leveraging web 2.0 technologies for learning and suggests a new term 'c-learning' (community learning, collaborative learning or communicative learning). I've been advocating adding the 'C' learning designs to better engage experts and peers for several years as many of you have heard in my conference presentations - it's great to hear thought leaders adding emerging approaches to the mix and extending it to all ages.
I mentioned a mobile tool called Winksite in the discussion group. Here is information on it and a link to those of you interested.
'Join The WINKsite Mobile Community. In minutes, you can set-up a mobile space that's available worldwide on a web-enabled phone, PDA or desktop PC. Each mobile site is outfitted with easy-to-use mobile channels including chat, blog, mobile feed reader, surveys, journal, forum, calendar, guestbook, bookmarks, email and more.
Overall, my impression is that we are at very early stages with mobile phone based collaborative learning. While the tools are increasingly becoming available, awareness of the mobile web itself remains low today and therefore ideas on how to leverage it are only just now being explored.
Posted by Ron Edwards at July 5, 2006 09:26 AM
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