Mobile Learning: location, collaboration and scaffolding inquiry

Critiques of mobile learning pedagogy are concerned with whether such approaches are technology led. This chapter discusses how the particular features of mobile learning can be harnessed to provide new learning opportunities in relation to collaboration, inquiry and location-based learning. Technology supported inquiry learning is a situation rich with possibilities for collaboration. In particular, mobile learning offers new possibilities for scaffolding collaboration together with its other better-known features such as scaffolding the transfer between settings and making learning relevant by making use of the possibilities of location-based learning. These features are considered as part of mobile learning models, in particular mobile collaborative learning models

Implementing Bring Your Own Device and the Paperless Classroom: A Change Leadership Project

My journey through the implementation of an action plan for a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program is presented in this research document. The action plan incorporated the addition of industrial certification standards for technology integrated into the core curriculum at a public middle school (grades 6-8) during the 2014-2015 school year. Technology skills became a part of students’ daily learning opportunities. An eSTEAM Academy provided interested students and teachers with technology training and skills for classroom inclusion and blended model of face-to-face instruction enhanced with technology in a “paperless” classroom environment. This is an account of our successful journey in the ever changing, ever challenging pursuit of technology infused 21st Century educational excellence

The Meeting Journey: Supporting the Design of Interaction Within Co-located, Collaborative Device Ecologies

The combination of personal and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technologies with augmented "smart" spaces designed for collaborative work offers new design challenges for the HCI community. This thesis looks at how BYOD technologies can integrate with such spaces in the context of cross-channel collaboration, from a user experience (UX) perspective. In addition to this, the work looks at how BYOD technologies can replace smart spaces entirely and form space-agnostic collaborative device ecologies. A series of qualitative empirical studies were undertaken that led to the development of the concept of a meeting journey. The meeting journey is an abstract representation of the different steps, tools and activities undertaken by users in the context of a co- located collaborative activity aimed to inform the design of such systems. The meeting journey helped define a series of design principles for collaborative device ecologies. Whilst the longitudinal aspects of collaboration have been well covered by work in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and supported by a number of commercial products, the UX of co-located ad hoc meetings have not. Such meetings are still characterised by difficult and awkward interactions due to different technologies, levels of computer literacy and processes. The concept proposed to improve the desirability of collaborative device ecologies following the design principles previously defined is based on a hybrid approach, built on an extensible framework nicknamed “OIL”. The sharing activities specific to ad hoc collaborative meetings are delegated to a consistent user interface, whilst the ecology retains a platform-agnostic philosophy as to which applications and devices are used by the participants. The final part of the thesis relates the development of a proof-of-concept hybrid system inspired by OIL, and its evaluation using desirability metrics. This leads to a discussion of the possibilities of extensions to the proof of concept, including support for more steps of the meeting journey, a broader set of functionalities, and a broader range of issues such as security and data ownership

Horizon Report Europe - 2014 Schools Edition

The NMC Horizon Project from the New Media Consortium is a long-term investigation launched in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. The NMC Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, the first of its kind for Europe, examines six key trends, six significant challenges and six important developments in educational technology that are very likely to impact educational change processes in European schools over the next five years (2014-2018). The topics within each section were carefully selected by the Horizon Project Europe Expert Panel, a body of 53 experts in European education, technology, and other fields. They come from 22 European countries, as well as international organisations and European networks. Throughout the report, references and links are made to more than 150 European publications (reports, articles, policy documents, blog posts etc.), projects (both EU-funded and national initiatives) and various policy initiatives from all over Europe. The Creative Classrooms multidimensional framework, developed by European Commission’s JRC-IPTS on behalf of DG EAC, was used for analysing the trends, challenges and technologies impacting European schools over the next five years. The analysis reveals that a systemic approach is needed for integrating new technologies in European schools and impacting educational change over the next five years.JRC.J.3-Information Societ