Ubiquitous learning or learn how to learn and you'll never have to learn anything again?
| Type of publication: | Incollection |
| Citation: | Beale2007a |
| Booktitle: | Beyond Mobile Learning: Workshop: The CSCL Alpine Rendez-Vous |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Pages: | 64--65 |
| Publisher: | Dublin Press |
| Address: | Dublin |
| Note: | Beale 2007 - Ubiquitous learning or learn how k, 27.05.2007 |
| ISBN: | 1871408482 |
| Crossref: | Arnedillo-SanchezSharples2007: |
| URL: | http://mlearning.noe-kaleidosc... |
| Abstract: | First came teachers: Plato spoke, asking questions - as did Socrates (giving rise to the Socratic method). People gathered, discussed, thought, reasoned, and were enlightened. Then came books. People read, thought, reasoned, and were educated. We then had teachers: talking, and using books, to instil knowledge in students, who listened, and read, and discussed, and wrote, and became educated. Then came e-teaching: like teaching, only on computers. People found it slightly harder to get to grips with, were sometimes educated, often frustrated, and were occasionally educated. The came e-learning: structured, personalised education based on personal abilities and interests. People were a little put off by their e-teaching experiences, but gave it a go, and it worked though the complexity of systems, the frustrations of computers, were still there. learning on mobile devices - and when people worked out that presenting large quantities of material on a small screen was sub-optimal, and that there were better things to do with mobile devices than focus on their least effective features, like their display or memory, we gained context- and location-sensitive systems, which provided relevant content tailored to individuals, and at least in the laboratory. But with all these systems, different forms of learning were supported in different ways, and students adopted different learning styles and approaches to maximise their benefits from the technologies. Educators realise this, and propose that blended approaches to learning are used, since different topics, styles and learners benefit differently from the alternative approaches. For best effect, history has shown us that new technologies do not tend to best support existing practices; instead, they open up new opportunities for alternative learning that suits the medium more. Books widened participation; e-teaching tried to present books and schoolroom teaching on a computer, and failed, whereas proper e-learning utilised the multimedia capabilities of the system, and related it to models of user knowledge acquisition and self-testing and presented tailored programmes that suited users. Mobile learning has come into its own now that it better understands the nature of mobility (devices and users) and plays to the strengths of context, location, and immediate presentation of relevant and interesting information. So the interesting question is, where will we go next? What form of learning should we be considering for the next step beyond mobile learning? From both a technological and a social perspective, the next step beyond mobility is ubiquity: a vision of the world in which multitudinous devices are embedded in the everyday world, around our persons, and in the devices we carry. These systems communicate with each other and with us, connecting us every closer to a digital web in which information, the environment, other participants and ourselves are closely interwoven. If we try to present educational approaches that we currently use into this new mesh of interpersonal, interwoven information spaces, we are doomed to fail. Interaction in this new world is it is mediated as if by magic by multitudinous systems, many of which we have little or no comprehension of, and it is these differences in interaction that occurred at each of the historical shifts in approaches to education and learning. Current educational dilemmas present us with an insight into these issues. Questions have become less meaningful in today's educational landscape: Google can answer a question, with no knowledge acquired by the student. Essays can be produced from essay banks, with the student participating in the learning process not one iota. However, knowing how to use information tools has become critical. In the ubiquitous future, it is quite likely if you know how to get to it. Facts become merely items to be accessed, rather than knowledge to be acquired. Knowing how to find out information, how to manipulate it, how to condense it; these will become key skills. Verifying information is reputable, understanding its veracity, assessing quality and reliability, combining and presenting it with conciseness and precision: these will be the key skills that separate the good from the bad, the innovative from the plodders. If you know how to access information, what information to trust, and how to combine and present it, then actually knowing anything will become irrelevant: details can be provided by the back end systems, by the environment. Deciding how best to access and fuse the different, conflicting and potentially overwhelming quantity of data will be a distinguishing feature of the new learning agenda. Finding new ways of seeing things, being creative, providing new perspectives on the world and our place in will become more important. Though maybe it was always thus? |
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| Added by: | [ADM] |
| Total mark: | 0 |
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