M - learning... another catchy phrase designed to lure us into a brave new world. Mobile learning. The ability to move learning away from a static situation -- it allows the learner to drive some of their own planning, like the when and how we can learn. Mobility of information. Ease of information usage. Multiple uses of technologies, multiple tasking of information. Many different perspectives.
The Smart board demonstration was a good introduction to a kind of technology that is designed specifically for a certain setting. The company used teachers to verify how wonderful the product is in the classroom. The user needs familiarity with files, menus and PC-based menu system, but once that is figured out, it is catchy and feels fun. My personal interest is in the iPad, an item that looks and feels much easier to use. It doesn't pull the eyes of the class to the front of the room, it's more of a personal device. But it feels easy. I'm sure the day is coming when Apple develops a big iDevice with easy-to-use apps that will sit in front of the room. Either item costs money and requires an infrastructure that connects them to the bigger world, but most schools have that in place, so it shouldn't be a huge issue. However, there are some schools that have rooms with only 2 or 3 electrical outlets, and some buildings don't have a wireless connection, which will limit the use of either object.
The RefWorks program is another phenomenal time saver, as long as the user sorts and files information correctly. There have been many occasions when I've had to go back and find a reference, either on the shelf in the library or in a database. This is another smart piece of software that saves time and could save energy. But it's only as good as the information you put into it. It's still essential to check the information you are using or citing for reliability. The average user, looking for a quick fix, might not know how to figure out whether a site is real or not. How can we trust what we are reading or seeing? Just using the product, or obtaining it from cyberspace is no guarantee of accuracy. And the user has to know how to keep all the bits together -- organization of information is just as important.
Ivor Tossell writes about the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising in the Globe and Mail on Feb. 1, 2011: "The transparency and immediacy that the Internet affords can be deceptive...with all the ways we've learned to project our presence electronically, it's easy to imagine ourselves drifting over the line from spectator to participant." Read the article at The Globe and Mail.
How do we define our own roles in using these wonderful new innovations? Are we unbiased users? Did we succumb to the lure of ease in obtaining information? Does the immediacy help us forget where we may cross a line?
The "Thought du Jour" on your side bar today reads: "The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer." -- Alice Williams Rollins
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy this quote. I mean your blog is insightful as always. And it ends off with questions difficult to answer; that only lead to more questions for myself. How addicted am I to the ease of information; to having the internet at my figertips with by blackberry and the convience of being able to look up any newspaper online and compare a multitude of stories from various sources. We have drug addicts and alcholics, sex addicts and those cursed with beiber fever, but are we all just information junkies?
Well, I certainly find that "addiction" is a good word to use in this case. I would challenge any of us to not be online, tied in, checking our email, looking things up for any length of time. Last summer, on my meagre holidays, I felt a bit bummed out because I had no internet access. Of course now it's different because of the "smart" phone, but geez... we went from zero to 100 in a very short time!
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