TJ - The Publication for Learning and Development

Pilot of the airwaves

By Gilly Salmon (November 2004 Issue)
0 Comments Comments
Article Rating:

Poor Best

Email to a friend | Print Version

If you were offered a communication device that enabled you to stay in touch 24/7 with all your learners at a very low cost, requiring no training on your part or theirs, which of the following would you do?

  • Insist it wasn’t used.
  • Invent ways of creating engaging learning using the device.
  • Retire hurt.

Why do I ask? At every theatre, concert and movie I attend, audience members are requested to turn off their mobile phones. The carefully constructed and rehearsed concert might be interrupted by a tinny pop ring tone, or the creepy atmosphere of the thriller interfered with by the attempt at a waltz on my handset. On flights, obediently we give up communicating and strap ourselves in to ensure we cannot interfere with navigation.

Similarly, at each of the 20 conferences I attended this year, announcements constantly urged us to turn off our communication devices. If I forgot, the power of the outraged glares sizzled my handset! But sometimes, quietly, I picked up interesting text messages as a refreshing antidote to the PowerPoint® glaze on the big screen. I wonder why this becomes a moral issue. Will the sky fall in if I multitask just a little? Before you bombard me with ‘Disgusted of Cyberspace’ e-mails, just dwell a while, pause and consider …

Mobile telephones are the greatest interactive and participative communication device the world has ever known, reaching 71 per cent ownership in many cultures. Possession of personal mobiles crosses the wealth and demographic divides that we struggle to overcome in our training. Although the price tag to the suppliers for licensing and networks was billions, the individual cost is affordable for many people.

Mobile devices are adopting the features of other technologies, with better displays, cameras, GPS and music, and considerably increasing their potential purposes. Work continues on reducing the size and producing better batteries.

The owners of any technology create and shape the purposes for which the technology is deployed. The use of mobiles is unpredictable, often to the surprise and chagrin of the marketeers. Howard Rheingold’s recent book, Smart Mobs,1 explains how the impact of mobile technologies can be used for good or evil, in beneficial or negative ways.

The integration of mobile telephones in our lives has gone well beyond personal and business use of convenient voicemail and truly changed societies’ norms on the use of time, safety, work and travel. New cultures and industries are flourishing. Crimes are solved but terrorism also relies on mobile communication. The lives of countless elderly, lonely or disabled people have changed. Massive widescale connection has become commonplace. Forty-six per cent of young people feel bereavement if they lose their telephones. Mobile phones appear where broadband never treads, such as in the great swathes of Africa and Asia. And it’s not over yet.

Embedded computing is coming closer to viability. Earlier this year, Microsoft® patented a device to transmit data using the electrical activity of human skin, opening a pathway to locating mobile devices all around our bodies – our daily news flashed directly to our spectacles, for example.

And where are the educational uses? Almost nowhere. We ask people to turn off their mobile devices if they get within a sniff of formal education or training. Are we so confident in our ability to inspire, enthuse and impart knowledge that we cannot risk an interruption to our star performance of any kind? Are our learners so compartmentalised in their thinking that their education would be doomed if they received a text from the babysitter?

The reality is this: the way we shape our cultural future is not by clinging onto old ways but by the movement we can achieve within the swelling tide. In other words, we need to be the pilot of the new trends. In short, we need to tap into mobile communication for learning. There are some growing experiments such as just-in-time delivery of information or instructions, time management and reminders, extending the physical campus or mobile field work. If each one of you tried something like this soon, and reported back, we will have turned the mobile learning tide. We could then let the providers know what we need – special learning channels perhaps?

I believe it’s incredibly important to harness the power of mobile communication and computing now, before they becomes sanitised into easy-to-use lightweight ‘training aids’. So colleagues, free yourselves from the electronic shovel-ware mentality and experiment with education on the move. Harness that mobility in the service of your educational objects. Turn your mobile on and send a text! ‘You’ll seem like a friend to me.’

Reference
1. Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Perseus Publishing, 2003. Further information visit www.smartmobs.com/book/book_summ.html

Surf it
Peer into the future:
www.longbets.org

Sources of inspiration:
www.mobilearn.org
www.m-learning.org/
www.techlearning.com/palm (see the ‘Handheld Educator’)


Dr Gilly Salmon is Professor of E-learning and Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester. Prior to this appointment, she worked at the Open University Business School for 15 years. Gilly can be contacted at gilly-salmon@le.ac.uk

Back to top | Current TJ

 

Readers Comment

Comment on this story here >

Be the first to comment on this news story