Alps alt c_2010

ALT-C Workshop: Navigating Through the Storm – Using Theory to Plan Mobile Learning Deployment Introduction to ‘Socio-Cultural Ecology’ and User Generated Contexts John Cook Learning Technology Research Institute London Metropolitan University

Framework : “Socio-Cultural Ecology” ( Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010)
Grounds readers by offering
theoretical and conceptual models
analytical framework for understanding the issues
Recommendations for specialised resources
Practical examples of mobile learning
in formal (school) as well as informal educational settings
Particularly with at-risk students

Macro framework: Socio-Cultural Ecology
Structures (digital tools and media)
educational institutions no longer define alone what learning and knowledge are and they are certainly no longer the only, even the main location where learning and knowledge can be accessed and takes place.
From push to pull, change of mass communication and media convergence
individualised mobile mass communication and social fragmentation into different milieus.
Agency (capacity to act on the world)
formation of identity and subjectivity
environment a potential resource for learning
different habitus of learning and media attitudes; a new habitus of learning is one of the characteristics of at risk-learners.
Cultural practices (routines in stable situations)
Institutional settings, be they school, university, the work place etc.
Media use in everyday life (includes informal/non-formal)

Micro framework: User Generated Contexts
Cook et al (accepted) suggest we should be looking at the student- or user-generated contexts as
‘ zones of proximal development’ or ZPD
Vygotsky (1978/1930)
Situated Learning
Or conversational threads

User Generated Contexts
The nature of learning is being ‘augmented’
Citizens/users are now actively engaged in generating their own content and contexts for learning
Calling this User Generated Contexts (UGC)
UGC is a micro view of ‘context’

Situated Learning
learning that takes place in the same 'context' in which it is applied
there is a link between meaning-making and situation/site of practice
(Lave and Wenger; for discussion see Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010)
But for me you can get
contexts within contexts
you can learn across contexts
and this blurs things
“ Context” is a slippery notion

Users of mobile digital devices are being ‘afforded’ synergies of knowledge distributed across local, augmented and virtual:
people
communities
location
time (life-course)
social contexts and sites of practice ( like socio-cultural milieus)
networks
systems, structures and media

Engage in the constant action and negotiation of a mutual understanding of their learning situations
Affiliated in increasingly loose configurations
Enabled external representations of knowledge
beyond the 'here and now'
to be drawn on and constructed to augment
individual learners' internal conceptualisations of knowledge
social uses that are made of knowledge in specific sites (of learning)

Dynamic knowledge building
Rootedness in social interaction, literacy and attention
Cognitive reflection leading to
meaning being emergent
rather than predetermined
(Issue: what can we design for? What do we leave to run time? Tightly/loosely coupled?)

Location-based urban education tour (Smith, et al., accepted)
Mscape and uses GPS to ‘push’ learning content.
Created a ZPD that allowed space for learners to generate their own context
active learning tasks
Learner audio blogs for subsequent reflection

Based on observation & feedback
Students’ attention becomes more focused
Concentrate on the tour more because they are looking out for what is coming up on the device
Then work on the tasks provided
Become active learners and are not merely taking in information passively

ZPD in the case study
“ The information given was underlined by the 'experience' of the area and, therefore, given context in both past and present.”
Being reflective of past and present
They were active participants and not passive recipients in the process as they moved along stages of development in a zone of proximal development.

UGC/ZPD guidelines (1)
Mobile phones and other mobile devices function as global cultural resources within a mobile, individualized and convergent mass communication.
This dramatically new mode of mass communication includes user-generated contexts which serve amongst other things as archives for media and knowledge.

Mobile phones and other mobile devices function as resources for learning in formal and informal contexts.
An educational task is to use mobile devices for the assimilation of learning of students in everyday life as native and naïve experts.

Situated learning is a way of accessing the essentials of learning which are hidden underneath the established practices of school learning.
The focus of the concept of situated learning is based on learning as meaning-making in context.
Learning as meaning-making brings into play the life-world of the student.
It creates a context that contains the powerful option to replace the passive transfer of knowledge, which is still in the foreground of many schools

References
Cook, J., Pachler, N. and Bachmair, B. ( accepted ). Ubiquitous Mobility with Mobile Phones: A Cultural Ecology for Mobile Learning. E-Learning and Digital Media . Special Issue on Media: Digital, Ecological and Epistemological.
Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices . New York: Springer.
Smith, C., Bradley, C., Cook, J. and Pratt-Adams, S. (accepted). Designing for Deep and Active Learning: Putting Learning into Context with Mobile Devices. In Anders D. Olofsson and J. Ola Lindberg (Eds), Informed Design of Educational Technologies in Higher Education: Enhanced Learning and Teaching . IGI Global. Due 2011.
Vygotsky, L. (1978 / 1930). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes . Edited by M. Cole et al., Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.

Alps alt c_2010

by London Metropolitan University on Sep 07, 2010

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