Informal learning activities using mobile devices that fall into seven categories.

1. INFORMAL LEARNING
ACTIVITIES USING MOBILE
APPLICATIONS

2. 
EXAMPLES OF INFORMAL LEARNING
USING MY MOBILE DEVICE FROM MY
LIFE, IN SCHOOL AND OUTSIDE OF
SCHOOL.

3. COLLABORATIVE:

I use my mobile phone extensively for social
media platforms like Google+ and Pinterest
where I can read articles pinned or shared by
people or communities that I follow and on
topics that interest me. At the same time, I can
share articles and resources that I find
interesting and would like to share with others.
I share the class blog that we have created for
our experiential Learning class on Google+. I
also use Google+ to share photos with family
and friends.

4. LOCATION AWARENESS


I use the GPS on my smart phone to locate new
places like the office of Passport Seva Kendra
which has shifted to a new location since I got my
passport made, or the Hyundai agency in the
Industrial area.
Recently on a visit to Srinagar with my sister, I
realized that there were no fast food joints in
Srinagar or Pehalgam. I googled for these
places, and not surprisingly, I did not find any. I
could only find two outlets of CCD in Srinagar.
Food chains like McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Pizza
hut were conspicuously missing.

5. DATA COLLECTION

I click pictures of my students doing various
activities in their Physics class. These are
used for the school website, school
newsletter, occasionally uploaded on facebook
and sometimes for my Mtech ET class. I made
a collage of the cards that my students gave
me on Teacher's Day and wrote an article on
the Learning Engineers blog.

6. ADMINISTRATION


I recently downloaded a mobile app called
Homework for use by my students. Even
though my students found it quite time
consuming and cumbersome to use, I like
some of its features and hope to use it more
effectively with my older students.
I also use the calendar on my smart phone as
a planner. I use it to plan and maintain my
schedule, code and store important
information and make daily and weekly to-do
lists.

7. REFERENTIAL

I often use the English dictionary to find the
meaning of new words that I come across. I
also encourage my children to do the same.
They find it more interesting to look for the
meaning of a word on a handy mobile
device, than in a dictionary which they first
need to find, because they wouldn’t know
where it is, or would be too lazy to go and get!

8. INTERACTIVE

When my daughter started learning German, I
used the translator on my phone to translate
from English to German and send her
messages in German. I thought I would be
able to learn a little of the language and at the
same time help my daughter stay in touch it
with the language she was learning and
finding extremely difficult.