SMILE is an open-source mobile inquiry-based learning environment. Learn more at http://www.smileconsortium.org/ Talk from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/unesco-mobile-learning-week/webinar/paul-kim/

1. SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment)
Thailand Indonesia
India Korea
Paul Kim
Assistant Dean &
Chief Technology Officer
Stanford University
Graduate School of Education
phkim@stanford.edu

2. 6B out of 7B/ 2B in drawers
Previous Mobile Learning Research leading to develop SMILE

3. A few projects
Mobile Learning Initiatives for migrant indigenous children who never owned any book
2006

5. 2008
Game-based mobile learning

6. PocketSchool
2009

7. PocketSchool is an initiative to give educational access to
underserved children and mitigate digital, education, and
economic divides.
Contextualization

8. Madaris Migrant Children (Never attended schools) playing Math games
2-hour drive from Rajkot, India

9. From device recognition to problem solving through collaborations.
Response tracking log

10. 10

14. `
14

16. USA
Science - Textbook content remixing

17. 17
Embedded mobile device to measure wind
power and velocity from analyzing data
captured with mobile devices
Documentation and
Visualization of
Evidence of
Collective design thinking

18. Understanding Education Ecosystem
PEDAGOGY
NEW POSSIBILITIES
VALUE
APPLICABLE
CONTEXTUALIZED
SHARABLE / REPLICABLE
CATALYZE LEARNING
ENABLING AGENT
TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
Perceived Value
Value alignment -teacher/parent/ school leader/ student
Motivate all constituencies
ANSWERS “WHY?”
IGNITE PASSION
Must continue to evolve

19. What is SMILE?

20. Educational Perspective
• SMILE is a pedagogical /andragogical model
• SMILE is a learning tool
• SMILE is an inquiry maker
• SMILE is a peer assessment tool
• SMILE is a presentation tool
• SMILE is a discussion stimulus tool
• SMILE is a student evaluation tool
• SMILE is a mobile learning management system
• SMILE is a learning object repository
• SMILE is an exam practice tool

21. Technical Perspective
• SMILE consists of a SMILE server and mobile devices
• SMILE consists of a teacher/facilitator system and
student application
• 2 models - SMILE ADHOC and SMILE GLOBAL
• SMILE ADHOC is for places without Internet access
• SMILE ADHOC can run on battery in classrooms
without electricity
• SMILE GLOBAL allows people to share, solve, present,
and evaluate questions globally

22. Economic Perspective
• SMILE ADHOC uses mobile devices such as Android
phones or tablets ranging from $30 to $500 ea
• Typically, students work in teams, sharing one device
per two or three students in each group
• For example, a class of 75 students can participate in
a SMILE session with 25 mobile devices
• A school with multiple classes can take turns by
moving the devices from one classroom to another
• Typically, a class runs SMILE sessions twice a week
• SMILE ADHOC requires a notebook or SMILE Plug
• All SMILE software solutions are FREE open source

23. How does SMILE work?

24. Make
Question
Incorporate
Mobile media
Share
SolveRate
Reflect
Exchange
Mobility, Social Networking, & Gamification
In Teams
Where is lecture or memorization?

25. S
Depending on different goals, students can create multiple choice questions or
open-ended questions

26. Ask this group why they made this question!

27. Student-made questions are shared,
solved, rated, presented, discussed, and
saved (if rated suitable for re-use).
Teacher/ facilitator may allow students
to use Internet before, during, or after
the session if Internet is available.
Students use a rubric to evaluate peer
questions and present their rationale.
A locally developed rubric may cover:
clarity, relevance, effectiveness of
media, level of learning (creative critical
thinking vs. traditional simple recall).
Teacher/ facilitator pinpoints mistakes,
misunderstandings, issues, etc.

28. Tanzania
Questions in Swahili and English.
No textbook. Only the teacher owns
textbooks.
Learning English by creating questions with
photos. (Bottom)

29. Why do we need SMILE in schools?

30. What do we do in our schools?
Which characteristic of motion could change
without changing the velocity of an object?
A) the speed
B) the position
C) the direction
D) the acceleration State standards - 8th grade science test
• Teachers give students what to memorize for tests
• Someone did all the necessary research and made questions for students
• This is a typical simple recall question

31. Current Model
Teachers come up with
questions while students
do rote memorization
and simple recalls.

32. What we don’t do in schools?
Creating
Evaluating
Analyzing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
Forgetting
What we do in schools
SMILE
Team Collaboration
Gamification
Higherorderlearning

33. SMILE MODEL
We can leverage mobile
technology to increase
student engagement and
achievement in all levels of
education and scenarios.

34. How do we implement SMILE?

35. 1st Students make practice questions on paper

36. 2nd Students make questions with mobiles

37. 3rd Students solve the peer-generated problems

38. 2nd – Students Make Questions with Mobile
4th Students evaluate the problems

40. 1. Selebra - celebra
2. Celebrated
3. In 1851?
4. Exposition
5. Prince Albert
6. Queen Victoria

41. There are many variations on how to run SMILE
Students read a chapter and come up with questions.
Students conduct research and come up with questions.
One group makes questions and another group comes up with
possible answers.
Best student questions made in previous sessions are reused.
Student teams compete in evaluation scores.
Student question repositories are exchanged.

42. After initial workshop…
Local teachers run SMILE workshops
Collect student questions
Analyze student questions on
Change of quality, pattern, scope, etc.

43. What have we learned so far?

44. Indonesia – Rural Village School
Math – Multi-age/ multi ability group
Advanced questions challenge less advanced students
Advanced students benefit from diverse questions

45. • Teachers were able to take over
running sessions after observing 3
initial sessions.
•It took about 3 sessions for
students to feel comfortable with
the SMILE model.
• Students were able to take photos and
add them into their questions.
• Teachers were active in coming up
with their own ideas about how to use
the technology in their classrooms.

46. Dropbox syncing questions

47. Surprisingly quick to adapt to the new learning model. 1st graders give extreme ratings: 1 or 5

48. S. Korea. Medical University - BYOD
Moving from lecture-centered to
student interaction centered model
Developed local evaluation rubrics

49. SMILE Plug Prototype with batteries for places without electricity.
The plug also contained many educational games & videos including TED Talks.

50. Influencing Industry Adoption
Creates a reliable digital classroom
Private classroom cloud for up to 60 students
Easy, low-cost deployment (Manufacturing cost $30)
Portable Wi-Fi access point, gateway, & content server

51. Findings
• High engagement
• Mobile media & network make learning interesting & interactive
• Mobile – portable, versatile, affordable, sharable & simple
• Students collaborate within own groups & compete against others
• Learning and assessment take place at the same time
• Teachers as facilitators and subject matter experts
• SMILE could be used for all learning scenarios in all conditions
• Simple & low cost implementation (share & rotate the use of
devices)

52. Findings
• Students are not used to making questions
• Early questions are all simple recall questions
• Question quality improves over time, but many
sessions are needed
• Must be integrated in existing curriculum first
• Teachers often want to have students make exam
practice questions, not open questions

53. Upcoming
• GLOBAL SMILE - Students should be able to exchange
questions globally, to generate questions at their
convenience, and to solve questions at own pace
• SMILE Plug – to be packaged with open education
content for developing regions
• SMILE Consortium – to establish open source
consortium

54. Big Challenges

55. small screen, game addiction, no nature, etc.

56. Documenting
Manipulating
Sharing
Making questions
Organizing
Presenting

57. Measuring
Analyzing
Verifying
Experimenting

58. Creating
Capturing
Sharing
Collaborating
Solving problems made by peers
Peer evaluating

59. Bigger Challenges

60. Question:
What is science?
Teacher:
Leads discussion on
whether this is a
good question, asks:
is it properly written
in English, is it
creative?
Explain why climate change
influences human activities?
Why do leaves fall?

61. SMILE introduced to
23 countries and reached over 25,000 students
worldwide
SMILE Consortium established

62. Wireless Broadband
Tanzania Airtel 3.75G Coverage Map
2.5G (GPRS), 3G (UMTS) and 3.5G and HSPA+
South Africa (Cell C)
Congo-Brazzaville (Airtel)
Sierra Leone (Airtel)
Zambia (Airtel)
Ghana (Airtel)
Nigeria (Etisalat)
Egypt (Etisalat)
Kenya (Airtel)
Nigeria (Airtel)
Tanzania (Airtel)
Rwanda (Airtel)
Malawi (Airtel)
Madagascar (Airtel)

71. Questions?
Paul Kim
digitalschema@gmail.com