This qualitative study looked at the instructional, curricular and organizational factors impacting on the adoption of mobile learning in a higher education institution. Academics expressed their views on a variety of educational issues likely to enhance or hinder the effectiveness of the innovation. Teachers requested more professional development in a number of key areas including the integration of the technology into teaching and learning. Likewise, resolving vital issues such as workload, equity to access and effective policy making were seen as key to successful adoption. Technical issues such as having good wireless connectivity, need for efficient technical support, access to mobile devices and an understanding of their operational limitations with respect to desk/laptops were also highlighted. The study revealed a number of alternative perceptions and misconceptions, about articulating effective mobile learning pedagogies. For instance, staff expressed concerns about the risk of exposing students to superficial learning when mobile learning experiences were not well designed, the prospect that the devices might distract students from learning, as well as a possible deterioration of the quality of interaction between academics and students. Recommendations to reconcile those alternative conceptions with best practice principles are outlined
This paper discusses gaming in a Western Australian school for boys. The overriding ethos of the school is supportive of the potential of ICT to better engage students and deliver enhanced educational outcomes. The school sees game-based design as at the vanguard of innovation, but also accepts its important duty of care responsibilities. Tensions were revealed between the opportunities presented by educational gaming and the perceived problem of managing student distraction, particularly the tendency for students to spend large amounts of time playing games that have little or no educational value. The paper describes the forms of gaming that emerged at the school, considering both their educational impact and propensity to detract from students' opportunities to learn. It is argued that the perceived benefits and risks of gaming are not well understood, and that powerful political forces are at play which shape school policy, teachers' pedagogy, parent perceptions and student actions.
In 2010, the Australian Commonwealth government initiated an $8m project called Teaching Teachers for the Future. The aim of the project was to engage teacher educators in a professional learning network which focused on optimising exemplary use of information and communications technologies in teacher education. By taking part in this network, participants were afforded opportunities to transform their practice through a range of localised initiatives that applied information and communications technologies to the art and science of teaching and learning. One of these initiatives involved reengineering a university mathematics unit targeted at pre-service teachers. Information and communications technologies were purposefully embedded using Mishra and Koehler's (2006) Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge model as a conceptual framework. This paper discusses the outcomes of the initiative. Pre-service teachers and staff involved in the unit shared their stories about the changes they had noticed in both their thinking and practice. The results of the initiative were heartening, and it is hoped that the constructs used will translate into other learning areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.