Evaluating the use of a mobile annotation system for geography education

Abstract

PurposeMobile devices used in educational settings are usually employed within a collaborative learning activity in which learning takes place in the form of social interactions between team members while performing a shared task. The authors aim to introduce MobiTOP (Mobile Tagging of Objects and People), a mobile annotation system that allows users to contribute and share geospatial multimedia annotations via mobile devices.Design/methodology/approachField observations and interviews were conducted. A group of trainee teachers involved in a geography field study were instructed to identify rock formations by collaborating with each other using the MobiTOP system. The trainee teachers who were in the field were guided by their lab counterparts on the tasks required to identify the rock formations.FindingsParticipants were able to appreciate the fieldwork task as it augmented their classroom lessons. The system allowed them to communicate with one another in order to meet the objectives of the study. However, there were some technical difficulties in relation to the affordance of the mobile and web applications that affected the usefulness of the applications.Originality/valueThis study reports the design and implementation of a mobile annotation system that was evaluated in an actual classroom setting. The results of this work have implications for both mobile applications design and mobile learning.

Systematic Review of Outdoor Science Learning Activities with the Integration of Mobile Devices

“…Other studies used mobile device apps to scaffold group work by enabling data and information to be shared among classmates (Yang & Lin, 2010) or by scripting the collaborative learning process by prompting groups to collect data by taking photos (Nouri & Cerratto-Pargman, 2015). Students used mobile device apps in the field to communicate with those in the lab by sending annotated multimedia-locations, images and tags with description-back and forth for scientific discussion (Goh et al, 2012), and other students used co-created knowledge claims communicated by text messages to construct mind maps (Laru, Järvelä, & Clariana, 2012). These examples demonstrate the feasibility of integrating mobile devices to support development of communication and collaboration skills.…”

Functionalities provided by Annotation Systems for Learners in Educational Context: An Overview

“…), images, sounds, videos, etc., are possible [47]. In addition, beyond HTML, the advanced capabilities of modern graphical interfaces are used to represent non-textual annotations in electronic letters shapes drawn with the mouse [7]. Yet, Kahan et al [29] report that it is rare to find an annotation system for performing annotations as fluid as on paper as the use of the mouse in this task is uncomfortable.…”