Posts made by Tia Carr Williams

How many people use mobile technology?

According to Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, there are 900 million personal computers users and  2 billion mobile phones (rising daily) currently in use around the world. With mobile devices becoming a primary way for people connect to the Internet Semel suggests that much accessing of  information, connect ion to online learning communities, and creation of content for the Internet via a mobile device will become normative.

A recent study by the Irish National Teachers Organization (INTO) endorsed this idea. According to INTO, only 20% of the 671 students surveyed report using their mobiles to make phone calls, whereas 81% report using their mobile to communicate via text or IM messages.

The INTO survey seems to dovetail with the results of a 2005 Pew Internet and American Life study on teens and technology. Like their peers in Ireland, American youth preferring using IM or TM for everyday conversations with friends.

Other key findings from the Irish National Teachers Organization survey:

96% of 11 & 12 year old students have a mobile phone
60% have a camera on it
72 % say they use it to access the Internet
20% use it to make calls
81% use it to send texts


Acknowledging the growing connection between mobile media and youth, the popular social networking community MySpace teamed with Helio to provide a mobile version that includes access to Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and various Yahoo! services.

A 2005 study conducted by the United States-based Kaiser Family Foundation also found that, although 90% of teen online access occurs in the home, most Gen Y students also have web access via mobile devices such as a mobile phone (39%), portable gaming device (55%), or other web-enabled hand held device (13%).

Derek Baird suggests that 'In order to create a better and more relevant learning environment for the digital learning styles of the Gen Y student, there is a need to integrate new pedagogical strategies that support the authentic use of technology to support and foster student motivation, collaboration, and learning.

The convergence of mobile and social media technologies, on-demand content delivery and early adoption of portable media devices provides higher education with an opportunity to leverage these tools into learning environments that seem authentic to the Gen Y students filling the virtual and physical halls of the 21st century university.

This is exactly the kind of conversation that needs to happen--especially here in the USA where our use of mobile technology to support student learning (mLearning) lags behind that of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia.'

Related Resources

Looking Forward: Thinking About mLearning
Learning 3.0: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
Leonard Low + mLearning
MoSoSo, Gen Y & Digital Learning Styles
MobilED
Totally Mobile

Given that this seems to be verified, Im kicking off with two excellent pdf's that give us a very comprehensive view about how the 'm' generation (m is for moble and we are talking phones) has a very specific way of transacting with information.

I believe the first document allows us to really understand the the deep connection (if you'll pardon the pun) that the student generation have with the immediacy of communication. Clearly, this has ramifications in a broad behavioural shift that cannot fail to reflect itself in the classroom. I would be interested to hear from you about observations on this.

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-8DF23CA704F5%7D/C&S_The_Mobile_Generation.pdf

My second choice to get our conversation started is from Educause and is a very good articulation from several perspectives about the expectations of the 'Net Generation' by Chris Dede, who is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.  Chris has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Educationaland Psychological Assessment, the U.S. Department of Education’s Expert Panel on Technology, and the International Steering Committee for the Second International Technology in Education Study. , so he should know a thing or three.

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub7101o.pdf

Remember, we will aggregate all the pdf's in a final document if you don't have time to download and read now, however, I shall be asking questions later.....

Nick,

Good point. I believe Paul or Sandy are recording them for asynchronous access but of course that doesnt allow you to be there. How much time differential would permit your attendance..would you need a later time, I dont think anyone in Vancouver could manage earlier?

Let me welcome you to Scope's 'Social Media for Educators' organized in collaboration with BCcampus Online Learning Communities.

I hope that you will find time to contribute and collaborate during the three weeks. I also hope you will take advantage of introducing yourself by the 'Voice Thread' as an opening gambit which is a new tool we are playing with.

I know that the assembled team come with outstanding pedigree and a deep desire to make your experience very productive in providing you with a forum and an opportunity to voice concerns, ask the tough questions, resouce answers from the collective experience of the attendees as well as the team.

I will do my usual net scouting to retrieve quality research around the topic which we will store in a thread for easy access and will be available in a 'take away' pdf by Therese Weel, who always provides stellar resource aggegation.

I sincerely hope you will get a lot out of the coming weeks and come away with a better sense of the role social media technology and application can provide in delivering education to the digital natives in your classrooms and elsewhere.

I would like to thank everyone else in the team for contributing their time and efforts to make this event a spectacular collective journey.

Tia

So, I'll kick off!

My name is Tia Carr Williams and Im an english woman living in Columbus, Ohio (which I put down to bad karma). Ive been here for nearly five years and have been working online for most of that time. In my previous incarnations I have run my own health centre, worked in Personnel and Hospital management, been a mature student in Psychology and Religion and raised two fine young adults on the way.

I parlayed my soft skills training into being an online consultant for Social Media (plenty of us about) as well as moderating and facilitating and coaching new entrepreneurs.

Im very excited about the opportunities that New Media Technologies represent in the field of learning, teaching and training as I think we have an unprecedented situation in accelerating the knowledge of young people if we can capture their imagination and their natural proclivity towards net life.

Tomorrow's Elluminate session will feature Truls Henriksen, the CEO of www.EctoLearning.com who will speak with authority about the needs and challenges of social media for educators and their students. I do hope you will join us.

My daily contribution today is to draw your collective attention to this iniative and the fine paper at the end of this post, which I believe helps us to frame some of our own concerns, potentially, as well as monitor their research to find solutions.

'TENCompetence is a 4-year EU-funded Integrated IST-TEL project that will develop a technical and organisational infrastructure for lifelong competence development. The infrastructure will use open-source, standards-based, sustainable and innovative technology. With this freely available infrastructure the European Union aims to boost the European ambitions of the Knowledge Society, by providing all European citizens, SMEs and other organisations easy access to facilities that enable the lifelong development of competencies and expertise in the various occupations and fields of knowledge.

The TENCompetence infrastructure will support the creation and management of networks of individuals, teams and organisations in Europe who are actively involved in the various occupations and domains of knowledge. These 'learning networks' will support the lifelong competency development of the participants from the basic levels of proficiency up to the highest levels of excellence. The network consists of learners, educational institutes, libraries, publishers, domain specific vendors, employers, associations, and all others who deliver services or products in the specific field.

 

The learning networks include:

  • competency frameworks for the different occupations/fields of knowledge
  • formal as well as informal learning facilities, including the sharing of knowledge, learning activities, units of learning and learning programmes
  • the learning of individuals as well as of teams and organisations
  • all levels of learning: primary, secondary and tertiary education, adult and company training and other forms of informal learning
  • social exchange mechanisms to stimulate the exchange, sharing and support between the individuals, teams and organisations within the network.

The project will:

  • develop new innovative pedagogical approaches, assessment models and organisational models for lifelong competence development
  • develop software for the effective support of users who create, store, use and exchange knowledge resources, learning activities, units of learning and competence development programmes within a learning network
  • integrate isolated models and tools for competence development into a common, easy to use infrastructure
  • run pilots, at least in the field of digital cinema, health care, water management and lifelong learning cities, to ensure the validity and viability of the approach
  • deliver training programs to learn users how to work with the infrastructure, and to train instructors and companies (specifically SMEs) to deliver services using the infrastructure
  • build a growing network of associated partners to ensure large-scale use in Europe.

A paper addressing a variety of issues, not forgetting the Peer to Peer learning functionality, that is very much a feature of contemporary learning styles and highly enabled in Gen Y through their behavioural attributes accustomed through MySpace and YouTube. To share is to teach....a kind of buddy mentoring.