I am now back from the ‘Learning in the Workplace’ conference where I was very pleased to be able to see several examples of what mobile learning can mean. It is a topic which I have been reading about for over a year now yet I haven’t really got to grips with it. From the examples shown, it seems clear that mobile learning is well-suited to the more practical subjects such as building, carpentry, home help services and farming but that it also has applications in more academic professions such as hospital registrars. It is also clear that I must give much more thought as to how I could make my courses more visual in order to fit the mobile format. One of the main advantages of mobile learning was seen to be the shift away from text to help those with reading difficulties. Another advantage is that it is very far away from the traditional classroom format which is still very scary to many adults. Cost was not an issue for any of the presenters even though it is often the first obstacle I think of. But one telling observation was that learning through dialogue does not seem so successful in mobile format which is counter-intuitive to me but was mentioned at least twice in different contexts. Perhaps that is for the future. As a language teacher I was interested in the language learning application from ARM Lingua, though unfortunately I missed that session and have only visited the website. I sympathise with the basic philosophy that oral skills are very important for beginners but am wary of language courses which are over-structured and don’t allow for free speech or following learner interests. We are back to the lack of dialogue issue.
There was also a lot of talk about learning objects in this conference and I can certainly follow the logic of this when mobile learning seems to require learning to be divided into incredibly small chunks (max 2 minutes). I can also see the logic of learning objects for practical and technical learning. But I don't see a big place for learning objects in language learning. Many will immediately cite grammar at me, I'm sure, but I believe that even grammar learning should mainly be based on dialogue with the grammar book lying in the background to be reached for only in case of emergency.
I am sure that there are more bicycles per head in Copenhagen than in Beijing!
