The value of mobile technology in teaching and learning

Mobile technology has developed at an amazing rate in recent years and now deserves a full assessment of its place and value in teaching and learning. “Mobile phones have the potential of becoming a teacher’s ally instead of the scourge of the classroom”. 

(Reece and Walker, 2009; 191)

In this blog post I will be looking at three applications (apps), Socrative, Hot Potatoes and Memrise, and the use of video for teaching and learning.

Socrative is a good example of software that is engaging, whilst also being quick to set up.  The teacher sets the questions and the class vote on a yes/no option.  The results are immediate, live and shown to the class via the Smartboard.  It would be excellent in quickly revisiting objectives of a lesson, as it enables the teacher and class to review main facts of a lesson.  It is limited by its unsuitability for assessments as the answers are given anonymously.

YouTube video of Socrative in the classroom

The Hot Potatoes app has arguably more diverse uses and seems already popular with teachers.  Teachers can set crosswords, word searches and quizzes, and these can be done in the class or for homework. The post sixteen learner is likely to be more engaged with the content presented on screen rather than on paper. The limitation is that Hot Potatoes is not innovative; it has merely made digital versions of traditional tests and games and now feels like old potatoes.

If a class needed to learn key facts then Memrise offers an innovative solution.  I discovered Memrise when studying for an Intermediate Certificate in Welsh Language in 2012.  Which is, as Dr Aaron Balick tweeted, an "Impressive website combining the addictive nature of gaming with memory improvement, really great!” (2012).  Once downloaded, the application provides options for different courses at different levels.  It begins by planting the seeds of memory and then tests by multiple-choice answers or requiring the participant to type in the answer.  Memrise is based on scientific study and its designers claim that they are “working with psychologists and neuroscientists at Oxford University and University College London to push the envelope in the science of Memory.”  If there is a problem word there users can insert ‘Mems’, quirky phrases or images to aide memory recall.  If the subject or level is not already uploaded to Memrise you can upload your own. I fully recommend it and will use it in future teaching.

Even without a fully equipped class with smartphones, a simple but no less effective way of using mobile technology exists.  One of the ways is to request a learner to record with a smartphone or camera a demonstration given by the teacher. This video footage can be uploaded to a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or YouTube and watched on the bus or at home.  This offers learners the chance to catch up with a session they have missed or a chance to recall or review a session.

YouTube is a great source of knowledge and also misinformation.  According to the YouTube website:  “Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth” and “Mobile [devices] make up almost 40% of YouTube's global watch time” (YouTube, 2014). This should not be overlooked.

Teaching learners how to learn is perhaps the greatest gift teachers can give to learners and in an increasingly technological era this should involve learning on-line. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt "Every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation up until 2003" (Seigler, 2010). With this expansion of information comes the huge risk of overload and distraction but huge potential for teaching and learning.  In my view if we do not adapt to using mobile technology in teaching and learning, we have failed to educate learners about the new learning options revolutionising the world they inhabit.

References

Balick, Dr. A. (2012) 'Impressive website...' Available at: https://twitter.com/draaronb/status/268275184040034305

[Accessed 26th December 2014]

Petty, G. (2004) Teaching today (3^rd ed.). Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.

Reece, I. and Walker, S. (2007) Teaching, training and learning: a practical guide (6^th revised ed.). Tyne and Wear: Business Education.
Seigler, M.G. (2010) 'Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As we Did Up To 2003'. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data/ [Accessed: 26th December 2014]
YouTube. (2014) 'Statistics'. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html [Accessed: 26th December 2014]

Bibliography

http://www.memrise.com

https://hotpot.uvic.ca

Building a museum of museums on the web

Last week on my teaching placement I delivered the lesson: 'Painting Techniques - Impressionism and Post Impressionism'.  Within this I delivered a PowerPoint I had put together, to aid my explanation of these art movements and the major artists and artworks associated with them.  
The class was engaged, enjoyed the presentation, were able to discuss the art movement with me and name additional artists and artworks within the movement.

This was all fine but it had its limits.  When I gave a demonstration on the painting techniques of Monet and Van Gogh I was not able to show on the PowerPoint nor on bing, clear images of the brushstrokes of the artists featured in my lesson.  I have since found the Amit Sood TED talk 'Building a museum of museums on the web'.

This TED talk has inspired me to use the Google Art Project in future lessons https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project and to look for on-line art education resources.  Perhaps Amit's point that this is to supplement the experience of going to a museum rather than replicate the experience is true (Sood, 2011).  It could be a way of engaging young people into visiting museums and galleries. As for the point I made earlier about wanting to see brushstrokes of Impressionist artists, Amit has the answer: 
"What if you want to see the brushstrokes?  And what if you want to see how Van Gogh actually created a masterpiece? You zoom in. You really go in." (Sood, 2011). While this would not be possible on web images with thousands of pixels on Google Art Project with around 10 billion pixels you can

These images are of Van Gogh's famous 'The Starry Night', they are screenshots of zooming further and further into the painting.  This is amazing, new, unique and go further into the painting than what we would be able to see in a museum, further than we would ever see. This is a really brilliant teaching aid and one I will be definitely using with my class soon.

Reference

Sood, A. (2011) 'Building a museum of museums on the web'. From transcript available at: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/amit_sood_building_a_museum_of_museums_on_the_web/transcript?language=en. [Accessed: 2nd December 2014]

Bibliography

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project. 

Would anyone else like to Bing it on?

To Bing or not to Bing?

I began teaching from my own Scheme of Work on Friday 21 Nov.  I was asked by a student, during a class discussion and slide show on Impressionism, about further work by Van Gogh.  I had no extra slides on Van Gogh prepared so I 'Googled' him.  In fact as Pembrokeshire College computers do not use Google I actually I 'Bing'd' him.  

I always use Google at home and was happy surprised to find Bing superior to Google.  Superior in that the images were all relevant and there is an option to play images as a slide show, whilst keeping an eye on the images due to come up in the order of slides at the bottom.

Bing is owned by Microsoft and is a major competitor with Google and was launched in 2009.  In Bing's bid to become the main competitor of Google it announced in 2011 it would power Yahoo's organic results.

I had no idea that Bing had quietly been evolving but as Bing's Corporate Vice President, Mike Nichols says: "We continued testing our results [...] Bing was regularly beating Google in web search results quality. [...] It's time to break the Google habit – you deserve more from your search engine."(Nichols, 2012)

Well, needless to say I do deserve more from my search engine, so I rushed to "Bing it on"

This screenshot above shows the results of my bing vs Google test.  Not entirely conclusive but there you go!  I may yet break the Google habit, time will tell. 

References

Nichols, Mike (2012) ‘Take the Bing It On Challenge!’. Available at: http://blogs.bing.com/search/2012/09/06/take-the-bing-it-on-challenge/ [Accessed: 12th November 2014]

Bibliography

Altoft, P, (2014) ‘Yahoo Organic results powered by Bing from 3^rd August in UK’. Available at: http://www.branded3.com/blogs/yahoo-organic-results-powered-by-bing-from-3rd-august-in-uk/ [Accessed: 12th November 2014]
Bing, (2014) ‘Bing it on’, Available at: http://www.bingiton.com [Accessed: 12th Novmber 2014]
Ward-Bailey, J. (2014) ‘Search engine wars: Microsoft invite Google to “Bing it on”’. Available at: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2012/0907/Search-engine-wars-Microsoft-invites-Google-to-Bing-It-On. [Accessed: 12th November 2014]
Bing (2014) Available at: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Post%20Impressionism%20Van%20Gogh [Accessed: 12th November 2014]