Going Mobile

                                 


Nowadays, it's much easier to find interesting ideas online that can cause a great impact on our teaching practice. One of these days, I came across a blog called Mapping Media to the Curriculum which starts with a very simple question: what do you want to create today? The author talks about different apps that students can use to produce digital content. I explored some of the ideas and decided to experiment with Mobile Learning (mLearning). Learning a language has to be a dynamic and automonous process.  However, I had some questions on the back of my mind:

Does Mlearning add value to my lessons?
What are the benefits?
Can I use it with all group levels effectively?
Do I have to work harder?

I got together with  Jose Antonio and we presented a workshop called - One Ipad-Only Class - to tell our peers about our experiences, tips and ideas regarding mlearning. Here you can read about what we said.

We talked about the main characteristics of each age group, and we showed activities that are easy to carry out to maximize learning that respect the aforementioned general traits.

We started talking about adult learners. What are the main characteristics? What should a task designer have in mind when planning a task?

The adult learner

                            http://www.freakingnews.com/Van-Gogh-Modernized-Pictures----3289.asp

• Long attention span.
• Ability to deal with tasks that are not intrinsically motivating.
• To maximize learning plan tasks that appeal to multiple senses and lower affective filters.

Su 

We then suggested some  activities that we used with our groups. It's important to mention that all the APPS used worked offline and are free. Click on the links below for details.
Proverbs  
Order of adjectives
Subordinating conjunctions

The teenage learner

• Child- like playfulness
• Adult-like ability to hypothesize and think critically
• Facts surrounding ego, self -esteem and  self- image are at pinnacle.
• Teachers should affirm talents and strengths and encourage collaboration

Suggested activities

Story telling 

The young learner

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

• Concrete operation
• Centeredness in functional purposes of the language
• Can understand patterns and examples

Suggested activities

The Weather Book

Doodling songs

José Antonio and I counted with the contribution of Denise De Felice, who added a prespective on how the brain works and how/why the proposed activities might be effective to boost learning.


When I reflect upon my experience, I come to the conclusion that Mlearning can be very powerful if we hold truth to our teaching principles, respect our students and find the correct practices that mirror our beliefs. I have gone mobile. Have you?