The document summarizes a workshop on mobile learning environments called Womble. The workshop aims to discuss how mobile phones can support contextual and work-integrated learning. Participants will develop scenarios for using mobile applications to support authentic learning situations outside the classroom. They will cluster and discuss mobile apps, then develop a mashup scenario presenting a practical solution using available or imaginary applications.
1. Womble (Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environments) Workshop #telss10 Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning, Ohrid, Macedonia, June 2010 http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/summer-school-2010 http://mature-ip.eu/en/start Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook John Cook, Graham Attwell and Carl Smith
Contact details: Professor John Cook, Email: john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk Home page: http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnnigelcook Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook Blip.fm: http://blip.fm/johnnigelcook http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/home.php?ref=home http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_side_pro http://www.plaxo.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wombles The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures that live in burrows, where they help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. Wombles were created by author Elisabeth Beresford , originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. The characters later became nationally famous in the mid 1970s as a result of a popular BBC children's television show using stop motion animation . A number of spin-off novelty songs also became major hits in the British music charts.
The idea of the workshop, and therefore the value added for the Summer School participants in terms of all 3 Grand Challenges, is to reflect on mobile based contextual learning and communication, to discuss the relevance of social connectivity in terms of how to orchestrate privacy issues, and to develop scenarios and solutions for mobile (work-integrated) learning; importantly, this will be based on the participants available or imagined applications. We would like to explore these questions: How do people work with mobile apps and how are they related to their work? How much are they integrated in their work? Is their a difference between private use, work-based use and social collaborative use in terms of mobile learning?
Some important characteristics of mobile devices, which make them attractive to us from a work based learning perspective, include among other things increasing portability, diverse functionality, multimedia convergence, ubiquity, personal ownership, social interactivity, context sensitivity, location awareness, connectivity and personalisation. At the same time, connectivity affords the user ubiquitous access to people and services, what De Waele calls ‘contextual communication’, which he sees characterised by: presence (psychological environment), location (physical environment) and communities (social environment).
Therefore, the workshop should be set up in two sessions. The first session can look like this: 1.1) Participants are invited to pin notes with their favourite mobile apps on a whiteboard and cluster them afterwards for certain criteria: i.e. private/work/networking, learning/fun/other. 1.2) Afterwards, we hold a free discussion about the questions mentioned above, but related to the main clusters developed in 1.1). 1.3) Based on this reflection, and the participants’ experience, scenarios fulfilling 1.1) & 1.2) are developed and briefly presented afterwards with the objective of providing a practical solution in the second session. This process should result in a mashup of available or imaginary applications, which can be used to illustrate the scenarios that are being proposed.
Optimally, a few days will pass between the first and the second session, so that people can search, reflect, collaborate, orchestrate and think about possible solutions or even develop some. The 2 nd session then contains the following: 2.1) Participants present their application bundles in the way that suits them best. This includes a discussion about the learning aspects, value added and limitations within the developed scenario(s). 2.2) The workshop organisers facilitate a larger discussion around the claim that “This workshop meets all the Grand Challenges”. We conclude with a plan o disseminate the outputs of the workshop via report, wiki and networks.