Mlearn final bits and a WOW session from Yrjo Engestrom

Apologies again for anyone who has been reading this, couldn’t get going today one way or another.

There was an interesting session as part of an extended “Sony Session” today, although it was a sales pitch type thing, the case studies were really interesting and actually quite moving. One was a special needs primary school for deaf children in Birmingham, UK. They have found huge improvements in confidence and language levels of the children and their relationships between parents, children and school really have taken on a new dimension. They use the PSP for sign language - because for most of the children, sign language is their first language and English may be their second or third. Some session notes:

PSP for sign language filming video diaries. Limited language so can use video for interviews. Learning writing & spelling - use graphics. Children record video of teacher signing then can view on their journey. For school trips children can record what they see then go home & share with their families. Helping communication maybe confidence so their language is developing. What about multi modal & touch. Children like because psp cool - doesnt have special needs stigma. Now trying to create a bedtime story to take home each night so building up a virtual library.

Highlight of the week for me was the keynote today from Yrjo Engestrom - a brilliant brilliant session on mobility entitled Wildlife Activities, New Patterns of Mobility and Learning. I am going to return to this session in more detail in a future related post. He described a current research project looking at mobility, see also From Teams to Knots, mobile version

I’ve emphasized bits which made me sit and think (as someone who has actually spent several hours of their life sitting and thinking about mobility, this was wonderful) some session notes mostly from his slides:

Mobility - context - reconceptualised. mobility - wildfire activities - communities - new potential for learning. Current patterns do not touch what is going on in the lives of learners. Script & counter script in mobility - how learner should move. Third spaces for learning Kris Gutierrez.

Movements - what are people engaged in - in wildfire activities - takes the shape of expansive swarming and multi-directional pulsation, with emphasis on sideways transitions and boundary crossing. Social production - what activities are carried out - changes radically. Not standard engineering logic - problem solving e.g. continuous running of assembly line - wildfires disappear then emerge again.

Movement of info, people, and things create textures that are constantly changing but not arbitrary or momentary. The textures and trails are made up of traces and trails which are both cognitive - in the mind - and material - in the world. Dispersed and distributed, yet well co-ordinated and aware of the whole in each node. Strong object and use value orientation. Quick adoption and creative use of up-to-date information and communication technologies but little emphasis or dependency on them (he used three examples of communities - skateboarding, birding and Red Cross disaster relief teams all of which are not currently dependent on the web but mobile technologies are crucial). No closed world of virtuality.

He described wildfire (where fires emerge, disappear then suddenly and rapidly re-emerge) communities as mycorrhizae - hybrid, poorly bounded, centre does not hold.

He describes his current research in learning in wildlife activities as a working hypothesis. Primarily learning without higher levels of mastery, fractured, poorly charted terrains, crossing boundaries. Subterranean - embodied, lively, cognitive trails and social bonds make terrains knowledgeable and liveable. Self-reflective, inherent in these communities - documentation, scrutiny, peer review. Learning by experiencing - high stakes personal involvement, risks, critical conflicts, shifts of identity. Quick improvisational adaptation and long term changes. Holoptic (cool - new word) oriented towards global view, every one in the local node has access to the whole but without central control.

So much to think about here - he is looking at mobility as it actually happens - its difficult to study and trace everything. (Jan Chipchase and Adam Greenfield’s research for Nokia spring to mind, especially Jan - so many of his photos observing the urban environments he moves around in… hmmm…designing for mobility - context, interactions, access, user choice…..). Mobility - shifting positions, shifting perceptions.

This entry was posted on 10/10/2008 at 09:17 pm and is filed under mobility, Mobile phones, mobile learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print