My dissertation title ended up to be: “Can mobile learning bridge the digital divide in education?”

Since the development of electronic technology and the innovation of the Internet, information has become readily accessible around the globe, triggering an innovative approach in today’s education; electronic learning in schools, otherwise known as e-learning. However, due to the considerable expense of computers and Internet services, a digital divide emerged between the countries that could and could not afford them. The gap in computer literacy between these countries is still substantial and the governments all over the world are constantly trying to find ways to reduce it.

There are many different technologies related to e-learning that have been successful in education practices in developed countries – from the original Internet based in-class applications to the latest mobile learning (m-learning) systems outside of the classroom. M-learning is a new concept in the industry, emerging in recent years with the development of handheld devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, iPods and smartphones. Now, people all over the world, including developing countries, own one or more of these devices. As Sachs (2008) suggests, over 3.3 billion people are subscribed, an estimate of one per every two people on the planet. Perhaps one reason for such growth is that mobile devices now have many technologies embedded within them, which allows vast flexibility and access to any information independent of time and location.

The falling costs of handheld devices have led people to believe this may aid to bridge the digital divide in education. Yet even with such flexibility and diverse technology like location-based media and communication services, these devices may not be powerful enough to bring computer literacy up to the required standard. The objective of this dissertation is to evaluate the potential success of mobile learning methodologies in this electronic age of education and measure its effects on learners and educators in various cultures and societies. Worldwide statistics, theories and projects will be evaluated and compared throughout this study, in order to discover whether m-learning can bridge the digital divide in
education.

Many hours of research and writting have finally ended as the dissertation is all finished and handed in! Here is the link to a PDF.

My previous ideas have not really tied in with my dissertation, therefore I decided to come up with something that did to same me time on research and to fit the brief closer.

I decided to look a bit closer at Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory that I mentioned in my dissertation and base my project on a mobile learning application that would integrate this theory/model.

Gordon Pask

The Conversation Theory developed by G. Pask originated from a cybernetics framework and attempts to explain learning in both living organisms and machines. The fundamental idea of the theory was that learning occurs through conversations about a subject matter which serve to make knowledge explicit. Conversations can be conducted at a number of different levels: natural language (general discussion), object languages (for discussing the subject matter), and metalanguages (for talking about learning/language).

In order to facilitate learning, Pask argued that subject matter should be represented in the form of entailment structures which show what is to be learned. Entailment structures exist in a variety of different levels depending upon the extent of relationships displayed (e.g., super/subordinate concepts, analogies).

The critical method of learning according to conversation theory is “teachback” in which one person teaches another what they have learned. Pask identified two different types of learning strategies: serialists who progress through an entailment structure in a sequential fashion and holists who look for higher order relations.

To help bridge the digital divide in education, technology that is widely available in developing countries needs to be used. These technology are mobile phones.  According to Pask’s conversation theory, the best way to learn is by communicating, which is the primary role of mobile phones.  Due to the fact that many people in developing countries have older handsets, not all modern features are present to them so a simple learning application would work best.

To get to the same level of literacy, people need to learn from each other by teaching others what they know and learning what they do not know back.

Based on this concept I came up with an idea of a social knowledge sharing mobile application (multiplatform but on iPhone for this project). Question and answer system is the best way to learn from each other through technology. This would be the basis of this application.

The features of this application would include:

• User gains points when they answer the questions, the higher the rating of their answers the more points they get.
• Earned points can be used to ask questions.
• To gain more points users can ‘drop’ facts in various locations around the world using GPS where others can ‘pick them up’ then rate them.
• When the app is on, a user’s location would be registered for local questions.
• Local questions are conversations between people in the same area.
• A user can search for another user in the same area at the time and ask them a question.
• Local search would sort people in the area by their expertise on the topic searched.
• Users can gain expert levels for topics that they gain the most points for.

The desired outcome for this application would be: People all over the world can find out anything they want to know quickly and virtually free (just at the cost of Internet connection on their phones / Wi-Fi)

Since I created my project model I kept thinking how I can connect all the elements and create a mobile phone application. It wasn’t an easy task as there has been a lot of amazing applications already invented that have similar elements incorporated in them and I want mine to be different. Here are my 2 new ideas:

1. A mobile learning application that would teach users about birds in the area that they are currently in. It would display a list of birds that are known to live in the area that the user is currently in after the location is identified by GPS. When the user clicks on 1 of the birds on the list, information like images and facts will be displayed. There would also be a “play the song” button available to let the user heard what the birds sounds like. There would be a ” Seen it” button, which the use will have to click on when they saw this bird.

Each time the user clicks on that button it creates a record in the database that will save information such as: what bird at what time and date was seen where. This data then will be shown on an online map and can be used as statistics for things like: science experiments, find out how many people and where in the world use advanced mobile phones, bird tracking, people can go to places where birds that they are interested in were seen, to determine whether migration of birds has changed due to global warming etc.

2.This was a similar type of idea but nothing to do with birds or animals. This would be an application that would collect data for location areas by people using it. A person would have a profile with their details such as age, gender, interests, hobbies but to avoid privacy issues there would not be any real names or credit card details involved. A user can create their user name and it can be anything they want as long as its not already taken.

Whenever a user enters a different area, the app will record the time and date. It will also add user’s interests and details to the area’s data. When the user exits that area, it will calculate how much time the user spent in that area. By collecting all this data from different people who use this application an online map would be generated like in idea 1.

A list of user interests, age ranges and genders will be used as keywords to show different maps with relevant information. For example, if a user clicks on “swimming” it will show all areas that are most frequently visited for a sufficient period of time by users of the app with swimming interest in their profile settings. This information then can be used to how many people use advanced mobile phones i what areas, what areas might be of interest to the user with the same interest as the users that have helped create the map with their data, to show areas of the world with more male population (or males who love gadgets!).

So the general idea of both of these ideas is automatic collection of data from application use, which can then be used for another applicatiopn or purpose. I decided that I like the second idea better and it will appeal to a higher number of people and not just bird lovers. I will now need to do some more research and decide what exactly my application will be, what data it will collect and how the data then will be used. I was thinking of may be creating a mobile social network (but not a dating service) that would collect data as described in idea 2 and then it could create an online travel guide of some sort by using the data of people’s interests taking in account they country of origin and country’s economical possitions.

Since my previous post with the initial ideas for my final project I’ve done a bit more research and thinking to help me decide which idea I should take and develop further. However, after finding out almost every one of my ideas have been done in some way or another I started thinking how I can combine them together to make something different (if that is possible!) Here is a mind map that I’ve created based on my research (click on the image to enlarge):

I decided that I don’t want to include the digital divide into my project as I want it to be high tech, which would make it hard to relate to the digital divide. I found the idea of a blogject very interesting though and am thinking to collaborate it together with the idea of collective blog. I don’t think I will have a social network within my project as there are a lot of them out there (including mobile social networks) and it does not seem to be very original anymore. I would still like to see if I can integrate mobile learning, however, I’m still now sure how. Research have given me even more small ideas but has not helped me develop my original ideas to make them better, which is what I need to do.

The next stage for me is to take all my chosen elements from the above model and combine them together into a final idea so I can start creating the project.

From the beginning, I knew that I was interested in creating some sort of mobile application due to the fact that everything nowadays is becoming mobile. I decided to take mobile learning as my dissertation topic and from that I wanted to create my final project idea. I didn’t know whether it has to relate directly to the dissertation but as it will be about ‘all things mobile’ it would relate to it at least in that way.
Initially I came up with the following 3 ideas for the project:

1. A collective/urban location based blog. This would be a mobile phone application that would allow users to add to the blog for each location, depending on where they are at the time. So each location would have its own blog full of user experiences, images and sounds. I also thought of creating a website for the online representation of this blog (in addition to the location mobile representation). This would be in a form of a map that would show where blogs are available and by clicking on them you can read the posts and comment on them, just like in a normal blog. However, this would not be a blog per person but per location.

2. A mobile social network just for schools or universities. This would be a mobile application also that would create a social network between schools and/or universities. For example, students and/or teachers can send messages to each other or to groups of people (e.g. to people in the same class), they can add public announcements or notifications for certain modules etc. This would only work in a location that corresponds to a school or university and it would be possible to interconnect these networks so that school/universities can work together and share information.

3. A mobile learning location based game. This would be a field trip based game, similar to a treasure hunt. This would be mainly aimed at young school children. As an example, on a trip to the zoo a teacher adds questions/quizzes to certain locations in the zoo. When a pupil goes to one of the locations that question pops up on his/her mobile phone, he/she has to answer that question to get a clue to where to go next. To find an answer the pupil would have to look around the location and may be watch animal behaviour or read notices. The aim of the game is to get children to make the most of their zoo experience as nowadays a lot of children ‘can’t be bothered’ with it so they just walk around the zoo and end up learning nothing. To make pupils play the game to the end they would be given points (or extra marks) by getting to the final location first.

I’ve just been to the university to get everything sorted. Got my NUS card, joined the lovely new and very cheap gym, got my loan scanned in and even changed one of my optional modules for this year. I will be doing Programming for entertainment systems now instead of Modding Culture module, thought it will be more usefull for the future for me and I love programming even if its hard.

All I have left to do now is to come up with some idea for my projects so I have a starting point when the lectures and seminars start.

Ok so I have finally found time to set up this Wordpress blog and customise it to make it fit within my website design. University starts next week and my only worry at the moment is that I will not have enough time for uni work and won’t do as well as I can but I have to work as money is a problem within my family at the moment. Well… I will just have to organize my time as well as I can to fit everything in.