Mobile learning for teaching and learning

Workshop title: Use of mobile learning for teaching and learning

Presenter: Ass. Prof. Dick Ng’ambi, UCT

Date and location: 10th of March 2011, 14.00-16.00, Bellville, 107 IT centre

While mobile technologies are increasingly being used in other sectors, the innovative uses of mobile devices for teaching and learning is surprisingly low. While the ownership of mobile phones by students has led to student-controlled environments such as social media, the disjuncture between institutionally-controlled environments such as learning management systems (LMS) and where students are at, continues to widen. One of the reasons, among others, for this low uptake of mobile technologies by educators is their limited pedagogical understanding of mobile devices.

In this seminar, I address three questions:

1. a common sense question of why educators ‘ignore’ the powerful devices already in the hands of students?

2. a pedagogical question of how can one teach with mobile phones?

3. a theoretical question of whether the use of mobile phones provide educators access to students’ internal dialogue?