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Perspectives on Learning: Where next? Niall Winters London Knowledge Lab
Perspectives on Learning: Where next?
Niall WintersLondon Knowledge Lab
Background
• User-generated content is well recognised as supporting communities to have a greater say in their own development (Slater & Tacchi, 2004)
• Knowledge construction through content creation
– Creating, sharing and communicating ideas contributes to learning (Roschelle, 1992)
Example from LKL/RVC: CoMo
Why is this important?
• Emphasis on mobile learning + Web 2.0• However
– Mobile learning has failed to adequately exploit “the social practices by which [the] new affordances [of mobile devices] become powerful educational interventions” (Roschelle, 2003)
Context as interaction• “Context then is a central construct of mobile
learning. It is continually created by people in interaction with other people, with their surroundings and with everyday tools” (Kukulska Hulme et al., 2009)
• Need to spend time designing for it• MOB4DEV project was a part of this process
The potential in Africa
What’s emerging across Africa?
• World’s fastest growing market for mobiles• Emergence of 3G infrastructure• Emergence of social applications for mobiles
– e.g. Microsoft OneApp
What’s emerging across Africa?
• Emergence of powerful mobile data collection tools– Google ODK– RapidAndroid– EpiCollect
• Excellent existing tools– FrontlineSMS– RapidSMS
Bringing all three together• The mobile is not only the dominant
technology but is the dominant technology for knowledge construction
Mobile data infrastructure
Mobile social software
Mobile data collection/analysis tools
Socio-cultural context
Scenario 1: Knowledge exchange network
• Rashid is a vet working in Arusha, Northern Tanzania and a member of VetAid. He has 20 vet assistants who work directly with rural farmers. The main challenges he faces on a daily basis surround the detection, identification and monitoring of infectious diseases. To help address this, and based on his experience of working in Arusha for the past 9 years, he set up an OpenKXnet six weeks ago. He began by producing two short 3-minute video clips on how to detect and identify East Coast Fever. He shared the clips with his vet assistants on Facebook. They have been working with the clips for the past week or so and commenting on their usefulness in the field via the private Twitter stream on their phones. Based on conversations with Watende, a local farmer on how he detects the early signs of East Coast Fever, one of the vet assistants, Kisima feels that this would be useful for other assistants. She records an audio chat with the farmer and shares this with them. Rashid is impressed and suggests that Kisima puts Watende in contact with Haki, another farmer currently facing a similar problem with his cow. Kisima suggests that all the assistants use the short audio clip on their farm visits to help other local farmers with early warning detection.
A definite challenge
• “… IS innovation as socially constructed entities, and therefore contingent in their perceived significance and their interplay with human actors and their social institutions. The focal point of the research is the process of innovation in situ, thus tracing the cognitive, emotional, and political capacities that individuals nurtured in their local social institutions bring to bear on unfolding innovation attempts” (Avgerou, 2007)
Explore further• Mobile learning for development Series of
workshops Q1 2010 at the LKL– Introduce participants to innovative mobile applications – Provide participants with the capacity to design mobile
learning activities, related to their everyday practice – Understand how to use the lastest mobile applications in
their development practice – Become part of the mobile learning for development
network
