Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ubiquitous Learning - Book edited by Bill Cope & Mary Kalantizis

A book that has had the biggest impact on my career and thought process is Ubiquitous Learning edited by Cope and Kalantizis.


This book captures the essence behind the mobile learning movement, helping redefine how learning can be approached when bringing mobile and other technologies into the education process. Unfortunately, I have to return the book to the library, but here are some of my notes:
uLearning describes the pervasiveness of computers in our lives, which is causing a paradigm shift where "educatators assume a leading role in technological innovation" (p.9).
Move 1 - Anytime/anywhere, lifelong learning, specific coming together, intuitive interfaces
Move 2 - We are the "players' (Gee). How we access information and mash it up affects how we learn
Move 3 - Shift in "balance of agency" (p.11) as learners become more cosmopolitan equally contributing to the knowledge base.
Developing u-learning devices means developing a new understanding of how know is transferred. The power relationship of teacher over learner changes.
Move 4 - Multi-media is easily manipulated by learners to generate meaning
Move 5 - Learning how to interpret mass amounts of information and its "meta-language"
Move 6 - knowledge is more a thing of "distributed cognition" resting among devices, which changes the previous keepers of knowledge. "In the era of u-computing, you are not what you know but what you can know, the knowledge that is at hand because you have a device in hand" (p. 12).
Move 7 - think how community is created through technology

The 6 Aspects of Ubiquity
1. Anywhere (space) information and people with no constraint on location
2. Portable
3. An "interconnectedness" through GPS, networked intelligence where knowledge is not just in our heads (p. 16)
4. Blur of activities, merging work and play and redefining where and when learning takes place through a action, reflection, inquiry dynamic
5. Anytime (asynchronous) learning to fit the learner who pops in when they are ready to learn. Relates to notion of lifelong learning where learning can be a perpetual opportunity
6. Information flow to learn about global struggles and interconnectedness

Think how the nature of knowledge has changed, created from "personal and meaningful" experience with the world.
How does the game change when teaching and learning connect?

That's all for now. I think I'll be purchasing this book soon...