To be published in S. Ludvigsen, N. Balacheff, T. de Jong, A.

Lazonder, and
S. Barnes (eds.) Technology-enhanced learning: Principles and products,
Dordrecht: Springer. The original publication is available at
www.springerlink.com

Chapter 14
MOBILE LEARNING
Small devices, big issues
Mike Sharples1, Inmaculada Arnedillo-Snchez2, Marcelo Milrad3, and
Giasemi Vavoula4
1

University of Nottingham, United Kingdom; 2Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; 3Vxj

University, Sweden; 4University of Leicester, United Kingdom.

Abstract:

Over the past ten years mobile learning has grown from a minor research
interest to a set of significant projects in schools, workplaces, museums, cities
and rural areas around the world. Each project has shown how mobile
technology can offer new opportunities for learning that extend within and
beyond the traditional teacher-led classroom. Yet, the very diversity of the
projects makes it difficult to capture the essence of mobile learning or to show
how it contributes to the theory and practice of education. This chapter
attempts to address the central issues of what is mobile learning and how can it
be designed and evaluated. Drawing on a theory of mobile learning as the
processes of coming to know through conversations across multiple contexts
amongst people and personal interactive technologies (Sharples, Taylor, &
Vavoula, 2007, p. 225), we discuss how learning contexts are created through
interaction, and how portable and ubiquitous technologies can support
effective conversations for learning. We draw on the findings from recent
major projects to show how people artfully engage with their surroundings,
peers and technology to create impromptu sites of learning and to carry their
conversations from place to place, from time to time, from topic to topic.

Key words:

Mobile learning, conversation, context, collaborative knowledge building

1.

INTRODUCTION

The foundations for mobile learning were laid over thirty years ago with
the far-sighted Xerox Dynabook project that proposed a self-contained
knowledge manipulator in a portable package the size and shape of an

Chapter 14

ordinary notebook which would allow children to explore, create and share
dynamic games and simulations (Kay, 1972). This project led to the
development of personal computing and can be considered an enduring
success of research in technology enhanced learning. However, early
innovations were desktop-based, and only over the past ten years has mobile
learning developed as a set of significant projects in schools, workplaces,
museums, cities and rural areas around the world. These projects range from
providing revision questions to children by mobile phone (BBC Bitesize
Mobile1), through small group learning in classrooms using handheld
computers (Zurita & Nussbaum, 2004), to context-sensitive learning in
museums and workplaces (Brugnoli, Morabito, Bo, & Murelli, 2007).
We are in an age of personal and technical mobility, where mobile
devices, including phones, MP3 players and PDAs, are carried everywhere.
We have the opportunity to design learning differently: linking people in real
and virtual worlds, creating learning communities between people on the
move, providing expertise on demand, and supporting a lifetime of learning.
In order to understand how people learn through a mobile, pervasive and
lifelong interaction with technology, we need to understand the implications
of learning with mobile technology and build an appropriate theory of
education for the mobile age.
The Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence has made a substantial
contribution to exploring the issues arising from learning with mobile
technology. In June 2006, a workshop at Nottingham, United Kingdom,
brought together leading European researchers to explore six major issues of
theory, design and evaluation. The workshop, and its subsequent report on
Big Issues in Mobile Learning (Sharples, 2007), sparked a discussion that
has continued through the Kaleidoscope Mobile Learning special interest
group (SIG).
This chapter explores these issues under three broad themes: what is
mobile learning, designing mobile learning and evaluating mobile
learning. It also discusses mobile learning projects, within the context of
these themes, to exemplify the range of European research in the field as
well as to identify issues and challenges that mobile learning presents for
education and technology design.

2.

WHAT IS MOBILE LEARNING?

There is little to connect delivery of location-based content on mobile

telephones with group learning through handheld computers in the
1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/mobile/

14. Mobile learning

classroom, apart from a reliance on handheld devices, so early definitions of

mobile learning were anchored on the use of mobile technology:
It's elearning through mobile computational devices: Palms, Windows
CE machines, even your digital cell phone. (Quinn, 2000)
The focus on technology does not assist in understanding the nature of
the learning and overlooks the wider context of learning as part of an
increasingly mobile lifestyle. While discovering a city during a vacation a
tourist might learn from a travel internet site on a home desktop computer, a
phone conversation to a friend who visited the city, an in-flight travel
magazine and promotional video, a Google map of the city on a mobile
phone, an interactive multimedia guide in the tourist information office,
printed brochures, and handheld audio-guides in the tourist locations. It is
the combined experience that constitutes mobile learning. In trying to
unpack the mobile in mobile learning one finds:
Mobility in physical space: people on the move trying to cram learning
into the gaps of daily life or to use those gaps to reflect on what life has
taught them. The location may be relevant to the learning, or merely a
backdrop.
Mobility of technology: portable tools and resources are available to be
carried around, conveniently packed into a single lightweight device. It is
also possible to transfer attention across devices, moving from the laptop
to the mobile phone, to the notepad.
Mobility in conceptual space: learning topics and themes compete for a
persons shifting attention. A typical adult undertakes eight major
learning projects a year (Tough, 1971), as well as numerous learning
episodes every day, so attention moves from one conceptual topic to
another driven by personal interest, curiosity or commitment.
Mobility in social space: learners perform within various social groups,
including encounters in the family, office, or classroom context.
Learning dispersed over time: learning is a cumulative process involving
connections and reinforcement among a variety of learning experiences
(Dierking, Falk, Rennie, Anderson, & Ellenbogen, 2003), across formal
and informal learning contexts.
Research into mobile learning is the study of how the mobility of learners
augmented by personal and public technology can contribute to the process
of gaining new knowledge, skills and experience.
The following section presents theoretical foundations of mobile learning
informed by a series of discussions amongst members of the Kaleidoscope
Philosophy of Technology Enhanced Learning SIG, and by their detailed
written responses to a series of publications (Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula,

Chapter 14

2005; Taylor, Sharples, OMalley, Vavoula, & Waycott, 2006) resulting in

an attempt to formulate a theory of learning for the mobile age (Sharples et
al., 2007).

3.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MOBILE

LEARNING

The theoretical foundations of mobile learning presented here summarise

and extend the account published in Sharples et al. (2007). It places mobility
and context as the objects of analysis. Rather than assuming that learning
occurs within a fixed location, such as a classroom, over a bounded period of
time, it examines how learning flows across locations, time, topics and
technologies. The strategies and opinions formed in childhood influence the
way we come to understand in later life. Learning undertaken in one context,
for instance informal discussions, can become a resource for other contexts,
such as a seminar or a workplace. Learning activities and the technologies
used to enact them are interleaved enabling us to maintain our long-term
projects and our familiar personal devices, while also picking up incidental
ideas and ready-to-hand tools, as we proceed through the day.
Context 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. Traditional classroom learning is founded on an illusion of
stability of context, by setting up a fixed location with common resources, a
single teacher, and an agreed curriculum which allows a semblance of
common ground to be maintained from day to day. But if these are removed,
a fundamental challenge is how to form islands of temporarily stable context
to enable meaning making from the flow of everyday activity.
Following Dewey (1916), Pask (1976), and Stahl (2003) we propose that
the fundamental processes by which we come to understand the world and
our knowledge of it are: exploration, conversation and collaborative
knowledge building. Thus, we make distinctions between elements of
experience (hot/cold, friendly/unfriendly, freedom/authority) which we label,
explore and discuss, with ourselves, as we refine our knowledge, and with
others, as we move towards agreed understandings by shared discovery and
discussion.
Exploration is essentially mobile in that it either involves physical
movement or movement through conceptual space, linking experiences and
concepts into new knowledge. Conversation is the bridge that enables
learning within and across contexts, whether through a discussion that builds
on ideas formed in different settings, or from a phone call between people in

14. Mobile learning

different locations, or by making a note to oneself that can be read at a

different time or place.
One role of technology in these explorations and conversations is to form
a distributed system of meaning making that promotes collaborative
knowledge building. At a first level of analysis we shall make no distinction
between people and interactive technology, instead examining how the
human-technology system enables knowledge to be created and shared in a
continual process of coming to know through the construction and
distribution of shared external representations of knowledge. For example,
Wikipedia is a massively distributed system for the construction of shared
meaning out of differing perspectives and opinions. The technology of
Wikipedia does not stand apart as a medium of inscription, rather it is an
active participant in the process, enabling certain forms of activity and
constraining others.
Proposing symmetry between people and technology, however, raises
tensions concerning the legitimate place of technology in learning and the
privileged role of human knowledge and activity. These demand further
exploration to claim a central role for the teacher and learner and to
determine the ethics of mobile learning in matters such as who owns the
products of conversational learning (online discussions, Wikipedia pages,
etc.) and what are peoples rights to be free from continual engagement with
educational technology. Technology can become a constant companion and
guide to learning; it can also continually monitor activity so that our every
movement and conversation is stored and assessed as part of a lifelong
record of achievement. If learning is continually mobile and evolving then it
is also continually provisional. How can we distinguish between the
intimacy of coming to know and the need to publicly record and register our
attainments?
So, we come to a characterization of mobile learning as the processes
(personal and public) of coming to know through exploration and
conversation across multiple contexts, amongst people and interactive
technologies. This analysis is not at odds with learning as a tool-mediated
socio-cultural activity (Engestrm, 1996). Indeed, it draws on this
conception to examine how knowledge is constructed through activity in a
society that is increasingly mobile. Nor does it negate learning in formal
settings. Conversation and context are essential constructs for understanding
how mobile learning can be integrated with conventional education. Mobile
learning offers new ways to extend education outside the classroom, into the
conversations and interactions of everyday life.

Chapter 14

4.

DESIGNING MOBILE LEARNING

A central task in the design of technology for mobile learning is to

promote enriching conversations within and across contexts. This involves
understanding how to design technologies, media and interactions to support
a seamless flow of learning across contexts, and how to integrate mobile
technologies within education to enable innovative practices. To this end,
much can be learnt from interaction design research (e.g., Jones & Marsden,
2006), which offers general principles for human-computer interaction on
mobile devices. Furthermore, findings from mobile learning research
(Naismith & Corlett, 2006) suggest the need to:
Create quick and simple interactions.
Prepare flexible materials that can be accessed across contexts.
Consider special affordances of mobile devices that might add to the
learner experience (e.g., the use of audio or user anonymity).
Use mobile technology not only to deliver learning but to facilitate it,
making use of the facilities in current mobile devices for voice
communication, note-taking, photography, and time management.
The design of mobile learning activities should be driven by specific
learning objectives. The use of (mobile) technology is not the target but
rather a means to enable activities that were otherwise not possible, or to
increase the benefits for the learners. Thus, the use of mobile technologies
may only be suitable for part of the activity, with other parts being better
supported by other technologies, or by no technology at all (as exemplified
in our case studies).
A design challenge is to enrich the learning conversations and enhance
the learner experience without interfering with it (Beale, 2007). Attention is
a key issue. Having to change the focus of attention from the surrounding
world to a handheld device can at best be distracting and at worse dangerous
(such as the hazard of walking while gazing at the screen). To counter this,
authors report the benefits of short audio presentations to enhance or
interpret the surroundings, for instance by telling the story behind a museum
exhibit or tourist site (see e.g., Bradley, Haynes, & Boyle, 2005; Naismith,
Sharples, & Ting, 2005).
Technology is not always used for the activities originally intended.
Young people are appropriating technology designed for adult work (e.g.,
SMS messaging and media file sharing) into their social world. This has
deep implications for learning, if we consider, for example, why people
would need to memorize facts when they can look them up on Google. What
are the implications for copyright, authorship and plagiarism when young
people can easily capture, share and publish their own experiences, and those

14. Mobile learning

of others, as they go about their daily lives? Until recently, instant

messaging, file sharing and social networking have been mainly restricted to
home computers and internet cafes, however countries such as South Korea
(ConsumerEase Publishing, 2006) have already adopted mobile networking
and the next generation of personal devices will support collaboration and
context awareness. An issue for schools is how to accommodate children
equipped with powerful personal technologies and new and disruptive skills
of informal collaboration and networked learning.
According to Reigeluth (1999), an instructional design theory offers
explicit guidance on how to help people learn and develop. Though an
instructional design theory for mobile learning is yet to be articulated, the
theoretical foundations of mobile learning previously discussed suggest
mobile learning instructional design should:
Support learners to reach personal understanding through conversation
and exploration.
Support learnerscollaboration in order to construct common knowledge.
Use technology to enrich learners collaborative knowledge building with
other learners and teachers.
Support learners transitions across learning contexts.
Naismith and Corlett (2006) identify five critical success factors for
mobile learning projects:
1. Access to technology: making mobile technology available where and
when needed, either by developing for users own devices (e.g., phones
and media players), or by providing learners with devices they can use at
home and on the move.
2. Ownership: owning the technology, or treating it as if it were our own.
Using the technology for entertainment and socializing does not appear to
reduce its value as a learning tool, but rather helps to bridge the gap
between institutional and personal learning.
3. Connectivity: using wireless or mobile phone connectivity, to provide
access to learning resources, to link people across contexts, and to allow
students to capture material that can be sent to a personal media space
and then shared or presented.
4. Integration: integrating mobile learning projects into the curriculum, the
student experience, or daily life. Strategies for achieving integration
include extending a successful form of learning onto mobile devices
(e.g., Frequently Asked Questions, or audio/PowerPoint recordings of
lectures) and proving technology that augments the student experience
(e.g., moblogs (mobile weblogs) to maintain an electronic portfolio or
record of learning).

Chapter 14

5. Institutional support: designing relevant resources in mobile format,

training staff and providing technical support.
The above success factors were largely identified from observations of
critical incidents in pilot projects. The following section addresses some
issues and possible solutions to moving beyond an inventory of successes
and failures towards a systemic evaluation of mobile learning.

5.

EVALUATING MOBILE LEARNING

Evaluation is a central activity in the lifecycle of interactive systems

design. When performed in the course of design and implementation,
formative evaluation informs design. When performed after deployment of a
new technology, summative evaluation offers a systematic approach to
assess the effectiveness of the system and the learning it enables. Mobile
learning poses additional challenges to the evaluation of both technology and
learning. This section identifies challenges for mobile learning evaluation, it
outlines new tools and methods for the collection and analysis of mobile
learning data, and it presents a framework for mobile learning evaluation.
Unpredictability of the context of use: evaluation methods for static
technologies are based on the assumption that the context of use is fixed
and well defined. In the case of mobile learning, however, the context of
use can vary significantly for instance in terms of ergonomics (user
posture, lighting, and background noise), social context, and demands on
users attention. Moreover, mobile contexts of use are often impromptu
and hence difficult to observe, predict or simulate.
the mobile environment is eminently suited to supporting learning
outside the context of curricula, institutions and timetables. Our potential
subjects of study may be wandering around studying things that interest
them, at times that suit themselves, with little or no concern for
consistency. (Taylor 2007, p. 26)
Unpredictability of the learning process: mobile learning blurs the
distinction between formal and informal learning. Children have always
been able to bring homework into the classroom for assessment or bring
in a personal or found object, such as a leaf or a stone, to illustrate a
lesson, but now they can systematically capture their experience of
learning outside the classroom, through images, notes and audio
recordings. Traditional assessment methods are not appropriate for
accrediting learning not directly related to the curriculum or done through
informal collaboration. Recognizing and assessing the value of non-

14. Mobile learning

curriculum learning raises profound issues related to the legitimate scope

of formal education. Where does school end? When can a child just
delight in learning for its own sake without having to present the results
for school assessment?
Unpredictability of the mode of use: technology for mobile learning is
designed to aid the practice of learning however; this same technology
may also change and affect practice. The way a technology will be used
cannot be determined until it is actually used by real people in real
settings. Often the way people adopt learning technologies does not
coincide with the designers intent. Tools that enable users to do new
activities may change the way users perceive and practice old activities
and may give rise to additional unpredicted patterns of learning. An
essential task of evaluation is to look at how new tools and services are
appropriated by people in their everyday learning practice (Waycott,
2004).
Looking beyond the wow effect: evaluations of mobile learning often
report on the users enjoyment and increased motivation. Through the
Kaleidoscope SIG, Jones, Isroff, & Scanlon (2007) have initiated a
discussion on the role of affect in mobile learning. They propose that the
high affective value of mobile learning is influenced by factors such as
control over goals, ownership, fun, communication, learning-in-context,
and continuity between contexts. Specifying the attributes that make
mobile devices cool for learning and understanding how best to exploit
these also requires further investigation. Thus, mobile learning evaluation
should attempt to see beyond the initial wow factor associated with the
technology and investigate how effective is mobile technology in
engaging learners over the longer term.
We argued earlier that supporting mobile learning requires supporting
people to continue their learning conversations across contexts. Hence,
mobile learning evaluation should explore how well these conversations and
transitions are supported and their consequences for learning; and assess the
impact of these technologies on previously established learning contexts and
practices.
The challenges mentioned above indicate the difficulties in addressing
data collection, analysis and assessment of learning outcomes in mobile
learning. Responding to this, researchers are exploring new tools and
methods for the collection and analysis of data, research methodologies and
approaches suitable for interpreting such data, and issues in designing
mobile learning research (Vavoula, Kukulska-Hulme, & Pachler, 2007).
New data collection methods include mobile eye tracking (Wessel, Mayr,
& Knipfer, 2007), co-design (Spikol, 2007), and data mining of

10

Chapter 14

automatically generated data logs (Romero & Ventura, 2007). Combinations

of conventional data collection methods are also explored (Smith et al.,
2007; Wali, 2007). Theoretical frameworks such as activity theory inform
the development of new analysis tools (Papadimitriou, Tselios, & Komis,
2007), while informal learning assessment techniques, like Personal
Meaning Mapping (Falk, 2003; Lelliott, 2007) and e-Portfolios (HartnellYoung & Vetere, 2007), are being considered for assessing mobile learning
outcomes.
Evaluation should be a continuous process starting with the inception of a
project and continuing on through design, implementation, deployment, and
beyond. Within the context of the Myartspace project (see section 6.1 of this
chapter) we have developed a three-level framework for mobile learning
evaluation (Centre for Educational Technolgy and Distance Learning, 2007).
It extends the Lifecycle evaluation method (Meek, 2006) which places
evaluation at the centre of the technology development process from the start
of the design process to the final assessment of the technology in a learning
context, and providing clear routes for feeding evaluation outcomes into
(re)design.
The mobile learning evaluation framework structures the evaluation
planning around general goals for assessing usability, educational
effectiveness, and overall impact. More specifically, it comprises three
levels:
1. Micro level, which examines the individual activities of the technology
users so as to identify issues of usability and assess how effective,
efficient and satisfying is the users experience of carrying out the
individual activities supported by the technology.
2. Meso level, which examines the learning experience as a whole to assess
the educational value of the new technology by looking at how it
transforms the educational and learning practice in terms of
breakthroughs and breakdowns, and how well the learning experience
integrates with other learning experiences.
3. Macro level, which examines the overall, longer-term impact of the new
technology on established learning and teaching practices by exploring
the extent to which the deployed technology matches initial aspirations,
intentions and expectations.
Evaluation activities at each level require a gradual introduction in that,
for instance, the Meso level requires that the technology is in place and is
robust enough to allow assessment of the learning and teaching experience
and its educational value. Thus, evaluation activities at the Meso level
cannot be introduced until well into the implementation phase. Similarly, the
Macro level requires that the technology is in place and used for long enough

14. Mobile learning

11

to establish its effects on learning practice, so evaluation activities at the

Macro level cannot be introduced until well into the deployment phase.

6.

MOBILE LEARNING EXEMPLARS

This section presents three exemplars of mobile learning that show how
children can be helped to explore the physical environment, how learning
can be supported across contexts, how handheld technology can enable
conversations for learning, and how new methods of evaluation can reveal
the practices and outcomes of learning outside traditional settings.

6.1 MyArtSpace: Learning with phone technology on

museum visits
MyArtSpace project was a year-long project funded by the United
Kingdom Department of Culture Media and Sport to develop and evaluate
mobile technology for school students on field trips to museums and art
galleries. It has been deployed in three museums for a year-long trial during
which over 3000 school students used the service, on organised visits from
local schools. The aim of the project was to address a well-recognised
problem (Guisasola, Morentin, & Zuza, 2005) of the lack of connection
between the school visit and any preparation and follow-up in the classroom.
MyArtSpace supported learning through explorations and conversations
across the contexts of classroom and museum. It enabled students to produce
their own interpretation of a visit through pictures, voice recordings and
notes that they can share and examine back in the classroom. The activity
typically starts with the teacher introducing a key topic in a pre-visit
classroom lesson to guide and motivate the students in a process of inquiryled learning during the trip, as they collect and interpret evidence to address
the question.
On arriving at the museum, the students are loaned multimedia phones
running a Java application that allows them to capture photos, notes and
audio recordings. These are sent automatically via the GPRS phone network
to a personal website that provides a multimedia weblog of the visit. The
students can also view short presentations on museum exhibits by typing in a
two-letter code shown beside the exhibit which are also recorded in the
weblog. Back in the classroom, they can view the material they collected and
produced during the visit, as well as the other students collections and
further material provided by the museum. They then use a basic presentation
tool to add captions to the images and to form the material into individual or
shared presentations that form their responses to the key topic.

12

Chapter 14

The evaluation methods included: one-to-one interviews with the

teachers; focus group interviews with students; video observations of the
pre-visit lesson, museum visit and post visit lesson; attitude surveys; and
telephone or email interviews with other stakeholders. Three MyArtSpace
visits were observed, of a first prototype and in months one and eleven of the
year-long deployment. In general, the system worked well, with the phones
offering a familiar platform, the two letter code providing an easy way to
activate multimedia in context, and the transmission of data taking place
unobtrusively after each use of the photo, audio or note tool. The teachers
indicated that their students engaged more with the exhibits than in previous
visits and had the chance to do meaningful follow-up work.
A significant educational issue was that some students found difficulty in
identifying, back in the classroom, pictures and sounds they had recorded.
The time-ordered list of activities and objects they had collected provided
some cues, but there is a difficult trade-off between structuring the material
during the visit to make it easier to manage (for example by limiting the
number of items that can be collected) and stifling creativity and
engagement.
Although the system was a success at the technical and educational
levels, there is a significant impediment to wider deployment of a system
like MyArtSpace. Understandably, museum staff need to spend their time
curating exhibits and guiding visitors rather than maintaining technology.
There is also the issue of who pays for the GPRS charges: schools,
museums, or students and their parents? MyArtSpace may be an indicator of
the next generation of mobile technology, when people carry converged
phone/camera/media player devices that can capture everyday sights and
sounds to a personal weblog. Then, the opportunity for schools will be to
exploit these personal devices for learning between the classroom and
settings outside school including field trips and museum visits.

6.2 The AMULETS project: Bridging outdoors and

indoors classroom activities using smartphones,
PDAs and GPS Devices
The AMULETS (Advanced Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning
Environments for Teachers and Students) project explored how to design,
implement and evaluate innovative educational scenarios combining
outdoors and indoors activities supported by mobile and ubiquitous
computing. AMULETS is based on the premise that the design of innovative
mobile learning activities should be guided by collaborative learning
scenarios in context supported by mobile and ubiquitous technologies in

14. Mobile learning

13

authentic settings. The results of two trials conducted with Swedish children
since the spring of 2006 illustrate these ideas.
The first trial took place in June of 2006 in an elementary school while
the second trial occurred the following December, in the town square with
the same school. For these two trials, fifty-five elementary school children
performed remote and co-located activities equipped with smartphones,
PDAs, GPS devices, and stationary computers in the subjects of natural
sciences, history and geography. The educational scenarios consisted of
different stages with game-like features. At the end of the learning sessions,
all these activities were reconstructed in the classroom using several
visualization tools such as digital maps. These types of activity provide new
opportunities for children and teachers to review and to continue the learning
experience in the classroom, thus supporting different aspects of learning
such as exploration, discussion, negotiation, collaboration and reflection.
In the first trial the theme of the scenario was learning about the forest
and in the second trial the history of the city square through centuries. In
the forest scenario twenty-six 4th grade students (10-11 years old) took part,
working in seven groups. The activities were conducted over a two-day
period with only one group performing at a time. The active challenges for
the children were based on exploring the physical environment, identifying
different types of trees and measuring the height and age of trees. Part of the
childrens tasks was to record still images and video clips using the
smartphones detailing how they solved the problems. This co-created
content was automatically encoded with metadata, containing attributes such
as GPS coordinates, time stamp, and the phone ID which provided rich
contextual information for later use in the classroom. Pedagogical coaches
provided the children with practical support in using techniques to measure
the height of trees. Additionally, animated characters delivered locationspecific content.
In the city square trial twenty-nine 5th grade students (11-12 years old)
participated. They worked in three groups, with each group divided into two
subgroups of five students. One subgroup worked in the local museum and
the second group operated outside in the square. For this second trial we
introduced collaborative missions to provide the children with challenging
problems. In order to solve them, children at the museum and outside were
required to collaborate using a number of mobile tools including an instant
text messaging system that allowed communication between stationary
computers at the museum and the smartphones outside it. A narrative
journey backwards in time related to the squares history was supported by
animated characters and video clips delivered to the smartphones, thus
providing the contextual information that was needed in order to accomplish
the challenges in the different missions.

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Chapter 14

In order to assess the result of our efforts, we used several techniques for
data collection including questionnaires and interviews with the children,
students, and teachers, as well as observation protocols and data stored files.
The questionnaires were used mostly to evaluate usability aspects, while the
interviews with children, students and teachers were used to evaluate the
educational aspects of the trial. The results of our trials indicate that children
were open and positive when it comes to using mobile and ubiquitous
technologies in everyday learning activities, especially when they can be
used in playful ways. Another interesting indication from the analysis of our
results is that the context in which the learning activity takes place impacts
the way children interpret and deal with information. Our results also
indicated that innovative learning activities enhanced by ubiquitous
technologies should not be regarded as stand alone activities, as they should
be part of a well developed educational flow that also is combined with
traditional ways of teaching and learning. Kurti, Spikol, and Milrad (in
press), provide an elaboration of these results.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, mobile and ubiquitous technologies
offer the potential for a new phase in the evolution of technology-enhanced
learning, marked by a continuity of the learning experience across different
learning contexts. Chan and colleagues (2006) use the term seamless
learning to describe these new situations. In this section we have presented
two examples in which we have implemented seamless learning spaces by
augmenting physical spaces with information exchanges as well as using
geospatial mappings between the mobile device and the real-world that
facilitate navigation and context-aware applications.

6.3 The Mobile Digital Narrative: Collaborative

narrative creation with mobile phone technology
The mobile Digital Narrative (mobileDN) Project (Arnedillo-Snchez &
Tangney, 2006) embodies an approach to support collaborative creativity
with mobile technologies. It involves the creation, from idea generation to
final production, of a collective multimedia DN shot entirely on mobile
telephones by a group of distributed learners.
The project builds on work in Digital Film Making (DFM) in schools
(Burden & Kuechel, 2004) and a Functional Framework for mobile learning
which argues for collaborative, constructionist and contextual applications
(Patten, Arnedillo-Snchez, & Tangney, 2006). While DFM facilitates
communication, negotiation, decision making skills (Burn et al., 2001),
encourages creativity (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002) and draws on students
out-of-school interest (Parker, 2002), access to technology and time
investment hinder its adoption in schools (Arnedillo-Snchez & Tangney,

14. Mobile learning

15

2006). Furthermore, technology dependent activities such as filming and

editing, which offer the greatest learning benefits (Becta, 2003), become
impractical as a whole group activity (Arnedillo-Snchez & Tangney, 2006).
The mobileDN process was designed and developed iteratively by
conducting a series of case studies with 78 users, including teenagers and
undergraduates in Ireland and South Africa. It utilises camera phones, a
notebook computer, a concept-mapping tool to scaffold the story creation, a
movie editor to assemble the DNs, and a portable data projector to enable the
collaborative editing process. Our knapsack lab provides enormous
flexibility in terms of where a mobileDN workshop can take place.
After collaborative face-to-face generation of the story, scaffolded by the
concept-mapping tool and a facilitator, the learners are divided into three
groups: image (in charge of shooting), sound (in charge of recording
dialogues and sound effects) and editing (in charge of assembling the film).
With the script (concept-map) in hand, the image and sound groups
separately go on location, while the editing group stays at the editing-station.
As the media is being captured this is transferred via MMS to the editors
who start editing shortly after the crews arrive on location. When crew and
cast are back in the editing-station, the first version of the DN is ready for
viewing. The initial shooting and editing phase is followed by additional
targeted shooting and recording as required. Final editing and production
take place face-to-face as a whole group activity.
Over a period of two years 36 DN workshops with over 200 participants,
including young children, teachers, teenagers, postgraduate students and
researchers, have been conducted. Data collection tools used include video
recording, observation and interviews. Data sets comprise the video footage,
interviews, the researchers journals, the scripts and media assets created by
the learners, the DNs at different stages of production and the final DNs.
Findings show that the approach tackles issues of access to technology and
time investment reported in traditional DFM projects. All the participating
groups have been able to create a DN, from idea generation to final
production, in approximately four hours. The work-flow, structure, and
labour division designed in the mobileDN methodology, together with the
affordances of mobile technologies, enable the parallelization of shooting
and editing supporting synchronous collaboration. Participants experience
the benefits of lengthier DFM processes and teachers reported that it is
practical, hands-on learning. The activity enables rich conversations across
contexts as the participants negotiated how the images and sounds captured
on location could best be assembled together to convey narrative intent.
Technical problems include in MMS transfer latency and the
cumbersome use of multiple disparate applications. We are addressing these
by developing a DN application (Arnedillo-Snchez & Byrne, 2007) (mobile

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and PC versions) that seamlessly supports the process and automates media
management and transfer. Cost issues are being addressed by providing
alternative data transfer mechanisms. We propose the mobileDN method as a
viable alternative to DFM in schools. The project, alike others that avail of
readily available and affordable mobile technology, presents a cost effective
solution that can contribute towards the democratization of technology
enhanced learning experiences.

7.

CONCLUSIONS

Ten years of research into mobile learning has revealed no single killer
application for mobile technology in learning, but has offered promising
scenarios such as the use of graphing calculators and handheld response
systems in classrooms, the use of PDAs to structure small group working,
handheld tools for basic learning including foreign language and numeracy
skills, handheld tourist guides, and those described in the exemplars.
A more general consequence of the research into mobile learning has
been an open debate about the nature of learning within and outside the
classroom. Focusing on the mobility of learners and learning reveals
assumptions and tensions in technology-enhanced learning (TEL). Until
now, most research into TEL has assumed that learning occurs in the
classroom, mediated by a trained teacher. Even iconoclasts such as Papert
saw technology as a means to reform and extend school education (Papert,
1980). Yet, this has implicitly excluded the design of technology for
informal and serendipitous learning.
One major opportunity is to support a person through a lifetime of
learning, providing young children with tools to capture and organise their
everyday experiences, to create and share images of their world, and to
probe and explore their surroundings. As they mature, these life blogs can
be extended with tools to support personal projects, such as learning
languages, sports and hobbies. In old age, they become storehouses of
memories and aids to remembering people and events. Such technology is
not only a technical challenge (e.g., maintaining and organizing a useful
database of experience over a lifetime) but it also raises deep philosophical,
social and ethical issues. Will the technology become a seamless extension
of human cognition and memory? What experiences will people want to
capture, and how will they erase them? What is the legitimate sphere of
parents, formal education and the state in managing and assessing childrens
mobile learning?
Tensions are already arising between the two spheres of traditional
context-bound education and informal mobile learning. A future scenario

14. Mobile learning

17

portrays schools being unable, or unwilling, to adapt to the new patterns of

learning and social interaction outside the classroom and young people
seeing school learning as irrelevant to their skills and interests. At the heart
of the conflict is the technology. Schools currently ban powerful tools for
personal learning and social networking while they struggle to provide
computers that deliver an outdated form of didactic teaching. A very
different future scenario depicts formal education adapting to the new
technologies and opportunities, with children learning how to adapt their
social networking practices to the school environment, supported by tools for
teamwork and collaborative learning. Schools will save costs by allowing
students to bring their own technologies and will gain from building on
students skills of networked learning. As converged computer/phones
become standard consumer products they will bridge the digital divide and
schools will be able to afford additional devices for children who do not own
them.
These future scenarios should not be determined solely by commercial or
social forces. The mobile learning research community has already played a
major role in defining the scope of the field, and providing exemplars of
successful, and unsuccessful, applications of learning with mobile
technology. Kaleidoscope has set an agenda for research into the coevolution of learning and technology that is not merely a response to the
pressures of society, governments and the technology industry, but an
attempt to shape a more expansive and inclusive landscape of learning.

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