General Information

St. Edmund’s Catholic School is a private middle and high school (ages 11-17) located in Wolverhampton, in the UK.  St. Edmund’s is also a designated Mathematics and Computing College, which is reflected on campus with interactive whiteboards in each classroom and numerous PCs throughout the school.  This emphasis on technology can clearly be seen in the school’s curriculum, services, and goals.  According to their prospectus, a major goal of St. Edmund’s is “to to equip every pupil with a personal mobile device by 2011″ (p. 8).  This case study analysis investigates that attempt.  It is based off another case study of St. Edmund’s HTC Advantgae mobile learning program, written by David Perry.

Technology

The mobile learning program at St. Edmund’s is based on the HTC Advantage, a PDA which runs the Windows Mobile pocket PC operating system.  The HTC Advantage has a touch-screen and stylus, a forward and rear facing camera, a 4″ screen, and detachable keyboard. St. Edmund’s runs a number of education-related programs, such as MSN messenger, Pocket Slides, the GoKnow software suite (such as PiCoMaps and Sketchy) the Opera web browser, and Notes among others.

The PDA can connect to the internet at home and at school, but access at school is whitelisted, meaning the school has designated certain websites as accessible (as opposed to blacklisted, which means certain sites are designated as inaccessible).  In addition, their is an established cloud network, which allows students to save their work at a central location and access it remotely from their device or another computer.

Learning Design

St. Edmund’s uses the PDAs in a variety of ways, in and out of the classroom across the curriculum.  For example, to study body movement, students used the PDA’s cameras in their physical education class to record and then study movement.  As another example, foreign language students listened to podcasts in that language, and then used their PDAs and the Sketchy program to present new phrases to other students.

From the case study examined, PDAs are used in a variety of ways.  They are used to make work easier, such as using the Notes application with German tests, which was found to be faster than typing.  They are used to make learning a more active process, such as using Sketchy to draw and discuss Catholic symbols in religious education classes.  They are used as data collecting tools: videoing the growth of baby ducks in the science lab or using GPS in the humanities.  It is also used as tool for sharing and presenting.  In math class students were able to take pictures of representations of math around the school and then presented them using Pocket Slides.  In another math class, students were able to hook up their PDAs to the interactive whiteboard and demonstrate the steps they used to solve problems.

Pedagogy

There are numerous underlying pedagogical principles that can be seen in St. Edmund’s use of mobile learning technology. The “’3 C’s’ of effective learning” – control, construction, and conversation- discussed by Sharples, Corlett, and Westmancott (2002) is evident in many of the ways these PDAs are utilized (p. 224). Students use these devices to construct meaning from the world around them, whether that is examining ducks in the science lab, taking pictures of math around school, or taking their PDAs on field trips. Students have the ability not only to construct meaning in the literal sense, as the PDAs facilitate the creation of not only knowledge but projects, presentations, and the like. These transformative activities allow students to construct meaning from their work in the most personal and relevant ways.

The PDAs also allow students a certain level of communication (or conversation), in and outside of school. They are able to be in communication with other students, other teachers, and remain in contact with the school in general. They can converse and collaborate with peers, receive assignments from teachers, and updates from the school. In addition, students are able to converse “with the world as [they] carry out experiments and explorations and interpret the results”, which is exactly how the PDAs are used in science, math, and humanities classes (p. 224).

Control is exhibited in a number of ways. Although students do not have control over what software is installed or websites are allowed, they still have a type of learning-control. In on example from the case study, students had to brainstorm different places to to photograph. Some students chose to do this work by building mindmaps on the PDA while others brainstormed on whiteboards. This choice is important, as students must be allowed to have control over what they feel is comfortable learning – learning that matches their needs, preferences, and styles.

Critique

Mobile learning is a learning-centered educational discipline that considers the mobility of the learner and how technological devices can provide them with opportunities to learn anywhere at anytime.  It is a dynamic discipline bound not to any one device but the concept of supporting life-long learning through technology.  Technology is not used for technology’s sake, but strategically to support learning, inside and outside the classroom.

St. Edmund’s mobile learning program understands the mobility of their students and the educational power mobile learning has to offer.  Their attempts to involve all students in their program circumvents a number of equal-access limits others wishing to establish mobile learning programs must face.  Using these devices across the curriculum and in myriad different ways ensures they are reaching the needs and preferences of a cognitively diverse student body.

Despite the great effort and initiative St. Edmund’s has made in creating a school-wide mobile learning program that involves all learner it is not without problems. First, from the case study, there was an obvious divide between Year 7 and Year 10 students. Year 7 students seemed to use the devices with more ease and motivation, while there was more resistance in Year 10 students.  More research needs to be conducted in this area. Both years are of the ‘digital natives’ generation, however it seems that only Years 7s were digital learning natives, being exposed to ICT in primary school.  Having this experience and being of a younger age most likely made the use of PDAs for learning more interesting and motivating.  The Year 10s saw less value in the PDAs and claimed they were only used in a few classes.

For the older students, the PDAs may need to become both more and less accessible.  To be taken seriously as an effective learning tool, it must be more accessible to students across the curriculum, used in all classes, not just math or science.  In order to build motivation for use by students, the PDAs must be used in ways that arouse interest and and provide novelty in both the process and products of learning.  In other words, the PDAs cannot be another pen or pencil of the classroom – something so common that students do not take notice of them.

Sharples, Corlett, and Westmancott described some the requirements devices should have if they are to be considered part of a life-long mobile learning scheme.  They should be:

• highly portable, so that they can be available wherever the user needs to learn;
• individual, adapting to the learner’s abilities, knowledge and learning styles and designed to support personal learning, rather than general office work;
• unobtrusive, so that the learner can capture situations and retrieve knowledge without the technology obtruding on the situation;
• available anywhere, to enable communication with teachers, experts and peers;
• adaptable to the context of learning and the learner’s evolving skills and knowledge;
• persistent, to manage learning throughout a lifetime, so that the learner’s personal accumulation
  of resources and knowledge will be immediately accessible despite changes in technology;
• useful, suited to everyday needs for communication, reference, work and learning;
• easy to use by people with no previous experience of the technology

(p. 223)

The HTC Advantages St. Edmund’s uses, as well as the mobile infrastructure, meet some but not all of these requirements.  The problems some students were having – students who would otherwise be considered digital natives – are evidence that the PDAs are not easy to use.  In addition, teachers also felt the Windows Mobile operating system was difficult and inefficient, as scaled down mobile versions of Windows software lacked important functions.  For example, taking a PowerPoint presentation from PC to PDA was tedious and resulted in poor quality presentations.  In addition, the lack of internet access at school (due to whitelisting) has been a problem for both students and teachers.  The device itself, while highly portable, only has a 4″ screen, which makers reading or inputting large amounts of text troublesome.

These problems mean not only limited use of the devices but limited learning potential.  Much of the internet is not utilized, which means that students are missing out on important knowledge gleaned from numerous device.  They are also missing out on learning opportunities from social networking sites, blogs, and wikis.  These learning opportunities mean not only reading these sites (and being passive participants) but participating in these sites (and therefore being active participants).  The school could work on creating a digital learning program which allows safe social networking, blogging, wikis, and so on.

The fact that these devices are being used in multiple subjects, in multiple ways – in class and outside, shows that St. Edmund’s is on the right path.  I fear, however, that they may be limited by the devices themselves, which have already been procured for most if not all students.

This case study took place in 2009, and already the HTC Advantage seems like ancient technology.  It is running on the Windows Mobile operating system while newer systems are operating on iOS and Android platforms which have proven to be more efficient and open. As the case study points out, the PDAs were designed as PC extensions (assistants) and not computers in and of themselves.  St. Edmund’s has considered iPhones as viable replacements, and I would venture to say they may find there program more effective if they choose a newer tablet system (such as the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab) which offers large screen sizes and a platform that is more open to educational uses.  In addition, devices such as these are becoming more ubiquitous while PDAs, as modern as they are, are taking on archaic connotations.

Conclusion

St. Edmund’s is making grand and important steps in what will be the inevitable course of many schools as understanding the learning potential of mobile devices becomes as ubiquitous as the devices themselves.  While St. Edmund’s program is somewhat limited by its infrastructure and possibly by its choice of device, it seems to be making great strides in the classrooms, especially by the more digital learning inclined students.  The great thing about St. Edmund’s is that it is not waiting for the perfect mobile learning solution, but rather working to perfect what it is already utilizing as an effective means of learning, inside and outside of the classroom.

References

Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O.  (2002).  The design and implementation of a mobile learning resource.  Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 6, pp. 220-234.

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