Gill Clough

Informal learning with PDAs and smartphones

There has been increasing interest in informal learning in recent years alongside interest in how such learning can be supported by technology. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which adults make use of their own mobile devices to support informal learning. In this study, a survey was used to investigate whether, and to what extent, experienced users of mobile devices use their mobile devices to support intentional informal learning. If so, do they make use of mobile device connectivity to support opportunistic informal learning and does such connectivity support or encourage collaborative informal learning? Experienced mobile device users were recruited from web forums and business, and asked whether they used their devices to support informal learning. A pattern of learning uses emerged, some of which deployed the mobile device capabilities relatively unchanged, others triggered adaptations to typical learning activities to provide a better fit to the needs of the learner. These informal learning activities provided the basis for the design of a flexible mobile learning framework that can be extended to support developments in mobile technology, and increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies by informal learners.

Geolearners: Location-Based Informal Learning with Mobile and Social Technologies

This paper looks at how mobile and social technologies are influencing informal learning in the context of online community membership. The development of mobile technologies that use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to pinpoint geographical location together with the rapidly evolving Web 2.0 technologies supporting the creation and consumption of content suggest a potential for collaborative informal learning linked to location. The research described in this paper asks whether these technologies can provide an effective focus for community activities and, if so, whether this combination of location-awareness, mobile, and Web 2.0 technology results in the creation of novel informal learning opportunities. The community selected for study was the Geocaching community, a geographically dispersed group who use mobile and Web 2.0 technologies to link the virtual social spaces of the Internet with the physical spaces that surround them.

Using Netbooks to Support Mobile Learners' Investigations across Activities and Places

We explore how small‐format laptops (‘netbooks’) have been used within evidence‐based investigations undertaken by secondary school students, to what extent these are suitable for effectively supporting learners across different locations and contexts, and their implications for open learning. Over the course of seven trials with 300 students and seven teachers we have gathered data on how netbooks have been used in formal and informal learning contexts, bridging school, field locations and home. The netbooks have supported individual, group and class tasks, and acted as both stand‐alone and networked devices. Three themes have emerged: the use of a single device to support inquiries across activities and places; student use and appropriation; and organisation and management. We conclude that netbooks are a category of device that can be highly effective in supporting open learning, although careful consideration is required when considering their deployment and use.

Augmenting Collaborative Informal Learning

This chapter deals with the development of informal learning communities in real and virtual settings and explores the impact of location-aware mobile technologies, augmented by Web 2.0 social spaces, on informal learning through community membership, using the Geocaching community as an example.

Interdisciplinary Knowledge Creation in Technology --- Enhanced Learning

The impact of the Internet on working practices has been profound, in terms of how people communicate, collaborate and network. In parallel, there has being increasing prominence given to interdisciplinarity as a means of addressing cross-disciplinary research challenges. This poster explores how interdisciplinary research can make better use of new technologies as a means of developing shared understanding. Interdisciplinary projects investigating Technology-Enhanced Learning TEL make a particularly relevant site for such research. We have found that a key means of support for the development of work on interdisciplinary projects is the development of mediating artefacts to support the articulation and process of discourse.

The JuxtaLearn Process in the learning of Maths’ Tricky Topics: practices, results and teacher’s perceptions

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Communitys Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 317964 JUXTALEARN.

Authoring Tools Supporting Novice Teachers Identifying Student Problems

We live immersed in a technological world. Learning is not an exception; most classrooms are equipped with multiple devices intended to improve the learning process for students. Especially for novice teachers, there is a need to provide usable technological tools that help them with their counterpart teaching tasks. This paper presents a set of teacher authoring tools to facilitate the tasks of identifying learning tricky topics, noting student difficulties, and creating quizzes for knowledge evaluation. The resulting quizzes, generated by these tools, are used at the start of learning activities, where students explain tricky topics by creating educational videos that use juxtaposition, and which are then shared and commented among peers.

Conclusions and Where to Start

This book began with the premise that our experiences of the world are augmented in many ways that help create our reality, yet they become invisible over time. Currently, technology is creating a con-vergence between the virtual and the physical world. Development of the former is shaped by realities of the physical world, and the latter is becoming progressively augmented by the virtual. We identified this as a good time to explore the diverse ways and situations in which learning is being augmented through new technologies, as our perceptions of this augmentation has yet to become fossilized (Holland & Valsiner, 1988). Our definition of augmented learning was that Augmented learning uses electronic devices to extend learners’ interaction with and perception of their current environment to include and bring to life different times, spaces, characters and possibilities. Having presented an analytical overview of the current state of augmented learning and the ways in which its affordances are employed, begs the question of whether it is possible to make any predictions about how augmented learning will develop in the future. In general terms, we would predict an increasing transformation of what is learned. The technological augmentation of our world will reconstruct learners’ experiences of topics and issues. By offering a reorganized, rearticulated space, augmented learning can provoke learners to attain fresh understandings of time and space.

Augmenting Learning Using Social Media

The last two chapters have explored ways in which learning can be augmented through the use of virtual worlds. Although such environments are widely used, particularly for gaming, their use is dwarfed by social media, which are now almost ubiquitous in many countries. Accessible through phones, tablets, games consoles, and computers, the 1.3 billion people who currently access Facebook and the 190 million people who access Twitter each month are never far from a portal to their online interaction. These social media facilitate conversations and the exchange of information, but the majority of postings could only be described as “learning” in the loosest sense of the word.

Augmentation with the Virtual

The focus in this chapter is on the virtual; on experiences mediated by a computer screen or similar interface. Although these virtual interactions can take place on laptops and tablets or via phones and gaming devices, this chapter is not focused on mobile learning. Augmentation with the virtual can take place in a classroom or at a study desk—it adds new possibilities to a conventional learning environment. The focus is also on these conventional education environments, where education is formal in that learning outcomes and the means of achieving those outcomes are decided by the educator rather than by the learner (Vavoula, 2004). Informal learning, in which the learner chooses both learning outcomes and means of achieving them, is dealt with in subsequent chapters.