Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

As I watched the two separate videos on the Horizon report, a couple of things stood out to me. The first was how happy I was to have some multimedia incorporated into our technology class. I have taken a number of online classes which only include the typical readings, forum postings, and assignments. This has been a frustration of mine for a long time. I’ve always hoped that as time went on, my university courses would become more multi-modal. The school I work for is now going to be using a new operating system in an attempt to offer a more multi-dimensional experience to our adult students. I am excited to see how this pans out and hope more universities will get on board. Rant over! :) 

Anyway, as I watched the videos, one thing I found extremely interesting was the tracking of the new technologies. They used the phrase “assessment using analytics”. This blew my mind a little bit. They talked about tracking participation, progress, ect and using this as formal assessment. I’ve always thought school needs to run a little more like a business than some old brick school house with a should be retired nun barking orders about memorizing times tables. This brought this thought to a whole new light. I hope that education continues to move this way to become more engaging and “real life” for future students. As of right now, it seems like funding is keeping the school system in the stone ages.

The Stockwell article was equally interesting in content. With the PDA experiment at the zoo, I was a little surprised to read that students found the use of the device to be distracting from the environment and things going on; however, when I thought about museums I have visited in the past with audio tours, I could relate. I wanted to experience the conversations and all things around me rather than to “plug in” and shut out the rest of the experience.

Under psychological issues, Stockwell refers to the fact that ‘a significant portion of young people do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the digital natives idea’. On the one hand, it seems like every child from the age of 5 has some kind of tablet or mobile device, but if we look at the bigger picture of the world there are far more children who do not have access to such technology. Furthermore, they may share these devices or only have limited access.