Designing a mobile toolkit for teacher educators

This week (March 8-11th) I was invited to present at  the annual UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, 2016 event  in Paris. This event has been running for five years now and brings together interested parties from across the world to share ideas and best practices in the use of mobile learning technologies and pedagogies. This year the focus was on 'innovating for quality' and the event highlighted the ways in which mobile technologies can be leveraged (according to context and for different groups) to support innovation, and assure high-quality learning opportunities for all people, in line with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Agenda. 

My presentation

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I chose to present the current progress of our MTTEP Erasmus+ project which fitted into the  'Making quality education a reality for all learners' track since the main purpose of the MTTEP project is to leverage pedagogical change by ensuring newly qualified teachers are trained in the use of mobile technologies by their tutors in universities and schools.  The presentation itself can be viewed at : https://www.zeetings.com/kevinburden/0001-4877-0002  and using this online platform (Zeetings) viewers can also leave questions and make comments.

The thrust of my presentation was based on the research I have undertaken with colleagues in Australia that shows how teachers, and teacher educators in particular, are not yet fully aware of the range of pedagogical approaches afforded through the use of mobile technologies to bring about more personalised, authentic and collaborative learning opportunities for students.  I presented the iPAC framework for mobile learning which we have developed and explained how the Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educators' Pedagogies project is utilising this framework to underpin the development of a mobile learning toolkit for teachers. This will include an online survey tool to evaluate and measure users current adoption of mobile technologies; a series of multimedia mobile learning case studies to illustrate best practice; a rubric for evaluating the pedagogical value of apps; a selection of eBooks and a 12 week online course helping educators to understand how best to use mobile technologies for pedagogical purposes. All of these resources will be available freely as OER under a Creative Commons license. 

The audience

The audience was composed of educators, policy-makers and school leaders who were interested to find out how the mobile learning toolkit might be of value to them. Feedback was extremely positive with many enquiries about using the toolkit and working alongside us as we develop a wider network of users. There was also interest from publishers and others involved in the creation of eBooks since the early stages of the project have featured the development of these resources.

Impressions

My overall impressions of the event were very positive. As you would expect, UNESCO  brings together a diverse and global range of players who are interested in the use of mobile technologies and this demonstrates the growing popularity and awareness of how these technologies may be able to bridge the digital divide that e-learning and traditional fixed technologies have failed to achieve. There was a significant presence from sub-Saharan Africa, India and South East Asia where mobile technologies are increasingly seen as the route to alleviating problems such as illiteracy. Many of the case studies presented from delegates in these countries were salutary lessons for those of us in the so-called 'developed world', such as the 'Classroom in a Box' example that demonstrated how the use of a single mobile device (an iPad) can leverage enormous educational benefits for teachers and  young people where traditional technologies have failed to impact.

I would strongly recommend anybody interested in this field and the broad area of social justice and inclusion to consider attending this annual event which will be held in paris again in March 2017. 

UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, 2016 presentation 

click here for link to Zeetings version

Images from the event