Mobile Learning

I have been part of a conference called Mobile Learning this past week - one session in Winnipeg (March 16) and one in The Pas, Manitoba (March 22). The sessions focus on new ways of learning and interacting with students and technology.
Carly Shuler is the keynote speaker and she presents her research from Pockets of Potential report - sponsored by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center of Children's TV Workshop. She has some interesting info on using mobile learning for learning - in and out of the classroom.
She mentions program such as Learning2Go and ookl.
I give a talk on Educational/Serious Games in Education which covers some of the brain research of digitally immersed (commonly called digital natives - which is an awkward term) people and also on the characteristics of a new age of students. Finally I look at some of the obstacles that teachers face to using games and how to move beyond these. I feature some of the video of James Paul Gee from Edutopia and audio of Angela McFarlane from her talk on novemberlearning.com.
That's the morning for the teachers, but we also have a student session and they spend their morning on Mobile Learning, using their cell phones to gather and share information. This session is led by Rob Fisher, Darren Kuropatwa and John Evans from Manitoba Education.

In the afternoon the teachers do the activity led by Rob, Darren and John and the students learn about possibilities in the IT industry in Manitoba and finish by playing an online/mobile game.
The idea and program were developed by Norm Lee from MindSet - the Manitoba Network for Science and Technology