Mark Pegrum, Associate Professor, GSE, University of Western Australia
Mobile Lenses on Learning
This seminar will outline the research currently underway on my new book project entitled “Mobile Lenses on Learning”. Using the metaphor of lenses, it draws together and builds on research carried out over the past decade and published as “From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in Education” (2009), “Digital Literacies” (2013, co-authored with Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly), and “Mobile Learning: Languages, Literacies and Cultures” (2014).
It is suggested, firstly, that in an era of heightened mobility of people, texts and languages, mobile learning is a complex phenomenon which can only be understood by considering it through multiple lenses: technological, pedagogical, social, economic, political, cultural and ecological. Each lens or set of lenses illuminates different aspects of mobile education, and sheds light on the polarised positions and paradoxical arguments currently surrounding mobile learning and, perhaps particularly, mobile-assisted language learning (MALL).
It is suggested, secondly, that mobile devices themselves can be considered as lenses on learning, with three levels of mobility – of the devices, the learners, and the learning experiences – opening up an increasing range of pedagogically sophisticated possibilities. These possibilities, however, always remain embedded in wider social, economic, political, cultural and ecological realities.
Friday, April 23, 2018
3 – 5 pm
B-4 Dwinelle Hall