mlearning: An Innovative Pedagogical Tool

Blog write up by Mrs Suman Purohit Das

mlearning: An Innovative Pedagogical Tool

With the advancement of educational technology, our teaching-learning process has faced the utmost changing trends. The classroom technology trends are changing so swiftly and speedily that the teachers and educators have to keep themselves equipped to meet the expectations of a diverse classroom for optimum learning.

21st century Gen Z is born with technology in hand, that’s why these children are known as “Digital Natives”. If we do not bring innovative technology to the classrooms then our classrooms will be dull, boring and it will be difficult to engage and excite children for learning in future.

Teachers have to embed technology into their innovative instructional planning. Around 5 years back on the name of educational technology, most of the schools had started changing their chalk & black boards into digital/interactive boards so called “Smart Boards”. But that also got out dated as the changing digital transformation trends are emerging & inflowing very fast into the education system. The latest digital tools available to bring innovation in pedagogy are Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, mLearning, Cloud Computing, Speech-to-Text options, 3D printing etc.

The mLearning is simply learning using mobile (m + Learning). The mLearning is an effective technology, reason being; firstly nowadays everyone has smart window or android mobile phone with mega pixel high resolution camera, hence it is easily available and secondly, the fast speed 4G mobile internet services. Few years back teachers used to struggle with downloads & uploads with poor internet connectivity for making technology based instructions. The buffering used to suck lot of time.

Now the mobile which is in the hands of everyone can be used as an excellent tool for teaching-learning process and making innovative instructional plans. A teacher can click images of class work & home work from his mobile and share with the students hence the home work of day will reach to parents as well as students on just a click. A teacher can shoot a video of his teaching and share with students on a social group as well as can create a you tube channel and upload; later the link or url of the video can be shared with students. A live teaching on mobile can also be seen.

Such data-driven instructions can be re-read, re-seen as well as can be used in future too. It can also be used in future to recall concepts & important things before the examination. It will also help in personalised learning as each student learns with different pace. If a student did not understand once then he/she may watch the videos again. Children may be asked to watch experiments in virtual labs in science, virtual maps in social science, and virtual 3 D figures in mathematics in the mobile apps for experiential learning. Kahoot games quiz is an another example of collaborative learning using mobiles. At one go all the students in the classroom can answer altogether in such quizzes as well as scores can be seen immediately at the end of the quiz. Teachers may design subject based quizzes, use such apps on mobile for assessment of students learning at the end of a topic taught.  Spell, Vocab & Grammar check can be done with enormous effective apps in the mobile. 

Mobile as a learning tool is also used to keep parents being informed about the progress of the child whether socially, emotionally, physically, mentally & academically. Social groups on the mobile phone may be used by teachers to keep parents informed of what’s happening in the classroom. With such social groups students feel more connected with the teachers as they are free to ask any question at any time related to the topic taught. 

The mLearning is a boon to the children with learning disability. Parents having such children used to feel stressed whenever they had to look for a scribe for their children. A mobile app called “Dragon speech” has resolved the mammoth problem of such students & parents.  

The mLearning has changed the traditional classrooms into flip classrooms. The self learning classrooms which we used to see a decade back have now converted into flip classrooms.  With such technology students will be getting more time in the classroom to perform practical tasks. Mobile technology has to be adapted for constructive usage. Parents, Teachers & Students have to be briefed about cyber safety and safe mobile apps. Parents have to support teachers & students for monitored usage of mobile technology & internet access.  The mLearning is an amazing tool for innovative pedagogy, active & experiential learning. It is the future of pedagogy and will certainly make a place in mainstream education.