Mobile Learning in Ecuador

 

                                                                           

IN ECUADOR

It is quite a controversial issue – mobiles and smartphones in the classroom… and my amazement when I learnt that a lot of teachers actually forbid the students to use them. Even I was one of them…Mobile learning is seen by many as a disruptive technology. This is because it has been identified as a technology which holds great potential to transform the learning and teaching within a classroom.Now, I’m a teacher who does that only during the tests and I rather encourage my students to use their phones in the classroom on a regular basis. And teach them how to use their phones to help them learn.

You see, the generation of 14-16 year old people is called digital natives, as opposed to us, digital immigrants, people who lived without the Internet. They are claimed to feel as comfortable in the virtual world as in the real one – but I find it quite hard to agree. I think being born in a particular environment makes you a native – but doesn’t necessarily make you feel comfortable about it..

It’s the same with a smartphone/mobile phone/anything with Internet access and the classroom. They’ve had those devices ever since they remember but it doesn’t mean they know how to use them efficiently. I believe we – the teachers – shouldn’t forbid but we should teach them how to use their devices in a classroom and in a learning process. Let me present a couple of ideasfocused on using mobiles/smartphones in the classroom:

 

Ø  Dictionaries - The easiest thing is – they have access to their own dictionaries. That’s pretty good, especially that more and more children have problems with traditional dictionaries due to their lack of knowledge of the alphabet (it’s not funny, it’s the ugly truth).

Ø  Google – a very useful tool

Ø  Camera- Making and recording roleplays, creating commercials and weather forecasts, etc. and any interview is better when recorded!

Ø  Music - Sometimes a nice award for a good student is to let him play a song he loves most so that we can all listen to it (and then say what the song is about). Sometimes it’s just a nice idea for a break – to listen to a song

Ø  Film presentations - The role of films – and youtube in general – may be a blessing in a classroom without an interactive whiteboard/ projector. It’s quite easy to tell the students to watch a short film focusing on a lesson’s topic

Ø  Pictures - we can use pictures students take in a classroom, especially in the exam-preparation courses, where the students will have to describe a picture on their oral part. A nice idea is also to take a picture of an everyday object but in such a weird way the rest of the class would have to guess what object it is.