A Possible Research Topic

As the mobile learning is become more and more popular in modern education, students are able to grab a piece of information so quickly through their iPhone/iPad or any other Internet-connected digital devises, do they still bother to make efforts to remember something?
At “ancient times”, we used pens and paper notebooks to record what teachers were taught in classes, when writing took place, to some extent, it helped students to take the first step in remembering the contents; when they reviews the class, things written on notebook could remind the learning contents again and they may think more deeper, then they might add more notes on. It’s better to understand the whole thing and remember what you have learned now, otherwise, it would be a huge task before the exam when you basically need to start from zero.
According to cognitive theory, two things are very important:
(1) The memory system is an active organized processor of information and
(2) Prior knowledge plays an important role in learning.
If students are so easy to get the information from Internet through their mobile devices, they may feel there is not a necessity to remember everything, since their mobiles made it possible for information-on-demand (or knowledge-on-demand). However, one’s knowledge is expended based on what they have now (what they remember), if you don’t have the previous knowledge base, you cannot absorb new knowledge. It can be explained that why we have prerequisites for different courses.
So what I feel will be an interesting research topic is that “Will the use of Internet – connected mobile devices weaken the memory ability for students?”
To conduct a research, a comparative experiment can be conducted. For one group of students, they are allowed to use iPhone/iPad during the class, and for the other group, they can only use pens and paper during the class. We can ask them to have a quiz right after class to see what happen to their short-term memory, and of course, we can also wait until the end of semester to see which group did better job in the exam.
Still, I think the result might be different when conduct experiment in primary school, secondary school and in the university. But I may have the hypothesis that it matters more in primary level.

Opinions on Experimental Classroom

Opinions on Experimental Classroom

It is a great experience to have classes in such a high tech classroom.

The best thing about this classroom is that we students are being the center of the learning process, while instructors are act as kind of facilitators during whole process. The student – centered learning is enabled of course by the ICT equipped in the experimental classroom.

1.    Students are arranged to be seated into different groups, it eases the communication and discussion among group members.

2.    With the provided PC, we can quickly key in opinions from different group members for documentation and later on we could use what we came up during the discussion for assignment and group works.

3.    Group works are not only shared among group members, but also with the rest of the whole class. Thanks to the ICT system, each groups’ input can be displayed through the big screen so that everyone in the classroom can see the contents of group discussion and freely give quick comments on that. It is definitely a good way to learn from each other.

4.    With smart control system, the lightening can be adjusted easily. When instructor would like to dry attention from students, he/she can turn off the lights and left only the big screens to be seen.

5.    Though the tables are set freeze in classroom, but the chairs are moveable, students can always move around. Maybe you would have a cross discussion with your neighbors, that would be possible.

6.    Except PC input, each table is also equipped with a microphone which help individual’s opinions to be passed throughout the whole class.

7.    I realized there is also a visualizer on each table too, though we have not used it until now, but I am sure it is a very good ICT that is used in education when people need to present something in real, for example, students may show some of the iPhone/iPad application on his/her iPhone through the visualizer.

Things I am not sure whether good or bad

1.    I personally do not see the leveling of the whole classroom help that much. It is a little bit uncomfortable when you hear somebody is talking but you cannot see his/her face. It is just different from talking through phones, you know the person is there, but without seeing him/her, you are not that convinced. It’s the same thing when instructor is lecturing, without the eye contact; it’s just missing something there. On the other hand, I believe to some extent leveling is good, but it is better to make sure the structure won’t block students’ vision.

2.    If the table can be movable, that would be great; but I can see how messy it could be if the cables cannot be hidden under the table.

3.    About the microphone on each table, though it is alright for us to pass around the microphone to the one and another, it is still not very convenient.

4.    If the system could display the multiple video inputs at the same time, (which means we can see different screen inputs from different groups on one single screen) that would be easy for us to make comparison.

Overall, I enjoyed the classroom a lot.

Web 2.0 in Education - Building a Virtual Classroom in SecondLife

Have you ever experienced a second life in the virtual environment provided by SecondLife? 

SecondLife has created a virtual world, each participant can create an avatar to represent himself/herself in this virtual world.  Every avatar we

meet in the virtual world corresponds to a real person in the real world.  We can chat or talk with others in the virtual world.  We can build our own buildings, rooms, and create our own settings.   We can share files, images, etc. in the virtual world.  You may click here to visit the website of SecondLife to get more information or to join it.

Thus, a teacher can use SecondLife to support distance learning.  The teacher can ask all students to create avatars for themselves.  He then creates a virtual classroom in SecondLife, and asking all students to log in and come to this place to attend the lesson.  The teacher can talk to the whole class as in the real world.  He can share the lecture notes and other resources.  Students can discuss with each others and with the teacher.

Use of Mobile Technology in my school

In my school, there is two wireless networks covering the whole campus.  One of these network is a secure wireless network providing services like Internet access, file sharing, network printing and school intranet access for all staff members.

All staff members can use mobile devices like smart phones, notebook computers to access the Internet and the school intranet.  Network printers are installed in various locations in the school campus.  Staff members can submit print jobs anywhere within the school campus and choose the desired printer for his/her print job.

Each classroom is equipped with a desktop computer with fast Internet access and a digital projector.  Each mainstream teacher is supplied with a notebook computer by the school while each IB teacher is supplied with a Blackberry smartphone.

Originally, the other wireless is supposed to open to all for accessing the Internet and the school intranet.  Each students can then use their mobile devices to these purposes.  But complains have been received from many teachers that students are using their smartphones and notebooks to access Facebook, msn, nba.com, etc. all the time even during lessons which comes to the concern of the school management.  Since then the network is not open to students until suitable measures are devised against the undesirable accesses.

Usage of open source software for schools: A case study in Hong Kong

Define	The education software is rarely and expensive in Hong Kong. The free online application is not stable. Thus, we try to find out the possibility of using open source software in Hong Kong Secondary School.
Plan	Literature review: Mobbs, R; Hawkridge, D.(2010). Utilizing open source tools for online teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology. 41(3).58-65. Chan, Man-hoi.(2004). Utilizing open source software in schools of Hong Kong. Master thesis. The University of Hong Kong. http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/31384 DiBone, C., Ockman, S.,& Stone, M.(1999) Open Sources. Sebastopol:O’Reilly.
Execute research procedures	quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, including satisfaction surveys, qualitative content analysis of online discussions, and unstructured interviews

The Golden Ratio of IT investment in system providing to training - A Potential Research Topic

I have observed that there are a huge different between the IT investment in hareware, software and training. This situation lead to inefficiency of using Information Technology. For example, IT department buy a lot of hareware and software that the teachers and students seldom used; the teachers have no idea what they can choos; even some simply technology that the teachers require most are never introducted.

I believe that there is a "golden ratio" of IT investment in system providing to training which is most effectiveness to education, and it's worth to find the ratio.

Firstly, I  hypothesized that there is a ratio of IT investment in system providing to training that can maximize the effect. Here I define that "system providing" mean the hareware and software that provide to teachers and students, and "training" included the knowledge of Information Technology that they can choose, the knowledge to applicate them and the idea to combine them in education.

The method we will use is collect the information from different schools and find the relation between the ratio of investment and the effect. Questionnares can be sent to the IT coordinator to collect the information about the investment. The data collected is reliable if the questionnare is set in detailed to guide them what is included in which fields. However, the effectiveness of IT in education is difficult to measure. I think it can be approximately measure by setting questionnares to all the teachers and the students in the school to determine the effectiveness of IT in education. For examples, we can ask the teachers how much they know about the latest Information Technology and how often they use them; or we can ask the students do they agree it is useful for the Information Technology that the teacher used.

After the information is collected, we can calculate the Correlate Coefficient between them and make a conclusion of the most suitable ratio of IT investment in system providing to training.

Mobile Learning Age

Preview

• A Theory of Learning for the Mobile Age (pre-print)
• Mike Sharples, Josie Taylor, Giasemi Vavoula 
• A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive.’ Dewey (1916, p. 88) 

Full Version

The book describing the Criteria for a theory of mobile learning, exploring what is learning as Conversation on mobile, it not only coverage the possibilities of mobile learning it also inspire us the implication of e-learning or learning with technologies.