Authors
Merryl Ford, Adele Botha
Publication date
2008/6
Journal
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on e-Learning (ICEL), University of Cape Town, South Africa
Pages
26-27
Description
The rise of mobile telecommunications and the cellphone in Africa has been an incredible success story. The cellphone is poised to play a major role in the stimulation of the information society and can be seen to be the most important networked knowledge exchange technology used in Africa today. However, the use of these increasingly powerful computing devices in the classroom has not yet reached a high acceptance level and many schools are banning them. Some of the reasons include lack of knowledge on the effective use of these tools in the classroom and a shortage of available, easy to use and cost effective educationallyfocussed mobile software applications. MobilED (Mobile EDucation) is a research project which aims to design a suite of cellphone technologies, applications and services to support teaching and learning in schools in South Africa. Various cellphone technologies and communication protocols (SMS, MMS, voice, bluetooth, Java and Symbian-based applications, telephony, WAP, GPRS/3G/EDGE) are being investigated in collaboration with educators in order to develop useful and pedagogically-appropriate applications and services for the classroom. The technological solutions will be supplemented by example lesson plans, tested in real classroom environments. The suite currently consists of an “audio wiki”, a “street memory” service, an mTutor application and an assessment tool. This paper reports on the results of initial pilots, work-in-progress and explores the possibilities for this technology as an important and powerful pedagogical tool in the classrooms of South Africa.
Total citations
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