Mobile pedagogic assemblages: learning about places by being ‘in’ place Teaching mobilities: practice, pedagogies, power RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2017
Dr Mark Holton, Dr Nichola Harmer & Dr Rebecca Vickerstaff – Plymouth University
Mobile phones are central to our embodied practices (Pfaff, 2010)
The ‘Swiss Army knives of connectivity’ (Wellman, 2011)
Improve engagement & motivation when conducting tasks (Welsh et al., 2015)
Blurring the more typical boundaries between geographical and virtual space (de Souza e Silva, 2006)
(July, 2017)
“Try getting into your students’ smartphones”
Mobile technologies / pedagogies • Mobile technologies can assist and enhance learning experiences (Hoff, 2015) • Compliment young people’s more intuitive use of technology (Welsh et al., 2015) • More creative forms of learning that deepen pedagogic experiences for students (Jarvis et al., 2013) • Morality of using students’ personal devices as teaching / research tools (Holton, forthcoming)
Photo courtesy of SWIB
Photo courtesy of James Quinn
The research • 4 groups of 4-5 Stage One students • Researchers shadowed and audiorecorded their own observations of the students’ tour and use of the app • Students given autonomy to work with the app – genuine experience? • Students completed a short questionnaire on their return
Mobile Assemblages “[…] the ways in which mobile communications form part of a reconfiguration of the relations between different media, their genres and the media practices of users [and] the role of [technologies] in assembling the social as destabilising some social relations [...] while stabilizing, and creating, others” (Goggin, 2009: 153)
Mobile pedagogic assemblages
Storytellers
Observers
Soloists
Collaborators
Knowledge Seekers
Images courtesy of Zander von Benzon (2017)
Storytellers “I could see myself living here”
“Hey, did you know this used to be the red-light district?!”
Knowledge Seekers/collaborators “One of them is now pointing towards the Sundial [she has] been looking at her phone and now has indicated that they needed to stop […] They're scrolling through and just checking out the information. They're all looking at the app now. They're looking up and around at some of the buildings, so they're picking up the information about the Abercrombie Plan and looking at the plaza and the TV screen. […] They're starting to discuss it a little bit with each other, they're pointing out information that they've come across in the app. They're smiling and looking a bit, sort of, surprised so I think there are a few elements in there they weren't expecting to see.”
Closing thoughts • Digital mobile technologies can produce (and reproduce) different understandings of mobility in place. • Constantly reconfiguring assemblages of mobile learning (relational links between students, technologies and environments). • Digital mobile technologies can stimulate more critical articulations of mobilities. • BUT, while learning remains organised around the classroom, mobile learning may be constrained.
Thank you Contact:
Twitter – @markjwholton Dr Mark Holton – Plymouth University
[email protected] Dr Nichola Harmer – Plymouth University
[email protected] Dr Rebecca Vickerstaff – Plymouth University
[email protected] 