E-Learning and Digital Media
ISSN 2042-7530

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Ubiquitous Mobility with Mobile Phones: a cultural ecology for mobile learning

JOHN COOK London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
NORBERT PACHLER Institute of Education, London, United Kingdom
BEN BACHMAIR University of Kassel, Germany

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.181

This article argues that mobile phones should be viewed as new cultural resources that operate within an individualized, mobile and convergent mass communication; such a recognition facilitates the options for a cultural ecology. A particular challenge here is to find adequate curricular functions in school where the inclusion of these new cultural resources can and should be introduced. The authors expand their argument, first, by discussing mobile devices as cultural resources theoretically from the perspective of their position within what they call a triangular-oriented mobile complex; second, by means of this triangular analysis of structures, agency and cultural practices the mobile complex is investigated with the purpose of positioning the school in relation to this complex; third, they present the notion of user-generated contexts as a means of integrating meaning-making from the world outside of schools into the school and its curriculum. User-generated context is conceived by the authors in a way in which users of mobile digital devices are being ‘afforded’ synergies of knowledge distributed across people, communities, locations, time (life course), social contexts and sites of practice (such as socio-cultural milieus) and structures. In order to concretize this notion of context they give a brief example. The article then goes on to draw on a case study of a school project that examines mobile devices and associated media within school mathematics. This analysis leads the authors to propose some guidelines for mobile learning. They conclude by noting some significant methodological challenges for their future research around the mobile complex and user-generated contexts.

Spatial Conditions: an unheeded medium in teaching and learning

TINA BERING KEIDING Danish School of Education in Aarhus, Aarhus University, Denmark

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.197

This article addresses spatiality as an educational category by asking how spatiality influences students’ experiences of interactions in project-based teaching. It examines students’ experiences with two different spatial conditions – namely, separate rooms, each accommodating a single group, or a much larger open space hosting multiple groups. It concludes that students’ experiences of the two types of spatiality provide very different contexts for interaction and learning. The advantages of separate rooms for multiple groups arise from their affordance of spontaneous inspiration, feedback and learning, but they present challenges regarding the handling of complexity. Single-group rooms support focus in discussions, but prevent members of one group from drawing inspiration from others. Deconstruction of students’ utterances about their interaction with students from other groups indicates that the experience of knowing each other, belonging to and being a part of the community appears to be the factor which makes a difference in students’ engaging in professional interactions. The findings suggest that the multiple-group room assists in the development of competencies in the areas of networking, professional interaction and learning.

The (Im)Materiality of Educational Space: interactions between material, connected and textual dimensions of networked technology use in schools

CATHY BURNETT Department of Teacher Education, Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.214

In contributing to understanding about the barriers and opportunities associated with new technologies in educational settings, this article explores dimensions of the educational spaces associated with using networked technologies in contemporary classrooms. After considering how educational spaces may be ‘produced’ (to use Lefebvre’s term), it draws on narratives of classroom practice to explore three dimensions of educational space – material, connected and textual – and considers the implications that these, and the relationships between them, may have for the use of networked technologies in education. It concludes by setting an agenda for future research, arguing that more extensive empirical work is needed to explore how these dimensions intersect and the implications this has for pedagogy. The need for such research is seen as particularly pressing given increased calls for transformative pedagogies which demand new ways of interacting within and between educational spaces.

Shifting Ontologies of a Serious Game and its Relationships with English Education for Beginners

MIKALA HANSBØL & BENTE MEYER The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.228

This article takes as its point of departure a language project which is a subproject under the larger ongoing (2007‑2011) research project Serious Games on a Global Market Place. The language project follows how the virtual universe known as Mingoville (http://www.mingoville.com) becomes an actor in English education for beginners. The virtual universe provides an online environment for students beginning to learn English in schools and at home. This article will focus on the shifting ontologies of Mingoville and teaching and learning situations in beginners’ English. It takes as its point of departure neither Mingoville as part of the media ecologies of the classroom, nor the epistemological ramifications of Mingoville. Instead, it suggests that opening up the shifting ontologies of Mingoville (i.e. what mediates Mingoville and its relationships with doing beginners’ English) may offer a different and useful approach to understanding how Mingoville becomes a multiple actor. It reveals that such an actor both influences and is influenced by manifold constitutive entanglements involved in organizing English teaching and learning activities for beginners. Theoretically and methodologically, the article and the empirical gatherings and analysis are inspired by science and technology studies (STS) and Actor Network Theory (ANT). The arguments and descriptions provided throughout the article will focus on the shifting ontologies of Mingoville as it moves into, and out of, different teaching and learning situations of English for beginners.

Teachers Teaching in the New Mediascape: digital immigrants or ‘natural born cyborgs’?

CATHERINE A. ADAMS Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
PATTI PENTE Department of Elementary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.247

Schooled in an earlier time, educators are laboring to find meaningful purchase in new media environments, unable to match the fluency and sophistication of their ‘digital native’ students. Yet is Marc Prensky’s portrayal of teachers as ‘digital immigrants’ really an accurate rendering of the today’s situation? Drawing on phenomenological and posthuman literature, the authors reconsider teachers’ everyday involvements with technologies, and explore new ways of conceptualizing teachers and students in today’s mediatic situation. They suggest that teachers and students alike are more aptly – and less divisively – visualized as digital migrants or nomadic cyborgs navigating and acclimatizing to a restless twenty-first-century educational scene.

Digital (A)Literacy

PHIL ROSE Department of Communication Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.258

This article investigates the tendency of those who explore the topic of ‘electronic literacies’ to downplay the fundamental nature and importance of the perceptual habits associated with print literacy, and highlights the opposite tendency of reading and writing specialists to decontextualize the acquisition of these fundamental skills from the character of the culture at large. Making the case for a perspective located somewhere between these two positions, which attends to cognitive and neurological distinctions between our media interfaces, the author surveys a number of purported social trends in the United States. Among these are the increased rates of television viewing; the inadequacy of writing practice and instruction in American educational institutions; and the migration of writing, typing, and reading to the computer screen. In relation to these trends, he considers our prospects for the cultivation of a type of ‘secondary literacy’, in order that we might attain a kind of equilibrium within the cultural conditions that Walter Ong describes as ‘secondary orality’ – a phenomenon inherent in our general reliance on the most common electronic communication forms, which, in the communication contexts that they create, predominantly employ the spoken word and moving imagery.

Copyrights and Creative Commons Licensing: pedagogical innovation in a higher education media literacy classroom

CUSHLA KAPITZKE, MICHAEL DEZUANNI & RADHA IYER Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.271

This article examines the role of copyrights in contemporary media literacies. It argues that, provided they are ethical, young people’s engagement with text should occur in environments that are as free from restriction as possible. Discussion of open culture ecologies and the emergent education commons is followed by a theorisation of both literacy and copyrights education as forms of epistemology – that is, as effects of knowledge producing discourses and practices. Because Creative Commons licenses respect and are based on existing copyright laws, a brief overview of traditional copyrights for educators is first provided. We then describe the voluntary Creative Commons copyright licensing framework (‘some rights reserved’) as an alternative to conventional ‘all rights reserved’ models. This is followed by an account of a series of workshop activities on copyrights and Creative Commons conducted by the authors in the media literacy classes of a preservice teacher education program in Queensland, Australia. It provides an example of a practical program on critical copyrights that may be adapted and used by schools and other higher education institutions.

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