Mobile devices afford both consumption and production. The purposes for which they are used are determined in part by their physical and technological design, but perhaps more importantly by their users’ needs, interests, and motivations. We can think of this coupling of a tool’s features and a user’s intention as a reciprocal relationship (Kirschner et al., 2004, p. 7). The robust capabilities and relative functional flexibility of mobile devices place more control in the users’ hands than do single-function devices like calculators. When bringing mobiles into formal learning environments, we have a responsibility to help learners recognize the extent of their personal agency with these tools and the ways in which they can use them for 1. consumption in support of production and 2. creative production more directly.

The networked functionality of mobiles, for example, can certainly support passive browsing of text and media. But if learners use the knowledge gained from that browsing in support of creative action, we can say this consumption takes on a transformational quality. The links between perception/reception and action in this case may be less immediate than Dr. Eric Klopfer envisions in his “Mobile as a Creative Medium” lecture, but I argue that these practices nonetheless do support constructivist learning.

My use of Twitter as a professional development tool, for example, is a largely consumption-oriented practice. I follow people and organizations who produce content that speaks directly to my interests. While I rarely interact socially in this space, the information and ideas I tap into throughout the day directly feed my creative work, whether writing, web development, or learning design.

If we consider creative practices more directly, mobile devices have also made enormous contributions to democratizing media production. From video and audio recording to app-based editing and publishing, mobiles have helped to make media production more affordable, portable, and accessible. The Adobe Spark app that I reviewed last week is a strong example of video production “for the people”. In their 2014 article, Davidson and Carliner discuss another revolution in production and publishing: the advent of the e-book. The authors here focus largely on innovations of presentation (the possibility of combining audio, video, animation, and text), but I find the real revolution offered by e-books to be the ways in which they extend authorship and publication to the masses (Davidson and Carliner, 2014, p. 714). Free apps like Apple’s iBooks Author promise to “allow anyone” to create beautiful, interactive, media-rich books with drag-and-drop software. With such software, learners can combine individual knowledge artifacts – text, audio, and video alike – to collaboratively build personalized e-textbooks, which they and future classes can access via tablets and e-readers.

The democratization of media production is only one of the social innovations sparked by mobile technology. By capturing and reifying elements of the physical world via audio/video recording and bringing them into the digital space, mobiles contribute to the ever-blurring lines between the virtual and the real. As our devices allow us to move fluidly along a continuum of reality-virtuality, increasingly we live and learn in a “Mixed Reality” space (Novak, Wang & Callaghan, 2012, p. 95).

Occupying one point along the “Mixed Reality” continuum, Augmented Reality technologies overlay the physical world with virtual information (Novak, Wang, & Callaghan, 2012, p. 94). Augmented Reality (or AR) tools offer opportunities to refine and extend the educational affordances of mobile devices. By moving information otherwise stored and accessed through small handheld devices into users’ visual fields, AR helps to shorten the physical and cognitive distance between “Knowledge in the Head” and “Knowledge in the World” (Norman, 2013, p. 74). With immediate visual access to just-in-time information, learners can devote more of their attention and energy to performing high-level cognitive tasks.

In addition, AR helps to mitigate some of the physical limitations of mobile devices, in particular their small screen sizes and small user input fields. AR technologies can improve users’ ability to easily enter data through QR codes, information-rich barcodes, and interactive keyboard projections (Novak, Wang, & Callaghan, 2012, p. 94). In doing so, they can extend the accessibility of mobile devices for learning, offering opportunities for learners who would be otherwise physically unable to interact with mobiles due to their small form factor.

While the above scenarios describe a tight conceptual merging of the real and the virtual, AR can also support learning and performance by allowing for a layer of the imaginary onto the real. AR has been used for military training purposes to allow learners to engage in interactive, immersive, but otherwise quasi-fictional environments and experiences. Champney et al., for instance, describe one application of AR training with Head Mounted Displays to support immersive on-site training of Call for Fire (CFF) missions that would otherwise prove costly to recreate in “reality” (Champney et al., 2015).

One key concept shared between these two texts is the argument that the effectiveness of AR for teaching and learning depends on the extend to which its use is aligned with solid educational theories. We can easily extend this requirement to apply to all uses of educational technology. By allowing users to engage in immersive, interactive, and authentic experiences, mobile-AR technology is particularly well aligned with situated and constructivist theories of learning (Champney et al., 2015, p. 251). As the cost of designing AR technologies and the limitations of physical device design continue to decrease, we can expect Augmented Reality to find increased application in the field of professional training and development.

Sources

 
Davidson, A., & Carliner, S. (2013). E-Books for Educational Uses. Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 713-722. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_57

Dunleavy, M., & Dede, C. (2013). Augmented Reality Teaching and Learning. Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 735-745. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_59

Kirschner, P., Strijbos, J.-W., Kreijns, K., & Beers, P. J. (2004). Designing electronic collaborative learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 52, 47-66.

Klopfer, E. [cyberlearningvideos]. (2012, Jan. 31). Mobile as a Creative Medium. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/_UHA9XYAXjA

Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things. Philadelphia, PA: Basic Books.

Novak, D., Wang, M., & Callaghan, V. (2012). Looking In, Looking Out: A Discussion of the Educational Affordances of Current Mobile Augmented Reality Technologies. In J. Jai (Ed.) Educational Stages and Interactive Learning: From Kindergarten to Workplace Training. (pages 92 -206).