Sunday 27 July 2014

Mobile Pedagogy: iPad Affordances

The availability and prevalence of mobile devices has grown so much in the recent past, that a majority of students that we teach will have some personal experience in their daily lives with some form of these devices. Whether this be with iPods, iPads, smart phones or another tablet device. They come to the educational environment already knowing how to navigate and utilise mobile devices. There are many educational benefits to using these devices in the school environment, but there is a need for a pedagogical change to maximise the potential of these benefits.

If you change the technology but not the method of learning, then you are throwing bad money after bad practice.” (Davidson. C, 2011)

In order to address the change in pedagogy, it is first necessary to identify the affordances of mobile devices. This then allows links to be made to ways to harness the potential of these devices for 21st Century learning. As I predominantly use iPads in the educational environment, this is the mobile device that I have created an overview of with regards to its technical features, affordances and limitations.




Davidson, C, 2011, Pointed response to NYT article on iPads in schools, retrieved 1st July 2014 from http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/pointed-response-nyt-article-ipads-schools

1 comment:

  1. Love the exploding look to the image :) Nice to see Inspiration Maps example. Management of multiple devices in the school environment is a significant issue - storage, charging and hygiene. Would BYOD alleviate some of these issues? Thanks for reminding me of the benefit of "ownership of learning" - an important motivator to produce best effort in my experience- mobile learning, cloud generated knowledge and varied learning pathways (differentiating) can all be accessed with mobile devices.

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