Enabling Literacy and Empowering Learners

This research study examined the experiences of struggling readers and the teacher education candidates who supported them in a remedial reading clinical setting. Students in the study used open-ended tablet applications to support their own literacy development and to communicate their literacy knowledge and skill levels. The iPad applications positioned the students as curators of their own literacy content and promoted their ability to self-assess and reflect on their own growth and development. Students were empowered to represent and document their experiences in multiple modes and in their own voice. Their experiences could then be shared with parents. Similarly, candidates involved in tutoring the students were also involved in using the apps to promote their own growth and development as teachers of struggling readers. The candidates tutoring the students faced some challenges in managing the young readers' workflows and work with the apps; however, the insights they gained allowed them to truly understand the abilities of young learners, even those labeled as “struggling.”

Fusing Culturally Responsive Teaching, Place Conscious Education, and Problem-Based Learning With Mobile Technologies

Students must be provided meaningful learning opportunities to employ content through active learning opportunities that capitalize their interests (mobile technologies), fuse real life issues (problems that they face in school or local community), and sustain their curiosity (creative learning experiences). Using mobile technologies for culturally responsive, problem based learning is a powerful and unique way to prepare students for the four C's: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. This chapter provides theoretical and practical support of the innovative impact of using mobile technologies in student selected, problem focused learning.

Engaging and Empowering Dual Enrollment Students

This chapter discusses how 11th and 12th grade high school students taking college classes for credit, called dual enrollment students, are empowered and actively engaged when evolving mobile technologies such as socrative.com and remind.com are used in the college classroom. Classroom Response Systems, Peer Instruction, and the Flipped Classroom have all become widely known and growing instructional strategies used to promote active learning and enhance student engagement in the college classroom. Socrative.com is used as a Classroom Response System to provide students voice in the learning context. Peer instruction facilitated through the use of socrative.com allows for the engagement of learners and is shown to empower students in the classroom to engage in and control their own learning. Effective communication outside of class is necessary in a flipped classroom. Remind.com is used outside the classroom to enhance communication and to keep students on track with announcements and reminders.

Improving Access to Higher Education With UDL and Switch Access Technology

This chapter presents an in-depth case study of the creative use of a mobile technology system by a diverse learner who is also one of the authors of the chapter. This learner is blind, has significant fine and gross motor impairment, and speaks in a whisper that is not understood by today's speech recognition technology. The learner's inclusion as an author is, in itself, a testimony to the empowerment the mobile communication system has brought to his life, which in turn has allowed him to be an active participant in the design of a learning environment based on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. More specifically, the chapter details the ongoing development of a system for making math content more accessible not only to the individual learner who is the focus of the case study, but to other learners who struggle with higher level math content in higher education.

Teaching Exceptional Children With Mobile Technologies in a General Education Classroom

Meeting the needs of all students is of crucial concern for all teachers. As technology continues to change our culture and the ways students learn, it is important for teachers to embrace new pedagogies that meet the needs of both gifted students and students with special needs. This chapter proposes a framework that supports the integration of differentiation, inquiry learning processes, and mobile technologies. The goal of presenting this framework is to provide a research foundation for a conceptual ideal geared toward practical implementation that benefits these two marginalized populations of students.

Ensuring Ethics and Equity With Classroom Assessments and Mobile Technology

As online education continues to grow in both K-12 and higher education environments, teachers are becoming more attentive to the presence and power of their classroom assessments via mobile technology to enhance their self-efficacy. In online education, classroom assessments change both the role of the teacher and the function of the assessments. Mobile technology offers more choices for conducting assessments and providing feedback, accommodating learners' lives and locations, and increasing democratic participation and social inclusion. However, prevalent across online education are ethics and equity: two essential elements that can be difficult to guarantee with many approaches to classroom assessment via mobile technology. This chapter examines the essential elements of ethics and equity with classroom assessments via mobile technology in online education with recommended guidelines for teachers to enhance their self-efficacy.

Mobile Open-Access Revolutionizing Learning Among University Students in Kenya

Today's knowledge-based economy requires that nations equip their citizens with appropriate skills, and a demand for university education has continued to soar. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the rapid increase in university enrollments has not been matched with an expansion of the relevant infrastructure, resulting in among other things, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate libraries. On the other hand, there has been a robust growth in the sector of technology globally. This chapter examines the rapid expansion of university education in Kenya and its implications on quality, as well as possible contributions of the Smartphone to learning. Challenges aside, the author concludes that the Smartphone could be exploited to supplement learning as it enables the student to access academic and research materials from credible sources that are either on free-access or subscribed-for through their home university libraries. Samples from forty-nine responses from university students are included in the chapter.

Logistical Issues With OER Initiative in a K-12 Environment

The arguments in favor of OER are many: ranging from cutting costs to a more equal distribution and access to knowledge globally. While there is a body of literature on the benefits and challenges to OER, what is often missing are cases of implementations that those who wish to adopt can emulate or learn from. In this chapter, we present a case study of a K-12 school district that is currently engaged in implementing open textbooks using mobile devices. We examined their process, and the logistical issues they have faced. Our findings reveal how a digital divide, student's preferences for a textbooks and perceptions of student empowerment all play a logistical role in adoption of OER.

Empowering High-Needs Students With Problem-Based Learning Through Mobile Technology

With nearly ubiquitous access to mobile technology in the classroom, differentiation can become more seamless and student-driven, and students can focus on solving problems and developing life skills rather than recalling and regurgitating content-focused material. The cognitive focus of the classroom shifts from the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy to the highest levels of analysis and synthesis, as students are asked to create, improve, revise, and design. Implementing this model of problem-based learning can be transformational in the classroom; however, high-needs students struggle with the challenge at first. High-needs students are often asked to complete the lowest cognitive tasks. While they may be exhilarated by the challenge of problem-based learning, they may also struggle to improve and revise because of the stigma of failure they have experienced in previous academic endeavors.

“With Tension Comes a Little Work”

“‘With Tension Comes a Little Work': Motivation and Safety in Online Peer Review” investigates whether the infringement of privacy inherent in using semi-public Web 2.0 platforms disrupts students' sense of safety. Grounded in the work of composition theorist Peter Elbow, this study offers a qualitative study using a questionnaire and focus group interviews to report on the experiences of 33 students using Google Drive in a freshman writing class. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that students need to feel safe in order to learn, the study finds that some discomfort contributed to student motivation and that too much comfort actually decreased motivation.