Opportunistic (L)earning in the Mobile Knowledge Society

This paper discusses the concept of opportunistic collaboration within the emerging mobile knowledge society. The paper illustrates how opportunistic collaboration can be applied to the areas of learning and earning by demonstrating how to transform a traditional unemployment agency into an Opportunistic Collaboration Agency based on an entrepreneurial supply-support network structured in the form of a prosumer manifold. The OCA pattern provides ways to capture the dynamics of entrepreneurial work-relations in the emerging ’work-portfolio society’, increase the transparency of the entire value chain of economic activities, and create prosumer value loops that can support multi-dimensional bartering and increase the opportunities for marginalized groups of people to create value together. The paper ends by demonstrating how to use the OCA pattern to transform a traditional educational institution into an Opportunistic Learning Activity Broker that could help to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning.

Work-Based Mobile Learning Environments

This paper examines the idea of a Work Oriented Mobile Learning Environment (WOMBLE) and considers the potential affordances of mobile devices for supporting developmental and informal learning in the workplace. The authors look at the nature and pedagogy of work-based learning and how technologies are being used in the workplace for informal learning. The paper examines the nature of Work Process Knowledge and how individuals are shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different purposes, for social learning at work. The paper goes on to describe three different use cases for a Work Oriented Mobile Learning Environment. The final section of the paper considers how the idea of the WOMBLE can contribute to a socio-cultural ecology for learning, and the interplay of agency, cultural practices, and structures within mobile work-based learning.

Mobile Phones as Mediating Tools within Augmented Contexts for Development

This paper argues for the need to re-examine approaches to the design of, and research into, learning experiences that incorporate mobile phones in the learning context. Following an overview of ‘mobile learning’ the author’s argument describes two initiatives: Firstly, Design Research is presented as an approach that tends to have interventionist characteristics, and is process-oriented and contributes to theory building. Secondly, describing Augmented Contexts for Development; these place context as a core construct that enables collaborative, location-based, mobile device-mediated problem-solving where learners generate their own ‘temporal context for development’, and a case study is used to reify this Vygotskian-oriented initiative. This paper revisits Design Research by making use of various questions, and concludes by briefly outlining intentions on how to move toward some preliminary generalized design principles and implications for broader theory.

Appropriation of Mobile Cultural Resources for Learning

This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices—as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them—as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the “mobile complex”. Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues.

Mathematics Learning Community Flourishes in the Cellular Phone Environment

Researchers point at the importance of nourishing learning communities, which do not merely represent congeniality but rather dig deeply into learning. These learning communities are needed in mobile learning environments. In this article, the author examines the building of a community of middle school students who learned mathematics outside the classroom by carrying out real life activities using their cellular phones. The building of the learning community was led by three 3rd year pre-service teachers majoring in mathematics and computers at Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education. The pre-service teachers worked for 12 weeks with 30 8th grade students who then learned mathematics with their cellular phones and were part of a learning community. The research shows that the use of the cellular phone for learning contributed to their learning, their identity, and their sense of community.

Unlocking Lifelong Learning Through E-Heritage

Lifelong learning is often associated with the sociology and the economics of education. However, its broader and more holistic context, which includes learning through involvement in cultural activities, tourism, leisure, and recreation, is much less known. The relationship of this term to the rapidly changing world of Information and Communication Technologies and to various conceptions of interaction is also worthy of further investigation. This article seeks to shed light on that theme by presenting a novel IT platform involving mobile technologies that can enhance access and consumption of cultural heritage community resources. Drawing on material from the ISAAC European project, the article demonstrates how lifelong m-learning can be supported by an integrated e-destination platform that enables the user to build content and engage with that through a variety of applications over time. It concludes with a demonstrator system for the city of Genoa, Italy, to highlight the pathways to change.

A Platform for Actively Supporting e-Learning in Mobile Networks

The ubiquitous availability of wireless networks has opened new possibilities for individuals to learn from each other in open learning spaces like cities. Therefore, the changed learning environment must be understood by e-learning systems and technological facilities must be provided for knowledge sharing and construction. Such systems need to be pedagogically sound, yet adaptive to altered modalities. The teacher who was once the central entity to fulfill the learner’s needs may not always be available. Therefore, e-learning systems would fill the gap created by this teacher unavailability by actively participating in learning activities and performing some of the teacher’s roles. This article proposes an architecture designed to meet such challenges in a city-wide context. The authors outline the main components and services needed to fulfill the new requirements and provide the learners with tools, services and educational support for learning activities.

JAMIOLAS 3.0

In this article, the authors propose an improved context-aware system to support the learning of Japanese mimicry and onomatopoeia (MIO) using sensor data. In the authors’ two previous studies, they proposed a context-aware language learning assistant system named JAMIOLAS (JApanese MImicry and Onomatopoeia Learning Assistant System). The authors used wearable sensors and sensor networks, respectively, to support learning Japanese MIO. To address the disadvantages of the previous systems, the authors propose a new learning model that can support learning MIO, using sensor data and the sensor network to enable context-aware learning by either initiating the creation of context or detecting context automatically.

Mobile Media, Mobile Texts

By examining contemporary changes in the mechanisms and practices of representation and communication, this paper focuses on the copy-and-paste affordance fostered by mobile technologies and digital technologies at large. Its widespread use is affecting radically (1) the acceptability standards of (in)coherent patterns of text production, and (2) the criteria defining successful communication, which coherent cooperation to a mutual understanding is sometimes less relevant than the transformation and reinterpretation of texts according to the sign-maker’s interests in participating to multiple communicative networks. In this light, by pinpointing the abilities required and developed in the use of mobile technologies, the paper hypothesizes possible paths for teaching in such a changed semiotic landscape.