Mobile Blog Project: uploads

 


A Selection of work uploaded by the students during our trip to the museum. Some of the students added more photos when they got home or in the following days before the presentation.

One of the groups did not upload any photos to facebook but instead uploaded a powerpoint presentation with photos in it - they then worked collaboratively through facebook to make changes to it.

 

Feedback:

Most of the students said they enjoyed the experience and found it easy to access facebook, their group, upload photos and share information. One of the groups did not upload any photos, instead deciding to work offline and then share online through facebook. 

Of the 12 students who took part, 10 said they found it very easy or easy to share information through facebook, partly as it is so familiar to them already.

10/12 said they preferred to work collaboratively using facebook rather than the LMS (currently Blackboard). Reasons included that it was easier to see when info had been updated in their group because they were often on facebook anyway; that the secret facebook groups were easier to use and more familiar.

11/12 said they enjoyed taking photos of interesting information in the museum and that they preferred this to making notes.

All the students said they found the mobile element 'fun' and some commented that it made the trip more interesting. Other positive comments included that fact that it was quicker to take photos than write/ copy notes and meant they could gather more information and sort through it later.

10/12 said it was easier for them to share their photos over facebook and prepare their presentation from home, rather than having to meet in person.

4 students commented that it was a good idea to use their facebook groups as a depository for information and that they deleted many photos from the group when they got home.

Some negative comments included:

• technical issues connecting to the WiFi at the museum
• Photos taking a long time to upload to facebook (from older phones mostly)
• Students wanted to 'check' their photos first before they uploaded them
• 2 students found that the cameras on their phones were not working;one had to share with a partner - they found it 'annoying' having to share a phone. The other used her iPad which the whole group then worked around, directing the photos together.
• Some groups did not communicate well and therefore ended up taking duplicate photos which they had to delete.
• One student found the photos he had taken of some text next to a photo had come out 'blurred' and therefore he couldn't read the information. He did manage to find the info online through a search but this could be a major problem.
• Interestingly, most of the student did not like presenting from facebook; they could not find the photos they wanted to show quickly and preferred to use powerpoint.

Asked if they would prefer to use mobile blogging or traditional note-taking next time, 8/12 said they would prefer mobile blogging, 2 said they would use a combination and 1 said she would prefer to just take notes but work within a group where the others were taking photos.

From a teacher's perspective, the project was easy to monitor and I didn't have to ask any group to get on with the project as they were all motivated in the museum and already knew how to upload their photos so they got on with the task straight away. This was easier than i had expected.

However, the set-up was a little tricky. One student did not friend me before we got to the museum so we ended up having to friend each other in the museum and I had to put her into a facebook group using my phone. Also, one group had trouble accessing the WiFi at the museum and so it was a bit stressful to get them all set-up and ready to start.

Following the museum trip, it was easy for me to see 'who was doing what' as I got constant updates through facebook anytime a student uploaded or changed content in their group. It gave me a good idea of their online contributions and I was able to prompt one group who had not started to compile their presentation a few days before the deadline.

Mobile Blogging on a trip

We have arranged to go on a trip with one of my morning classes. The trip is to the Science Museum to see two exhibitions on medicine, which is the topic we have been studying this month. 

As part of the trip, the students will be working collaboratively in small groups to collect information which they will then summarise into a short, informal talk in the next class. 

I decided this would be the ideal situation to try out mobile-blogging; instead of asking the students to take notes on paper, they can take photos and upload notes to their private group on facebook and then use this to create their summary later.

 

All the students in my group had a facebook account except one. I asked her whether she would like to use my 'test student' account or use a different platform but when I came to the class after break, she had decided to register herself for facebook anyway. 

Out of the 12 students taking part, only two had the app downloaded onto their phones and only one uploaded information regularly so it was necessary to demonstrate how this worked to the class.

In order to protect their security, I advised them to 'friend' me but give me limited access to their account (eg. no access to their timeline/ photos etc). One of the advantages of groups on facebook is that members of the group do not need to be friends with each other. I also gave them an opportunity to request a partner/ group member or to see me if they had concerns about working with anyone in the class; no-one requested a partner or had a problem so I put the groups together based on who works well together in class. A further protection measure is that the groups are private or 'secret' so only the members can view anything posted to them.

There was a mixed reaction to the task at first. Three of the students seemed very excited about the project and started downloading the app straight away in class. I created the groups immediately, and those that had already 'friended' me were placed into their groups. Interestingly, one student started invited other members of his group who had not yet friended me, so i wondered whether next time I might create a 'spokesperson' or 'manager' who can friend me and then invite the other members of their group, instead of me friending everyone. As a note, these students were 18/ 19 years old and were from Japan and Korea. The two Chinese students in the class are familiar with the Chinese version of facebook but had only just joined facebook itself, so are taking a little longer to become familiar. 

There were 3 or 4 other students who were interested in the project but had a lot of questions about how to get into their groups online, how to upload photos and text. These learners were a middle-aged lady from Iran, a woman in her mid-20's from Qatar and a man in his mid-20's from Thailand. They are able to post to their blogs and contribute to the class blog but are less confident in using mobiles/ apps/ facebook. I spent some extra time with these students and made sure they were placed in a group with someone quite confident in using facebook. However, this raises the idea of the digital divide and whether students can end up being marginalised by the use of technology in the classroom if not properly inducted and scaffolded.

Technicalities of moblogging

At first, I thought I would use blogger for the mobile blogging project: the app is free and available on Andriod and iPhone, and is easy to use.

I envisaged creating group blogs and inviting the students as authors.

However, one draw back to this is that the students need to sign-in with a gmail account. I'm not sure how many students have gmail and whether they would want to sign-up for it and create a blogger account. It seems like a lot to ask technically. So I started to investigate the other platforms available.

I found this useful link: http://searchengineland.com/do-mobile-blog-templates-have-enough-substance-for-seo-76732 which lists the pros and cons of Blogger, Wordpress and Posterous for mobile blogging.


I experimented with all three, creating an account and downloading the apps. By far the easiest for me to use was blogger but that is probably because I am already familiar with it.

Wordpress has more options for authoring content which is nice but could lead to more confusion for my students, not all of whom are digitally literate or native (Prensky).

Posterous was a new platform for me. Creating an account was easy but downloading the app to my old Andriod phone was a pain and wouldn't work for a while. This kind of technical difficulty could be really hard for a non-native speaker.

There is further information on mobile blogging sites here:  http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3120-9-Tools-for-Mobile-Blogging

Moving away from blogging sites, I investigated Twitter and facebook.

The problem with twitter for my project is that you need to use the # to group your posts. Plus, I think my students will feel too exposed.


My final investigation was facebook; most of my students have facebook accounts and some already update their pages using a mobile app so this was a positive start.

I created a private page called group one and invited a member to join. We were both able to update content from our phones really easily. This seems like the winning solution to my project but it does have some drawbacks:

The students have to 'friend' each other (if not already friends) to join the group or they have to 'friend' me so that I can put them into groups. This might be too much of an invasion of their private social space and perhaps of mine too. Facebook does allow for security settings, so students can limit the access of their classmates to their personal information like photos or posts.

I have created a separate account for facebook as an educator so that my two 'worlds' can be kept apart as necessary. It will probably be useful to ask students their preferences for group members or to suggest they do the same and create an educational account.


However, in terms of access and ease, facebook is the platform I have chosen for my mobile blogging project.

Mobile blogging

Taken from www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g

After I had considered all the tools available currently in m-learning, I really liked the idea of trying Mobile blogging, often refered to as 'moblogging'. Mobile blogging is about updating content (text or photos) via sms or email from a mobile device and seems to lend itself ideally to collaborative constuctivist frameworks.

An Introduction to Moblogs in Education

View more PowerPoint from Leonard Low

http://www.moblogging.org/ and https://www.21classes.com/help/mobile are two great places to start with the basic FAQ's about moblogging.

Currently, my students create individual blogs which are linked to my blog, therefore they can view each other's content and post comments. Mostly they don't do this though. They wait for me to comment on their posts and then reply to me. I've noticed also that a few of them are posting photos and videos from their social lives and updating their diaries on these events. I'd like to harness these skills for an educational purpose and to get them working collaboratively, sharing information and working towards a common goal. The great advantage of m-learning is that is doesn't need to happen in a classroom, so this is also an important aspect to explore.

Current uses of 'moblogging' in education:

• Many schools and education groups use moblogging to create a collaborative wiki of information.
• They can be used instead of paper note-taking on field trips.
• Students can also create individual diaries or journals, updating them as and when they see examples of their current topic.

However, there are a few concerns with moblogging, primarily whether the mobile number of the user will be visible in the post. Safeguarding the students is essential and so I will test out moblogging first my posting my first mobile blog post to this blog in the next few days. I will also research more about the Internet safety aspects on moblogging.