Ten Tips for e-Learning and m-Learning


It’s not about the technology - it’s about learning. Lots of schools are buying interactive whiteboards, iPads, netbooks and EeePCs because other schools are, not because they have an identified need or a plan in place. If you don’t know how this tool is going to make an identifiable “value for money” difference for your children’s learning then what are you thinking?

Just because it seems like a huge challenge for you doesn’t mean it will be a huge challenge for your children. I have fallen into this trap where I have looked at what a school or children in a school are doing and thought “that’s so far beyond me, we could never do that.” My limitations don’t need to be their limitations.

It isn’t rocket science. Using ICT, employing e-Learning strategies and allowing children to use mobile devices to assist them with their learning is not frightening and not rocket science. For them it’s normal and natural so let go and let kids.


You don’t have to start brilliantly - you just have to start. It doesn’t matter if you are finding your way a bit with e-Learning, ICTools and m-Learning, having  go and making mistakes is how kids learn and it should be how we learn too at least some of the time.

Give teachers the tools, give them time to play with the tools and give them training. It’s not going to happen for the children if the teachers are not on board and have not had the “fear factor” removed.

Shutting mobile devices out of places of learning is like King Canute trying to command the tide to come in. There can only be one outcome - Epic Fail!

Google does not have all the answers. Someone needs to tell children just because it’s on the net doesn’t mean it’s true. Someone needs to tell adults the same thing about the News.

Google has a truck-load of answers and can provide them in a host of ways that most of us don’t realise. Have you used Timeline, Reading Ages, or Wonder Wheel to improve your searches? These are tools that appear to the side of your search-results window when searching via google.

Two of our basic desires as humans are to create and to communicate. e-Learning Tools and m-Learning tools offer fantastically effective and powerful ways to do just that - and to a real audience.

We need to move past the concept of discreet items of work, learning tasks etc that are recorded in exercise books, annotated at home by a teacher and never again referred to. e-Learning and m-Learning tools allow children to revise, re-use, re-purpose, re-visit learning again and again. We are trying to grow life-long learners, but often their learning is done and then buried. The learning needs to be life-long too.

Strategic Planning for e-Learning and m-Learning


Moemoetia te moemoe, engari whakatinana hia.”
Dream dreams but achieve them as well.


“A vision without a plan is just a dream. 
A plan without a vision is just drudgery. 
But a vision with a plan can change the world.” 


You don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you don’t know - Yogi Berra.



Step One:   To look at what e-Learning and m-Learning can involve in a teaching and learning      
                        context. Learning Safaris for staff and management to see e-Learning and m-Learning in
                        action.

                        If we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got.

Step Two: To look at trends and near-future developments in ICT and e-Learning and m-Learning.
                       
                        Good planning happens when we ask the right questions.

Step Three: What do we want for our children?
What do we want for our Teachers?
What do we want for our community?
How can we find out?
Where are we now?
How will we bring our teachers on board?
How will we bring our community on board?
How will we bring our children on board?

We need to understand and then communicate WHY e-Learning and m-Learning are important for our school and our community of learners to focus on.

We need to consider - pedagogy; engagement; access; 21st Century skills; student context; management; training; support etc

We need to consider future trends; issues; risks; costs.

We need to plan for success and plan to prevent the “frustration” factor putting a roadblock in the place of learning.

We need to provide teachers with the tools, techniques and technologies, and prove to them these tools can make their everyday lives, tasks and focuses easier to manage and complete.

It all starts with the teachers - get teachers to become enthusiastic adopters and the battle is as good as won.