Handheld and Mobile Technologies - KMD2003

Overview

Do you own a cell phone? Do you own a portable music player? Do you own a portable computer? If you said yes to any or all of these questions than you are amongst the millions of people worldwide who have adopted mobile technologies. As the world begins to adopt technologies of various kinds, individuals search for ways of seamlessly integrating these technologies into their daily lives. There is a natural desire to engage in experiences that transcend space and time as we search for ways of becoming "unchained" from our desks whilst remaining "connected" to our world. The mobile device facilitates this somewhat schizophrenic desire by allowing people to remain connected in anyplace at any time. A mobile device is much more than merely being "portable". It transforms the idea of "using a computing device" from dedicated time and place to "fitting the gaps of all day's life", and the location of the user suddenly becomes an important factor of the interaction as well.

While the social implications of this desire are complex the potential applications for mobile technologies are limitless. It is for this reason that an examination of our current use of mobile technologies, as well as an exploration of emerging technologies, will be rich and meaningful intellectual enterprise.

Our goal is to explore the use of handhelds as a tool for knowledge retrieval and development from an experiential perspective. Ideally we are hoping that the pre-class activities will provide people with an opportunity to use a variety of handheld devices to retrieve/develop knowledge that is meaningful for them. It is hoped that these experiences will serve as the foundation of our in class discussions on our topic.
We will also demonstrate and discuss other possibilities of mobile learning, and finally the in-class activity will simulate a field trip enhanced by mobile devices, hoping to inspire our classmates' interest and creative insights.

Pedagogical Goals and Approaches

The main pedagogical goal is for the students to:

Understand of mobile devices' presence in daily life and knowledge communities
Experience how mobile devices can be used to support/enhance daily life and knowledge commuties
Discuss the influence of mobile devices on people's personal and social life
Explore new possibilities of mobile device usage and applications

The kinds of engaging activities for the class could involve:

Exploring physical environments (field trips) with the assistance of mobile devices
Capturing life experience with mobile devices
Remote collaboration and collaboration on-the-go using mobile devices

It is also important to engage in a discussion of this topic from a critical perspective that examines questions that may include but are not limited to:

What is the nature of the relationship between people and technology?
What impact does technology, such as mobile technologies, have on social norms and behaviours?
In what ways does accessibility affect the adoption of technologies?
In what ways does the use of mobile technologies impact the way that people relate to each other?

Specific examples fropm past classes (see Implementations, below)

Reflections, Evaluations and Ideas for the Future

Mobile and handheld devices is a huge topic and deserves a lot of attention. "Ubiquitous computing" could be one more topic to integrate in future classes. In practice, the class activities could be constrained by the accessibility of the students to mobile devices, especially if network functionalities are required. Within that constraint, the 2007 activities went pretty well.