An anatomy of a mobilized English preposition lesson: Toward personalized learning

With the proliferation of mobile computing devices by the current school generation, significant opportunities have emerged for supporting personalized learning experiences through mobile devices. In our pilot study in introducing mobilized curricula to a class, we observed an inspiring mobilized lesson that made the students moved beyond classroom activities and exploited the affordances of mobile learning to provide multiple learning pathways for elementary grade (primary) 2 students. We analyzed how the affordances of mobile computing enable personalized meaningful learning in the lesson from four aspects: (a) allowing multiple entry points and learning pathways, (b) supporting multi-modality, (c) enabling student improvisation in-situ, and (d) supporting the creation and sharing of student artifacts on the move. A key property of mobile technology that enables these affordances lies with the high degree of portability of these devices which make them non-obtrusive in the students' learning spaces. Through the analysis, we hope to inspire the m-learning field to explore further what the affordances of mobile technology can enable in order to inform the design of more effective mobilized lessons. Copyright © 2009 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.