Welcome. We are Aarón Alzola Romero and Elton Barker, from the Open University's Department of Classical Studies. This blog is part of a broader research project exploring the uses (and abuses) of mobile learning in the Arts. Our aim is to examine mobile learning applications, assess their strengths and weaknesses (in terms of user interaction, contribution to learning outcomes, cost and popularity), identify areas of opportunity and challenges in their future implementation and assess the impact that mobile learning solutions have on the delivery of Arts courses.

Sunday 18 March 2012

Learning by tinkering


Raspberry is the latest fruit to hit the IT market, and initial sales figures suggest that it is going to cause quite a stir. This is great news for mobile learning. Raspberry has been conceived from the outset as an educational tool, which is a breath of fresh air in the current IT landscape.
(Image: CC by Fir0002).

Today, the most widely used operative systems (MS Windows and iOS) not only don’t encourage customers to look under the bonnet – they have welded the bonnet firmly shut (and include causes in their EULAs threatening users with legal action if they attempt to have a sneaky peek by reverse engineering). The most popular forms of software are not powerful, highly scalable tools in a versatile commandline environment, but off-the-shelf apps where “configuration” means the option to change the screen’s background colour. Ironically, the deeper technology sinks into everyday life, the more remote it can come to seem.

Yes, downloading an app is much more convenient than compiling source code, and yes, most end-users would rather not have to churn out a custom-made Java script every time they feel like increasing the font size. However, this wealth of off-the-shelf IT solutions leaves us asking ourselves an important question: where is the next generation of programmers and IT engineers coming from? Where is the equivalent of that generation who keyed in their own scripts into a BBC Micro or an Amstrad? In the words of Raspberry’s creator, a Cambridge-based engineer, applicants for degree course places “[didn’t] seem to know enough about what a computer really was or how it worked… I found it worrying”.

Raspberry is designed to tackle this issue. It is portable, dirt cheap, and addresses a key aspect of mobile education: learning by tinkering. As illustrated by Marian Petre, playing and learning have an an important feature in common – they are construction processes. Building things, tinkering and generally messing about with things are some of the most powerful forms of discovery. They promote self-improvement, lead to challenge-based accomplishments and encourage reward-driven exploration.

One of the most surprising aspects behind the principle of learning by tinkering is that it often does not feel like learning at all. These activities work best as informal learning. In fact, the less structured and more rebellious the activity, the better. Cracking game licences, circumventing a school’s firewall policy or hacking into the teacher’s computer are just perfect.

Raspberry was designed specifically to foster learning by tinkering in relation to IT engineering. But the same principle applies much more broadly in mobile learning. Mobile devices provide access to a vast range of environments that have great potential for informal learning in the sciences and arts – social networking, games, media repositories, etc. Allowing students to tinker with these resources as part of an enquiry-based learning strategy can lead to the development of experimental and analytical skills, delivering experiential learning more efficiently than some traditional pedagogical methods.

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