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Education Goes Mobile

Veronica Gaylie, Assistant Professor UBC Okanagan Faculty of Education

The future will see more teaching and learning outside the four walls of the traditional classroom. That is, the movement in interdisciplinary teaching and learning, combined with greater access to mobile technology, will increasingly move students toward community and environmental-based education.

Exploring Interdisciplinary Learning Communities and the Mobile Classroom

"I am proposing a jail break that would put more learners of all ages outdoors more often." (David W. Orr)

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning stands at the forefront of education. I feel that the future of research in this area will not so much emphasize the links between subject areas, as it will explore the pathways of learners contributing their talents within diverse learning communities. So…what do interdisciplinary communities look like? The rising tide of the Middle School movement, lead by progressive research at the National Middle School Association and increasingly being implemented in schools nationwide, provides one example. The Middle School model emphasizes interdisciplinarity through: team teaching, co-operative learning, community involvement, outdoor learning, environmental stewardship, creative teaching methods, close teacher-student mentorship, and hands-on, minds-on learning.

The brand new Middle School teacher education stream at UBCO takes the concept of interdisciplinarity to heart as it attempts to realize principles of openness, sustainability and community centred learning. Interdisciplinary subject areas are taught through themes of technology, environmental education, and creative teaching methods. In this scenario, time is spent outside of the traditional classroom, engaged in tangible learning moments. Such “interdisciplinarity in action” leads to another future of teaching and learning: the increase of community and environmental based education. As more and more schools take part in sponsored mobile technology and laptop programs, in combination with the increasingly wireless world, students suddenly have access to mobile learning and a means of communicating that learning in exciting ways.

For example, a classroom of students might take their laptops down to the creek side, observe salmon migration, and create a film, audio or written reflection related to their observations (http://www.oih.bc.ca/KokaneeQuest/). Research in such a learning milieu will involve ensuring that the human story, the eco-literate place of the learner within new technologies and methods, is promoted and maintained. With themed interdisciplinarity, the role of educators will involve being able to nurture expanding, evolving learning communities that include a wide range of student and community interest. In other words, educators will have to be ready for interdisciplinary learning communities that also take shape organically, even beyond their own visions. Overall, in Education, I believe the forecast calls for going outside…