Mobile phones as cultural resources for learning
This paper written earlier this year by Ben Bachmair, Norbet Pachler and John Cook explores the need for education to recognise mobile devices as the tool by which our students are engaging in culture outside of the school.
“Outside the classroom learners are building up new rich media literacies as they create their own habitus of learning in everyday life. We propose that schools should, and ultimately must, recognise and embrace this change. However, we are aware that such a perspective provides a challenge to our conceptions of where the boundaries of formal education are positioned.”
The paper is based around two cases studies, one of “Cyrill’ in Germany, a young man who causes controversy by using his mobile phone to video the homeless at a train station and post the video online.
“Cyrill not only found a way to act within the new structures of mass communication, but he also developed himself into an expert. Theoretically speaking, he appropriated the new structures and used the mobile video application plus the convergence extension for his personal ends, i.e. to identify social outcasts (homeless drunks) and to contrast them with his self image using the internet as a media platform.”
“Cyrill does not only act within structures of mass communication, which are far removed from the school, but also within socio-cultural structures, which are in conflict with the school and its typical scripts for learning.”
The relationships between Cyril’s cultural position, multi-media expertise and literacy are examined. “He displays considerable software competence and engages in written communication online. These complex literacy practices motivated by a competent use of the mobile phone as a phenomena of everyday life are separate from school, yet schooling contributes competences, such as the ability to read and write, to them.”
The existence of many educational videos produced for mobile devices online is used as evidence that the social and educational use of mobile devices need not be kept apart. It is proposed that mobile devices be considered as cultural resources, which belong to everyday life as well as school. Reference is made to YouTube playlists, such as MathsTutor, to demonstrate a convergence between the structures, agency and cultural practice available to link learning with mobile devices.
Bachmair, Pachler and Cook state that ”Educationally, knowledge and media are cultural resources, which are no longer controlled and governed by the school.” Our schools should not be a place that students are rendered unable to engage with the culture in which they exist. Educators should instead be embracing these devices and their capacity to improve the learning agendas set within the formal environment of a school.
