Biodata
Professor
John Traxler was Professor of Mobile Learning, the world’s first,
since September 2009, and now Research Professor of Digital Learning
in the Institute of Education at the University of Wolverhampton UK.
He is one of the pioneers of mobile learning and has been associated
with mobile learning projects since 2001 when he was evaluator for
m-learning, the first major EU project. He is a Founding Director and
current Vice-President of the International Association for Mobile
Learning, responsible for the annual international mLearn research
conference running since 2002. He is co-editor of the definitive
book, Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers, and
Mobile Learning: the Next Generation with Professor Agnes
Kukulska-Hulme. He is also co-author of Mobilizing Mathematics: Case
Studies of Mobile Learning being used in Mathematics Education and
Mobile Learning and STEM: Case Studies in Practice, and has written
many papers and chapters on all aspects of mobile learning. He sits
on various editorial boards. He has been responsible for large-scale
mobile learning implementations small-scale mobile learning research
interventions, major evaluations and landscape reviews. He currently
works on a large
EU project exploring digital learning for CPD in rural areas, and on
Erasmus projects building HE capacity. He has a grant to research
digital literacy for the Palestinian refugee community and extensive
experience in MENA.
Abstract
New Insights
into Mobile Digital Technology
Our
societies are all now variously characterised by massive, pervasive, ubiquitous
and intrusive mobility and connectedness, giving all of us opportunities to
create, share, discuss, transform, store and distribute our ideas, images,
information, identities and opinions. This has enormous implications for our
economic activities, in the assets, resources and commodities that we create
and transact, at a personal, corporate and international level, and the ways in
which economic and employment activities are organised and managed; for our
ethical, aesthetic, expressive, creative,
spiritual and political activities, creating new genres, communities,
formats and meanings and transforming old ones, and for our languages and the
social context in which they work, likewise creating new forms and transforming
old ones, as mobile cyberspace, sometimes called phonespace penetrates and
merges with real space, combining, fertilising and fragmenting. These phenomena
have been studied and investigated, at both the level of acute empirical
details and philosophical speculation. The term Society 2.0 might represent an apt description.
We now
live in a world where universal mobile technology makes us more connected and
more mobile, enabling us to become people who write and talk as well as read
and listen, who express their ideas as well as absorbing those of other people,
who can produce as well as consume, and who move in to new formats as the old
one fade away.
The
language learning community has imaginatively embraced the ideas and techniques
of the established mobile learning research community, using the technology to
make language learning more widely available, to more people, communities and
countries, make language learning richer, more varied, more situated,
contextual, personalised and contingent.
The
language learning community has imaginatively embraced the apps and websites,
the tools and techniques of the wider mobile learning research community, using
the technology to make language learning more widely available, to more people,
communities and countries, make language learning richer, more varied, more
situated, contextual, personalised and contingent, basically more meaningful.
What
is less clear is any attempt to respond and react to the challenges and
opportunities of Web 2.0. Webinars, podcasts, downloads, websites, videos,
wikis, apps and blogs are now available, content and communities are available
where learners are learning from each other but where teachers are struggling
to develop the skills to orchestrate this abundance and help learners tell the
good from the bad.
What
has not happened is much reaction from the language learning community to
embrace and exploit the challenges and opportunities of Web 2.0. Language
teacher should be helping learners learn from the abundance of digital
resources, and to distinguish good from bad.
Furthermore,
mobile digital technology is no longer the dumb container and passive conduit
of language. Language is embedded in changing social practices driven by
universal mobile technology, instantaneous translation now supports language
workers, technology produces new genres, new vocabulary and new dialects,
distorted by interface and interaction design and disturbing the balance between
different languages.
Furthermore,
mobile digital technology not merely stores and contains language and transmits
and transfer it amongst people: language is a component of changing behaviour,
relationships and interactions between people. Instantaneous translation using
digital technology now supports workers across language barriers, and new
vocabulary and dialects are a consequence of digital communication.
The
language ecosystem is moreover populated by powerful languages and vulnerable
languages, the technology ecosystem is dominated by US technologies, the commercial
ecosystem is dominated by global corporates, the university ecosystem by elite
universities in the global North.
Meine Forschungsinteressen sind die Analyse und Förderung der Generierung, Konstruktion und dem Teilen von Wissen in kleinen Lerngruppen, Arbeitsteams und größeren Gemeinschaften. Ich entwickelte mehrere computerunterstützte Kooperationsskripts, die Rollen und Aktivitäten Lernender orchestrieren. Skripts fördern spezifische Interaktionsmuster sowie individuellen Lernzuwachs und Wissenskonvergenz in Gruppen. Lerner können mit diesen Skripts darin unterstützt werden, aktiv und gleichberechtigt an Wissensaustausch und kooperativem Lernen teilzunehmen sowie dabei besser zu argumentieren. Den Skript-Ansatz habe ich in verschiedenen Online-Szenarien, z. B. in Diskussionsforen, angewendet und weiter entwickelt, um verschiedene Sozialformen des Lernens sowie unterschiedliche bildungstechnologische Szenarien innerhalb und außerhalb des Klassenzimmers zu orchestrieren.
Redaktionelle Arbeiten:
- Journal of Computers in Human Behavior: Gastherausgeber, Sonderheft Emerging and scripted roles in computer-supported collaborative learning (2010)
- redaktioneller Beirat des International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (seit 2012)
- Gutachter für nationale Wissenschaftsförderstellen, wie etwa DFG, ISF, FWO, und SNF; Gutachter für wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften wie etwa International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Computers & Education, Journal of Computers in Human Behavior, Instructional Science, Journal of Learning and Instruction, Research in Comparative & International Education, Journal for Educational Research Online, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, und Gutachter für Konferenzen wie etwa CSCL, ICLS, EC-TEL, CTS, etc.
Auszeichnungen:
- Auszeichnung für Demo Backstage auf der EC-TEL 2012
- Auszeichnung für Demo Proportions auf der EC-TEL 2012
- Preis für Outstanding Journal Article in the Field of Instructional Design Division of Design and Development of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2005
- Preis für gute Lehre des Bayerischen Wissenschafts- und Kultusministeriums für die Entwicklung und Umsetzung computerunterstützter Lernumgebungen an der LMU München / der Virtuellen Hochschule Bayern 2000
(Source)
Armin Weinberger is founding professor and head of the Department of Educational Technology and Knowledge Management. His main research interests lie in analyzing and facilitating the generation, construction and sharing of knowledge in small groups of learners, working teams, and larger communities. Armin Weinberger has a 20-year experience in designing, implementing, and investigating computer-supported collaboration scripts that orchestrate roles and activities of learners in technology-enhanced environments.
Armin Weinberger is on the editorial board of ijCSCL (International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) and associate editor of the JLS (Journal of the Learning Sciences), the two premier journals of the Learning Sciences field. Of the top ten most cited articles in ijCSCL, Armin is an author of four of them and the most published author in said journal 2006-2014. Recent publications concern the design and investigation of mass collaboration platforms for learning, such as social networking sites like Facebook, to leverage argumentation for learning online.
Abstract
Orchestration of Technology-Enhanced Learning
The concept of orchestration has recently emerged as a useful metaphor in technology-enhanced learning research, because of its explanatory power and appeal in describing how different learning activities, tools, and arrangements could be combined to promote learning in an ecology of devices. More than a buffet of tools offering possibilities to the teachers, orchestration refers to the purposeful mixture of different aspects of the learning experience, serving a particular set of learning goals. In this presentation, current potentials and open issues in orchestrating technology-enhanced learning arrangements will be discussed and exemplified with current scenarios of technology-enhanced learning such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), learning with social media, e.g., Facebook, and learning with mobile and multi-touch devices.
