Mobility, Creative Learning and Future Scenarios

Morning: MediaScape workshop designed by Lucinda and Dewi and led by the Wildkey team

Jocelyn introduced the concept of mediascapes, as originally developed by Futurelab and HP Labs and the Create-a-scape examples from the web were shown and discussed.

The Wildkey team introduced their new mediascape and interactive trail product: WildMap but before letting us loose on the Berkeley Square trail sent us out collecting mini-beasts on Brandon Hill to test their signature product Wildkey. Both WildMap and Create-a-scape run on PDAs with GPS position sensing to link the learner's location to a media artefact that can be delivered via the PDA.

Having turned us into keen insect collectors and wildlife identification experts they then showed us back at base how the location of our finds had been logged and, impressively, displayed them using Google Earth.

More information on the Wildkey range.

Feedback from the group included:

"DOING what we've talked about was vital. "

"I can see that there might be potential applications for this technology at all levels of education: it really fits well with a constructivist approach"

Afternoon: Future Scenarios and Backcasting to identify issues for research

This session focused on strategic futures planning, taking the trends identified in the last workshop and using them to develop future scenarios. The groups were then asked to backcast from their chosen scenario to identify actions that we need to work on today to bring about that scenario.

Three pairs of trends were developed into scenarios.

1. Flexibility within the curriculum, Affordability of devices

2. Valuing informal learning vs Government policy, objectives and funding

3. Affordability of  hardware, how informal learning is value

This work was developed using the Futures toolkit from the UK Government's  Foresight Programme

Conclusions

Actions needed NOW concern:

Having a fully functional device available and common in schools and colleges using SmartPhone technology

• Research into wireless issues

• Changing structure of assessment

• Increasing user involvement in design and development

• Making appropriate software and tools available

• Cultural acceptance by teachers and lecturers with students encouraged to use mobile devices to support their learning

• Increasing bandwidth and storage /  Decreasing cost of connection / 3G or Wi Max as appropriate