Interactive Stuff
E-learning has allowed us to become creators of wonderfully interactive content such as quizzes and games. Whether you use commercially produced materials or try producing your own you might wish to consider the advantages of producing m-content.
So why use interactive content on mobile devices?
For many reasons - such as:
- 'drill and practice' opportunities so learners can re-visit learning or prepare for a test
- learners can take turns to play games to build on communication and collaboration skills
- provides pre-class activity as an introduction and preparation for a new topic
- private study to practice and improve literacy and numeracy skills
- fun way to engage with 'dry' content such as policy awareness, health and safety knowledge, hygiene and personal safety
- 'brain training' exercises to develop calculation, cognition or co-ordination skills
Games are good for re-inforcement, re-capitulation and differentiaton. A slow learner will gain by having fun and interactive supportive material on his/her own device and, equally so, a faster learner will appreciate extension material designed for their own level and pace.
"Games need to be appropriate and relevant to the subject studied and level of learning and automatic feedback to be useful. In some cases games need to be a challenge and in others, simple but it's important they don't become trivial"
Mobile Learning in Practice; C Savill Smith, J Attewell and G Stead
If you are going to design and create interactive content for mobile devices then it useful to think of certain things before you start. For example, you will need to initially decide on the desired outcomes, especially if the activity has assessment questions built in to the material. Why not look at the Developing m-assessment activities document for more suggestions. The How To section has step-by-step guides for content creation to help you get started.
Paper activities can often support or complement 'e' or 'm' activities. A learner could be presented with an extract of text and, having read it, is prompted to interact with a set of questions on the mobile device. Another learner might be involved in a group discussion initially and then asked to play an interactive game, in pairs, which will encourage them to develop the discussion at a later time.
EEDA (The East of England Development Agency) has produced activities to complement mobile phones quizzes - a document with plenty of transferable ideas
This Skills Workshop Colour activity worksheet works well with an ESOL Colour activity that can be downloaded from Moleshare, the MoLeNET website for sharing resources. The two activities could be used in a classroom as side-by-side activities or the mobile game accessed by the learner on the bus, train or at home.
Oaklands College has produced Mobile Learning Quiz Templates to encourage tutors to create Flash-based interactive learning content for Windows Mobile devices. The The Mi-Quiz templates can be downloaded, unzipped and edited with new questions.
For Java-based phones it is easy to create flashcard activities using Studycell software. The flashcard activities can incorporate multiple choice questions. Why not create your own activities or download the language vocabulary examples on the Studycell website?
Newtoon is a mobile phone and web activity which aims to embed physics learning in mobile game creation and play. It enables young people to create microgames via a web interface on a PC, in a 2D world consisting of balls and springs.
"The Newtoon experience involves a number of important learning opportunities. By authoring their own games, children are able to visualise laws of physics and manipulate their parameters with the aim of creating exciting and challenging game experiences for their friends. Through actively creating and editing these games, children can experiment through trial and error and observe the effects of their designs. As the online collection of experimental games grows, young people are encouraged to become a community of physics learners."
Red Kite Learning, has developed engaging interactive e-learning content that can be available for many mobile devices. Why not try the interactive activities online such as the 'Interview Assistant' or 'Tiling' - the numeracy activity for Construction learners?
Tribal CTAD has produced interactive mobile learning content for several years, and provide demos, of a number of activities for Windows Mobile devices, on their website. Tribal CTAD has also produced a content authoring tool, called MyLearning Author, to help practitioners create bespoke activities for their learners.
The BBC has various interactive content that can be downloaded to or accessed on mobile devices such as Bite-Size - the popular revision area for learners. BBC Blast has downloadable and online games and, although many aren't directly connected to curriculum and standards, they may well enthuse and motivated less keen learners in bite-sized episodes.
Sums UK has produced many of its numeracy and literacy activities for handheld devices including the Sony PSP.
Futurelab create exciting and innovative 'e' and 'm' learning activities for children and young people. The MobiMissions project involved young people aged 16-18 years who were mobile phone users. The aim of the trials was to identify and explore significant factors affecting young people's participation in MobiMissions - a location-aware mobile phone game created in partnership between Futurelab and the Mixed Reality Lab (MRL) at the University of Nottingham.
The MRL’s initial concept used cellular phone networks as a locative device to provide the structure for a mobile phone game called ‘Hitchers’. As players move around, their phone connects to different cells, each of which has a unique ID.
"Locative, mobile and social experiences such as MobiMissions offer many opportunities for learning, not least in their potential as tools to support a personalised and active approach to learning situated in our immediate environment, as participants are able to share ideas and build networks as a precursor to taking action on issues of local importance.
MobiMissions Report written by Lyndsay Grant, Hans Daanen, Tim Rudd.