Cell Phones Allow Anytime Learning

An Interview with Liz Keren-Kolb

Laura Varlas

Liz Keren-Kolb is the author of Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education (ISTE, 2008). She is currently writing a book tentatively titled Cases for Using Students' Cell Phones in Education: A Practical Guide to Using Cell Phones in K–12 Schools, which looks at 11 U.S. and 5 international case studies of teachers integrating students' own cell phones into instruction. A former high school teacher and technology coordinator, Keren-Kolb currently teaches learning technologies at the University of Michigan and Madonna University. She discusses why now, more than ever, schools are taking advantage of the tools already in students' hands to integrate education technology.

Q: It seems like there's been a real boom (as described in two recent Inservice posts here and here) in interest around using mobile technology, like cell phones, for learning. What's that about?

Keren-Kolb: Yeah, I've been studying this for about six years, and it's really in the past year and a half that I've noticed a huge interest. I think there are a few reasons:

• Schools are realizing that policies banning and ignoring mobile technology in the classroom aren't working. Mobiles and cell phones are technology that society values, and they're not going away.
• Turning to technology that students already own can be very cost-effective for schools. A lot of the technologies we use in schools are expensive—not everyone can afford them, and not everyone can access them all the time. Especially with budget cuts, people are becoming more open to using student-owned mobile technology in schools.
• People who know the history of ed technology know that it hasn't been that successful, long-term, with sustaining learning because it's often attached to a tool that students don't have access to outside of school. So by looking at a tool students do have access to, we might be able to sustain learning and engage and motivate students.
• And generally, I think there's a new excitement around changing the way we do education, in the United States especially. Mobile technology could be a viable alternative, if we can harness it. There are so many questions about how to best do this.

Q: Are these conditions that support what you call a "bottom-up approach to technology in schools"?

Keren-Kolb: One of Larry Cuban's (Teachers and Machines, Oversold and Underused) theories about why ed technology often fails in schools is that we use this top-down approach where administrators or tech coordinators introduce the technologies to the teachers, and they in turn try to introduce and teach it to the students. It's a very foreign concept for the students, as well as the teachers. And often what happens is maybe a handful of teachers end up using this very expensive technology, and students don't have any access to it outside of school.

Cuban recommends a much more bottom-up approach to ed technology. Rather than making specialized software and hardware just for school learning, students and society introduce the technologies that schools should be integrating into learning.

Q: In a recent Education Week chat ("Mobile Learning: Trends and Challenges"), one of the experts listed "teacher willingness to give up some control in the classroom" as the number two barrier to successful implementation of mobile learning in the schools. What's your take?

Keren-Kolb: I kind of agree with that, because the traditional style of teaching is very much "I lecture, you listen; I have all the information, and you learn from me." I work with preservice teachers, and a lot of people who go into teaching, especially at the secondary level (because they love the content), go into it thinking they have to be content experts. For them, it can be really unnerving to not know an answer when a student asks a question.

It's a similar situation with new technology. If a student wants to use a tool and the teacher doesn't know how to do it, some teachers are great about saying, "I don't know and I want to learn." But for many, it can be uncomfortable and easier to just be dismissive, and say, "That's not the way we learn."

For many schools, the hardest part is making it acceptable to turn to technologies that aren't traditionally used in schools. It's a culture that has to be cultivated at the school itself. In the book I'm working on now, many of the teachers in the case studies I discuss approached their administrators with something they'd been using with success outside of school, and their administrators were open to trying it out within school. Kipp Rogers at Passages Middle School in Newport News, Va., has done a phenomenal job modeling that approach and valuing not only his teachers, but also his students, who are involved in planning, as well.

Q: Rogers says that when mobile devices meant for learning are misused, he's careful to punish the action and not the technology. What does he mean by that?

Keren-Kolb: Mostly, what we see in schools, the punishment is to take away the cell phone, instead of dealing with the behavior—cheating, posting something inappropriate on the Internet. We take away the device when, frankly, if they didn't have the cell phone in school, they'd still find a way to do those things.

Q: It reiterates that the device is somehow taboo, not the behavior?

Keren-Kolb: Right, and if that were true, then we shouldn't have pencils and paper in schools, because those can be used to cheat and pass inappropriate messages as well. We have to get away from the mind-set that the tool is the problem, when really it's what the students are thinking and doing that creates the problem.

Q: From what you've seen in the field, what's the most interesting instructional use of mobile devices happening now?

Keren-Kolb: Definitely what's going on in Australia. Teachers are using QR (two-dimensional bar codes) for activities and learning. In the United States, about 60 percent of the phones can do this, but in most other countries, it's almost universal. So, in some Australian schools, this means [that] students come in on the first day of class and their entire syllabus is on a bar code they scan directly into their phone—same thing with some books and homework assignments. They'll scan a code for their homework, and it'll link to video tutorials and activities. So, moving away from textbooks and moving toward paperless learning that's much more interactive. I think that's exciting—how much information you can attach to that little bar code, and use it to extend learning.

In New Zealand, a couple of schools are allowing students to use cell phones and mobile technology during assessments. When students can use whatever tools are around them, obviously, testing changes. It's not just about a right or wrong answer—it's about inquiry, collaboration, and the higher-order thinking skills we want students to do.

Laura Varlas is project manager of Inservice, the ASCD blog.

ASCD Express, Vol. 5, No. 18. Copyright 2010 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.