Learning Technologies in Practice [EDCN865]

If we want to implement mobile learning in school, either the institution has to provide the devices or students have to be allowed to bring their own smartphones or iPads to school (BYOD). Furthermore, the school’s policies have to allow the usage of mobile devices and applications in particular. Actually, data privacy can become a big issue (Bower, 2017). Nevertheless, if those hurdles have been cleared, teachers should try to explore how free apps can contribute to improving student learning. I wondered which app I could use in primary school to foster more creative and collaborative learning. Falloon and Khoo (2014) investigated in a study how the app Puppet Pals HD can contribute to that, especially to student talk. Puppet Pals HD can be deployed for students as a ‘Learning Skills App […] with the accurate environment to construct their learning‘ (Domingo & Garganté, 2016, p. 23). The app offers the possibility to create animated short videos with different puppet characters ...

Web 2.0 tools have two major advantages: They can be accessed from nearly everywhere and by everyone, and their variety harbours a lot of possibilities to enhance learning processes (Bower, 2015). On the other hand, it can feel like there are too many options and issues that have to be considered wisely in order to support student learning. As pointed out by Bower (2015), in the first place, we have to understand what Web 2.0 technologies are if we want to exploit them successfully for our teaching. He defines Web 2.0 technologies as  openly available online technologies that allow creation, editing and sharing of digital content between (often large) groups via a web-browser (Bower, 2016, p. 162). Additionally, Bower’s typographical analysis of Web 2.0 technologies (2015) builds a helpful framework to get an overview and decide on which technologies might be the best fit for the next teaching project. Since it benefits me a lot educationally, especially ling...