Provides an overview of mLearning in the context of critical pedagogy and problem-posing education.

1. mLearning & Critical
Pedagogy
Viva the Mobile Web 2.0
Learning Revolution!
Alexandra R. Dolan

2. “I've always been attracted to the
more revolutionary changes. I
don't know why. Because they're
harder. They're much more
stressful emotionally. And you
usually go through a period where
everybody tells you that you've
completely failed” - Steve Jobs
(Jobs, as cited in Goodell, 1994).

3. What is mLearning?
• Mobile Learning
• Learning Anytime, Anywhere
• Learning in Action
• Learning with Wireless Handheld Devices
• Do we define mLearning (mobile learning) in terms of
its technologies, or user experiences?
(Traxler, 2009, pp. 13-14)

4. Defining mLearning:
• Muyinda (2007) defines mLearning as eLearning that
utilizes wireless communication devices to deliver
content and learning support (p. 97).
• Note ‘communication’ was included in mobile device
description, which implies interactivity, and Web 2.0
nature of mLearning
• mLearning is a process of giving and receiving feedback
Muyinda, P. B. (2007). MLearning: pedagogical, technical and organisational hypes and realities.
Campus-Wide Information Systems, 24(2), 97-104. doi:10.1108/10650740710742709

5. Who/What puts the ‘m’
in mLearning?
Is it the learner?
or
Is it the device?

6. Takin’ it to the Streets!
• Bringing learning back to the community - authentically
situated contexts. No more sitting in a classroom
learning for ‘someday’ - when you could be learning for
today!
• Knowing where to find the answer becomes more
important than knowing it or having it.
(Traxler, 2009, p. 14)
Traxler, J. (2009). Chapter 1: Current State of Mobile Learning. In Ally, M (Ed.), Mobile Learning (eBook.). Athabasca, Canada: Athabasca
University Press. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120155

7. Pedagogical Heresy?
“Imagination is more important
than knowledge. For knowledge is
limited, whereas imagination
embraces the entire world,
stimulating progress, giving birth
to evolution"
- Albert Einstein
Viereck, G. S. (1929, October 26). What Life Means to Einstein. The Saturday Evening Post, 202(17), 17.

8. mLearning: Freedom ‘to’:
"If love for life is to develop, there must be
freedom 'to':
freedom to create,
and to construct,
to wonder,
and to venture.
Such freedom requires that the individual
be active and responsible,
not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine"
(Fromm, 1964, p. 52).
Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man, its genius for good and evil (1st ed.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.

9. The Nature of
mLearning:
• Learner-centered.
• Just-in-time.
• Lifelong.
• Disruptive to formal institutionalized
educational settings.

10. “With our technology, with objects,
literally three people in a garage can
blow away what 200 people at
Microsoft can do. Literally can blow
it away. Corporate America has a
need that is so huge and can save
them so much money, or make them
so much money, or cost them so
much money if they miss it, that they
are going to fuel the object
revolution” (Jobs, as cited in
Goodell, 1994).

11. “True dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers
engage in critical thinking -
thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity
between the world and the people and admits of no
dichotomy between them -
thinking which perceives reality as a process, as
transformation, rather than a static entity -
thinking which does not separate itself from action,
but constantly immerses itself in temporality without
fear of the risks involved”
(Freire, 2008, p. 92).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

12. “Critical thinking contrasts naive thinking, which
sees historical time as a weight, a stratification of
the acquisitions and experiences of the past, from
which the present should emerge normalized and
well-behaved.
For the naive thinker, the important thing is
accomodation to the normalized today.
For the critic, the important thing is the continuing
transformation of reality, in behalf of continuing
humanization of men”
(Freire, 2008, p. 92).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

13. Action
+
Reflection
The The Essence of
=
Word Dialogue
“To speak a true word is to transform the world”
(Freire, 2008, p. 87).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

14. “Without dialogue, there
is no communication, and
without communication
there can be no true
education”
(Freire, 2008, pp. 92-93).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

15. “The world which brings
consciousness into existence
becomes the world of that
consciousness”
(Freire, 2008, p. 82).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

16. “In problem-posing education, people
develop their power to perceive
critically the way they exist in the
world with which and in which they
find themselves;
they come to see the world not as a
static reality, but as a reality in
process, in transformation”
(Freire, 2008, p. 83).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

17. Defining mLearning:
• New field that is evolving as technology
advances…
• Concept is evolving and advancing with the
technology…
• Hard to define...

18. mLearning Involves :
• People • Creativity
• Mobile Technology • Transformation
• Mobile Devices • Interaction
• Engagement • Imagination
• Action • Design
• Reflection • Development
• Communication • Authentic Context
• Dialogue • Freedom
• Critical Thinking • Self-Expression

19. My Working Definition of
mLearning:
People engaging in self-expression, action,
reflection, communication, dialogue, critical
thinking, transformation, and interaction in
an exercise of freedom situated in authentic
contexts that utilizes creativity and
imagination in the process of design and
development mediated by mobile
technology and mobile devices.

20. People Matter Most.
• In this definition, technology is just a tool.
• Technology is the medium through which all
else is facilitated.
• The technology is only important as far as
what is made possible by its use.
• Technology is the support structure, that
supports learning in action.

21. “Technology is nothing. What's important
is that you have a faith in people, that
they're basically good and smart, and if you
give them tools, they'll do wonderful things
with them. It's not the tools that you have
faith in — tools are just tools. They work,
or they don't work. It's people you have
faith in or not.Yeah, sure, I'm still
optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic
sometimes but not for long” (Jobs, as cited
in Goodell, 1994).

22. People matter:
How radical is that?
• In mLearning, the people are primary.
• In today’s current institutionalized educational
climate, people have been reduced to objects,
mere things quantified and labeled according
to the results of high-stakes tests.
Au, W. (2010). The Idiocy of Policy: The Anti-Democratic Curriculum of High-Stakes Testing. Critical Education, 1 (1), 1-16.
Retrieved from http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/article/view/60/0
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

23. Oppressive Pedagogy:
“Any situation in which some individuals prevent
others from engaging in the process of inquiry is
one of violence.
The means used are not important;
to alienate human beings from their own decision-
making is to change them into objects”
(Freire, 2008, p. 85).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

24. “Banking Education”
• Students are taught
• Students know nothing
• Students listen
• Students comply
• Students are powerless to act
• Students conform
• Students are mere objects in the learning
landscape
(Freire, 2008, p. 73)

25. “Education is suffering from a narration
sickness. The teacher talks about reality as
if it were motionless, static,
compartmentalized, and predicatable. Or
else he expounds on a topic completely
alien to the existential experience of his
students. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 71).

26. “His task is to ‘fill’ the students with the
contents of his narration - contents
which are detatched from reality,
disconnected from the totality that
engendered them and could give them
significance. Words are emptied of their
concreteness and become a hollow,
alienated, and alienating verbosity”
(Freire, 2008, p. 71).

27. “This is the ‘banking’ concept of education,
in which the scope of action allowed to the
students extends only as far as receiving,
filing and storing the deposits. They do it is
true, have the opportunity to become
collectors of the things they store. But in
the last analysis, it is the people themselves
who are filed away through the lack of
creativity, transformation, and knowledge in
this (at best) misguided system.”
(Freire, 2008, p. 72).

28. Banking v. Problem-Posing:
“Banking education (for obvious reasons)
attempts, by mythicizing reality to conceal
certain facts which explain the way human
beings exist in the world;
problem-posing education sets itself to the task
of demythologizing.
Banking education resists dialogue;
problem-posing education regards dailogue as
indispensable to the act of cogntion which
unveils reality”
(Freire, 2008, p. 83).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

29. The Bottom Line on Banking:
“Banking education treats students as objects of
assistance;
problem-posing education makes them critical
thinkers.
Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates
(although it cannot completely destroy) the
intentionality of consciousness by isolating
consciousness from the world”
(Freire, 2008, pp. 83-84).
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

30. “Investigation will be most educational when it is most
critical, and most critical when it avoids the narrow
outlines of partial or ‘focalized views of reality, and sticks
to the comprehension of total reality.
Thus, the process of searching for the meaningful
thematics should include a concern for the links
between themes, a concern to pose themes as
problems, and a concern for their historical-cultural
context”
(Freire, 2008, p. 108)
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

31. “Human beings are because they are
in a situation. And they will be more
the more they not only critically
reflect upon their existence but
critically act upon it”
(Freire, 2008, p. 109)
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

32. mLearning:
• mLearning is different from traditional
institutionalized learning,
• in traditional formal classroom instruction
learners are viewed as objects that hold
knowledge that has been pre-determined
and pre-planned for delivery.

33. mLearning:
• mLearning does not demand conformity like
institutionalized education does.
• Content adapts to the learner.
• The Learner does not have to conform to the content.
• mLearners are not vessels to hold knowledge. They
have mobile devices for that.
• mLearners transform that knowledge in the process of
mLearning.
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for
learners, teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol. 2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings
Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT
ePrints. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/

34. mLearning: Ubiquitous
Computing
• Today’s learners do not shut down without
a fight.
• Educational institutions that demand that
leaners turn in, turn mobile devices off, and
drop out of their wireless network will
soon find that students view them as
irrelevant.
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for
learners, teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol. 2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings
Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT
ePrints. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/

35. mLearning Significance:
• Students are digital natives, a tribe of multi-tasking,
technologically-mediated communicators,
collaborators, and content-creators.
• Rather than ignoring such changes, educators will
need to develop meaningful contexts to apply
technology to meet digital native’s learning needs.
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for
learners, teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol. 2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings
Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT
ePrints. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/

36. mLearning Challenges:
• Learners will increasingly refuse to be
taught.
• Instead of being taught, they will demand
relevant contexts wherein knowledge can
be socially constructed.
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for
learners, teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol. 2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings
Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT
ePrints. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/

37. mLearning
• mLearners do not want the terms of
learning dictated to them.
• They want to choose what, when, where,
why, and how they learn in a way that is
individualized, personalized, and highly
interactive.
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for
learners, teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol. 2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings
Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT
ePrints. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/

38. mLearning
• Mobile learning provides anytime/anywhere access to
learning and communication.
• Without these mobile wireless multimedia technology,
these interactions would not be possible.
• As the affordability, availability, and capabilities of these
devices increase, access will become increasingly
ubiquitous.
• Always on, always there...has positive and negative
implications
Kim, S. H., Holmes, K., & Mims, C. (2004). Mobile wireless technology use and implementation:
Opening a dialogue on the new technologies in education. TechTrends, 49(3), 54-63. doi:10.1007/
BF02763647

39. mLearning of these devices
• As the ubiquity, availability, and capability
and their educational applications increases, educators
and educational systems will find the the demand for
mLearning increases
• Increasingly, educators and institutions that shy away
from mLearning, will be put on the defensive.
• Instead of having to justify adopting mLearning, they will
have to justify why they have not adopted mLearning into
the curriculum.
Kim, S. H., Holmes, K., & Mims, C. (2004). Mobile wireless technology use and implementation: Opening a
dialogue on the new technologies in education. TechTrends, 49(3), 54-63. doi:10.1007/BF02763647

40. mLearning: Pedagogical
Imperatives
• Fusing the capabilities of mobile technologies for
learning with pedagogical practices to enable, support
and enhance the learning potential of mobile platforms
are critical to successful development and utilization of
mLearning applications.
• Pedagogical practice must shift with technology to
become more individualized, situated, collaborative, and
lifelong.
Motiwalla, L. F. (2007). Mobile learning: A framework and evaluation. Computers & Education, 49(3),
581-596. doi:
10.1016/j.compedu.2005.10.011

41. mLearning as a Mobile Bridge
Across the Digital Divide:
• Mobile devices reduce barriers to acessibility
• Cheaper than computers, and more portable
• Enhances learner’s ability to view courseware, complete
coursework,
• Expands opportunities for participation and
collaboration
• Maximizes productivity
Motiwalla, L. F. (2007). Mobile learning: A framework and evaluation. Computers & Education, 49(3),
581-596. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2005.10.011

42. mLearning
• Allows learner more opportunities to
accomplish goals and learning aims
• Allows for greater work/life balance as
access improves and learning process is
streamlined
• Allows leaners who otherwise would not
have access to participate

43. mLearning: Work in Progress
• Although mLearning is a relatively new field, criticisms
and predictions of inevitability of its failure as a learning
modaility are unwarranted
• Such criticisms rely on stagnant assumptions of
education, culture, technology and communications
while ignoring the role of innovation and progress
• Development of instructional design, organizational and
institutional aspects of mLearning are needed to bring
mLearning to the forefront of education
(Muyinda, 2007, p. 102)
Muyinda, P. B. (2007). MLearning: pedagogical, technical and organisational hypes and realities.
Campus-Wide Information Systems, 24(2), 97-104. doi:10.1108/10650740710742709

44. mLearning
• Technology is a means to allow people to live their life
more effectively - giving people more freedom, instead
of more mandates
• The effectiveness of technology cannot be measured by
assessment in terms of standards, benchmarks, and
performance on standardized tests
• Instead, the real advantages provided by mLearning
technologies are that they enhance the value and reach
of individualized learning for individual benefit..
Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O. (2002). The Design and Implementation of a Mobile
Learning Resource. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 6(3), 220-234. doi:10.100s007790200021

45. mLearning: Technology as a
Means of Empowerment
• Individual controls content
• Content does not control individual
• The medium that delivers the content is not as
important as what content enables in a given context
• Devices and systems for mobile learning should augment
individual opportunities to learn, do, create, recall,
incorporate, experiment,a nd communicate effortlessly
and intuitively
Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O. (2002). The Design and Implementation of a Mobile
Learning Resource. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 6(3), 220-234. doi:10.100s007790200021

46. “An epoch is characterized by a
complex of ideas, concepts,
hopes, doubts, values, and
challenges in dialectical
interaction with their opposites,
striving towards plenitude. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 101)

47. “. . . The concrete representation
of many of these ideas, values,
concepts or hopes, as well as the
obstacles that impede the
people’s full humanization,
consitute the themes of that
epoch. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 101)

48. “...These themes imply others which
are opposing or even antithetical;
they also indicate tasks to be
carried out and fullfilled. Thus,
historical themes are never
isolated, independent, disconnected,
or static, they are always interacting
dialectically with their opposites. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 101)

49. “. . .Nor can these themes be
found anywhere except in
the human-world
relationship. The complex of
interacting themes of an
epoch constitutes its
‘thematic universe’. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 101)

50. “. . .Confronted by this ‘universe
of themes’ in dialectical
contradiction persons take
equally contradictory positions:
some work to maintain the
structures, others to change
them…”
(Freire, 2008, p. 101)

51. “… As antagonism deepens
between themes which are an
expression of reality, there is a
tendency for the themes and for
reality itself to be mythicized,
establishing a climate of
irrationality and sectarianism…”
(Freire, 2008, pp. 101-102)

52. “ ...This climate threatens to drain
the themes of their deeper
significance and to deprive them of
their characteristically dynamic
aspect. In such a situation, myth-
creating irrationality itself becomes a
fundamental theme. . .”
(Freire, 2008, p. 102).

53. “ … Its opposing theme, the critical
and dynamic view of the world, strives
to unveil reality, unmask its
mythicization, and achieve a full
realization of the human task: the
permanent transformation of reality in
favor of the liberation of the people”
(Freire, 2008, p. 102).

54. “It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling
people, and it's not about convincing people that
they want something they don't. We figure out what
we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the
right discipline to think through whether a lot of
other people are going to want it, too. That's what
we get paid to do. So you can't go out and ask
people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's
a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd
have asked my customers what they wanted, they
would have told me ‘A faster horse. ' "
(Jobs & Morris, 2008).

55. AL-Fahdi, A., Al-siyabi, K., & tech4101. (2008). mobile learning.
Slideshow, . Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/tech4101/
mobile-learning-presentation-805226
Au, W. (2010). The Idiocy of Policy: The Anti-Democratic
Curriculum of High-Stakes Testing. Critical Education, 1(1), 1-16.
Retrieved from http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/
criticaled/article/view/60/0
Cobcroft, R. S., Towers, S. J., Smith, J. E., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile
learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for learners,
teachers, and institutions. In Online Learning and Teaching (Vol.
2006, pp. 21-30). Presented at the Proceedings Online Learning
and Teaching (OLT) Conference 2006, Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane, Australia: QUT ePrints. Retrieved from
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5399/
Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.).
Continuum International Publishing Group.

56. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man, its genius for good and evil (1st
ed.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Goodell, J. (1994, June 16). From the Archives: A Revealing
Interview with Steve Jobs. Rolling Stone, (684). Retrieved from
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31896381/
from_the_archives_a_revealing_interview_with_steve_jobs
Kim, S. H., Holmes, K., & Mims, C. (2004). Mobile wireless
technology use and implementation: Opening a dialogue on the
new technologies in education. TechTrends, 49(3), 54-63. doi:
10.1007/BF02763647
Morris, B., & Jobs, S. (2008, March 7). Steve Jobs Speaks out On
the Birth of the iPhone. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/
galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/index.html

57. Motiwalla, L. F. (2007). Mobile learning: A framework and
evaluation. Computers & Education, 49(3), 581-596. doi:
10.1016/
j.compedu.2005.10.011
Muyinda, P. B. (2007). MLearning: pedagogical, technical and
organisational hypes and realities. Campus-Wide Information
Systems, 24(2), 97-104. doi:10.1108/10650740710742709
Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O. (2002). The Design
and Implementation of a Mobile Learning Resource.
Personal
and Ubiquitous Computing, 6(3), 220-234. doi:
10.100s007790200021
Traxler, J. (2009). Chapter 1: Current State of Mobile Learning. In
Ally, M (Ed), Mobile Learning (eBook). Athabasca, Canada:
Athabasca University Press. Retrieved from http://
www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120155

58. evaluation. Computers & Education, 49(3), 581-596. doi:
10.1016/
j.compedu.2005.10.011
Muyinda, P. B. (2007). MLearning: pedagogical, technical and
organisational hypes and realities. Campus-Wide Information
Systems, 24(2), 97-104. doi:10.1108/10650740710742709
Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O. (2002). The Design
and Implementation of a Mobile Learning Resource.
Personal
and Ubiquitous Computing, 6(3), 220-234. doi:
10.100s007790200021
Smithsonian Institution. (2010). Chandra X-ray Observatory - a set
on Flickr. Flickr - The Commons. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/
photos/smithsonian/sets/72157608016866848/
Traxler, J. (2009). Chapter 1: Current State of Mobile Learning. In
Ally, M (Ed), Mobile Learning (eBook). Athabasca, Canada:
Athabasca University Press. Retrieved from http://
www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120155