We are excited to introduce our new book: Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators, Developers, and Learners. Starting Monday, it’ll be available wherever books are sold.
What’s it about? Let’s start with what inspired us to write.
Every day, we think about the exciting possibilities mobile devices bring to the traditional classroom. Those thoughts are intimately connected to what we do at SAS Curriculum Pathways. We are especially interested in, and focused on, the intersection of educational content and technology development. Our book grew out of these experiences.
Without good educational content, mobile learning initiatives in schools are doomed to fail. Without input from teachers, mobile-app developers won’t be able to make tools that meet students' needs. Much rides on these mobile learning initiatives: not only high levels of financial investment, but our children's education. And yet, very little has been written on this crucial topic!
Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners.
So we wrote the book.
Our aim was to create a handbook for a broad audience:
- Developers who want to make apps for students and teachers to use in and out of class
- Educators with any level of technology access at their schools – from an iPad cart or computer lab to a 1:1 environment
Because we believe there is an inherent value in having all the stakeholders reading from the same page (literally), our book contains resources for both these groups. Here are some highlights included in Mobile Learning:
- Discussions of higher-order thinking skills and the science of learning, and their application to mobile technologies
- Guidelines on how to implement various levels of technology, whether it's 1-to-1 or an iPad cart.
- Evidence that mobile devices, properly used, have special promise for education
- Best practices in mobile-app development, including multi-disciplinary teams and foundations in educational research
- Roadmaps of the market and business models for educational apps
- Applications of mobile devices for special populations
- Details about data privacy and digital citizenship (which we’ve blogged about here, here, here, here and here)
- Our vision for the future of mobile learning
Over the next week, our posts will explore these kinds of key topics. And since social media and mobile learning are interconnected, let us hear from you! Please share our updates and tweets; we’ll be using the hashtag #MLearningBook. Let us know what if you have questions or feedback.
As we mentioned in our post Wednesday, Scott McQuiggan, co-author of the book and leader of SAS Curriculum Pathways, will be a Mentor at SXSWEdu, coming up soon! He and Lucy will be armed with a selfie stick and books. We hope you’ll look for them and say hello!
