Mobile Learning

The world is changing.  Learning is no longer limited to a specific location or time. Today, students can access learning whenever and wherever they want.  Mobile learning allows flexibility that has been unprecedented.With mobile networks accessible to 90+% of the world population,  and 37+% of college students using a cell phone for learning, it is time we embraced and utilized this trend rather than try to suppress it.

Mobile learning has some unique features that makes it different than other web-based learning.  Since mobile learning typically occurs on a smaller screen, the material has to be presented in a concise way with very simple, user-friendly tools.  Designers must optimize the space, limit the need to scroll, and make sure buttons for features are very clear and intuitive.

Because of this, mobile learning naturally utilizes many good pedagogical practices as it allows for smaller chunks of information to be given at a time, calls upon a diversity of presentation methods and media to be included such as sound and images, and includes regular interactivity such as self-tests.  All of these practices have been well researched as brain-friendly.

Here are a few mobile apps that will help any educator get started using mobile learning with his or her students!

1.  Evernote:  https://evernote.com and Skitch: https://evernote.com/products/skitch

Evernote is a cloud-based note taking app that is optimized for mobile use.  It stores and syncs across devices allowing users to save notes that not only include text but media as well.

Skitch is an extension of Evernote that allows the user to annotate on a photo and save it to their  Evernote account.

Both of these apps could run the gamut of Blooms taxonomy.  They could be used for your first-tier, remembering levels of learning all the way up to the top-tier, creating levels.  It's all dependent on how the user chooses to apply the features of these apps and for what purposes.  They are very flexible tools.


For me, I liked being able to create notes with different media, and organize them into a notebook/folder structure allowing me to group multiple notes around a topic together.  For example, I created two notebooks; one for personal notes, and one to start keeping notes on cloud-based tools I discover.  In the first, I used Skitch to annotate on a picture of my fireplace as I start to plan a makeover for it. As I move forward, I could add pictures of materials I find, measurements, calculations, cost estimations, etc.  In the second notebook, I can add a fresh note for every helpful tool I find to remind myself of possible uses for the tool.  Each of these pages and/or notebooks could be shared as needed - I could share the fireplace page with my husband who will help with the project.  I could share the cloud tools notebook with fellow teachers looking to expand their toolbox. 


2. Edmodo:  www.edmodo.com

Edmodo is a free learning management platform.  It calls itself a "global education networking tool" and it accomplishes this task very well.  It allows teachers to connect with each other not only within a school or district, but across it's entire user base.  Teachers can create classrooms to connect with students to illicit feedback, collect work, share files, and inform students and parents alike of the goings-on in the classroom.  Basically, it combines some of the best features of social networking with file sharing management and class webpages.

Edmodo has a lot of useful features for a free tool.  It can be used for all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.  Simple, quick quizzes and polls can take formative data on a student's remembering and understanding levels.  Assignments can be given that require students to apply their knowledge by drawing diagrams and upload them to the teacher.  Students can collect data through Excel and analyze it by making charts and graphs.  Students can create slideshow presentations through PowerPoint.  And the upload tool seems to offer endless opportunities to use other third party apps and upload the content as pictures, docs, or other file types.

Other useful features includes a built-in parental notification (students can't use the platform without the parents being notified via email or text), OneDrive and Google Drive connections (making file sharing even easier) and the ability for a teacher to share and customize the library of files across all of their classes (meaning you only have to upload the file once rather than for each class you want the file shared with). 

I was able to create a demo class and demo student, post a poll, and create an introduction assignment in a matter of minutes.  Then, I logged in as my demo student, took the poll, and submitted the assignment which included posting a picture and stating 2 things I wanted my teacher to know about me.  I did this by creating a Word document right from the assignment submission tool in the platform.  It was very easy to do.




3.  Duolingo:  https://www.duolingo.com/

Duolingo is a language-learning app.  It capitalizes on the gamification trend as users work their way through lesson units earning badges and "health" points along the way.  Each advance opens new features or lessons for the users to guide them as they progress.







This app is very similar to Rosetta Stone; it uses an immersive approach intermingling audio and images to help learners acquire the language similar to the way babies and toddlers do - by hearing and seeing the language in context.  The interactive nature switches up the approach often.  Sometimes it will be a simple multiple choice question, other times the user has to repeat a phrase using the voice recording option.  All along the way, users can check their answers for immediate feedback.  

The approach to learning seems to be on the lower-levels of Blooms (Remembering, Understanding, and Applying), but are very important for language acquisition.


4.  Quizlet:  https://quizlet.com

Years ago, I found and used Quizlet with my biology students.  Back then, it was simply a digital flashcard app.  It has always been optimized for mobile learning and allowed my students to use their devices to review complex vocabulary whenever they wanted.  Knowing it had been a few years since I've used it, I decided to take a peek and see if anything had changed.

I was pleased to see that they have added self-quizzing tools, have created games for practicing, and added the ability to add images to the flashcards.  I was also please to see that the things that I loved as a teacher (the ease of making and sharing flashcard sets, the ability to organize in a folder structure, and the ability to create and assign classes) were still there.


Quizlet capitalizes on the Remembering and Understanding levels of Bloom's taxonomy, which are important foundational levels for tier-three content vocabulary.  Teachers could kick it up to the Application level asking students to create diagrams, classify, or translate the terms, but none of that can be done within the application itself.

5.  Educreations:  https://www.educreations.com and Explain Everything  https://explaineverything.com/

Both are interactive White Board apps that allows users to record their screen as they create on the board.  These tools can be used to show higher-level learning with respect to Bloom's taxonomy.  Starting with the Application level, students can diagram, solve, and illustrate their learning.  Students can compare and contrast, categorize, and explain broad concepts at the analysis level.  Moving even higher, students can use the tools to invent, compose and design to show what they know at the highest creating level.

Both tools offer easy ways to share creations through a link or embed code.  Educreations has the simplest, most user-friendly interface, but does so at the cost of some features.  Users can still record both screen and voice, but are limited on annotation colors and shapes.  You can also upload an images to your presentation.

Click here to view my sample Educreation lesson.




If you are looking for more options, then Explain Everything is the way to go.  With more annotation features, the ability to upload existing audio, clip art, and files as well as images, and the ability to collaborate with others easily through a code or invitation, this tool adds important 21st century skills on top of the higher level learning.

Productivity Tools

Digital productivity tools help learners collect, organize, and analyze data in different ways.  These tools are vital to push learning higher in Bloom's Taxonomy.  They help learners to deconstruct their learning, then recreate something new, or apply it in new ways.

When most people think of productivity tools, your typical "office suite" comes to mind:  word processing, spreadsheets, and slide-based presentation tools.  However, the web offers new and innovative tools our students can use that embed 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.  Here is my review of five such tools.

StoryboardThat- (https://www.storyboardthat.com)

StoryboardThat is a browser based Storyboard Creator.  With it's simple drag-and-drop functionality, teachers and students can create storyboards, graphic organizers, comics, and other visuals to demonstrate learning.  Once created, the creations can be presented via PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Apple Keynote.  Boards can also be emailed, posted to social media, or embedded on a blog or web page.  Users can access their account anywhere, from any device, no download needed. This tool is very user-friendly and gave just the right amount of choice - enough to allow users to express their unique view, but not so much they get bogged down in the details.  Learners will be creating and composing their learning, which is the highest level of thinking according to Blooms taxonomy.  The learning experience is definitely one of performance and presentation, in which students must think creatively and communicate their learning in new ways.  Between the ease of use (not too much instructional time spent teaching how to use the tool) and the higher order thinking and learning, this is definitely a "go-to" tool for educators!

Draw.io (https://www.draw.io) and Gliffy (www.gliffy.com)

These are two diagramming tools, that while not the "slickest" were both free and did not require an additional account creation.  Draw.io can integrate with your Microsoft OneDrive, where Gliffy is a Chrome extension.  Both tools had your very basic shapes and lines for students and teachers to create graphic organizers, flow charts, and mind maps.  Since both integrate with tools most are already used to, the menus and choices were very easy to figure out.  These tools can be used to illustrate and compare (apply and analyze levels of Blooms) as well as plan and design (creating level of Blooms) - it all depends on how you use them.  The learning outcomes would also reflect higher levels of design, create, present.  As with most web-based tools, they make collaboration easy, seamlessly embedding those 21st century skills right into the lesson.  

Poll Everywhere - (https://www.polleverywhere.com)

This is a web-based audience response system that lets you embed live polls and surveys directly into your presentation.  The audience responds on the web or via SMS texting on their phones. The interface is very user friendly and aesthetically pleasing, allow the user to customize the look of the polls.  Data can be exported into spreadsheets for further analytics.  Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended allowing for a wider variety of data to be instantly and accurately collected.  In Blooms taxonomy, this tool would assist thinking at the analyze and evaluate levels as data can be examined and used to justify a position or decide a course of action.  It could be a very useful tool for formative data collection for teachers.

Chartle - (https://www.onlinecharttool.com)

Does Excel give you anxiety?  If you need a quick way to make professional looking charts and graphs for a presentation without all the formula writing and data validation in a spreadsheet, then this tool has got you covered.  It is fast, easy, and requires no account creation!  After you've created your chart, you can download it in a number of formats including CSV (spreadsheet), as an image (PNG, JPG), or as a PDF.  You can save it online to come back to, email it, or share it via social media. Students can use this tool to analyze and evaluate data or to use that data to predict, formulate, or forecast, all higher order thinking skills.  This tool will allow them to design thought-provoking presentations and models to stimulate analytical discussions.  Charts and graphs allow students to reorganize information in new ways for better analysis.  It allows learners to evaluate the data from another angle that could lead to creative ideas.

Easel.ly - (https://www.easel.ly/home)

This tool states as its mission: "to inspire and enable anyone to represent and idea in a visual way".  Users can do just that by creating beautiful infographics that are so easy!  Easy-to-edit templates are provided for inspiration, or you can start with a blank slate.  These infographics can easily be embedded in a web page or social media account, downloaded as image files or PDF's, or shared via email or link.  Learners can even collaborate on the product through a "invite" system.  Infographic creation definitely calls on higher order thinking skills and learning experiences by allowing learners to deconstruct their "remember" and synthesize it into a new design.  It also calls on creative skills to consider the organization and aesthetic of the final product.  It's like graphic organizers on steroids!

Web 2.0

The Web offers many tools that educators can use with their students to enhance creativity, assist with accessibility, increase student choice, and embed technology skills with their content knowledge.  These tools are often free and user friendly and can be used to assess students knowledge and move students from simple recall to higher order thinking skills.  Here is my review of four current tools that are very popular with educators.

FlipGrid- https://flipgrid.com/

FlipGrid is a student response tool that harnesses the power of video.  Teachers can create learning communities in which students can post ideas and share responses to the teacher as well as to one another through the use of a simple code.  Students are using the upper levels of Blooms taxonomy as they create their own video content in response to prompts, as well as analyze and evaluate their classmate's content.  With regards to Dale's Cone of Learning, FlipGrid has students on the bottom of the pyramid as hey analyze, create, and evaluate.  With this tool, students are doing, saying, writing.  They are discussing ideas and processing content by synthesizing their knowledge and presenting it in original ways.  The video tool requires students to be concise, and doesn't  require a lot of technical expertise.  This allows for collection of quick, on-the-fly responses, or planned, well thought out responses.  Students must have a mobile device, however, and download an app by which to create and upload their videos.  This could prove to be an obstacle to some students and classrooms.

VoiceThread-  https://voicethread.com/

VoiceThread, like FlipGrid, allows students to upload video, audio, and other media files, as well as annotate over and comment on the media.  One major difference, however, is on the teacher management side.  You have to upgrade your account in order to create "groups" (class space), so the free tool limits how you can collect the content from your students.  A teacher using the free version would have to designate a single device for students to use one at a time in order to collect the media in one location.  This tool could be of a great benefit for those teaching World Languages, however.  It would be an easy way to assess student speaking skills such as pronunciation and accent.  Depending on how it is used, VoiceThread could fall into the application part of Blooms taxonomy, right on up to the Creating part.  Same with Dale's Cone of Learning - students could be demonstrating, applying, and practicing, or they could be creating, analyzing, and evaluating.

LucidChart - www.lucidchart.com

LucidChart takes advantage of drag and drop functionality for a collaborative diagramming experience.  This tool is great for mind mapping, graphic organizing, and creating flow charts.  It's primary an application/analyzing tool where students are modeling, organizing, and categorizing their learning.  While this is in the low-mid range of Bloom and Dale, it could be used to bolster higher order thinking skills by having students justify their organization or combine information into new organizational models.  While the free version does have limits, teachers and students can still collaborate easily with the use of a shareable link.

Blendspace - https://www.tes.com/lessons

TES Teach, formerly known as Blendspace, is a digital lesson platform.  Teachers can add a variety
of lesson components from worksheets to multimedia as well as interactive assessments.  It is very versatile -teachers can upload original content or link to created web content.  Lessons are easy to share and teachers can create classes by which students self enroll with a code.  This tool would be essential to anyone following a "flipped" classroom model, as students can access content outside of the classroom and school hours.  The simple assessment tool would allow a teacher to collect some formative data, though it's not very sophisticated - mostly multiple choice and polling-type questions.  This tool is primarily on the lower end of Bloom and Dale, as it is primarily a content delivery tool.  Students read, view, and hear information presented through text, images and videos.  Students are on the recall and check for understanding levels for the most part.  A creative teacher could find ways to move up the taxonomy/cone towards higher level thinking, but I did not see a way for students to comment or create through the tool itself.  The tool could give instructions and point students to other sites through links to do their creating activities.