A response to Buendgens-Kosten, J. (2008),
Its a rather broad definition of a case study, but its valid as one person's vision of the future (near future, i would have thought). It certainly sounded familiar to me.
I downloaded, read and annotated the case studies on my Ameo on the bus journey to work. I listen to podcasts - it’s normally the only way I can keep up to date with the current technological trends. As a college, we already text students when their library books are overdue, rooms are changed, they miss lessons ... Every course has its own area on the vle – to access course materials and support learning activities. These support classroom teaching, they don’t replace it.
I would have loved to have access to this type of technology when I was at uni. It would have made life so much easier on field trips .. to be able to enter and exchange data at the time.
I’m not quite sure that they are suggesting that it replaces the lecture. Personally, I never found them particularly helpful, I just don’t learn like that. But, that is one of the advantages of technology: to increase the richness and variety of the learning experience and hence be more inclusive.
Now many students have to work part time to support their studies, they need the flexibility and learn anywhere anytime advantages of a technological approach.
If students aren’t so reliant on tutors/lecturers for information transmission, perhaps they would have more time to support individuals.
Most of the technology the article envisages is available now, though perhaps not fully utilized and not when the article was written, which seems to be 2005 (?).
A small point .. but the use of the mobile as a personal identification device seems a bit odd, unnecessary and open to abuse. I would have thought that fingerprint recognition or equivalent would be better …
References
Buendgens-Kosten, J. (2008), My thoughts concerning "Learning without boundaries", H807 aeb324 case stud, 09 February 2008 10:25:48
JISC (2005), Case studies of innovative practice, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning_innovation/eli_casestudies.aspx (Accessed 2 March 2008)
