Norris+&+Soloway+Keynote


 * Abstract:**

Cathleen Norris, Regents Professor, University of North Texas Elliot Soloway, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan
 * Education in the Age of Mobilism: The Inevitable Transformation of K-12 Classroom**

The planet is entering headlong into the Age of Mobilism. The hallmark of this new age is connections: connections to people, to events, to places, to things – immediate, multiple, and simultaneous connections. The affordances of a smartphone, that miraculously-thin, aluminum-encased slab of glass that is essentially embedded into the palm of one’s hand, are engendering changes in beliefs, values, and practices in all areas of human endeavor, from accounting to zoological research – and even in K-12!

For the past 40 years or so schools have used computers – desktops to laptops, standalone to online – to “better” implement the existing curriculum – a curriculum that was initially design by the Committee of Ten to prepare students to enter Harvard -- in 1892. (It’s true – Google-it – you will see!) It took the business community 20 years or so to figure out that in order to gain substantive benefit from computing technology one needed to informate, not automate. That is, using the computer to “better” implement an existing business process, i.e., automate, brought only small gains; but when a business process was redefined to take advantage of the affordances of the technology then – and only then – did business see serious, substantial gains. Sadly, K-12 has yet to learn that lesson, generally speaking.

But, we are here to report that some schools have figured out that that mobile learning devices – aka smartphones – afford students with new opportunities, i.e., informate, to learn and are indeed reaping serious benefits from their use (read: increased test scores).

In our keynote we will (1) describe the characteristics of this Age of Mobilism and we will (2) describe how those palm-sized, mobile devices are the catalyst in the transformation of the classroom from “I Teach,” a teacher-centric, didactic, direct instruction, 19th century, boring and ineffective pedagogy to “We Learn,” a student-centric, project-based, inquiry-oriented, 21st-century pedagogy.