mLearning Project - Larry Lugo: mLearning and AR for inclusive education of indigenous students

[Larry Lugo]

Well, finally, and as promised, here I leave to your consideration the attached proposal as the template suggested by you.

Thank you very much in advance for your comments, but above all for... your vote;)

You can download the file from https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13460268/MobiMOOC2012/mLearning-Project-LarryLugo.pdf too

Warm regards.

[ET_Russell (Elizabeth)]

Larry,

Does this project mean that the 'Sunshine State' will need to talk to "The beloved land of the sun" (ha ha).Obviously I am sleep deprived with this amazing MOOC.

Good stuff...first thing that came to mind was Geoff Stead's McDonald's  phone app.  

Your target group is a bit different, yours is Indigenous students being upskilled in Spanish. My target is to teach Indigenous kids their own language that is being lost.  In saying this during my research for something that could do that I found the following samples:

These are iPad apps and they were free to download...I've had fun playing with them, they are easy to use, engaging and based  [listen to the word, see the word, record the word]+memory game.

• White Clay Lite
  
• Ho-Chunk Native
  
• Konkow Toddler HD
  
• Navajo Toddler HD
  
• Lakota Toddlers
  

Have fun.

ET

[Larry Lugo]

At first I was surprised because your mail was signed by ET (did you phone home? ;). But seriously, I love your project and your country is a delicious mix of stories from the veil between reality and imaginary, beautifully scenic, dense and entertaining. In short, it will be a pleasure to work together joinning available resources and effort. Sharing this beautiful experience of using ICT to help indigenous minorities and preserve their culture... is priceless!

Here I have noticed deficiencies in native students speaking Spanish. They are going to correct this condition as they go in their careers. The idea is to start this project since even before entering college so they can take advantage of both educational and job opportunities .

Moreover, AR objects could be a means to encourage the use of mobile devices and get them more interested in their original culture.

Bye the way ET, did you phone home?

Warm greetings from The beloved land of the sun Ü

[etorresrussell]

Hi Lugo,  

Got an article from an Indigenous colleague today on a new app for Iphone "Apps to help languages" it is being developed in Australia and they have one version from one of the Indigenous languages ma-iwaidja  (I could not find it doing a search via apps on iPad, but the link below points to it.

Regarding ET phone home....don't laugh but my husband and my bosses historically tend to say 'ET go home!' I tend to get so involved in projects I am passionate about I get lost in them...ha ha.  I even have a coffee mug with ET go home to remind me.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ma-iwaidja/id557824618?mt=8

Look forward to catching up in the next few days.  BTW my email is elizabethto...@gmail.com

And yes I think there is definite synergies between our projects would love to collaborate, I can practice my Spanish.  I only speak it with my mum and my sister.

Cheers

ET

[Angie Popova]

Hello Larry,

I know I am making an appearance quite late, but I thought maybe you would still like to hear some more opinions on your project. 

I like a lot your idea and it would be great if this project works out. This is a rather complex project because it tries to address a number of needs, some of them interconnected, others not so obviously interconnected. 
Needs analysis is the first thing to do in order to have a starting point for a project. Assessing the availability of technology to the native students and addressing the lack of such is obviously the first step to take, as you have planned in your project proposal. Maybe the attitudes towards the technologies, and the level of understanding of what they can be used for, could be grasped at that same stage of the project- then you have a clearer picture of the challenges to face. 

The "no costs" of the first stage sounds to me like a too good to be true- if students are to be involved in creating applications, you have to deal with the attitudes of the tutors/teachers, the motivation of the students to do them, and it might require additional training. I would expect some costs- even if not financial, they could be in terms of motivating, organising, evaluating. Creating one application is a project in itself. Furthermore, if the administration is to be involved (e.g. for permission), and administration is usually quite reticent to changes, you have to be convincing that this is the best solution to the problem you are addressing. What if the one last person on whom it depends to give a green light to the project, says "Native students can improve their Spanish studying at the library and thus money won't need to be spent to buy better mobile phones"? Of course there is a response to this, as with mobile phones we can do more things than with books, but these have to be stressed.  

You mention something very interesting- namely, that sometimes native students feel ashamed of the culture from which they come. Involving native students in collecting all sorts of data about their native culture can be a very powerful way to revive their attachment and interest to their roots. I would expect a lot of interesting things to come out of this, as it would become possible to understand how exactly young people see and experience their culture. And for they would, probably, evaluate their place in that culture and in the society, possibly reposition themselves, who knows- I think whether in a project of creating augmented reality apps or simply gathering the material and data, the processes of (re)learning, (re)discovering, (re)thinking etc are so important. This is yet another project within the project. 

Overall I find a number of interesting ideas in your project. It might be that I did not understand it well enough, though, but it did not become clear to me why you think all these needs that you have explained, will be best addressed with mobile technology and augmented reality. 

I hope something of all that I wrote would be meaningful...

Good luck!