A two-day series of meetings on mobile technology for learning led to the thought that perhaps there might be a taxonomy for engagement with technology for learning. Technologies involved in this discussion included things like mobile phones, e-Readers, Flip video cameras, etc. The motivation for the taxonomy was the notion that some types of interactions with these devices are inherently fairly simple – sending a text message, taking a picture, and the like. Other interactions can be far more complex – taking a picture, uploading it to a PC, uploading from there to a sharing site, and then integrating it into an essay or presentation, augmented with location information about where the picture was taken.

As one ascends this engagement taxonomy (and perhaps it’s not a straight line of ascent), things become more complex and perhaps more error-prone, and also perhaps harder for both faculty and students to manage. Hence, if we can provide a structure with which to think about the ways we want to engage our students with technology, we might be able to help both faculty and students to readily gauge how complex these interactions might be.

As a first-order view of the taxonomy, descending from most complex to least complex (or most engaging to least engaging), I propose this structure, and would welcome your feedback:

• Integration (taking content from multiple mobile sources and combining it in unique ways or via multiple tools)
• Collaboration (sharing content with others; using content from others)
• Publication (making the created content available to some audience)
• Creation (taking pictures, capturing video, writing text or messages)
• Consumption (viewing content created by others)
• No interaction

This is just a first draft, and may go no further. If you have comments on it, I’d welcome them – thanks in advance!

Tags: teaching and learning, Teaching Tools