French Mobile Learning Site of Interest

Philippe Steger just emailed me information about their academic mobile learning initiatives in France.

The abstract of the project is:

Since more and more pupils have their own mobile/cell phones and are attracted by sophisticated low cost - 1 €-mobile/cell phones, new ways of getting learning and teaching resources can be offered to both pupils and teachers. Mobile/cell phones tend to become Personal Assistants.

The chance for pupils to get complementary lessons, short documents about health and orientation, recorded messages and question papers anywhere and at anytime (on the bus, at home or in study rooms) lead to extended fields of research programs. Besides WAPEDUC allows pupils to learn or revise during their spare time (http://www.wapeduc.net/)

The number of families connected to the Internet is still low if compared to that of families possessing one or more mobile/cell phones.

The main interest of this system lies in the fact that it is opened to everyone and it is quite cheap.

The aim of this innovative teaching strategy is to allow any pupil to get information about the contents of his/her future lessons and to self-assess himself/herself at the end of each lesson by means of an interactive question paper. Furthermore a search engine and a “training” program and a page devoted to teenagers’ problems are available on the “mobile learning” platform.

Other projects such as short texts which pupils could read before attending class, the presentation of sketches and diagrams, mathematical reminders, recorded messages and videos used in language lessons, can be considered as efficient and well targeted tools which prove to be complementary to school lessons.

Pupils choose themselves the moment when they want to consult the platform. This autonomous behaviour is resourceful and can lead every pupil to use the platform at the end of each school week.

For the time being, the learning platform offers 4 main themes:

- Lessons and self-assessment question papers
- Advices concerning orientation for studies
- A page devoted to domestic phone numbers for Health and advices.
- A culture program
The teacher and its pupils can communicate: the teacher upload resources from a computer and the child consults them on his cellular.

If numbers indicate success, he indicates that "The experiment is being conducted among 120 pupils in Primary School, 1400 pupils in Colleges and 4000 students (20 forms) in colleges in Montpellier Académy. Only in the Hérault Département the number of daily connections can vary from 1200 to 1700. After the Baccalauréat 2008, we had 92.000 pages viewed on 6 days."

Unfortunately my high school French has not been used and long ago forgotten, but you can view the site as I did through Google translate here. I have long been following mobile projects in the UK, but know I need to look at more European and Asian initiatives.

Thanks and Congratulations, Philippe!