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Using a navigational metaphor, this chapter introduces readers to the sometimes stormy seas of implementing new learning technologies into a course, especially those that have pre-existing design flaws (lack of rigor, accountability, content and time constraints, etc.). In addition to presenting what we feel are some best practices in using iOS devices, we analyze nearly 600 students’ reactions to these devices related to how they were used in a 100 level survey style course. For every student who told us that they were “awesome” or helped them “learn and discover new things through [the] course,” there were multiple students who felt that “they are damaging [the] learning experience because they are distracting.” The central argument of this chapter is that without engaging in a dialectic course (re)design process that puts the affordances of the learning technology in conversation with classic principles of instructional design, the utility of adding iOS devices will be limited at best and distracting at worst. The instructors in the course described here did use the devices in a variety of ways and many students were satisfied with the learning experience. However, for others, the combination of the course being too easy and too forgiving along with putting the Internet into students’ hands was a recipe for incivility and off-task uses of technology.

Research into the autonomous use of MP3 audio recorders by students in UK higher education demonstrated that students were innovative in their autonomous use of the devices. They used them to capture learning conversations from formal and informal situations to personalise and enhance their learning. However, today smartphones and other smart devices have replaced the necessity for students to carry multiple mobile devices including MP3 recorders. This chapter builds upon the earlier work and presents a small qualitative study into how students are autonomously using their smart devices to support their learning. The research explores the hypothesis that students are being innovative in the ways in which they are using their smart devices to support their formal and informal learning. The study involved five students who own smart devices who were invited to discuss their ownership of smartphone and tablet technologies and the ways they used them in their studies. The students first completed a short questionnaire and were then interviewed in small groups. The results agree with previous research into student use of smart devices and describe autonomous engagement facilitated by personally owned smart technologies. The study identifies continuous patterns of pervasive engagement by students and concludes that more thought should be given to disruptive innovation, digital literacy and employability.

Technology provision and Next Generation Learning Spaces (NGLS) should respond to the active learning needs of twenty-first century learners and privilege multiple ‘pictures of learning’ and associated knowledge work. In this sense it is important for NGLS to be pedagogically agnostic – agile enough to cater for a range of pedagogical approaches within the one physical space. In this chapter, the democratising and potentially disruptive power of new digital technologies to facilitate the privileging of these multiple pictures of learning is explored, recognising the significant rise in student ownership and academic use of mobile technologies. With their escalating ubiquity and their facilitation of active knowledge work, research around considerations for the implementation of mobile digital technologies is canvassed, highlighting a range of issues to be considered. This is part of the ‘hidden work’ of technology implementation. Without this hidden work, the potential of NGLS in facilitating and privileging active learning and multiple pictures of learning is diminished and the potential for reinforcing already powerful and potentially exclusionary modes of knowledge work increases. Finally to assist in articulating the hidden work of digitally enabled NGLS, a model is proposed to help understand how ease of use and confidence impacts on student and academic knowledge work.

This chapter shows that nowadays, ordinary people also encounter huge amounts of information. What used to be part of privileged leaders can now be owned by anyone. What has been gathered in the past by dedicated services is now available to almost anyone. The technical tools for access have become cheaper than ever. Infinite information is accessed through the Internet, and people share their explanations and analyses through social media. What used to be strictly confidential information of the secret services is nowadays part of everyday life. A new economy is being created. Professions and industries are disappearing and new ones are emerging as the concept of knowledge acquisition, information processing, “secret” as such is transformed. In the past, government agencies have mobilized through the media, and nowadays people reach out to one another and form crowds in Internet-based social media. “Anyone” can be an influencer, opinion-forming journalist, e.g., through his blog, a revolutionary or a politician. There are risks and dangers: dangerous teachings and thoughts to communities reach the masses through the same channel. The democratization of technology is a formidable challenge to existing political systems that are trying to limit, hinder, people’s suddenly enormous freedom.

School districts across the United States have adopted web-based student information systems (SIS) that offer parents, students, teachers and administrators immediate access to a variety of data points on each individual. In this chapter, I offer findings from in-depth interviews with school stakeholders that demonstrates how some students, typically ‘high performers’, are drawn into ‘pushed self-tracking’ (Lupton, 2016) of their academic achievement metrics, obsessively monitoring their grades and other quantified measures through digital devices, comparing their performance to other students and often generating a variety of affective states for themselves. I suggest that an SIS functions as a neoliberal technology of childhood government with these students internalising and displaying the self-governing capacities of ‘enterprise’ and ‘autonomy’ (Rose, 1996). These capacities are a product of and reinforce the metric culture of the school.

This chapter presents the perspective of an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) integration specialist on how mobile devices and apps are being used in several Western Australian primary schools to improve students’ literacy across a range of contexts and curriculum areas. In her role, the author is responsible for assisting teachers in Independent sector schools with Technologies, ICT Literacy and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and has worked extensively in helping teachers design rich cross-curricular tasks and programmes that harness a range of digital technologies, including mobile devices. The chapter presents several examples of how teachers in Western Australian Independent schools have used mobile tools across the curriculum in rich tasks, and how this has supported students’ literacy learning. Although this chapter makes specific references to Australian curricular requirements and contexts, it is envisaged that the practical examples and insights presented will be more broadly applicable in helping practitioners use mobile technologies to enhance literacy learning across the curriculum.

Mobile devices, through their capacity to enable anytime-anywhere learning as well as capture, annotate and share multimedia, offer entirely new ways for students to learn. This chapter provides review of mobile learning with a particular focus on learning design. First various definitions and characteristics of mobile learning are examined in order to establish a common understanding of its boundaries and meaning. Example uses of mobile learning in schools and higher education are described as a way to provide a more concrete understanding of design possibilities. Benefits of mobile learning are unpacked, as distilled from the literature, including the ability to provide flexible, accessible, authentic, personalized, ubiquitous and seamless learning. Mobile learning issues are also examined, including technical problems, cognitive load issues, distraction, equity and safety. A primary school science and a university pre-service teacher education vignette are described so as to offer a more in-depth illustration of what mobile learning can look like and achieve in practice. Finally, mobile learning research findings and observations are synthesized into recommendations, to inform and guide evidence-based mobile learning design practices. Opportunities for future research and investigation are also discussed.