Learning through fingertips: Mobile learning at the Butterfly Zoo

2012/09/28

    National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) has been promoting digital learning, hoping to utilize the advantage the technology to assist learning.

    NTUST's Digital Learning team is promoting a project of Digital libraries and Mobile Learning with the objectives of "language learning" and "mobile learning". The goal is to study the effectiveness of digital learning, which is tested among elementary school students, college students, senior citizens and foreign spouses. During recent years of study, the project led by the Digital Learning team has enjoyed outstanding achievements in applications such as the individualized English learning system, Chinese interface for anti-plagiarism computer-assisted learning systems, online Chinese teaching and teacher training systems, and the digital/internet learning systems for the elderly.

    The project of "Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning" led byDr. Gwo-Jen Hwang, Chair Professor of Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, is designed to help students to do “ubiquitous learning” with the assistance of devices such as PDA, smart phones and ultrabooks and WiFi as well as sensor technology (e.g. FID). With the help of new technology, students can have access to internet information instantly while they are observing butterflies in the garden and learn more about how to identify the species and their habitats.

    The students of Chen-gong Elementary school in Tainan were each given a PDA that is connected to the Internet through WiFi. With the assisted-learning system on the PDA, the students become young scientists who are busy observing creatures and testing water. Learning is more effective for the students experiencing learning from the nature as well as from the web. At the end of the learning process, students' reflections are digitalized and fed to a database for further studies.

    According to Professor Hwang, outdoor observation activities nowadays are much different from before. With the online learning system on certain devices, students are able to take photos and check online the names as well as the features of the plants when they are learning and observing the nature outdoors. This is just like bringing along a personal mobile library for outdoor learning.