Abundance or Deficit Thinking For Mobile Learning

Teachers and administrators think and act according to an abundance or deficit mentality. A few examples from mobile learning will explain the difference between the two ways of thinking and acting.

In a deficit mentality, an educator  says the school does not provide mobile devices or that not all students have their own mobile device and,therefore, the teacher cannot use mobile learning in his/her class. However, with an abundance mentality, a  teacher says that at least half of the  students have mobile devices so the  students can work in pairs and therefore, the teacher uses mobile learning in the classroom.

In terms of training with the deficit way of thinking, the teacher would say there is little or no district professional development and, therefore, the teacher cannot begin mobile learning in the class; on the other hand, in an abundance model,  the teacher would ask his/her students to teach him/her about how to use mobile devices.

Furthermore, with regard to  the selection of apps with the deficiency model a teacher would say that he/she does not know which apps to use and therefore, the teacher does not do mobile learning. Conversely, with an abundance mentality, the teacher simply asks his/her students what apps they think they could use in his/her course.

Also, with deficit thinking, a teacher might say there is no money for apps and, therefore, the class cannot use mobile devices. Yet, in  the abundance model a teacher or students identify free apps that they can use.

Likewise,  in the deficit model, a teacher might feel that there is no way to assess students with mobile learning since the students cannot share their screen with the teacher as they would do in a computer  lab and, therefore, he’/she will not do mobile learning.  In an abundant mentality,  the teacher has the students physically show their  device’s screen to the teacher.

Do you have an abundant or deficit way of thinking in your class?

My ebook, 90 M0bile Learning Modern Language Activities, is available at http://bit.ly/90mlact.

My modern language blogs are  now at  http://bit.ly/imprml.  I have developed 25  Spanish activities  and 4 Modern Language Visual activities that allow students to begin to express themselves in the modern language and to begin to move toward spontaneous speaking Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My three formative assessment books, Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students and Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, are available at   http://is.gd/tbook

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A Protocol for Conference and Class Tweets

Conferences or educational events should develop a  protocol for tweets.  The conference can set up two twitter hashtags, one for social comments and one for content comments.  The social tweets  include references to the weather, the crowds, the excitement, the food, the desire to see a famous speaker,  how great a speaker is, where someone will go for supper,  etc. The conference can simply add an “s” to the end of its usual hashtag such as “iste13s”.

For content, a  “c”, can be added at the end of the usual hashtag as “iste13c”.  These tweets would include specific content such as  something specific the speaker said  (“Tuttle says to put wireless on all of the campus, not just in the buildings”, questions about the speaker’s ideas “What mobile activities would students do outside the building?”, or connections such as “Yesterday Smith also  talked about mobile learning  being physically mobile”. If each tweeter tweeted just one content about each session, the critical ideas of the whole conference could be tweeted.

During and after the conference, attendees and others  can search for the “c” comments so that they can learn from others without having to sift through all the purely social comments. They can quickly learn powerful concepts from the conference.

In a similar manner, classroom teachers that use tweets can develop appropriate hashtag endings to represent the different categories, types of thinking or levels of thinking in the class. For example, an English teacher may add “p” at the end of English104 to indicate poetry analysis or an “e” to indicate tweets about the essay so the class members can quickly find the appropriate learning.

My ebook, 90 M0bile Learning Modern Language Activities, is available at http://bit.ly/90mlact.

My modern language blogs are  now at  http://bit.ly/imprml.  I have developed 25  Spanish activities  and 4 Modern Language Visual activities that allow students to begin to express themselves in the modern language and to begin to move toward spontaneous speaking Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My three formative assessment books, Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students and Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, are available at   http://is.gd/tbook