Use of mobiles on the field trip was successful, but not without its problems. Some
of the learners’ mobiles were older models, which meant there was some difficulty
when transferring the photographs and videos. The battery life of the phones was a
problem too. Registering for the websites in order to use the Web 2.0 tools was also
time-consuming. However, Karin believes the results and the learners’ feedback on
the activity meant that this time was well spent.
The second part of the mobile project involved station work, with the learners
working in groups of three in the classroom. There were a total of six stations,
with each group using one mobile phone and spending an average of 12 minutes
per station. Karin made use of a range of different smartphone applications for
the activities. For many of them, the learners accessed the Web addresses (URLs)
using a square barcode called a QR (quick response) code, which has become
a popular way of delivering URLs to smartphones.