A social semiotic account of (mobile) learning

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A social semiotic account of (mobile) learning

• AERA - San Diego, 13-17 April 2009
• Elisabetta Adami - University of Verona
• Gunther Kress - Institute of Education London

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Questions motivating the study

• to what extent can a theory of communication
  explain (conceptions of) learning?
• to what extent can a theory of meaning (-making)
  underpin conceptions of learning?
• to what extent do mobile devices reconfigure
  (conditions of) learning?

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Assumptions

• Learning the transformative engagement with an
  aspect of the world which is the focus of
  attention of an individual on the basis of
  principles brought by her or him to that
  engagement leading to a transformation of the
  individuals semiotic/conceptual resources
• Affordances representational constraints and
  possibilities, types of representations fostered
  and hindered by a given medium, both materially
  and socially (Kress van Leeuwen, 1996/2006).
• The affordances of any technology shape ways in
  which we communicate and in which we make meaning
  about ourselves and the world -gt affordances
  shape the way we learn
• Medium Affordances -gt background/foregrounded
  skills for its use

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Social semiotic analysis of Smartphones

• Affordances of
• Hardware design
• Software design
• Functionalities
• Habitus
• Skills
• Implications for education

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Hardware/Software design

• Primacy Visual output
• Navigational over textual input
• Menu-based semiotics
• Content generation and text creation
• Representation-as-selection
• (inter)activity navigation/selection among
  options

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Functionalities Imaging

• Immediacy, real-time, quantity
• Representing (everyday) reality by capturing and
  selecting it becomes a naturalized activity
• every fact achieves further significance
• the environment is lived so as to
  capture/represent it
• life-world is turned into an artefact to be
  (re)used

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Functionalities Web browsing

• Mobility interpersonal connectivity
  information access
• Less strategic planning ? more tactical thought
• Intolerance to fixity / stability
• Environment is supplemented with online info
• Blurring of online/offline worlds
• Life Experiencing informed activity (no need of
  risk-taking)
• Learning grabbing reliable info about your
  environment

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Functionalities e-mail

• Features of mobile Web browsing
• merging sites and times of information/relations/a
  ctivities
• merging online/offline environments
• Trend to representation-as-selection
• selected artefacts rather than texts created in
  writing
• a new textual genre mobile emails

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Functionalities GPS positioning

• Live contextualization of the self in the
  discursive representation of geography
• Displacement of the self
• Geographical record of a life
• Movement -gt representation/artefact

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Functionalities Lifeblog

• a multimodal chronological representation of the
  whole activity with the device
• a multimodal diary automatically recorded and
  assembled while using the device
• life turns into a visual artefact which can be
  (re)used

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Multi-functionalities

• Immediacy and real-time
• Adaptation and flexibility (from other devices)
• The more functionalities, the more likely their
  use in their default settings (templates)
• Personalization is index of expertise (interest)

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Skills fostered

• Representation as selection recontextualization
• Adaptation and flexibility
• how-to (processes) over what (contents)
• (local/operational) tactics over (global)
  strategies
• Real-time multi-tasking synergy over fine-grained
  focus

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Learning

• how-to access, select, capture, use in real-time
• global/collective info/events
• for local/individual aims/activities

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Implications

• Production selection and transformation
  consumption (re-use)
• usability, selection, bricolage, mobility
  freedom and creation
• blurred boundaries information/relations/activiti
  es time/space online/offline
• learning how-to access, select, capture, use in
  real-time global/collective info/events for
  local/individual aims/activities
• A new commodity generates new (newly-shaped)
  needs and purposes

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Implications for education

• Foregrounded skills
• Selection Re-contextualization
• How-to
• Real-time tactical and multi-tasking thinking
• Navigational aids in the era of the ideology of
  choice
• style - as the politics of choice
• aesthetics - as the politics of style
• ethics - as the politics of value and evaluation
• Background skills
• Strategic/global planning
• Text-creation from scratch
• Architecture building (rather than navigation
  among options)
• Focus on contents, on accuracy and reflection
• Life risk-taking, exploration, ephemeral
  experiencing

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Conclusions

• Can social semiotics by exploring changes in
  representation and communication explain
  changes in habitus of learning?
• a merely rhetorical question !

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Thank you!

• A social semiotic account of
• (mobile) learning
• AERA - San Diego, 14-17 April 2009
• Elisabetta Adami - University of Verona
• Gunther Kress - Institute of Education, London