The English in Action team had the privilege to participate in the 11th mLearn conference 16-18 October 2012, in Helsinki, Finland.
mLearn is the short name for the ‘World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning’, a series of mobile learning conferences that has been running annually since 2002.
Participants from the EIA team comprised members from The Open University, UK, BBC Media Action and BMB Mott MacDonald. The OU and BMB colleagues conducted a 1 day pre-conference workshop on 15 October 2012, titled “mLearning Solutions for International Development: Rethinking what's possible.”
The mLearn conference was a big platform for exchanging experiences, sharing ideas, challenges and issues; showcasing projects; and disseminating best practices amongst those working within the field of mLearning in International Development. In that conference the team shared experiences of using mobile technology for a large number of teachers in the EIA project.
The participants of the conference give presentations based on current practices, scale and impact of English in Action. One of the presentations aimed at focusing on how video materials are working for the professional development of a large number of teachers in Bangladesh within their context. Another presentation, titled ‘Usability and sustainability in using audiovisual contents for ELT in Bangladesh’ considered the use of audio-visual materials for English language teaching. It not only considered the usability of audio-visual materials and technology in Bangladesh, but also the sustainability of these in terms of integrating the EIA schools approach within mainstream Bangladeshi teacher training institutes and programs.
All the participants showed interest and positive response in the EIA project and its activities.
Overall, it was a rewarding experience for myself and the entire team. It gave us the opportunity to exchange knowledge and learning in the field of education and mobile technology.
Click to view the Conference proceedings: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-955/
Members of the EIA project additionally participated in a pre-conference workshop on “mLearning solutions for International Development” – the proceedings of that workshop are here: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-955/workshops/WS4International.pdf
