Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education

While mobile technologies are not yet widely and routinely used in education, they have the potential to be used in a multitude of pedagogical and other contexts in higher education. For example, Patten, Sanchez and Tangney (2006) have identified several categories of use: • Administration, e.g., the use of calendars, exam reminders, grading software; • Referential, e.g., dictionaries, e-books and office applications; • Interactive, e.g., quizzes, response software; • Microworld, e.g., simulations, games; • Data collection, e.g., data logging, note taking, audio recording, eportfolios • Location aware, e.g., augmented environments, gps navigation and tagging; and • Collaborative, e.g., pod/vodcasting, blogging, instant messaging. The aims of this research were to evaluate the technological and pedagogical affordances of using a smartphone (combined mobile phone and personal digital assistant) as a data collection tool to create digital narratives or stories designed to be used by adult educators as curriculum resources in their teaching and training. In this study, video, pictures and audio were captured with a Palm Treo smartphone.