ARTICLE #4 | 71
MOBILE LEARNING DEVICES AS COLLABORATIVE TOOLS TO ENHANCE
BIOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION SKILLS IN THE LAB AND FIELD
Figure 8: Post workshop transformation of participant opinion on
ability of (a) educational apps improve tree ID skills [Appendix 4.2 –
Q6] and (b) iPads facilitate collaboration (Appendix 4.2 – Q7]
However, students were incredibly positive about the potential
of integrating this workshop into a first year lab. Transcripts of
reflective audio commentaries are detailed in Table 4. Four groups
created a Fotobabble narrative to a static picture (Figure 6 bottom
right), one group filmed a scene which they talked to, and another
group filmed themselves – all were very effective at getting their
message across and it looked like they had a lot of fun doing this
part of the task.
4. Discussion
4.1 Preconceptions
The low levels of usage of educational apps at schools and colleges
represents the age of the students when they went through the
education system – as the students embarked on their degrees at
Keele in September 2011. The App Store, which acts as a digital
repository of apps, was not released until 11 July 2008 and the
Apple iPad ® did not debut until 27 January 2010 (Nations, 2014),
a year after the majority of students would have moved from high