Project Background

In Spring 2008, Lucy Haagen, Visiting Lecturer in the Program in Education, used mobile phones to develop learning communities connecting Duke students with Durham high school students and mobile-learning resources. Haagen and the students used mobile phones both as traditional devices (i.e., as phones) and as capturing (for example, to record audio essays) and advanced communication (podcast broadcasting) devices. Based on the initial success of this program, CIT provided resources for Haagen to use mobile phones to facilitate ESL service-learning activities with DukeEngage in Vietnam during Summer 2008. Using the multimedia capabilities of the phones, Duke students used mobile phones as communication, documentation and instructional tools to enhance their work as English teachers in two villages outside Hanoi.

About the technology

Haagen’s project used Nokia N 72 handsets. Many mobile phone brands can be purchases as ‘unlocked’ and/or ‘international’ – meaning they’re not tied to specific carrier, and can be used in foreign countries by purchasing a ‘pay as you go’ SIM card after arriving in the destination country. In contrast to the US, where calls and text messages are most often charged to both callers and receivers, receivers of calls and text messages are not charged in Vietnam and many other Asian countries. Increasingly, even affordable mobile phones are equipped with cameras (still and video), voice recorders and messaging systems that don’t require internet connectivity.

Teaching strategies

1- Mobile phones as portable documenting tools

Multimedia-capable phones often include cameras that can take photos or even capture video. Built-in microphones can capture and record audio as well. Depending on the type of phone, these files can be shared between phones or downloaded onto a computer later. Some phones even include software for editing audio and video within the device itself. For ESL activities, audio/video recording is especially helpful, as students can record themselves trying phrases, and immediately listen to and/or view the results. In Haagen’s proejct, for example, one student created an audio diary by recording messages to a close friend. Other students used the mobile phones’ cameras along with audio narration to document various aspects of the culture.

2- Mobile phones to create ad-hoc networks

Mobile phones that are enabled to send and receive text messages can be used to communicate between smaller groups to arrange meetings, or even accept answers to short quiz questions. The cost of text messaging (SMS) in many foreign countries is far less than the cost of messaging in the US. Faculty Director on the Vietnam project, Erik Harms, used text messaging on a week-long field trip where students were trusted to explore on their own as long as they met up at appointed times and places. Program Assistant Duc Ho used text messaging to run an ad-hoc “admissions office” for one of the projects involving a 3-week English class for gifted high school students. Faced with more applicants than available spaces, Duc used text messaging to manage a waiting list and communicate with applicants as information became available.

3- Mobile phones as teaching devices

Throughout rural Vietnam, electricity is rationed. In summer, electricity rations (about 10 hours/day) are reserved for lighting and for running electrical fans at night – crucial to sleeping in a tropical climate without air conditioning. With power in such short supply, mobile phones took the place of laptops as presentation tools. English lessons were enhanced as small groups of students crowded around the instructor’s mobile phone, viewing pictures and listening to downloaded American songs and podcasts.

4- Mobile phones and teacher workshops

Haagen used her mobile phone to capture images, video and audio connected with English teaching in Hanoi and the two villages. With assistance from staff in Hanoi University’s new media lab (a gift from the New School (NY, NY), she used Apple i-DVD to create interactive DVDs. These DVDs were then used in a series of teacher workshops funded by the US Embassy in Hanoi.

Project start date: 5/07/2008
Funding awarded: $5,630

In this lab for “Computational Methods in Engineering,” students picked ten seconds of a favorite song, stored on their iPods, to manipulate. They adjusted the rate at which the computer takes in samples of sound, break out individual frequencies, boost and lower frequency ranges and scramble pitch and beat.

Lab instructor Professor Michael Gustafson explained why he decided to incorporate the devices into the lab. “Rather than spend any money buying signal generators, we could just use the free signal generators [i.e., the iPods] that Duke provides,” he said. Plus, he said, the music helps connect engineering principles to a familiar experience.

Sophomore Joanna Noble had done a similar lab exercise — but without the iPods — in another engineering class. “It makes a lot more sense in the context of the music,” she said.

In the lab, freshmen Corey Butler and Stesha Doku selected the song “Innocent” by rock band Our Lady Peace (listen to the clip of “Innocent” on the band’s Web site). After recording ten seconds of the song into a computer, they ran algorithms that raise or lower the strength of certain frequency ranges in the song, and then listened to how the change in frequency distribution affected the sound.

Next, Butler and Doku applied another algorithm to the original song, which switches around certain frequency ranges, effectively encrypting the song by altering it beyond recognition (listen to “Innocent” after it has been encrypted). Finally, they returned it to its original state by applying the encrypting algorithm three more times.

Butler, Doku and other students agreed the lab is more engaging using music from their own collections, than it would be using a tone generator.

You know your own music, freshman John Pura explained, so any changes to it are “readily detectable.”
In addition to learning engineering principles, students gained insight into their songs. Pura discovered in “100 Years” the lead singer of Five for Fighting “has a really, really high range.” And freshman Emmett Nicholas discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Universally Speaking” “doesn’t have a really strong bassline.

And Gustafson gave the class a tip for do-it-yourself karaoke — just pick a song and filter out the frequencies in the range of the human voice.