The Mobile Complex, Socialization and Learning Resources

Abstract

The integration of mobile devices into everyday life by all groups in society leads to a socialisation effect around ubiquitous mobility and in turn to a quasi mobile identity around the availability and disposition of social activities and space. This does not mean that typical school competences, such as reading written texts, are irrelevant; on the contrary, they are essential, particularly as a basis for critical participation in the mobile ‘world’. The socialisation effect of the mobile/cell phone within the wider mobile complex challenges the school to support critical literacy. Through a detailed examination of the mobile complex we identify pedagogic tasks in this chapter. We consider mobile devices and their applications in the interrelation of socio-cultural structures, agency and cultural practices. Mobile, individualised mass communication is one feature of prevailing socio-cultural structures, which does not only mould specific habitus of learning and media use for personalised life-worlds but promotes individual expertise. An important option for schools is to assimilate such naïve expertise of everyday life and foster it at the appropriate level of reflection and complexity.