Four cases of a sociocultural approach to mobile learning in<i>La Clase Mágica</i>, an afterschool technology club

Abstract

This paper presents four projects in which mobile devices are used to support authentic learning in an afterschool technology club, La Clase Mágica (LCM@UTSA), designed to motivate underrepresented elementary school children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The implementation of mobile devices into our LCM@UTSA is based on a sociocultural approach to mobile learning in which we use mobile devices to bridge school and home lives in order to make learning authentic and meaningful. This approach uses mobile devices to facilitate generative themes, and multiple contexts. This paper describes four tablet-based projects in LCM@UTSA since 2012, which follow this sociocultural approach to mobile learning.