So I was playing with my cellphone the other day whilst sitting in the car. I was reading blog posts on my phone's web browser. One post in particular contained a link to a PDF file. Initially I thought I'd have to wait until I got home to see what it contained, however, I decided to click the link and see what happened. Next thing I knew Adobe Acrobat Reader opened on my phone (I didn't even realise the phone had it) and I was able to read the downloaded document.
Now I just have an ordinary sort of a cellphone - a Nokia , with an ordinary sized screen so I had to zoom the text up a bit to read it and I'm not sure I'd want to be reading too many documents in this format - it's a bit cumbersome if you zoom in too much. Never the less, I was quite excited to realise that I could access PDFs on the move.
My phone has blue tooth and so does my computer so when I got home I was able to blue tooth the document to my computer. I also realised I could send PDFs back to my phone from my computer, which could be useful.
It's been a long time since I've had a chance to just sit and play like that and see what I can discover. What I discovered is, I'm sure, not all that amazing to some of you, however, it was an aha moment and piece of new learning for me. I have always been a strong advocate of having sand pit time, having the time to play and experiment as a means of developing knowledge and skills in the area of ICT (or any area of new learning for that matter). I was reminded of this as I played with my phone the other day. My other thought as I was playing with my phone was "duh! Why didn't I realise my phone did this before?" It reinforced for me that sometimes adult learners ( and kids too) make learning discoveries that might night be a big deal for those in the know. The important thing I took away from this was to remember, when I'm teaching others in PD situations, that we're all at different stages along our journey and that it is important to acknowledge the excitement and new learning discoveries made.
