“MiLK connects students to learning by harnessing their own contemporary culture and interests” - Janelle Williams, Visual Arts Head of Dept. Trinity Bay State High School.

MiLK is a Mobile Learning Kit that connects students and teachers through simple and effective technology and pushes the boundaries of the teaching and learning beyond the classroom into the other environments students inhabit both now and in the future.

Teachers can now design everyday learning activities using mobile phones and the internet. For students this makes events such as excursions, group discussions, and questionnaires all the more engaging. Using MiLK students can create their own learning profiles, discuss topics with other students and teachers, share ideas, photos, comments, and most importantly, design their own learning events.

MiLK is an interface that allows educators and students to design event paths that lead people through places with the use of a mobile phone. The event paths consist of a number of checkpoints at which the event player must SMS an answer before they are directed to the next checkpoint. An event path can be designed to meet specific learning outcomes for any subject or any location. The interface also enables player reflection and assessment functions.

MiLK:

Is simple, flexible, scalable and adaptive

Extends learning experiences to include other environments locally, globally, and virtually

Promotes new and effective learning partnerships between students, teachers and families.

Offers opportunities for personalised learning

Inspires students to engage in learning

Engages students in multi-literacies

Results in increased teacher confidence and professional development

Click here to view a short demonstration of the MiLK interfaces.

Playing MiLK Events
A MiLK event is an SMS pathway consisting of up to 10 checkpoints. Each checkpoint is made up of a question, answer, and hints. When playing an event, players receive SMS messages. These messages ask a question of the players and if the event is based at a particular place, the also give directions to a locale. To progress in the event, players reply to the SMS with the answer to the question. If the answer is incorrect they are sent a hint SMS and try again.

Building MiLK Events
MiLK events can be created by students or teachers. You may like to get your students to make events for each other to play, they can build events in groups or individually. If you want to use a MiLK event to test specific knowledge of a particular topic, then you may like to make a game for your students to play and use it as a testing tool.

Some events are designed to make use of features that already exist within a space, and some make use of things put there by the builder. Other events are entirely fictional events that are narrative rich and can be played anywhere. Events can reveal hidden narratives and allow you and your student to share stories and knowledge.

The first step to building an event is to define a locale or a topic for the event.

Next, explore the location and/conduct research into the defined topic. Note down points of interest keeping in mind the question, answer and hint structure of MiLK events. You may like to take a camera to take some photos of interesting things you find. Your event can have up to ten checkpoints with five hints per checkpoint.

Now it is time to start using the MiLK Event Builder to start building your event. You can upload a map of the location of where your event is set. Set the scene for your event, is there a narrative backstory. Give your player a purpose or a goal for playing your event, this will keep your players engaged. Do you players need any special equipment to play your event?

Now you can design your checkpoints. Make sure you include a question answer and at least one hint per checkpoint.Give your players a congratulations message for when they complete your event.

Now you are ready to test your event. Use the mobile phone emulator to test your event. Check for spelling mistakes. You might like to revise your ’set the scene’ section your narrative may have evolved while you were building your event. Once you have tested your game you are ready to hit publish. Now a teacher can assign other students to play your game.

Discussion Pages
There are several opportunities for discussion supported within the MiLK interface. There are class-wide discussion pages where teachers can set discussion topics/questions. There are also builder and player discussion pages. If students are building events in groups the can use the builder discussion page to share and discuss ideas/research for their event. Players also have their own discussion page where they can reflect on the event they have played. Teacher may set discussion topics/question for each of these three discussion pages.

Reflection Journals
Once a builder publishes an event, you can assign students to play that event. When a player begins to play, an event journal is created that allows players to reflect on how they played the event and on the design of the event. Players can add notes and upload photographs to a map and review a log of SMS messages they sent and received when playing the event. Players can also engage in in-depth reflection and discussion using the discussion forum of their event journal.

Tech Requirements
To use MiLK in your class all you need is computers (1:4 student to computer ratio is about the norm), access to the internet and a set of mobile phones (1:4 student to mobile ratio on average).

For your mobile phones you will require a set of sim cards (one sim per mobile phone). You can purchase $10 sim cards that can be restricted to SMS only.

We suggest that the mobile phones and sim card sets be kept in a central school location such as the library so that they can be shared amongst a number of classes.

Feel free to contact us for any further questions regarding tech management for MiLK.
info@milkit.com.au