Utilizing Mobile Learning for Orphans Aging Out

Abstract

How can mobile e-learning be used to support and enhance the goals of working with youth aging out of an orphanage. This chapter describes the use of an ethnographic narrative approach to tell the stories of eight young women who were “aging out” from their orphanage where many of them had spent most of their lives. The chapter examined the way in which a collaborative art community could support the participants as they narrated their lives over a 16-month period through photo-journaling and social media outlets. The focal points of this study were community building via art making and building of personal aesthetic, community engagement, reflection on self-identity, cross-cultural art education, and shared experience via photo-art narratives. The authors also examined the role of collaborative art experiences in helping these young women form social connectedness with their peers. The project was also designed to help sustain the girls digitally and virtually in the present and future. The research project studied the identity development and how these functioned within a collaborative medium that supported the young participants as they moved out of their orphanage.