'Over the past ten years mobile learning has grown from a minor research interest to a set of significant projects in schools, workplaces, museums, cities and rural areas around the world. These projects range from providing revision questions to children by mobile phone (BBC Bitesize Mobile), through small group learning in classrooms using handheld computers (MCSCL from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), to context-sensitive learning in museums (MOBIlearn European Project).
Each of these projects has shown how mobile technology can offer new opportunities for learning that extends beyond the traditional teacher-led classroom. As the projects developed, the researchers became aware of significant issues that were not obvious at the outset. Some are technical problems, such as how to manage technology with short battery life, or how to interact with a mobile device when walking. Some are educational, such as how to coordinate small group learning in the classroom, or to deliver teaching content through a small device. And some are broader issues of society, for example whether it is ethical for software on mobile devices to monitor and control children’s learning activities outside the classroom.
We are now entering the mobile age, where phones are carried everywhere, banks are accessed from holes in the wall, cars are becoming travelling offices, airplane seats are entertainment centres, computer games are handheld, and advertising is ubiquitous. We now have the opportunity to design learning differently: to create extended learning communities, to link people in real and virtual worlds, to provide expertise on demand, and to support a lifetime of learning.
The entertainments industry is comparable in size and complexity to the education sector. One hundred years ago people travelled to music halls or concerts to be entertained. Then broadcasting and the gramophone brought mass entertainment into every home. Now a second revolution is underway as the internet enables people to create and share entertainment media across the world.
One hundred years ago children travelled to schools to sit in rows and be instructed by a teacher. Today they still do the same. Why is education so resistant to change? Over the next decade will it undergo as radical a transformation as the music industry? If so, it will have to face some of the same issues, such as preserving copyright and maintaining quality, and also some unique ones such as assessing learning in the field and bridging the gap between formal and non-formal education. We urgently need to address these issues if learning is to meet the challenges and opportunities of the mobile age.'
This document is a report of a workshop by the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence Mobile Learning Initiative.
