Are you ready for Mobile Learning?

Much is being said about the new-wave of learning people are calling ‘mobile learning’. It’s even been given it’s own moniker … mLearning!!

So, what is it? mLearning “refers to the use of mobile and handheld IT devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile telephones, laptops and tablet PC technologies, in teaching and learning” as quoted from QIA Excellence. Mobile Learning  is when “people see it as a follow-up of e-learning” (ShareIdeas.org).

Personally I do not consider a laptop as mobile learning, not in the newest thinking behind the term – loads of us have them as the main computing power in our lives. I have a new iPod Touch as well as a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet… these are devices that are can be used with the term mobile learning. The ability to read text on the screen is only half the battle, whatever device you use must be Internet-ready, as are both the iPod and the N800, although I prefer to surf on the N800 as the screen is bigger and it supports Flash.

But what of mobile learning? A few months ago I was privy to a senior Academic chatting about an anecdotal story about his first experience of mobile learning. During one of his seminars he mentioned some financial figures for a leading High Street supermarket. Within a matter of minutes a hand went up at the back of the room. “Sorry, but you’re a couple of percentage points out on your figures for the company’s first quarter results”. This then sparked a new direction for the seminar, whether reported results can be believed as both student and academic could put their hands on the source for their figures.

The student had been sat at the back of the room with their iPod and was surfing along with the seminar, making notes, finding resources to back up his ideas. Amongst the pages he’d found was a different set of figures for the same period for the same company. Hence, without even realising, they had both painlessly entered the world of mLearning / Mobile Learning.

Image source: Executioner Blues by Stephan Geyer (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)