Enabling Mobile Learning

While finding people with a similar direction for learning and eLearning I found my way over to the ‘Educause Connect‘ website. It’s one of these resources that you need a good couple of days to really find your way around to truly appreciate the volume of content they have.

What took my eye was the article that Ellen Wagner wrote (in 2005) on mLearning – ‘Enabling Mobile Learning‘.

“Wherever one looks, the evidence of mobile penetration and adoption is irrefutable: cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), MP3 players, portable game devices, handhelds, tablets, and laptops abound. No demographic is immune from this phenomenon. From toddlers to seniors, people are increasingly connected and are digitally communicating with each other in ways that would have been impossible to imagine only a few years ago.”

“Mobile learning offers many rich opportunities for personalizing learning experiences: broad, comprehensive community wireless initiatives; rich field-based experiences; immersive museum-enrichment experiences; and campus-wide laptop initiatives. Increasingly, mobile learning will feature rich, dynamic portal applications.”

“The success of mobile learning will ultimately revolve around a mosaic of rich converged experiences. These experiences will rest, in turn, on a foundation of converged network and device technologies, wireless services, rights management, content management, search management, and transactional processing power. Successful mobile learning will demand a rich presentation layer that runs efficiently on a variety of platforms and a variety of form factors. Effective mobile learning programs will require new digital communication skills, new pedagogies, and new practices. Luckily, as we anticipate the arrival of 3G and 4G technologies, we have time to prepare for the oncoming wave of learning innovation.”

These are three of the bits of the article that jumped out at me on the first read through.