Steve Wheeler has written an interesting bog post, which deserves unpacking and discussing.

Steve says:

Blended learning (in the established, traditional sense) means a mix of learning activities that involved students learning both in the classroom, and at a distance from the classroom, usually mediated through technology. I am claiming that this type of blended learning – in concept at least – is now outmoded because the boundaries between local and remote have now been substantially blurred.

I think I would largely agree with him although I am not so sure it is due to the blurring of the boundary between local and remote. Reading older papers on technology enhanced learning, there was great emphasis placed on the divide between synchronous and asynchronous communication and how to provide a proper ‘mix’ of technologies facilatating such modes. Today we flip between different modes without thinking about it. Take Skype – if I text someone they may reply straight away or may reply the next day. I may have a series of short episodic conversations with a colleague throughout the day. I may switch from text to audio or video for parts of these conversations. They may be one to one or we may invite others to participants for particular parts of the conversation. Instead of a divide between synchronous or asynchronous communication, tools now support multi modal communication and multi modal learning.

Steve goes on to say:

The new blend is to blur formal and informal learning

Of this I am less convinced. I am in a few problems here because I have often written myself about informal learning. But in truth I am unconvinced of the value of the concept. Indeed there is little agreement even on what the terms formal, informal and non-formal learning mean. If you are interested in this debate there is an excellent literature review by Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom who explore different definitions and uses of the terms. I have tended to use the idea of informal learning in two ways – to refer to learning which takes place outside the formal education system or to learning which takes place in the absence of formal teaching. The problem with the first use of the term is that it refers only to what it is not, rather than to what it is. And in the case of the second, it tends to ignore the influence of what Vykotsly called a More Knowledgeable Other. The More Knowledgeable Other is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process – a friend, a peer, a colleague, who can support the scaffolding of  learning. Technology is playing a significant role in blurring boundaries here. If I read Steve Wheeler’s article, think about it and write my own ideas then surely I am learning, and in this case Steve is playing the part of the More Knowledgeable Other in guiding my thinking. Recently one of my computers was overheating. I searched for and found a web site telling me at what temperature the Northbridge chip should be running (it was running much hotter). I then found a YouTube video showing me how to take my computer apart and clean the filters. Is this formal or informal learning? Do I have scaffolding and guidance in my learning? I would suggest I do.

Even more problematic is Steve’s idea of “informal technology”. I think this may just be careless use of terminology. Of course technologies are not informal or formal. However what is certainly true is that most young people today own various technology based devices, which can be used or as John Cook calls it “appropriated” for learning. And as we move towards near ubiquitous connectivity, at least in richer countries, then these devices provide constant access to all kinds of learning – including contact to those with more knowledge than we have. It is interesting to note that most of this learning takes place in the absence of purpose built education technology, rather we appropriate applications designed for business or enterprise use or for entertainment, for learning.

I think more useful than setting a dichotomy between the formal and the informal is to explore the different relationships and contexts in which learning takes place. Last year Jenny Hughes and I made a slidecast called Critical Literacies, Pragmatics and Education as part of a Critical Literacies course being run by Rita Kop and Stephen Downes as part of their ongoing research project on Personal Learning Environments.

In this we referred to the relationships in which learning take place. These include the relationships between learners and teachers, between the learners themselves and between the learners and the wider community.

We went on to look at context. Obviously this includes place or physical context, which could be described as the learning domain. This might be a school or college, the workplace or at home. Important here is the distance between the different domains. Sometimes this distance will be short (say in the case of an apprenticeship involving workplace and school based study), but sometimes there may be a quite broad seperation between the different domains.

A second context is the social, cultural and political environment in which earning takes place. A third – and to my mind critical – context is the idea of what is legitimate learning – what is learnt and how it is learnt. Obviously this involves the idea of control.

Especially important is the context of how we recognise achievement – how outcomes are defined, what value is placed on learning, by whom and how.

We also raised the idea of discourses – the sum total of the conversations around education. In the past, we suggested, education has tended to be a top down discourse with prescribed and structured strategies  for learning. This is changing and now leaners may be more likely to start from practice without a predetermined strategy for learning.

Thus relations and context or learning are becoming fluid and are contently changing. Technology is playing a major role in these changing relationships and contexts. Such a fluid discourse inevitably leads to conflict with an educational structure based on top down educational discourses.

Yesterday the UK Telegraph and  News of the World newspapers reported that minister of education Michael Gove had announced plans to ban mobile phones from school classrooms from September 2011. This would form part of  government guidance to schools due to be published in July 2011.

Whether such reports are true or not are open to considerable doubt. It seems more likely that Give will give powers to schools to ban phones although they probably could do so anyway. What is in no doubt is Gove’s belief in a very traditional idea of education and his skepticism (or non understanding) of the potential of technology for learning. One of the coalition government’s first acts was to abolish the BECTA support agency for technology in education.

And Gove is proposing giving powers to teachers to confiscate phones form students and search their text messages although it would seem possible that this would be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights.

Anyway as the Telegraph article circulated by Twitter there was a quick reaction from the education community with a Google doc based petition being set up within two hours:

We, the undersigned, believe that such a ban would scupper successful mobile learning initiatives and is a short-sighted, reactionary move. We call for a mobile phone ban to be removed from any guidance published by the DfE.

The petition contains a comments column and elicited many interesting replies.

Danielle Bayes, a teacher, reflected the views of many saying:

Banning mobile devices won’t go any way to helping students understand how to use them appropriately and to their advantage. And for every negative news story concerning mobiles in schools, where is the publicity for the hundreds of thousands of children who are innovators of their time and creatively use them to further their learning?

Hilary Curtis added a parent’s perspective

I expect/require my son to take his phone to school, so that he can let me know if he has chosen to go to the park or a friend’s house afterwards.  This is an important element of teaching him safety and responsibility.  The only safe place for him to keep it at school is in his bag, which means it is with him in class, although he is quite properly not allowed to use it then (though I agree with other comments that there could be planned educational use of phones too).  Schools already have perfectly adequate powers to set their own rules in such matters.

Deputy Headteacher Steve Philp said:

This is just a way of discriminating against the poor. At my school (50% FSM within top 20% deprivation); most parents communicate using mobile phones – it is their way of accessing the internet and information. We are exploring ways of bringing mobile technology into the classroom to increase the links between all our stakeholders (parents, governors, staff and students particularly) and this ban will just disenfranchise students and parents, de-skill teachers and alienate governors.

And Ewen McIntosh reflected the comments of many in that modern technologies cannot be ignored in education:

The problem is not with the device, in the same way that it is not paper that is fault for those writing hateful remarks in books, or in racist pamphlets.

The problem is one of attitudes towards students’ ability, wherever they are, to communicate in private. The attitude of students can be a negative one. But it is the attitude of parents, teachers, school leaders and Governors, that allows us to take negative attitudes and practices, and educate youngsters in the huge potential these devices have for their learning and participation in the democratic process.

Mobile phone use is a crucial part of today’s information architecture, for understanding the world around us and having one’s say in it. To remove it from the principle place of learning is equivalent to removing books in the 16-19th century, televisions and overhead projectors in the 20th century, and the internet in the beginning of the 21st century.

The list continues to grow. It is encouraging that many of the signatures are from teachers and school leaders as well as researchers and developers. But it also poses a question of how a space and discussion opened up in response to reported government policy initiatives can be transformed into a longer term and positive campaign and space for exploring ideas and innovation in technology and pedagogy..

Just a few quick comments about the Mobile Learning Conference Bremen, which took place last week. By all accounts it was a big success – at least if the feedback from participants is to be believed. And I enjoyed it greatly.We had about one hundred delegates – from 19 different countries according to Judith Seipold. What were the lessons for the future?

1. The conference theme – ‘Mobile Learning: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments; allowed us to look at learning from a  number of different perspectives including from pedagogy, the arts and entertainment as well as from technology. As learning is embedded in ever wider contexts these perspectives can provide us with a richer and wider perspective on our work.

2. The venue is important. Although it raised some eyebrows when we said we were holding the conference in a youth hostel – the deign and location of the building – allowing different interlinked spaces with lots of light and right by the river (with a sun terrace) – facilitated informal discussions and learning linking the formal presentations and workshops with that valued ‘out of conference’ time.

3. Conferences do not need to be so expensive. We only charged 50 Euro per delegate and provided free access to students. How did we do it? Firstly the youth hostel gave us an excellent deal – considerably cheaper, I suspect, than we would have been charged by purpose built conference venues or by universities. And it was a no frills conference – no gala dinner and no free iPads. We managed all the administration ourselves using free or open source software – EasyChair, Twitter, Google forms etc. (The most tricky bit was negotiating with PayPal which took for ever).We begged and borrowed equipment.

Ok it was a bit touch and go – we haven’t paid everything yet but my guess is we will make a profit of about 45 Euro. But if we can do it so can others – the cost of conferences at the moment excludes many people resulting in a poorer discussion.

3. We encouraged multiple formats including workshops and demonstrations. the poster sessions was particularly good. And although the multiple strands meant some of the sessions were quite small it was those sessions which in my experience were the most interesting.

I think we still have some way to go in integrating unconferencing sessions properly in the agenda. Unconferencing takes a lot of organization and facilitation. But perhaps we should stop thinking about a dichotomy between conferencing and unconferencing and look at how we can encourage the maximum involvement and participation in all of our work.

4. We have got some sort of record of our conference on Cloudworks. But that took a lot of work and we need to look again at how we can pull together diverse information sources from the different places – slideshare, twitter, blogs etc which people use to show their work and ideas. This links back to the idea of how we amplify conferences and events.

5. We had a relatively small local organising committee. This has pros and cons. On the good side this allowed us to work together informally and intensely. On the down side it resulted in a few individuals ending up with a lot of work. We also had recruited a lot of reviewers prior to the conference which spread out the time consuming work of reviewing proposals. And we were extremely lucky to be able to draw on support from students from the local university who did this work for free as part of their studies.

And people are already asking about next years conference. I think we should do it again. But one suggestion is we might stick with the Crossing Boundaries theme but move on with the technology. After all mobiles are not alone in crossing those boundaries!

Niedawno, 21 i 22 marca odbyła się „Mobile Learning Conference: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments“ w Bremie – konferencja dotycząca mobile learning, czyli wspierania nauki  przy użyciu telefonów komórkowych.

Wraz z partnerką naukową z Hiszpanii zaprezentowałyśmy na niej nasz nowy projekt dotyczący kursów uniwersysteckich, ktróre torzymy razem ze studentami z Berlina i Tarragony. Nasze kursy oparte są na metodzie „action based reasearch”, której celem jest właczenie studentów do wspólnej pracy naukowej.

Studenci pracują w małych grupach nad przez siebie wybranych pytaniach badawczych dotyczących użycia telefonów komórkowych do nauki, pracy w zespole, zarządzania wiedzą itp. W trakcie kursu studenci zostają wprowadzeni w aplikacje i metody mobile learning oraz podstawowe metody badawcze oraz sami w grupach definijują pytania badawcze i wybierają odpowiednie metody do przepowadzenia badań. Są w tym procesie wspierani przez nas wykładowców.

Projekty są przeprwadzane „zza biurka” lub „w terenie”, np. studenci  przepowadzają ankiety w firmach na temat aktualnych lub przyszłych zastosowań mobilnego Internetu  i używają do tego celu technologi komórkowych. W ten sposób mobile learning jest jednocześnie treścią i metodą kursu.

Studenci używają różnych urządzeń – takich, jakie są im dostępne – od prostych telefonów komórkowch, przes Smart Phones do Tablets (np. iPads). Pod koniec semestru grupy z Niemiec i z Hiszpanii prezentują wyniki swoich badań i dyskutują na temat rozpoznanych różnic w obu krajach. Prezentacje i dyskusje odbywają się w ramach wspólnych konferencji w sieci.

• Więcej na temat naszego projektu i kursów mobile learning na naszym blogu: http://ourmproject.wordpress.com
• Program konferencji w Bremie: http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/downloads/Bremen_programme.pdf

Here is the recording of the Sounds of the Bazaar live internet radio programme broadcast from the MLCB-Conference 2011 in Bremen.just as in the first day, we focused on encouraging participants to tell their own stories about the use of mobile devices for learning in different contexts.

First up on this programme was Helen Keegan who has earlier wowed the conference with her presentation on mobiles and film (more to come on this). Jenny Hughes went on to interview Ceridwen Coulby, Alice Huskinson, Prabhjoyt Kler, Catherine MacMillan and  Helen Macrorie, students at Leeds Univeristy Medical School, about their perspective on use of mobile devices in medicine and health care. Antje Breitkopf talks about the One Laptop Per Child project, based on her experience of working with the project in Peru. And in a series of vox-pops Jenny Hughes talks to John Potter and Ludger Deitmer amongst others about their impressions of the main issues arsing from the conference.

Production by Dirk Stieglitz, interviews jenny Hughes and anchorman Graham Attwell.

The music is from the Album “Velvet Dress & Stockings” by Dazie Mae and is available from the Jamendo web site.

License: Creative Commons 3 Attribution, Share-Alike.

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The live internet radio programmes from The Mobile Learning Conference Bremen this week were a real gas. We are pretty confident with our sound set up these days which leaves us free to focus on content. And I think we did a pretty good job in catching the debates and ideas of the conference. If you are interested in the theory and practice of mobile learning, then I’d recommend you to listen to the two programmes. Each lasts about half an hour.

The first programme features Daniela Reimann talking about her keynote presentation on art and mobile devices. Andy Black preveiws his popular workshop on future trends in the use of mobiles for learning. Klaus Rummler, one of the conference commitee, tells us why and how the conference was organised. Julia Laxton, from Leeds University Medical School, talks about the use of mobiles in medical education and issues for institutions. Anke Königschulte from Bremen talks about using audio technologies in museums. And last but not least, John Traxler looks at the international dimension of the use of mobile devices for learning.

Great stuff! The music we played is made by Daniel Berges & The Windsurfers on his album Drop By Drop and like the programme itself is licensed under Creative Commons. Graham Attwell anchored the programme, Jenny Hughes was interviewer and as ever the producer was Dirk Stieglitz.

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The 2011 Horizon Report was published today.

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. There are no real surprises in  areas of emerging technology cited for 2011:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Electronic Books
• Mobiles

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Augmented Reality
• Game-based Learning

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Learning Analytics

However whilst the impact of mobile devices on learning is becoming readily apparent, the impact of e-books is harder to assess. Of course it may be that students will access textbooks and academic publication on e-book readers, along with the accompanying Digital Rights Management. But I think we may be reaching the tipping point where academic textbooks and research are published online or in electronic editions and are not published in traditional paper based book format. Of course this may be somewhat disruptive for the academic publishing industry! It also raises interesting issues of quality. And in the longer run I wonder if students will shun e-book readers as such preferring to read open materials on reader apps on mobile devices. We may actually be seeing the zenith of the Kindle in just the same way as analysts suggest that iPod sales may have peaked.

Pontydysgu is sponsoring the Mobile learning: Crossing Boundaries in Convergent Environments 2011 conference being held in Bremen on March 21 – 22. And as I did with the PLE2010 Conference last year, I will be writing the occasional bog about how we are organising the conference and why.

We held a meeting of the organising committee today. The committee is small, Klaus Rummler, Judith Seipold, Eileen Luebcke and myself. The advantage of such a small group is that meetings are informal (and generally productive) and we can all meet face to face. The disadvantage, of course, is that there are not many people to do all the work. Informal is key for me. Long gone re the days when conferences could only be organised by the great and the good, and organising committees were full of Professors with many letters after t5heir name. This is one of the democratising effects of social media. In the past it was necessary to have such grand committees in order to get word out of an event. Now we use twitter and facebook and viral info0rmation flows. In additio0n I think researchers are changing their attitudes towards events. In the past it was the authority of the organisation running the vent which was key – were they and their organising committee respected academics with many publications to their name. Now people are more interested in the subject of the conference and on the possibilities for fruitful exchange of ideas and knowledge.

Of course there remain issues. It is often difficult for researchers – and especially students – to get funding to attend a conference. for that reason we have tried to make the event as cheap as possible. We are only charging 50 Euros, and even though we have no sponsorship, we are confident we can break even. I was disappointed last year that the conference on Open education in Barcelona was charging something like 500 Euros to attend.

We rely on the goodwill and input of the community to organise the event. The hardest job is reviewing. We are sending all of the submissions for the conference to two reviewers. With something like 50 submissions that means 100 reviews. the open source Easychair system helps in organising this but is by no means perfect. And I remain sceptical about how review systems work. However clear the instructions, different reviewers seem to have very different perceptions of submissions. however, I have no ideas of a better system for quality. And at the end of the day, the success of the event depends on the quality of the inputs.

One of the more bizarre problems in organising such events is collecting the mo0ney. It is extremely hard to get systems for universities to accept money in (and often just as hard to get the money out again. Furthermore, an overview of who has paid is vital and university finance systems are rarely geared to providing such information on demand. however Paypal makes setting up your own payments system fairly easy.

We started  talking about the programme design today. One thing we are keen to do is to separate between the submission of a high quality research paper and the traditional academic form of presentation. Endless paper presentations do not stimulate discourse and ideas, and seldom lead to the generation of new knowledge. Thus we are looking at different forms of presentations, including cafe type sessions and debates. It is also very heartening that we have received some excellent proposals for workshops with real interaction with participants. And once we have got an outline programme we will be looking at add different unconferencing sessions.

Submissions for the conference officially closed last Friday. But if you do want to make a last minute proposal email it to me by Sunday. But even if you haven’t got a proposal in their will be plenty of ways to participate. Hope to see many of you in Bremen in March

Two discussions have been coming together recently – the use of mobile devices – especially tablet computers – and the provision of text books.

As more tablet devices are released – and the increasing functionality of smart phones – plus the rising availability and popularity of ebooks, there is an immediate attraction to the idea of giving students mobile devices pre-loaded with all the text books students need for a course. However, as Ewen MacIntosh has pointed out, mobile devices remain relatively expensive compared to the price of text books and it may be that the only institutions that can afford to distribute them to students for free are those catering for relatively wealthy students anyway.

That ebooks have made a limited impact in the education textbook market is not surprised. Remembering my own student days – and talking to friends little seems to have changed – there is a thriving market in second hand textbooks. Digital Rights Management software and prohibitive licensing have prevented such a market emerging in ebooks.

I wonder though, if the debate over text books and mobile devices has been overly limited in scope. The real qu8estion for me is if we still need textbooks. The development of Open Educational Resources would appear to potentially render many textbooks redundant. But even more, web 20 and multi media applications put the ability to produce and share materials in the hands of anyone. So text book publishers no longer have a monopoly on the production of (scientific) publications. And that of course, has big implications for what is considered as scholarly or what publications or artefacts have authority, approval or sanction as learning materials. to an extent that debate has already started with the widespread use of wikipedia despite the frequently ambiguous attitude of academic providers.

Is it too big a step to imagine that in the future the ability to seek out and evaluate source materials will be seen as a key part of learning, rather than absorbing pre given material. And further, that student work can contribute to the body to learning materials, rather than being seen as just an exercise on the way to achieving accreditation?

A quick summary of some of the recent research on mobile learning.

Mobile devices are becoming ever more important due in main to their ubiquity. The number of mobile phone subscribers will increase to five billion people this year thanks to the growth of smartphones in developed nations and mobile services in poor nations, according to the United Nations (2010).

Industry predictions are that the sales of smart phones, able to access internet services, will surpass that of ;ordinary’ mobile phones by March, 2011. Added to this is the rapid development and take up of all kinds of different mobile devices, ranging from tablets such as the iPad and book readers such as the Kindle.

Although in an early phase, the potential of these devices for teaching and learning is being recognised (indeed so much is being written, it is hard to keep up to date with the research)
Alan Livingston, writing in Educause Quarterly (2009) says:

“The past decade has witnessed two revolutions in comunication technology. The first — the Internet revolution — has changed everything in higher education. The second — the mobile phone revolution — has changed nothing. We’re vaguely aware that our students have mobile phones (and annoyed when they forget to turn them off in class), but it hasn’t occurred to us that the fact they have these devices might have anything to do with our effort to provide them with educational experiences and services.

HELLO? as our students sometimes say when trying to communicate with someone who’s being particularly obtuse. Mobile phone usage among our students has become virtually universal. Isn’t it time for us to stop ignoring and start taking advantage of this fact?”

The definition and scope of mobile learning is central to the debate over the pedagogic use of such devices.
According to MoLeNet, mobile learning can be broadly defined as “the exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning.”

The London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG) have been working on conceptualising pedagogies for mobile learning.

“Mobile learning – as we understand it is not about delivering content to mobile devices but instead about the processes of coming to know and being able to operate successfully in and across, new and ever changing contexts and learning spaces.m And, if it is about understanding and knowing how to utilise our everyday life-worlds as learning spaces. Therefore in case it needs to be stated explicitly, mobile learning is not primarily about technology (Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010, p6)

The London Mobile Learning group have developed the idea of a “social-cultural ecology of mobile devices” based on the  triangular relationship between structures, cultural practices ad the agency within which they conceptualise the use of mobile devices.

In this approach they say “learning is understood as the process of coming to know and being able to operate successfully in and across ever changing contexts and learning spaces as well as understanding and knowing how to utilise our everyday life worlds as learning spaces. It is viewed as a process of meaning making through communication / conversation across multiple contexts among people within a triangle of social structures, cultural practices and agency as well as an augmentation of the inner, conceptual and outer semiotic resources – increasingly with and through mobile devices.” (Pachler, 2010)

Socio-semantic tools including language, material artefacts and technology mediate the actions of learners as they seek to augment their conceptual resources.

John Cook (UK) develops the idea of mobile phones as mediating tools within augmented contexts for development further through a re-conceptualisation of Vygotsky’s notion of a zone for proximal development as “responsive situations for development’ in recognition of the socio-cultural, economic and technological conditions of the early 21st century.” (Cook, 2010)

Other writers have looked at mobile devices as offering a pedagogy for the social inclusion of at risk groups or people socially marginalised.. Margrit Boeck (2010) says mobile devices are:

• making learners mobile so that they are able to expand their horizons
• engaging learners on their own ground and addressing them as people who are learners already and as knowledge makers;
• according them full recognition in their position and achievements in their lives; as well as of their position as learners and makers of knowledge. In this context,learning means being mobile, being able to change.

Reporting on a symposium on m-learning, Laurillard (2007) reports Geoff Stead as arguing that mobile learning is important for access, personalisation, engagement and inclusion providing learners with control over learning, ownership, and the ability to demand things, and thus meeting the rights of the learner.

Naeve (2005) points to the ability of mobile learning to support more learner centric interest oriented and knowledge pulling types of learning architectures. The traditional educational architectures are based on teacher-centric, curriculum-oriented, knowledge-push. The new demands are largely concerned with a shift along all of these. (Naeve, 2010).

Diana Laurillard (2007) has highlighted the mobility of digital technologies in providing “opportunities for new forms of learning because they change the nature of the physical relations between teachers, learners, and the objects of learning.”  (p1).

Nial Winters (2007) suggests we have to address three mobilities in mobile learning – learners, technology objects, and information – and the objects can be differentiated by being in:

• regional space – 3-dimensional physical space;
• network space – the social space of participants and technologies; or
• fluid space – learners, relations, and the object of learning.

At a practical level there are many discussions, often in social media such as community web sites or blogs suggesting how mobile devices can be used in teaching and learning (see for example Hughes, (2010, a). Hughes (2010, b) also provides a useful summary of the arguments for and against the use of mobile devices in the classroom.

The presenters at a 2006 Kaleidoscope Convergence Workshop on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, entitled ‘Inquiry Learning and Mobile Learning’ collectively offered a wide range of learning activities that could be supported through mobile digital tools and environments (Laurillard, 2007):

• exploring – real physical environments linked to digital guides;
• investigating – real physical environments linked to digital guides;
• discussing – with peers, synchronously or asynchronously, audio or text;
• recording, capturing data – sounds, images, videos, text, locations;
• building, making, modelling – using captured data and digital tools;
• sharing – captured data, digital products of building and modelling;
• testing – the products built, against others’ products, others’ comments or real physical environments;
• adapting – the products developed, in light of feedback from tests or comments; and
• reflecting – guided by digital collaborative software, using shared products, test results, and comments

There is a growing body of research over the use of mobile devices for work based learning. Sharples et al, (2005) say “Just as learning is now regarded as a situated and collaborative activity (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), occurring wherever people, individually or collectively, have problems to solve or knowledge to share, so mobile networked technology enables people to communicate regardless of their location.” (p5).

Liz Kolb (2010) links the use of technologies for learning to the way we communicate, not just in education but in the world of work: “…many are still shying away from this new literacy (even dismissing it as a negative form of communication). Knowing that text messaging is fast becoming the #1 form of communication reminds me that it will also be an important literacy for the 21st century job force.”

Winters, (2007) points to the potential of mobile devices for learning in the workplace to: enable knowledge building by learners in different contexts. and to enable learners to construct understandings. Mobile technology, he says often changes the pattern of learning and work activity.

Naeve (2010) also points out that mobile devices can link learning to knowledge management.

“At the same time, within most organisations, new demands are being placed on effective and efficient knowledge management. Promoting the creation and sharing of knowledge in order to assure the right person with the right knowledge in the right place at the right time for the right cost is the overall aim of these demands.” (Naeve, 2010).
Attwell (2010) has pointed to the potential of mobile devices for developmental learning in the workplace. This allows the bringing together of learning from different context and domains, including the informal learning which is developed through work processes. He outlines the design of a “Work Based Mobile Learning Environment” (WoMBLE).

Perhaps the greatest impact of mobile devices may be in changing the relationship between institutional or classroom based learning and learning in a wider society. Steve Wheeler, in his presentation on Web 3.0. The Way Forward? (2010) says that whilst in the past we have brought the world into the classroom in the future we will bring the classroom into the world.

References

Attwell, G. (2010). Work0based mobile learning environments: contributing to a socio-cultural ecology of mobile learning, in Pachler, N. (ed) Mobile learning in the context of transformation. Special Issue of International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

Boeck, M. (2010). Mobile Learning, digital literacies, information habitus and at risk social groups, in Pachler, N. (ed) Mobile learning in the context of transformation. Special Issue of International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

Cook, J. (2010). Mobile phones as mediating tools within augmented contexts for development. in Pachler, N. (ed) Mobile learning in the context of transformation. Special Issue of International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

Kolb, L. (2010). From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning. http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/.
Laurillard, D. (2007). Pedagogical forms for mobile learning, in: Pachler, N. (ed) (2007) Mobile learning: towards a research agenda. London: WLE Centre, IoE

Livingston, A. (2009). The Revolution No One Noticed: Mobile Phones and Multimobile Services in Higher Education. Educause Quarterly, 32(1).

Naeve, A. (2010). Opportunistic (l)earning in the mobile knowledge society, in Pachler, N. (ed) Mobile learning in the context of transformation. Special Issue of International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

Pachler, N., Bachmair, B., & Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Learning. Structures, Agency, Practices. New York USA: Springer.

Pachler, N. (2010). Guest editorial, in Pachler, N. (ed) Mobile learning in the context of transformation. Special Issue of International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

Sharples, M. Taylor, J. Vavoula, G. (2005). Towards a Theory of Mobile Learning

Winters, N. (2007) What is mobile learning? In M. Sharples (Ed.), Big issues in mobile learning (pp. 7–11): LSRI University of Nottingham