m-learning... really?

It's easy to see that rise of the Internet truly brought about a revolution in learning. Relevant (and not so much) information available within seconds, anywhere in the world - if one's willing to learn, opportunities are endless. In fact, there's almost TOO MUCH data - anyone who's serious about reading RSS feeds can attest to that. Until very recently, getting access to this wealth of knowledge involved sitting in front of a desktop computer for hours on end. Laptops allowed us to choose where to sit, but the fundamental metaphor of staying put was still in full effect. Recent introduction of function-rich phones and Nokia's ultraportable multimedia computers could mean a major change in the education process. Is the s-called "m-learning" already making an impact?

My favourite form of today's mobile learning is podcasting. Yes, it's not specific to mobile phones, but fits them perfectly. A podcast is an audio file that can be seen as a recording of a hypothetical radio broadcast. As such, it can be about anything and anyone. Students complaining about their workload, professors sharing their course material (hey Richard ;) ) and activists voicing their political views - all of them belong to the diverse world of podcasting. A key future of podcasts is their recurring nature - it's expected that podcasters provide new material on a regular basis.

I recently subscribed to a podcast called "Manager Tools". Two senior-level business coaches outlining specific steps to becoming a decent manager. It's fun, useful (I am currently involved with a team planning a student conference) and doesn't take much of my time. In fact, I usually listen to it during my daily commute - the time I would usually spend staring out the window or dozing off.

 A step forward? Definitely. But it's far from a revolution - people have been reading books on-the-go for dozens of years.

How about Mobile Internet? With YouTube coming to mobile, videocontent should become even easier to search and access. Text and images have been accessible for quite a while - I enjoy going to WikiPedia when I suddenly get the urge to read up on a historical figure or event. Small screen of my phone doesn't make it a very enjoyable experience, but it's worth it nevertheless. Watching educational videos could prove to be useful, but this brings me right back to the recent discussion of the shortcomings of MobileTV.

The real potential comes when mobile becomes more than just a tool for accessing data. Digital Media, interaction and connectivity, combined with social networking is the way to a better learning experience. For example, what if elementary school students would get assignments on memory cards instead of paper? What if Bluetooth was used for real-time knowledge exchange and polling in a classroom? Yes, MobileTV might be inferior to HDTV, but if every kid in Africa has it in their phone, would it change things? Like my fellow blogger John Boxall often says - the One Laptop Per Child foundation might be several years too late to make a sensible impact on education in developing countries.

 A paper by Sara Price and Yvonne Rogers of the London Knowledge Lab is an example of the opportunities that are available. The researchers combined mobile phones with a range of other custom-built devices used to determine location, humidity, temperature and other parameters of any point in a small forest. Then, they let a group of elementary school students explore the area using these tools. Not only were the students able to successfully use what was given to them, they had a lot of fun learning in this interactive fashion. That certainly beats reading a boring textbook! 

 m-learning in its current form and shape is a step in the right direction. It makes education more accessible and streamlined. However, to truly rediscover the learning process, we will need multimedia computers that are easy-to-use, interconnected and universally available. Just give it a few years...