Mobile Learning: Shaping the Frontiers of Learning Technologies in Global Context

Abstract

Learning with mobiles will undoubtedly shape the frontiers of learning technologies in every global context. Looking back over the past 10 years of mobile learning we can see increasing evidence and experience of mobiles driving the agenda for other established learning technologies and either taking learning to people and communities who were previously too distant or expensive to reach or enhancing, enriching and challenging the conceptions of learning itself. This has taken place in an increasingly global context gradually achieving international visibility and recognition but has not been wholly benign as the medium for specific agendas. This chapter reviews this previous decade and then looks forwards to a world where increasingly the notion of learning technology is itself problematic as technology, especially mobile technology, becomes a pervasive, universal, ubiquitous and defining characteristic, taken-for-granted and not-worth-mentioning. The world is no longer a world with technology and mobile technology added in, somehow separate, additional and optional, but is becoming a world unthinkable without technology, particularly mobile technology. This transforms knowledge and knowing and challenges education to stay credible. Learning with mobiles is no longer learning as we knew it somehow delivered or enriched by mobile technology, it becomes learning defined by societies defined by mobile technology. This chapter explores these issues.