mLearning: What we thought in 2000.

An article by Clark Quinn in LiNE Zine laid it all out for us.

"mLearning is the intersection of mobile computing and elearning: accessible resources wherever you are, strong search capabilities, rich interaction, powerful support for effective learning, and performance-based assessment. elearning independent of location in time or space. What is less clear is where we are now and how we will deliver on this vision." [LiNE Zine]

I'm not sure the vision has changed much, and neither has the last sentence. Maybe we should be asking why we think mLearning is needed, and where. The only physical environments where it would work currently seem to be inside large warehouses and other business locations with pervasive wireless access (and said wireless access being provided by the business organization, not by external providers).

12:46:12 PM    

m-Learning in Australia: Stymied?

Why mobile e-learning fails to make a move.

Australia's telecommunications companies are stifling the economic benefits of mobile e-learning (m-learning). Dr Marcus Bowles, director of the Institute for Working Futures, says the incumbents are defending market share by confining mobile data transmissions to high-cost cellular networks.

This is being accomplished using clever marketing and interconnected blocking of cheaper technologies.

Network switching is important for m-learning to avoid dead spots and dropouts interrupting training and real-time assessments of work in progress. For example, most of the time a device may prefer a faster wireless network, with the ability to switch to cellular, wired or satellite data transmission as the occasion requires. But network switching means freedom of choice, cheaper prices and lower margins. In Australia, the standard surcharge is being maintained at about 12 cents per megabyte if you go over your mobile plan's data limit.

"In the US it costs one or two cents," Dr Bowles says. "So they are gaining share by limiting market growth. If I'm sitting with the telco executives, I would know my share price will plummet the instant it looks like I'm cannibalising an existing market to gain a potential market."

This means cheaper wireless technology - which can transmit up to 80 megabits of bandwidth up to 80 kilometres away - is being introduced by many undercapitalised start-ups instead. The result is a patchwork of non-switchable overlapping networks, which are concentrated in big cities. Yet despite the communications mayhem, the institute is starting to test some promising m-learning applications.

[The Age]

12:22:24 PM    

Speaking of Google ... .

Isn't this exactly what some professors are raising hell with Google over? Might there not be some copyright pushback here? I don't care if the professors are slicing and dicing their own lecture notes, but dissecting someone else's book and republishing it on the Web (possibly combined with content from other copyrighted materials) looks to me like it violates fair use. Of course, IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer).

Living book makes learning easier - IST Results. Re-engineering online learning and teaching material on-the-fly to meet the individual needs of students and teachers is now possible thanks to a complete set of tools developed under the IST programme-funded Trial-Solution project. “The new tools, devel [Online Learning Update]

11:40:18 AM