Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Definitions of Mobile Learning

Summer is over and my school has started about 4 weeks ago. This semester we have a goal to start several pilots of different use of mobile learning devices like tablets and smart phones. My #finnedchat colleague Renkomaki school principal Jukka Manninen teach alphabets to 1. graders with mobile phones Letter A with mobile learning (look the video which is in Finnish but you get the point) and that really inspired me to go deep to my Diigo files. I found there about 300 mlearning tags, most of from real mobile learning teacher @snewco Scott Newcomb. Looks like im going to spent some time in my Diigo library.


Im going to post series of mobile learning posts and try to open the field for me and teachers who are not familiar practical and educational use of mobile learning devices. Im heading from theory towards practice and finally post also our school practical experiences of mlearning.

First there are couple of definitions (there are plenty of more) of mobile learning.  In Upside Learning blog: General Considerations for Mobile Learning (mLearning) i found many definitions on mobile learning:

Wikipedia defines mobile learning  as “Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies”.
In other words, mLearning decreases limitation of learning location with the mobility of general portable devices1.
Simply put, mobile learning is the acquisition or modification of any knowledge and skill through using mobile technology, anywhere, anytime and results in the modification of behavior

What is mobile learning?



Upper: Thoughts on the state of mobile learning

Mobile Learning 1 by