5.2: Ultra-mobility - A New Way to Learning

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Mobility—and increasingly “ultra mobility”—is the buzzword of the day. According to the CEO of OQO, a manufacturer of Ultra Mobile PCs, “Ultra mobility is the ability to access all of your information, get in touch with anyone you want to, collaborate with anyone, and run any application you want from anywhere on the planet”. Convergence is making this possible, with music players, wi-fi connectivity, video cameras, GPS units, and live television capable of running on a single device, often a mobile phone. The days of carrying a separate phone, camera and music player are over. Indeed, many people are beginning to question use of the word phone at all, preferring to refer to these new gadgets as mobile communication devices, or digital assistants.

M-learning is a term regularly used to describe the many possibilities opened up by this convergence, whether it be exam results by mobile phone, lecture podcasting via iPod, or structured language games on a Nintendo. These are still early days, and while examples of m-learning in action are continually on the rise the benefits have already begun to be studied and documented. In “Mobile technologies and learning: A technology update and m-learning project summary”, Jill Attewell highlights a few examples of her own. According to her findings, m-learning is helping students improve their literacy and numeracy skills and to recognize their existing abilities. It also encourages both independent and collaborative learning experiences and helps learners identify areas where they need assistance and support. It can help combat resistance to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) that can help bridge the gap between mobile phone literacy and ICT literacy, and it can remove some of the formality from the learning experience which engages reluctant learners. It can also help learners remain more focused for longer periods.