Mobile Digital Technology in learning: Enhancing mobile learning for anywhere anytime engagement

In a blog post, Chris Dede, a professor in learning technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, advocates the use of mobile devices in education. The devices, which allow students to learn any time and anywhere, expand instructional time beyond the classroom and the teacher and help increase students’ motivation to learn, Dede writes:

1. Knowing where you are

2. Interacting with networks

3. Sensing local content and services

4. Discovering relevant things

5. Enhancing your surroundings with information and simulation

6. Learning your interests, as well as how and with whom you like to learn

This new capacity for learning, which is infused with global information, is a powerful way of complementing the traditional model of learning, which is isolated from the world in classroom settings. The anywhere and anytime come into play.

Mobile phones, tablets and other mobile devices now provide access to a much broader and more flexible set of learning resources than is available in classrooms. The mobile access and options of these types of technologies offer alternatives wash of working and create connections to a wider and more flexible network of individuals, groups and organizations. Another great aspect is the ease to modifying learning experiences for individual learners to connect further with content and instructional styles designed to fit the interests and experience of each person and exploration of meaning making.

But questions around limitations exist, they can be problem solved and developed according to needs, wants, and possibilities, however these areas must be resolved to realize the power of mobile digital technologies for learning:

 How can we access mobile devices and infrastructure for learning? How can we best balance educational investments between wired computers and the emerging infrastructure of wireless mobile devices?

 How can we use internet access and digital student data to enhance education, while preventing various forms of abuse? How do we work with and around safety and privacy with care and compassion?

 Digital assets and assessments: How can we drive innovation in digital learning materials and services when the education market is notoriously fragmented and slow to adapt, and when the strengths and limits of mobile devices for learning are not well understood?

 How can we empower educators and other stakeholders to realize the potential of anytime and anywhere learning?

 Which of these barriers affects progress in the other areas?

 I’m interested in your thoughts. What ideas have you explored?