Update on mobile learning - the future of mobile communications

Getting back into mobile learning after a few months steeped in educational research.
Judy Brown who maintains mlearnopedia provides a good overview & updated presentation on mobile learning on slideshare. Over a hundred slides! but covers reasons for using mobile learning, tools, sites and examples.

I uploaded my mlearn2008 presentation on to slide share late last year and see that it has been viewed over 200 times! This from no real adverts or indication that I have put it up. I had originally put it up with the intention of comparing slideshare with other presentation tools like flowgram. Unfortunately flowgram ceased a few months ago & I did not get around to putting the links up. So the number of views caught me by surprise & reminded me of the power of the internet for sharing & networking.

While on slideshare, I decided to have a look around to see if there were other presentations to update myself on mobile learning. To start with, came across this one on phone design trends. It’s two years old & the trends are supposed to appear by next year. Some seem to be already available, especially several versions of jewel encrusted gold plated mobiles. I was really taken by a crystal mobile phone (wow) but the wristwatch phone was supremely nerdy. Other ones that caught my imagination were the robot phone (really cool) & the flexible phone (a great idea).

Also discovered MOCOM 2020 – a think tank on the future of mobile technology via their presentation on the mobile future into the year 2020. Their by-line is “you can only create what you can imagine”, so the site has a survey to find out if you agree with some of their predictions & a user friendly interface to allow you to join up as a friend of their site. The presentation is very slick & does present many plausible scenarios for the future. There are two you tube videos embedded, the first one is a call to join up with the conversation and the second summarises the think tank’s ideas. There is a good overview of mobile developments from 1906 to the present & then on to 2020. Great ideas & much food for thought. No real mention of mobile learning but the possibilities are inferred & I can see many applications if some of the scenarios eventuate (& some are highly likely).