Policy Guidelines For Mobile Learning

There can be no doubt that mobile technologies are here to stay. Global mobile traffic grew 74 percent in 2015 alone, with 563 million devices and connections added -- most of them tablets and Smartphones. This growth has been 4000-fold in the past 10 years and 400 million-fold in the past 15 years (Cisco, 2016). Mobile technologies permeate the lives of 21st century citizens as mainstays of organizational and institutional day-to-day operations, commerce, and communication and as tools used to support individuals’ personal, social, and career responsibilities. In both the corporate and educational worlds, e- and m-learning and marketing with mobile technologies are moving forward at breakneck speed with, in many cases, a blurring of traditional sector boundaries. As neither the technology nor the uses are static, exploring practices and policies that underpin this quickly shifting mobile technology context is crucial for ensuring its intelligent, purposeful, and equitable use. This edited book provides a venue for researchers to share their work on mobile learning with a focus on uses for mobiles in informal settings and PK-20 classrooms, language learning, mobile gaming, leadership and policy issues, and what mobile learning in the future may be. It assists researchers and educators to consider and answer questions such as: What is “mobile learning” today? How can mobiles be used to enable learning? How is mobile learning crossing or connecting economic, social, and/or cultural sectors? How do specific cultural practices with media influence mobile learning (e.g., youth practices, educator practices, parent practices, community practices)? What are policy and leadership implications in supporting mobile learning? What policies, practices, and/or pedagogical approaches are necessary to move forward with mobiles in schools or universities? In what ways is mobile learning impacting education; including how students learn and teachers teach? What will/ should/might mobile learning look like in the future?

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning, mLearn 2014, held in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2014. The 20 revised full papers and 17 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on technologies and interaction; tablets and ebook readers; learning and teaching inside and outside the classroom; learning design and design implications; evaluation and review studies; development and national perspectives; inquiry-based learning and science applications; work-based learning; theory; language learning; learner perspectives.

As with television and computers before it, today’s mobile technology challenges educators to respond and ensure their work is relevant to students. What’s changed is that this portable, cross-contextual way of engaging with the world is driving a more proactive approach to learning on the part of young people. The first full-length authored treatment of the relationship between the centrality of technological development in daily life and its potential as a means of education, Mobile Learning charts the rapid emergence of new forms of mass communication and their potential for gathering, shaping, and analyzing information, studying their transformative capability and learning potential in the contexts of school and socio-cultural change. The focus is on mobile/cell phones, PDAs, and to a lesser extent gaming devices and music players, not as "the next new thing" but meaningfully integrated into education, without objectifying the devices or technology itself. And the book fully grounds readers by offering theoretical and conceptual models, an analytical framework for understanding the issues, recommendations for specialized resources, and practical examples of mobile learning in formal as well as informal educational settings, particularly with at-risk students. Among the topics covered: • Core issues in mobile learning • Mobile devices as educational resources • Socioeconomic approaches to mobile learning • Creating situations that promote mobile learning • Ubiquitous mobility and its implications for pedagogy • Bridging the digital divide at the policy level Mobile Learning is a groundbreaking volume, sure to stimulate both discussion and innovation among educational professionals interested in technology in the context of teaching and learning.

Explore the game-changing technology that allows mobile learning to effectively reach K-12 students Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators and Learners provides research-based foundations for developing, evaluating, and integrating effective mobile learning pedagogy. Twenty-first century students require twenty-first century technology, and mobile devices provide new and effective ways to educate children. But with new technologies come new challenges—therefore, this handbook presents a comprehensive look at mobile learning by synthesizing relevant theories and drawing practical conclusions for developers, educators, and students. Mobile devices—in ways that the laptop, the personal computer, and netbook computers have not—present the opportunity to make learning more engaging, interactive, and available in both traditional classroom settings and informal learning environments. From theory to practice, Mobile Learning explores how mobile devices are different than their technological predecessors, makes the case for developers, teachers, and parents to invest in the technology, and illustrates the many ways in which it is innovative, exciting, and effective in educating K-12 students. Explores how mobile devices can support the needs of students Provides examples, screenshots, graphics, and visualizations to enhance the material presented in the book Provides developers with the background necessary to create the apps their audience requires Presents the case for mobile learning in and out of classrooms as early as preschool Discusses how mobile learning enables better educational opportunities for the visually impaired, students with Autism, and adult learners. If you're a school administrator, teacher, app developer, or parent, this topical book provides a theoretical, well-researched discussion of the pedagogical theory and mobile learning, as well as practical advice in setting up a mobile learning strategy.

The New Landscape of Mobile Learning is the first book to provide a research based overview of the largely untapped array of potential tools that m-Learning offers educators and students in face-to-face, hybrid, and distance education. This cutting edge guide provides: • An essential explanation of the emergence and role of Apps in education • Design guidelines for educational Apps • Case studies and student narratives from across the US describing successful App integration into both K-12 and Higher Education • Robust, research-based evaluation criteria for educational Apps Although many believe that Apps have the potential to create opportunities for transformative mobile education, a disparity currently exists between the individuals responsible for creating Apps (i.e. developers who often have little to no instructional experience) and the ultimate consumers in the classroom (i.e. K-20 educators and students). The New Landscape of Mobile Learning bridges this gap by illuminating critical design, integration, and evaluation narratives from leaders in the instructional design, distance education, and mobile learning fields.

This book explores the use of mobile devices for teaching and learning language and literacies, investigating the ways in which these technologies open up new educational possibilities. Pegrum builds up a rich picture of contemporary mobile learning and outlines of likely future developments.