The Mobile Learner – An Introduction

So the time has come for me to expand from my humble beginnings and to delve into new and exciting places.  I began blogging exactly a year ago as a way of experimenting with online publishing.  My first blog, which can be found at http://canuckhistory.wordpress.com, is about helping history teachers incorporate Web 2.0 tools in the History classroom.  While I am still very interested in this area and will continue to publish on that blog, I find myself publishing more and more material there that has less to do with history per say and more to to with teaching tools and teaching techniques.  As a result, I find that I have begun to explore different areas and different themes that are not necessarily suited for that blog.  Therefore, I am starting a new blog here.

So what will this be about?  I am very interested in Web 2.0 and new social organization but find that there are plenty of others blogging on this topic and what I may say here may be no different than what others have written on their blogs.  As a result, I decided to engage in a conversation about an emerging area that is not without its share of controversy – namely – mobile learning.  There are plenty of well-educated and well-meaning people who maintain a belief that handheld devices are detrimental to education when they are used in the classroom and I think it’s time that an alternative view be presented.  While I do have my brands of preference, and I’m sure these biases will reveal themselves, this blog is ultimately about learning and not about the gadgets themselves.

So why bother?  Well, I feel that we in education need to do a better job of reaching students on their level and to address student needs.  I also think that we in education need to do a better job of making learning attractive to today’s youth.  Today’s youth are connected, social, digital and mobile while our classrooms are disconnected, isolating, paper-based and static.  To make learning relevant, we need to make it dynamic and relevant.  I want to start a conversation about reconnecting students and education with the goals of student improvement.  Ultimately, it is student learning that matters most so if a cell phone or an iPod can be utilized to make that improvement happen, the so be it.

So let us begin this conversation…together…