A bright future for mobiles in schools Yes

Australian Jonathan W. Nalder has got down to writing his own paper on mobile learning on his blog in fact Jonathan your going to make into my side bar of interesting blogs !!!. Now I am not as always expressing opinion but it does add to the debate.

He explains his reason for writing the paper

" Rather than just reporting on what others have been saying about this new frontier in mLearning - that being kids using their own mobile phones for learning - I've written my own paper dealing with policy responses from schools and Education departments. Mostly these have only touched on safety issues - but I also include in the paper plenty of examples of their positive use in education. I even talk about why they should be used and make recommendations that hopefully future policy makers can use to get the balance right. Enjoy!"

The abstract is below

Abstract
Policy before practice: Reactions, Revisions & Recommendations for the educational use of mobile phones.

Although ICT integration is growing across all sectors of Education, the one device

that most symbolises the current stage of the Digital Revolution, the mobile phone,

has not been welcomed into classrooms. Many policies have been written to deal

with the negative social and disruptive consequences of the use of digital mobile

devices in Education; however less effort has been made to balance such policies

against the educational needs of students dealing with the ongoing impact of the

Digital Revolution. This paper aims to examine the reactions of current policy to the

presence of mobile phones in education and then detail emerging examples of their

use to enhance learning. The paper concludes with a summary of recommendations

drawn from these examples that may form the basis for more learner-centered

policy to be developed in the future.

Read the blog posting linked to this and look at the paper in draft http://mlearningworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/bright-future-for-mobiles-in-schools.html

Thanks to Jonathan for an interesting piece of work.