Mlearn2008 get the date in your diary

Hi Just back after a week off in the lakes and what a lovely post to set me off blogging again.

"2007 was the year mobile wentr mainstream with Handheld learning and Mlearn2008 both in the uK this is the year its goes "MASSIVE"!!

Please see note from John Traxler about Mlearn2008 .

Johns message reads

I'm extremely pleased that I can now announce publicly that mLearn, the world's flagship mobile learning conference, will take place in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ironbridge in Shropshire, England, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in October 2008. The conference started in Birmingham and has since taken place in London, Rome, Cape Town, Banff and Melbourne.

The aims of the conference are to bring together the world's leading mobile learning researchers, developers and activists in a environment that will stimulate dramatically increased deployment of mobile learning and catalyse dramatically enhanced innovation. The key notes will include Prof Yrjö Engerstrom and Prof Diana Laurillard

The themes are

• mobile learning, mobile knowledge, mobile societies: covering discourse, identity, knowledge and learning with pervasive, ubiquitous, mobile technologies; social, individual and cultural aspects of mobile learning
• devices, systems, technology and standards: convergence, diversity, frontiers, trends
• mobile learning landscape: work-based, informal, subject-specific, context-aware, social
• mobile learning for all: inclusion, assistivity, scalability, embedding, participation, evaluation, evidence, assessment

and for the full paper submissions, we're assembling a world-class panel including Dr Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Dr Marcelo Milrad, Växjö University, Sweden; Dr Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Open University; Professor Roy Pea, Stanford University, USA; Professor Chee-Kit Looi, National Institute of Education, Singapore; Professor Tak-Wai Chan, National Central University of Taiwan; Professor Earl Woodruff, University of Toronto, Canada and Professor Angela McFarlane, University of Bristol, UK for double blind-reviewing. We anticipate linking with a respected journal for a special edition

The dates are: Tues 7th October for pre-conference workshops, then Wednesday 8th to Friday 10th October for the main conference. We're collaborating with Handheld Learning, Barbican Brewery, London - Monday 13th to Wednesday 15th October, giving the intervening weekend to choose London or Shropshire for sight-seeing!

As part of our registration pack, delegates will be given an ‘active’ ID badge and asked to choose one or both of the broadcast technologies available in order to allow automatic detection of the delegates throughout the conference. A benefit of this will be to record the sessions that they have attended and to automatically generate a blog as well as transmit relevant information to delegate devices. The blog can then be accessed post conference to review the individual experiences of the delegate. This technology will be carried over to the evening sessions, with the full cooperation of all venues involved.

We'll be offering the opportunity for everyone chance attend the conferences back-to-back. This has been designed by the conference committees from the outset, and a single ticket for both events will be available. The technology will allow the 'handover' of all delegates' blogs and will use similar technology at both conferences.

The conference will be endorsed and attended by all the major national e-learning bodies. The Call For Papers will go out shortly. Please get in touch if you need any extra information

Web-sites are www.mlearn2008.org and www.mlearn2008.mobi

Think about attending and presenting. Look forward to seeing everyone

Regards

John Traxler

Reader in Mobile Technology for e-Learning
Director, Learning Lab
Conference Chair, mLearn2008
School of Computing and IT
University of Wolverhampton