mLearning

This week, a student pal brought up the topic of mlearning. As I've posted on my blog for some time now, I too feel that there has to be some learning (edtech) opportunity for mobile devices when an estimated 80% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own cell phones, as reported in the linked AP article by Allen Breed.

Telephia recently released a report on mobile Internet usage. While the subscriber rate is increasing, the access and experience still lags far behind Internet browsing via the computer. According to their research, 34.6m mobile subscribers (presumably just in Europe, US and Canada?) accessed the Internet on their mobile device in June 2006 - up about 6 percent from January 2006 according to a PC World analysis of the Telephia report. Sites geared to quick hit lookup searches for e-mail, weather, maps and sports stats dominate the Top 10 visited sites during the month, including sites that have done a good job of optimizing their content and display for the mobile browser:

Jane Knight maintains a wonderful blog filled with great e-learning resources. Given my new interest in all things mLearning related, I will have to check out Symex mTeacher that Jane highlighted this week. From the features listed on the site, Symex mTeacher looks like more of an teacher classroom administration tool than a mlearning platform. Here is a snippet from the web site: