When I was at school, around this time of year, we would visit Marks and Spencer’s for the annual school uniform trip. Uniform was compulsory but not supplied by the school, the same was true for PE Kit, pens, pencils, rulers, calculators and a whole raft of other supplies much of which had no application outside of formal education. None of this ‘required kit’ was paid for by the school or tax-payer. There were funds for those that struggled financially to meet these costs but the vast majority of learners and their families paid for (and continue to do so) these things themselves. The situation continued right through from school, to college, to university.

Now a weird paradox has opened up in education; one in which we ask students and their families to pay for things which they don’t need outside of the formal educational environment e.g. uniform but we use public funds to supply them with kit they already have. I am writing about Mobile Devices, such as mobile phones, for use in Mobile Learning.

One of the largest of the projects involved with the direct supply of mobile digital hardware to students is the MoleNet project. In the recently announced next round of funding an emphasis was placed on making Mobile Learning sustainable. But how do you make Mobile Learning sustainable?

Well, we need to shift from the supply of hardware to starting to really understand why the use of mobile digital devices in learning is desirable.

The mobile can provide anywhere, anytime access to a wealth of information and interaction. This means that formal learning can move from the classroom and start to interact with the informal environment. That’s desirable because the informal learning is the stuff we generally choose to learn rather than being told we have to learn it. For me that is one of the key advantages of mobile devices. They can give access to resources, which until recently where only available at certain fixed points: classrooms, libraries etc. but now it really is anywhere, anytime. This can be used to provide a bridge between the informal and formal learning realms but it cannot be device dependent, since this vision relies on using what the student has to hand and more importantly has chosen to interact through.

The mobile digital landscape is complex, it is new and immature. We still have more to discover than we already know, which makes it exciting. A natural reaction to this complexity and disruption will be to shy away from it or to try and control it. I’ve seen both approaches in education and they are wrong. Why?

It is because to take away these technologies from learning is to take away the environment our students will have to make their living and social interactions in tomorrow. For many this is already happening, of course (e.g. Facebook and MySpace etc.) and institutions that do not help students understand this new modus operandi put their student’s prospects directly at risk.

The issue of control is more complex. At a certain level and especially with younger students, institutions have a duty of care to their learners and need to know what they are accessing when in their care. This control does not have to be at device level. For example the international innovation award winning mobile learning platform I designed (and that has been used widely in MoleNet), will work on all mobile web enabled devices. It uses Federated Access as the control mechanism. The institutional responsibility in this example would relate to the supply and recommendation of learning materials not the path of access to them.

For institutions wanting more then intranets and Virtual Learning Environment’s can be mobile enabled. As part of the Stockport and Trafford MoleNet projects (which I consulted on) Moodle was mobile enabled to provide controlled access to learning materials. Again in this model it is a case of the learner coming to the access point for learning rather than controlling the route they take. It is akin to a student walking to school. The school cannot control the route taken or what happens along the way but once through the gate they take on the responsibility.

Cost of connectivity does remain a current issue but increasingly we are seeing this as a pre-requisite of a mobile device use and consequently seeing better cost models. There are ways of dealing with the cost during this interim period (but that’s another blog post, or get in touch to discuss it more) as the new cost models come in but it will change and it is getting better. The current situation in terms of mobile Internet connectivity is very similar to the decline of dial-up fixed line Internet access and the rise of broadband. Increasingly we will see the end of the cost per access model and its replacement with single fixed cost for effective unlimited access, but we are not quite there yet!

Education cannot keep up with the pace of change in technology. For the first time in Western history most end-users probably have better leisure access to technology (through mobile phones, game devices and computers etc.) than in many of the institutions we work and learn in. The idea that we can supply hardware to students that matches the pace of change doesn’t make sense when the resources involved are considered. It makes sense for the Telcos and hardware suppliers because it gives them bulk deals and gateway access to a future market but it makes no sense for the learner.

As we move through the 21st Century it is a digital age. Our interactions: social, economic and political are increasingly based in cyberspace. Learners will be in a world of constant connectivity. There will be much to discover and they will need the skills to do that.

To gain those skills the focus of mobile devices in learning should be about how to make the most of anywhere, anytime access, about how to make wise and discerning decisions about what sources you trust and what personal information you share. These are the important things and to do that we need to create a learning environment that is flexible enough to cater for any device the learner chooses to use. It is a mission we cannot afford to fail.