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Preface

Dear mLearn delegate  

Welcome to mLearn 2005 - the 4th annual world conference on mobile learning.  

This annual conference is currently the key research and networking event for researchers, strategists, educators, technologists and practitioners, as well as high-level decision makers from education, business and government from across the world.  What started as a small initiative in the UK has grown to a premier event that brings together people from more than 60 countries worldwide.  MLearn has become the world's leading event to share research findings, engage in projects, learn from successes and failures, and share ideas and visions on mobile learning and emerging ambient technologies.  

From the pen of Mike Sharples, the first mLearn chair:

“I am delighted that mLearn 2005 is being held in Cape Town.  The conference series began in 2002 as a workshop on Mobile and Contextual Learning, held at the University of Birmingham.  It attracted 80 delegates from six countries, including researchers, policy makers and new media developers.  In the welcome to that event I said: "a central aim of the workshop is to broaden the horizons of mobile learning". Since then the horizons of mLearn have expanded from Birmingham, to London with 150 delegates (2003), Rome with some 200 delegates (2004), and now South Africa.  With this conference we have the opportunity to explore learning across contexts and continents, as a global community of mobile learning researchers.” 

Bringing mLearn to Cape Town, South Africa, pays tribute to the fact that Africa is one of the leading continents in terms of growth in the development of wireless ICT infrastructure.  mLearning has already started to play a very important role in eLearning in Africa.  It has brought eLearning to the rural communities of Africa – to learners learners that we never even imagined as eLearning learners just a few years ago.  Africa is leapfrogging from an unwired, non-existent eLearning infrastructure to a wireless e-learning environment.  South Africa, in particular, appears to lead the way globally in the application of SMS (basic text messaging on mobile phones) for administrative and academic learning support. 

mLearn 2005 promises to be a conference to be remembered for many years to come.  From the volume and quality of contributions we have received, we were able to put together a stimulating and comprehensive conference programme.  The goals we have set for the conference are to stimulate critical debate on theories, approaches, principles and applications within the mobile learning environment, and to provide opportunities for networking and collaborative research.  It is hoped that the conference will serve as an incubator for the promotion of mLearning in Africa. 

Some of the trends we identified and presentations to look out for at mLearn 2005 include:

  • Challenges for mLearning in developing countries

  • Teacher training and lifelong learning

  • Mobile learning content management systems

  • Towards mainstreaming mobile learning

  • Mobile technology to support open and distance learning (ODL)

  • Mobile technology for student and learning support

  • Design and development of learning materials for mLearning

  • Future trends in mLearning technology, including the impact of emerging technologies

  • Learning by playing

  • Improvement of access

  • Mobile technology in Assessment / Evaluation

  • Mobile technology for Language support

With the developments in mobile and handheld devices, new challenges are dawning for teachers and instructional designers. Mobile phones and PDAs are no longer just communication devices and gadgets for personal diaries.  Mobile devices have become mobile radios, music players and digital cameras; personal handheld computers, gaming devices and portable video viewers.  The next step is the convergence of handheld communication, music (audio), imaging (still pictures and video), gaming and computing with the purpose of enhancing learning and providing additional opportunities for learning experiences outside the restrictions of time and place.  

Do you remember the words “anytime, anywhere”?  Ironically, these concepts have exploded into a different dimension with the availability of the technology we have today.  These mobile technologies appear to have the actual potential to break down the physical barriers imposed by location and time.   

With mobile technologies, the future of teaching and learning is in YOUR hands

Herman van der Merwe
Chair: mLearn 2005    		Tom Brown
Co-chair: mLearn 2005

                                                                                                              

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