The mLearn 2008 conference is giving discounts of £30 to IAMLearn members. You can either join on this website for £45 (£25 for students) and get a £30 discount for the conference. Or you can join the Association on the Conference website for £60, included as part of the registration, and then get a £30 discount. mLearn is the leading World Conference for mobile learning, this year being held at the World Heritage Site of Ironbridge Gorge, UK, from 8th-10th October.
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I would like to cordially invite to consider contributing your expertise to a forthcoming book edited by me and M.A. Mandy Schiefner of the University of Zuric, Switzerland, entitled "Looking Toward the Future of Technology Enhanced Education: Ubiquitous Learning and the Digital Native" (read)

ICCE 2008 Conference workshop

Taking advantage of an international gathering of researchers at ICCE 2008 in Taiwan (http://www.apsce.net/icce2008/), this workshop is designed to facilitate exploration of pedagogical, cultural and social issues surrounding the introduction and uptake of mobile and ubiquitous language learning. Mobile technologies promise to stimulate and transform language learning, but the potential is not yet being fully realized. As mobile learners begin to cross existing boundaries between formal and informal learning, and as they take more advantage of opportunities to travel and study in other countries, new challenges arise out of tensions between learner expectations, emergent social networking practices, and what is appropriate in a particular pedagogical culture or social environment of technology use. (read)

We invite you to submit a paper to CAML'08 which will be held in Cergy-Pontoise - Paris, France on October 27-31, 2008. CAML'08 is an IEEE/ACM sponsored workshop covering a wide range of topics in the emerging field of M-learning. The aim of this workshop is to advance the state-of-the-art in M-learning design and theories, context-awareness in M-learning, and knowledge management for M-learning. CAML'08 in conjunction with CSTST'08 provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss their research and experience in the field of mobile learning. We solicit both academic and industrial contributions covering mobile learning technologies, theories, systems, and applications. (read)

Ars Technica (May 15, 2008 - 09:21AM CT ) writes "Former One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) security director Ivan Krstić is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. He opened up a massive can of damning allegations about OLPC earlier this week in a lengthy tirade on his personal blog." (read)

Applications are invited for a three year PhD studentship. This project is funded by Great Western Research and is a collaboration between the Psychology Department at the University of Bath (Dr.Danaë Stanton Fraser, Dr. Dawn Woodgate); The Department of Computer at the University of Bristol (Dr. Mike Fraser) and Sciencescope (a specialist educational sensor company based in Bath). The PhD research will focus on understanding the educational impact of using mobile devices to collect scientific data as part of school science activities. The research will focus on three main areas: Reflection and Learning, Authentication and Privacy issues. (read)

CALL FOR CHAPTERS FOR IGI GLOBAL BOOK :: BOOK title: "Architectures for Distributed and Complex M-Learning Systems: Applying Intelligent Technologies" (read)

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. (read)

"Our aim is an exciting and compelling conference that will enable researchers and developers to showcase results of their cutting edge work in the rapidly moving field of serious games and that will stimulate debate on design and deployment issues." (read)

Help Hendrik Buedding from Westfaelische- Wilhelms-university Muenster, Germany with his research by filling out this questionnaire. (read)

MobileMonday (22 Dec 2007 at 18:28 GMT Timo Poropudas) writes "At the age of 10, most children (88 per cent) have their own mobile phone, according to the survey. Four years ago, 52 per cent of 10 year olds had a mobile phone. In addition, 71 per cent of 9 year olds own or have access to a mobile phone, compared with 57 per cent last year. As many boys as girls have a mobile telephone." (read)

mLearn, the world's flagship mobile learning conference, will take place in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ironbridge in Shropshire, England in October 2008, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. (read)

Modern technologies provide us with sophisticated tools for learning and teaching, such as serious games, i.e. game software applications that are designed to do more than entertain. Games engage; research shows that games applications can
effectively engage in learning.
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The slides were produced for the mlearning SIG stand at the Kaleidoscope
Symposium, Berlin Nov 07 and gives a good overview of various SIG projects. Read on to view the download link. (read)

Newsfactor (Barry Levine, November 26, 2007 8:47AM ) reports that "the OLPC's Give One Get One (G1G1) laptop promotion -- where buyers purchase two OLPC laptops at once, one for personal use and one for a child in a developing nation -- comes at a challenging time for OLPC and its dream of getting millions of the OLPC laptops into the hands of the world's poorest children." This program is now being extended through the end of this year".

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The Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology provides a multimedia forum for the advancement of scholarly work on the effects of technology on teaching and learning. It seeks to provide unique avenues for the dissemination of knowledge within the allied fields of new media and educational technology consistent with new and emerging technology research, theory, application and best practices.
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Special Feature/Issue in International Journal on Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning. The editors invite scholarly articles on Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning Environments (MULE) supported by wireless, mobile, pervasive and ubiquitous technologies, such as PDA, mobile/smart phone, tablet PC, iPod, RFID tags, GPS, sensors, augmented reality, etc, to be considered for a special feature or full issue (depending on papers accepted) of the International Journal of Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning. Papers on the topic received after the deadline for this issue will be considered for an ongoing strand on the topic. (read)

"BBC Learning English has become the first international content provider to officially launch on Mobiledu.cn, Nokia's new mobile English Language Teaching (ELT) platform in China. Hundreds of millions of English-learners in China will now be able to use their mobile phones to take authentic and modern English learning courses provided by the BBC, including Take Away English, Real English and Quizzes. " (read)

Put mobile learning on the agenda and participate in the BT developer challenge. The BT site writes: "BT now offers customers Wi-Fi connectivity in a large number of locations through its Wireless Cities initiative and its network of BT Openzone hotspots. This offers the potential for customers to utilise new, exciting applications that make use of this fast, high-bandwidth connectivity. To support this, the BT Wi-Fi Developer Challenge has been launched to seek out the most innovative applications for Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. The challenge is supported by Symbian." (read)

The SIG held a successful meeting at the Handheld Learning Conference in London. About 50 people attended, many of them newcomers to the SIG. Mike Sharples introduced the aims of the SIG and its activities over the past year. Then members of the SIG gave a roundup of news and projects from across Europe. After some lively disussion about the future of the SIG is was agreed to explore the possibilities for becoming affiliated with the International Association for Mobile Learning, to be launched at the mLearn conference in Melbourne, as a European SIG. Read on to download the presentation held at the SIG meeting. (read)

Norbert Pachler, Kaleidoscope Member and Co-director of the Work-Based Learning Centre for Education Professionals (WLE), Institute of Education, London is editor of a new FREE e-book

Entitled: Mobile Learning: towards a research agenda.
The book can be downloaded from:

http://www.wlecentre.ac.uk/cms/files/occasionalpapers/mobilelearning_pachler2007.pdf (read)

This is an invitation to PhD candidates to participate in the Kaleidoscope Virtual Doctoral School (VDS) Workshop “Design Challenges for Future Mobile Learning Environments”. The purpose of this VDS workshop is to elaborate and explore those aspects related to the design, implementation and evaluation of future learning environments supported by mobile technologies. The workshop is mainly aimed at PhD students within the Kaleidoscope Mobile Learning SIG who are conducting their research projects within the field of mobile learning. The number of participants for this workshop will be limited to 15 students. Participants will be carefully selected based on the relevance of their own research in connection to the main focus of this workshop.
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"The 2nd Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning Environment (MULE) Workshop 2007 was successfully held from August 15 to 17 at the Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE), Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, sponsored by APSCE (http://cello.is.tokushima­u.ac.jp/ogata/MULE2007HK/venue.html) with US$100.00. This workshop was initiated by the steering committee consisting of Prof. Hiroaki Ogata, Prof. Masanori Sugimoto, Prof. Chen­Chung Liu and Prof. Tai­Wai Chan, and co­organized by CITE local organizers: Prof. Nancy Law, Prof. Daniel Churchill, and Ms Yanjie Song. Hiroaki organized the program. CITE provided facilities and places for free utilization, and helped prepare and arrange the registration and daily events of the workshop. PhD students Ms Carol Chu and Mr. Moushir EL­Bishouty also contributed to the preparation work. 14 professors and 9 graduate students in total were invited and participated in the interactive and fruitful workshop." (read)

The 'World Changing' site writes: "Cut to the world of the nearly-ubiquitous mobile phones. Could these devices be harnessed as learning tools for urban naturalists and farmers?"(Sanjay Khanna - WorldChanging Team August 28, 2007 8:48 AM) (read)

The conference aims to promote the development of Mobile Learning, encourage the study and implementation of mobile applications in teaching and learning and provide a forum for education and knowledge transfer. IMCL2008 will provide educators and researchers with an excellent opportunity to convene and discuss innovative ideas in the emerging fields of mLearning and online labs and the general eLearning discipline. (read)

The Freedom to Tinker writes (August 10th, 2007): "Today’s guest blogger, SG, is twelve years old and is the child of a close friend. I lent the laptop to SG and asked SG to write a review, which appears here just as SG wrote it, without any editing." (read)

The Telegraph (Calcutta, Friday, August 03, 2007):
"Hewlett Packard, one of the world’s leading providers of technology solutions, will set up a mobile learning centre in the region’s only IIT to give students of computer science and information technology courses access to high-end technology." (read)

After some initial competing over providing educational laptops the technology Web log 'Good Morning Silicon Valley' writes "that apparently the craziness is over. Intel announced today that it would join the board of the OLPC project and kick in money and expertise". (read)

NewswireToday reports that "The UK's largest-scale exercise in mobile education to date is helping 9,000 students throughout Yorkshire to assess their own competencies via their phones and related handheld devices"(newswire - St Albans, Herts, United Kingdom, 07/10/2007). (read)

PRNewswire reports (ATLANTA, June 25) that Nokia and the Pearson Foundation have announced two significant expansions of their Mobile Learning Institute program: "The Mobile Learning Institute Leadership Network and the Digital Arts Alliance Leadership Institute." (read)

The conference aims to promote the development of eLearning and mLearning in the Middle East, provides a forum for education and knowledge transfer and encourages the implementation of mobile applications in teaching and learning. (read)

The OLPC project is one of the projects we are following closely in the mlearning SIG. This is the third video documentary available from Red Hat Magazine about OLPC. (read)

The 5th International Conference on Wireless,Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE2008), to be held in Beijing, will be a prestigious and high quality international conference that establishes a forum for a scholarly exchange and interaction in employing the use of wireless,mobile and ubiquitous technologies in education. (read)

This is a workshop in conjunction with ICCE 2007 (http://www.icce2007.info). The theme for the workshop will be "Design and Experiments of Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning Environments (MULEs)". (read)

A series of some really nice videos of the 'green machine' are available from the Red Hat Magazine. In these videos you will among other matters be introduced to the team behind the OLPC including the ideas behind the project. (read)

Chip-maker Intel "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine the $100 laptop initiative, according to its founder Nicholas Negroponte. (read)

There's been discussion in the media over the past months about concerns over Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies in schools. The BBC have joined the debate with a 30 minute Panorama documentary in the UK on Monday 21st May. Dr William Stewart, Chairman of the UK Health Protection Agency is reported to have called for a review into the health risks of using Wi-Fi in schools after the Panorama programme-makers measured signal strength from a laptop that was three times higher than a typical phone mast. (read)

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.” (read)

3iMobile has announced the introduction, in France and several other European countries, of a new method teaching English using a 3G/UMTS Video phone combining interactive self-study lessons with live English tutoring by native speaking instructors in New York. (read)

Last week CBCNEWS Canada Toronto reported that "Toronto District School Board trustees voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion to force students to turn off their cellphones and other personal electronic devices such as BlackBerrys." This is bad news for productive use of personal computational devices in education and is a view we as a community need to be aware of. (read)

The PI (Personal Inquiry) project is a new joint project between the University of Nottingham and the Open University. In this Australian PC World magazine article, "Ultramobile PCs to lead in 21st century science education", you can read about the aim of the projects including short about it's 'scripted inquiry learning' approach. (read)

Recently TI has demonstrated a projector that fits into a mobile phone. The mobile phone is slightly larger than a normal mobile phone, but this is existing news with regard to the development of larger mobile displays. (read)

Arstechnica reports that Quanta, the company manufacturing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
project's XO laptops, plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. (read)

This special issue deals with the techniques and pedagogies for personalized, adaptive and intelligent m-learning, and aims to include issues that cross the boundaries of software engineering, artificial intelligence, and information systems to bring solutions in m-learning context. This collection will serve as a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss the state-of-the-art, present their contributions and set future directions in information and service personalization for mobile learning. (read)

This conference, hosted by The Open University in partnership with Athabasca University, aims to explore and share work carried out in libraries around the world to deliver services and resources to users ‘on the move,’ via a growing plethora of mobile devices. (read)

The "Big Issues in Mobile Learning" report has now been published. The report is edited by Mike Sharples and contains chapters from 8 collaborative sessions organised around important and emergent topics of mobile learning.

A limited number of printed copies are available and will be sent to those who first send their personal profile (postal address, email, affiliation, description of your mobile learning interests, and a photo) to rune.baggetun AT intermedia.uib.no.

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The new website for the SIG has been launched. It will collate an extensive resource of news, documents, projects and provide a forum for researchers with an interest in research into mobile, contextual and ambient learning across Europe and beyond.
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On New Years’ Day I had the good fortune to travel in a new Boeing 777-300ER commissioned by Singapore Airlines. The 13 hour flight gave me plenty of time to explore the latest design and technology developments. (read)