Mobile Learning

According to BoingBoing, the term “Bacn” (e-mail you want, just not now: myspace alerts, twitter followers, newsletters, etc.) was only coined on Sunday, but as of today it has been blogged over 350 times and has become the 14th most-popular search term of the day.

I guess that’s just because it’s such as useful term. I have various spam filters, but my email inbox suffers from inordinate amounts of bacn – particularly various informative and educational sites I’ve subscribed to (e.g. the Networks Community Forum and other EdNa forums), which don’t have an RSS alternative, but which I want to keep tabs on.

This is a good prompt to reflect on the importance of context for mobile learning. Just as students receiving a social phone call in class is intrusive and disruptive, so too could m-learning intrude into students’ lives. Just as most people would not enjoy getting a phone call from work just as they’re sitting down to dinner, we also need to be aware of the caveats to creating learning experiences on our students’ most personal and ubiquitous digital companions.

Quite possibly, mobile learning is, indeed, stuff students want… but is it stuff they want right now? M-learning enables us to provide students with convenience, portability, ubiquity, flexibility and contextualisation… but if we’re delivering it via students’ personal mobile phones, we also need to be courteous guests in their personal space, lest content be considered bacn!

technorati tags:m-learning, bacn, mlearning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, spam, education, not, now, right, teaching, learning, context, cellphones, cellphone, phone, intrusive, disruptive, technology, gadgets