Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

The 10th of April this year I left for the IADIS Mobile Learning Conference, which this year was held in Carvoeiro, Portugal. After an eleven hour travel, with a quite bumpy in-between landing in Lissabon, I finally arrived in the south of Algarve, to my big surprise in a beautiful hotel and a room with a view. The next day was the first one of the conference, and it started of well with the first keynote speaker, Graham Brown-Martin from Handheld Learning Ltd.

Graham turned out to be a bit of a rebel, trying to provoke people to think differently about their field of mobile learning. Most of his interesting keynote was about using mobile devices that children already use for learning. Instead of using for example mobile phones or PDAs, why not use Nintendo DS or Sony PSPs, that children mostly already own, are used to, and are fond of using too? Also, instead of coming up with yet another boring software, try to make learning appealing, most importantly, do not portray the whole thing as learning. A basic example Graham gave was Nintendogs, a game that teaches children to raise a dog, calculate, sell and buy items for their dog. Basic skills taught at primary schools but wrapped in a game, in a way that motivates and engages the learner, and therefore probably results in more effective learning. The game was used in a primary school in Scotland, and first result looked promising he told us. More importantly, his message was that mobile learning was not so much about the technology, but "It's the Learning, Stupid!" and learning should be fun, a really simple message, but one of importance and one that started off the conference well.