Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

As part of the above article in The Scotsman there is a vote and a debate about the benefit or not of implementing such a scheme in Edinburgh.

So far there appears to be a remarkable amount of negativity from the general public who perhaps are giving a knee-jerk reaction without understanding the facts and benefits of mobile learning - actually it's getting quite heated!

Here's an extract from one commentator calling themselves "TheGlaswegian":

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The debate and vote is being held here

I agree that there are some quite unpleasant comments on their discussion board. However, I also think that there's some value in reading these off-the-cuff responses to understand the kind of concerns and misunderstandings that the public may have when considering such ambitious initiatives.

Some of the comments appear to be political point scoring from disgruntled citizens grinding an axe against an incumbent council on general issues rather than how such a project may benefit their children. There also seems to be a lack of understanding about the capability of current devices, it seems that some commentators are locked in a PDA as PIM device rather than powerful multimedia computer. I suspect the photo of a child with a Blackberry didn't help either!

The style of question for the vote is also strangely structured, one might even say leading to a negative response. Sort of like "have you stopped beating your dog?".

But never-the-less, if we are to advance with a national roll-out of devices so that every child has their own, shall we say, Mobile Digital Companion (MDC) we will need to be able to handle these objections effortlessly and positively, backed by solid evidence of improvements in teaching and learning.

Hopefully this forum can be a place that helps with this objective.