Future Learning Through Experiences and Spaces
PROCEEDINGS
Christian Glahn, Rob Power, Esther Tan
World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning,
Abstract
The mLearn 2019 marks an important milestone in its trajectory. For the first time in many years, mLearn has returned to Europe and like in its early days, it brings together the global community of scholars, researchers and practitioners on mobile learning. The 18th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning also marks an important point for the conference as a whole. In most countries in Europe, being 18 means to be able participate in the political elections as well as to perform economically and legally independently. It means one has grown up. Similarly, mobile learning has grown massively since its first inception some two decades ago. The field of mobile learning has since witnessed an increasing volume of educational innovations that reached mass markets at a speed faster than any information technology has done before. The advent of the iPhone and of the Android platform just a little over 10 years ago has turned the mobile market upside down. Just around the same time, John Traxler (2007) wrote about the potentials of mobile learning to democratise education. Today, even “dumb” phones provide smart connections with global information channels and enable learners to connect to educational services at fingertips. While technology advanced, many countries move rapidly to full smartphone market penetration in which every citizen possesses an personal device. From this viewpoint the call for one-to-one technology-enhanced learning (Chan et al, 2001) appears to come into reach with little national investments in educational infrastructures. These developments have brought the mobile learning topic into the focus of communities of educational researchers and practitioners. These communities adopted the topic mobile learning into their core interests, so mobile learning is discussed on any conference that even loosely connected to technology-enhanced learning. Consequently, mobile learning has transformed from a niche field into a traversal topic. This raises the questions on the role of a specialised conference on mobile and contextual learning.
Citation
Glahn, C., Power, R. & Tan, E. (2019). Future Learning Through Experiences and Spaces. In Proceedings of World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning 2019 (pp. 1-3). Retrieved November 29, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/210594/.
