NEW TRENDS IN EDUCATION: M-LEARNING INITIATIVES

The use of new mobile devices has grown the recent years even overtaken the employ of personal computers in professional and social contexts. Suitable devices like digital media players, smartphones, and Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs have potential to be used as powerful teaching and learning tools. These handheld wireless technologies contribute to improve the e-learning appearing a new term for this area, m-learning. The mobile devices available are commonly used by young people in communications, socializing and entertainment and it is rare to find a person in current society who does not own at least one such device. Using these devices, m-learning allows the study “on the fly”. The new learning tools can be used anywhere and anytime, and they are an immediately form of communication between the teacher and the learner.

It is the purpose of this paper to review the existing ongoing work on m-learning, including initiatives such as MOBIlearn, M-Learning, GIPSY/Manolo, Skills Arena, The virus game, etc., since it is a new domain, and this review could do people understand how the current mobile devices are useful in education.