Emerging Technologies and Attendant Practices

Abstract

This chapter takes a critical perspective on what is being promised for mobile learning and what is possible and feasible. An overarching question that frames our discussion is whether emerging, i.e. mobile and ubiquitous technologies will change teaching and learning practices. Another question we ask is whether and how mobile devices can become transformational for schools. We argue that the particular potential of mobile devices lies in personal ownership, functional convergence and their impact on the cultural practices of young people in their everyday life-worlds. In this chapter we survey emerging technologies and attendant learning and teaching practices from the perspective of media technology and how these may interact in the future. We identify a number of trends and issues: computing is moving off the desktop: going small, large, everywhere and getting interactive; infrastructures such as mobile broadband, social operating systems, cloud computing and IMS; context-sensitive and location-aware learning for new ways of meaning-making that extend beyond the classroom. Ethical questions regarding these developments are raised throughout our discussions; they include: what risk is associated with the surveillance that mobile technologies enable? Should we be monitoring a learner’s activity and location on such a fine-grained level of detail? Our goal in the chapter is to explore the directions near-future mobile learning is likely to take and to provide teachers and researchers with access to discourses that will affect students’ futures.