Lesson 1: Introduction to mLearning

Without any doubt, emerging hand-held devices are bringing great transformation to mobile learning or mLearning and taking distance learning to new dimensions.

mLearning became popular with increasing access to mobile phones and the capability to send and receive SMS as a means of interacting among peers and instructors as well as community of practices. And with some more expensive mobile phones and PDAs, it is possible to record and playback audio and video.

A school could send exam results to students via SMS (after all, it seems even 12 year olds have mobile phones these days [1]

Now, new digital media player devices, some of which are originally design as children gaming devices, are available in the market in different shapes and colors. These include iPod, Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) and other brands of Portable Media players (PMP). These devices are very good platforms for delivering educational contents to distance learners in podcast mode. They are relatively cheap and the price will continue to fall as demand increases and more manufacturers go into production. At the moment, depending on country and location, you can get brands of PSP/PMP between US$65-120.

PlayStation Portable (PSP)	Apple iPod