Tag Archives: Mobile Learning Timeline

To understand why we’re in an exciting period in mobile learning education, it is important to take a look at the technologies and developments that have gone into making learning accessible to people on the move.

Let’s start with defining mobile learning. Mobile learning is the ability to obtain or provide educational content on personal pocket devices such as PDAs, smart phones and mobile phones. Educational content here refers to digital learning assets which includes any form of content or media made available on a personal device.

Simple enough to explain. However if you look deeper into the multiple technologies involved in m-Learning,  tracking the developmental history becomes a little tricky.

Here’s how it looks to us:

From the above timeline, it is clear that the technology overlap that has happened in this last decade has given the needed impetus to escalating the potential of mobile learning. This convergence of mobile information and enabling technologies has significantly impacted the way users interact with information on a daily and immediate basis.

So if you’ve just downloaded a conversational French application on your iPhone, take a few seconds to appreciate the hardware upgrades, software development, wireless network and communication advances that have occurred over the last five decades, to get you to say your first “Bonjour” to the world.

With information and communications technology becoming portable and individual-oriented, we are today experiencing the first level of effective mobile learning as it was envisioned decades ago.

What we do with it is now in our hands.