Connected Learning

Today is iPhone launch day in Australia.
In the small office where I work at least 5 people took the day off to be one of the first to get one (admittedly I work with Geeks), but its influence and impact cannot be denied.

Simply put this may be one of the first truly mass market mobile internet devices which will be in the hands of many of our students after the school holidays and even more so in the months and years ahead. For the foreseeable future it will be the device to have. Well known futurist Mark Pesce said:

“Now we come to iPhone 3g. It is already known, from data gathered in the US and Europe, that iPhone’s ease-of-use for mobile internet is unparalleled. Nokia, Motorola and Microsoft have been caught flat-footed, and, even now – a full year later – have nothing new to show. Their mobile web browsing is as complicated, unfriendly and ugly as it was a year ago. This is a real pity, because it means, in the near-to-medium term, Apple has decisively won the battle of the mobile Internet. Everything now hinges upon iPhone, and its ever-expanding base of users.”

So our students, being the connected generation that they are, are going to LOVE this device as it offers them talk, text and My Space, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed etc in a live ongoing way.  They don’t have to wait to get online, they always will be!

Ok, so the logical conclusion for most schools will be to ban them!
However we can actually exploit them for student learning (same holds true for the iPod Touch). Consider a school with a nice WiFi network to which the students could login, a Learning Management System (LMS) which was optimised for a mobile browser, which included high quality audio and video which enhanced the learning, Student produced video based news and updates etc. Sharing would become ubiquious and a matter of course rather than the exception. It would offer potentially a safe closed environment for students which they may choose to use as it would preserve their precious paid data (this is very relevant in .au where the Telco’s have rediculous data limits, those of you in the US don’t know how good you have it!)
The key would be in providing the networking (people not bits) applications that allow students to stay in touch and exploit their social networking abilities for increased learning outcomes.

Living online and being socially aware is the new world and students need to become good at it, that’s not to say that they aren’t already, but they need to learn (from us) how to manage it, focus and exploit to their advantage.

The iPhone is the thin edge of the wedge in education and the Australian landscape in general. This device (and all the copies that follow) will produce an always connected population who accept that the internet is everywhere they are.

We need to prepare NOW!