Bloom in the House of Commons

Whilst most of the gossip in the bars and tea rooms was about who would be the new speaker, mobile learning was getting some exposure in dining room B as Roberta Blackman-Woods MP hosted a launch of the “bite sized learning opportunities on mobile devices” (BLOOM geddit?) project.

The partners in the project Tribal, Communication Workers Union, GoSkills(the sector skills council for transport) and Bango,a mobile technology company were hopeful of a ministerial appearance but in the frenzied politicking going on upstairs that seemed unlikely.

However the MP’s who did wander in discovered that taxi drivers in Liverpool can now access learning in their cabs on mobile devices (not when driving obviously!) and can work towards their NVQ’s whilst at work.

Carl Werbeski a taxi driver and NVQ assessor was pleased with the opportunities mobile learning presents;

“mobile learning makes the task of the assessor more professional. It helps me deliver feedback in a more professional way”

Mike Short, Vice President of Research and Development at O2 was equally positive abut the potential of mobile learning describing it as;

“the greatest opportunity for inclusive education this century”

The Mobile Learning movement has gathered pace in the last few years and the UK is a hotspot of development.

Geoff Stead has been at the forefront of this development and is one of Tribal’s “thought leaders” on learning technology and sees his job is to “take learning visions and weave them into mainstream service and product offerings.”

In the FE and Skills sector the LSC has invested over£12million into mobile learning as part of the MoLeNET project and Danny Atwere of the LSN shared some of the outcomes of what was described as “the worlds largest mobile learning project”

The potential for the use of mobile devices for learning is enormous and is beginning to have an impact in schools as Elizabeth Hartnell Young from the LSRI reported last year.

Perhaps the private and work based learning sector, freed from some of the constraints of schools and colleges, will be more innovative?

Links

Bloom www.m-learning.org/bloom
Mobile is schools http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/ehy/LSRIfinalreport.pdf
Molenet www.molenet.org.uk

Geoff Stead,Tribal and Mike Short,O2 explain mobile learning to John Heppell MP

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under Flux, education policy, events, general ramblings, government, learning spaces, mobile, politics, schools, teaching and innovation, tools and technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.