Does m-learning exist?

I've been involved in mobile and pervasive learning research for around six years, but this year was the first time that I've attended two of the leading events in the field: IADIS m-learning (held back in April), and m-learn (which I attended last week).


I enjoyed both events - not least because of the interesting locations (especially the Cold War museum in Shropshire with its ominous collection of the best nuclear weapons 20th century money could buy) - however this year there has been a dramatic improvement in mobile technology (driven in no small part by the iPhone and Android) that has left me wondering if there is such a thing as m-learning anymore.

In fact some of the most enjoyable presentations at m-learn reinforced this thought. For example, Thomas Cochrane from the UniTec, New Zealand presented a fabulous experiment with multimedia reflective journals, students on a design course were given video phones and told to use them to add content to a variety of Web 2.0 style sites, and bring together them together in a Vox powered online blog.

The interesting thing is that most of the innovation in this case is in the use of multimedia and the online sharing, the mobile phones are almost incidental - a convenient way of creating content - their mobility is useful because you can film outside of the classroom and upload from anywhere (for example, design students road-testing their products in the wild) but its not enabling a new kind of activity (such as merging virtual with physical spaces, location-based services, or synchronously connecting students outside of the classroom). And even if it was, isn't that just what we do with desktop or laptop systems, only on a mobile device?

That may seem like an odd argument - after all, if it's on a mobile device doesn't that make it m-learning?

However, I think that as devices increase in power the fact that learning involves a mobile device becomes less and less interesting. If I upload a photo to flickr from my laptop is that m-learning? What about if I use my iphone? What about if all I was doing was accessing Blackboard through Mobile Safari?

It seems to me that the term m-learning will become less and less relevant - even if (perhaps especially if) we start to see it used more and more.

Because if all our e-learning is m-learning, why do we need the term at all?

Death Magnetic: How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere else to go?

Last week I got myself a copy of the latest Metallica album (Death Magnetic). I've been following Metallica since the Autumn of 1991. That was a good year for rock; Nirvana's Nevermind, G'n'R's Use Your Illusions (I and II), and Metallica's Black Album stabbed a flag in the eye of 80's rock, and defined the genre for my generation (and launched Grunge and Thrash into the mainstream as well).

The Black Album is astonishingly good, but Metallica never really recovered from their success and it has remained a high point in their career. Of their albums since then, only S&M really merits a re-listen, and that's basically a greatest hits album (with generous doses of orchestral accompaniment).

Death Magnetic claims to recapture some of the magic of those glory days. The band has supposedly put their arguments behind them, and this is supposed to be a new start. This is supposed to be vintage Metallica.

So is it?

Well let's get something straight, Death Magnetic is no Black Album. When I first heard it I was a little disappointed, sure its not some good stuff on it, but nothing that matches the riff on Enter Sandman, nothing that gets under your skin like Nothing Else Matters, and nothing that has the anthemic qualities of Unforgiven. But as I have listened to it more and more, I've realised that actually this is still a really good album.

Its no Black Album - but then why should it be? This is a different band, a different time, and this is a different piece of work.

The band are obviously enjoying themselves, if you were being negative you might say that some of the songs go off the rails slightly and turn into a bit of a jam, but then you could just as easily say they are more complex - the album more textured - and that underneath the layers the quality might, just might, have returned.

Nirvana disbanded after Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, G'n'R were riddled with internal arguments and finally disintegrated in 1997, but Metallica carried on. There work may not have been as fine as it once once, but they carried on touring and making music, and I think that it has finally paid off.

Death Magnetic is its own album - and it's a return to a new form.



Metallica are possibly the finest metal band there has ever been. And now looking back at the Load's and Reload's I feel slightly St. Guilty :-/ After all, this is the band that produced the Black Album: so how could they be lost, when they had nowhere else to go?