1. Continuous learning: Up until now, most people relegated “education” to a finite time in their lives: entering school at around five years old and attending school institutions all the way to university. Education had an expiration date, then working life began. This model, which has its roots in the industrial era, is quickly becoming less relevant or applicable to the way we live our lives in the connected age.
2. Educational leapfrogging: With low-priced computers, tablets, and cell phones in the hands of children in resource-challenged communities, many kids who are engaging in technological leapfrogging will have the opportunity to skip past outdated formal school systems, too. This is especially relevant in the case of children living in poverty, who may be denied an opportunity to improve their condition through education because they start working very early to help sustain their families or do not live near schools.
3. A new crop of older, lifelong learners (and educators): A by-product of the continuous learning phenomenon is the fact that the grandparents of children growing up with a touchscreen in their hands–people in their 60s today–are being pulled into M-Learning more than ever, motivated to adoption by the need to stay in touch with their grandkids.
4. Breaking gender boundaries, reducing physical burdens: In parts of the globe where, because of centuries of cultural practices, young women may still not be allowed to access a formal education, mLearning promises to be able to put girls and women of all ages in contact with high-quality education privately and on their own time.
5. A new literacy emerges: software literacy: MLearning could usher in a boom of interest in learning software programming languages, which could very well become a new lingua franca. This is already happening; Numerous startup web-based businesses today such as Codecademy teach people via interactive lessons how to understand and write software programs. Not even a year old, Codacademy has more than a million “students” and has raised about $3 million in venture-capital funds.
2. Educational leapfrogging: With low-priced computers, tablets, and cell phones in the hands of children in resource-challenged communities, many kids who are engaging in technological leapfrogging will have the opportunity to skip past outdated formal school systems, too. This is especially relevant in the case of children living in poverty, who may be denied an opportunity to improve their condition through education because they start working very early to help sustain their families or do not live near schools.
3. A new crop of older, lifelong learners (and educators): A by-product of the continuous learning phenomenon is the fact that the grandparents of children growing up with a touchscreen in their hands–people in their 60s today–are being pulled into M-Learning more than ever, motivated to adoption by the need to stay in touch with their grandkids.
4. Breaking gender boundaries, reducing physical burdens: In parts of the globe where, because of centuries of cultural practices, young women may still not be allowed to access a formal education, mLearning promises to be able to put girls and women of all ages in contact with high-quality education privately and on their own time.
5. A new literacy emerges: software literacy: MLearning could usher in a boom of interest in learning software programming languages, which could very well become a new lingua franca. This is already happening; Numerous startup web-based businesses today such as Codecademy teach people via interactive lessons how to understand and write software programs. Not even a year old, Codacademy has more than a million “students” and has raised about $3 million in venture-capital funds.
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