Mobile technology has transformed our lives in ways that might have seemed unimaginable only 15 years ago. There are now more than 60 million mobile phones in use in the UK (one for every man, woman and child), and they are no longer used just to make phone calls. Eighty-three million text messages are sent every day, and sales of cameraphones now outstrip those of ordinary phones.

As the size of mobile phones decreases, so their processing power increases. Most industry analysts expect that the line between a smartphone and a hand-held device, such as a PDA, will become more and more blurred until it disappears altogether. At the same time, the introduction of 3G networks - the mobile version of broadband, offering high-speed, continuous access - has made it possible to browse the web or hold a video-conference from a mobile phone. The potential offered by these developments is huge, particularly in education. So, what can we expect to see happening in the next five years in the world of mobile technology?

Some idea can be gained from Korea and Japan, which both have a highly developed mobile market. The devices themselves are more sophisticated - cameraphones have already been embraced with enthusiasm, and a TV phone has recently arrived on the market - but the services on offer are richer too. "The variety of content and the access to the web has much deeper market penetration in Japan and Korea than in the countries in Western Europe," says Mike Short, Vice President of Research and Development for O2 and chairman of the Mobile Data Association. This is largely down to NTT DoCoMo's hugely popular iMode service. Launched four years ago, iMode was the world's first 3G service and enables users to send e-mails, surf the internet, check the news and play games, all while 'on the move'.

Mobile phones are used in Asia in strikingly innovative ways. In Japan, there have been stories of schoolgirls writing messages on scraps of paper, photographing them with their phones and then e-mailing them to friends. In Korea the third biggest national newspaper, Oh My News, gets most of its content from citizens who e-mail text stories or photos from their mobiles.

Only a few steps behind, the UK seems to have developed an insatiable appetite for mobile technology. Mobile phones are replaced on average every 18 months, and a recent report from the consultancy mobileYouth found that one in three children aged between 5 and 9 owns a mobile phone: the average age of first phone ownership is now 8.

So what developments can we expect in the mobile market in the next few years? "Most mobile phones will become PDAs in effect. We would expect by 2009 that most devices coming on the market will have one megabyte per second access, 50 gigabytes of memory and a much larger colour screen as well as removable memory and interactive capabilities," says Short. These devices will also be enabled with Bluetooth, a short-range wireless technology, which means that users will be able to synchronise their phones with other devices such as PCs.

The combination of powerful personal computers and high-speed access to the internet has already begun to transform the way many schools approach teaching and learning. Martin Owen, Director of Learning at Futurelab, is confident that mobile phones will have the same impact: "The notion that you've got this tool which can be a camera, a cinecamera, a television, a computer and a calculator as well as something you use for talking to other people in your pocket all the time means that you're armed with a very powerful learning tool."

Mobile phones are already being used in education, but so far the uses have been fairly modest. "We already see some education authorities sending truant 'text alerts' to parents. It's also used for notification of lesson and classroom changes, as well as to relay information about health visitors coming in," says Short. In Higher Education, says John Traxler, Research Fellow for Teaching and Learning at the University of Wolverhampton, text messaging has been used in several small-scale projects, for example, to inform students that a lecture has been cancelled or that library books are overdue.

This kind of usage represents only a fraction of what mobile technology can achieve in education, says Traxler, who believes that one of the most important qualities a mobile phone can offer is its context-awareness: "You can have a far more personal spontaneous informal learning experience that can be situated somewhere more relevant than in a classroom. Rather than talking about flora and fauna by looking at slides, you can actually get out there and do natural history, and all the material you need can be with you while you're in that environment."

Short agrees, pointing out that once camera phones are more commonplace, they can have a useful part to play too. Students could, he suggests, make notes and take photographs on field trips and then file their reports using those pictures and notes. One of the useful aspects of having a powerful processing device with you is that you can avoid duplicating your effort, says Traxler, who suggests that students could make notes on a mobile device and synchronise it with a PC or server, or enter data and process it immediately to see the results.

A mobile phone also increases the possibilities for informal learning that is not tied to a particular physical location - students can stay in touch with their tutors and with each other while they're away from the classroom. As Owen argues, people are already comfortable with using phones for discussion, and so a discussion that can be enriched with other media makes the phone an "important collaborative learning tool". The most revolutionary aspect of mobile technology is perhaps that it addresses the problem of social inclusion - many young people who wouldn't go near a university or who don't own a computer do own a mobile phone. "Mobile learning is an easy way in for e-learning," says Traxler. "Working on a small unthreatening device and working up to a larger more powerful computer eases people back into formal learning."

This view is supported by early research into mobile learning (or m-learning). A report by the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) into a three-year m-learning project in England, Italy and Sweden, funded by the European Commission, found that m-learning was good at reducing the formality of the learning experience, engaging reluctant learners and raising self-confidence. Similarly, Ultralab's eVIVA project, funded by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), enabled Key Stage 3 students to take part in assessments by answering pre-recorded questions over their phones. Researchers found that children taking part in the project improved their motivation and their self-esteem.

This democratisation of learning is perhaps what makes mobile phones so exciting. "Mobiles are in the vanguard of unlocking the digital archives," says Short, pointing out that museums, libraries and galleries own vast quantities of material that is often physically inaccessible but, once digitised, will be available to all. Students, meanwhile, will be able to access learning materials while sitting on a bus or standing in a queue, says Traxler: "If we can deliver anything to them in those situations it's making better use of their time, keeping them engaged in learning activities."

However, there are suggestions from some quarters that there may be a need for caution. The Stewart report, Mobile Phones and Health, which was updated in January 2005, advised that children should minimise their use of a mobile phone and that those under 10 shouldn't have one at all. Although this advice is being widely ignored by parents, it would be difficult for schools to introduce mobile learning to the curriculum while the warning still stands. In the meantime, development of m-learning is slowed by the fact that the mobile phone companies have an industry-wide agreement not to market their services to children - a stance that is even more difficult for them to reverse in light of the Stewart report. Indeed, would it be better for these companies and their considerable resources to be involved in, rather than frightened away from, the m-learning debate?

The advice will be reviewed regularly, however, and Owen is optimistic: "The radiation that comes from the technology is not what it was five years ago. The old-fashioned telephones caused much more radiation than the modern ones. Also there's been worldwide research into the impact of mobile telephones on health, and that's indicating that the risk is much less than might have been believed."

The other factors slowing down the adoption of m-learning include the cost of the technology, security of both the devices and networks and, most importantly, the lack of a standard technology. Students own a variety of models of mobile phones and PDAs, with differing functionality and screen size - a challenge not only for those designing educational materials for use on a mobile platform but also for the IT department that has to support those devices. Traxler agrees that early mobile learning projects have been hampered by just these difficulties.

None of these problems are impossible to resolve, however, and the pace of change suggests that mobiles will be used extensively in colleges and schools within the next five to ten years. "If we look at the world of mobile technology as it stands today, we could come to the wrong conclusions about how it can be used in education, because we're forgetting that these things move very rapidly," says Short. "One thing's for sure - it will look very different. But what it will look like nobody can be sure."


Links

Futurelab literature review - 'Mobile Technologies and Learning': www.futurelab.org.uk/research/lit_reviews.htm