Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
1
Introduction
Widespread ownership of mobile phones and the increasing availability of other portable and wireless devices have been changing the landscape of technology-supported learning. Use of these technologies turns out to be well aligned with strategic educational goals such as improving student retention and achievement, supporting differentiation of learning needs, and reaching learners who would not otherwise have the opportunity to participate in education (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2005). A great deal of effort has also been devoted to understanding how mobile technologies relate to both traditional and innovative ways of teaching and learning, showing the applicability of mobile learning across a wide spectrum of activity (Naismith et al., 2004; Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, 2007) as well as highlighting the most important emerging issues (Sharples, 2006).
Alongside formal education, everyday opportunities to access learning resources on mobile devices have multiplied. When making an online booking for a foreign holiday or a flight, you might be offered a phrasebook to download to your audio player or mobile phone. When wishing to advance your knowledge of a language, it is possible to find downloadable resources and many websites that can be accessed on the go. In practice, there are issues of cost and usability that often stand in the way of such self-initiated mobile learning.
The aims of this paper are to reflect on what mobile learning has to offer and to consider whether it is likely to change how languages are taught and learnt. Educational practice is not determined by technology. Neither is technology likely to be a determining factor in informal, everyday learning. However, if we understand technology to be a social and cultural phenomenon, it "cannot but influence the ways in which people learn, and therefore what makes for effective learning and effective pedagogy" (Beetham & Sharpe, 2007: 6). It has also been noted that evolving social practices may have implications for the design of mobile technology (Spasojevic et al., 2005), thereby drawing attention to the co-evolution of social habits and technology. To a certain extent, by dint of their ubiquity, mobile devices are already influencing how people learn; on the other hand, educators need to do more than just watch it happen.
For our purposes...