Mobile Education...Take a class on your cell phone!

Currently if you have a cell phone you can do the following...read a book, write a book, podcast, Jott notes, create a live TV or radio broadcast, check your google calendar, research information (GOOGL), surf the web (.mobi sites), create a blog, photoblog, videoblog, and now you can----take a class on your cell phone! Yes! No need to have Internet access or a home computer anymore to take distance learning classes (and no snail mail for video-based distance education). Japan is the first country (that I know of) to start doing this. In a recent USA Today article it describes how students can take an entire course via their cell phone. Currently the curriculum is limited to Enhanced podcasts (made primarily from PowerPoint) of course lectures. While this is a limited example, I have a feeling it will be expanding quickly into many different phone services and across the world.

This has potential for K-12 education; from dealing with absent students (they can take responsibility for loading videos of the class activities into their cell phone) to opening up education to different forms of teaching outside of the traditional classroom setting. For example, students who are studying about Business could be watching a lecture on how to start a new business and be told in the lecture to go into a local store, using their cell phone, and record an interview (it could even be a live broadcast--Talkshoe or QIK-- that other students in the same class could be listening to) with the owner or salespeople. It could be a "real world" LIVE classroom! I know this is a ways off, but an interesting concept.