Mobile Phones – Not Just a Phone

Posted by Deepak Shrivastava
December 25, 2009

Six in ten people (more than 4 billion individuals) around the world are carrying a powerful computing device in their pockets and purses. They don’t realize it, but today’s mobile phones have the computing power of a personal computer from the Mobile-Phone-Deals-UKmid-nineties, while consuming a fraction of the energy and are made at significantly lower cost.

In India, the mobile phone has revolutionized communication and India is now one of the fastest growing markets for mobile phone services, with growing usage and increasing penetration. According to TRAI, there are 286 million wireless subscribers in India, June 2008, of which 76 million were capable of accessing data services. The increasing ubiquity of the mobile phone begs for it to be used as a learning tool. It would be a shame if we were unable to leverage it to improve socio-economic conditions in our vast population.

Mobile phones are not just communications devices sparking new modalities of interaction between people; they are also particularly useful computers that fit in your pocket, are always with you, and are nearly always on. Like all communication and computing devices, mobile phones can be used to learn. The content delivered would depend on the capabilities (features) of the device accessing it.

There are many kinds of learning and many processes that people use to learn, but among the most frequent, time-tested, and effective of these are listening, observing, imitating, questioning, reflecting, trying, estimating, predicting, speculating, and practicing. All of these learning processes can be supported through mobile phones. In addition, cell phones complement the short-attention, casual, multitasking style of today’s young learners.

Last 5 posts by Deepak Shrivastava

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