The London Mobile Learning Group
London M-Learning Group - Mobile learning is an emerging, and rapidly expanding field of educational research and practice across schools, colleges and universities as well as in the work place. - The London M-learning Group brings together an international, interdisciplinary group of researchers from the fields of cultural studies, sociology, semiotics, pedagogy and educational technology from the Institute of Education, the University of Kassel, the London Metropolitan University and the University of Verona. - The group is working on a theoretical and conceptual framework for mobile learning around the notion of cultural ecology. The analytical engagement with mobile learning of the group takes the shape of a conceptual model in which educational uses of mobile technologies are viewed in ecological terms as part of a cultural and pedagogical context in transformation.

• John Cook, Norbert Pachler, Claire Bradley: Appropriation of mobile phones for learning
  Paper given at mLearn 2008, Telford, University of Wolverhampton, School of Computing and IT
• Norbert Pachler, John Cook: Mobile, informal and lifelong learning: a UK policy perspective
  Conference on Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking, Budapest, September 25-27, 2008
  
  For the last 20 years or so the UK has been what one might call a hyperactive educational policy domain. The role of technology, in particular its harnessing for education, has been no exception. Unlike other European countries, the UK education sector benefits not just from professional associations providing self-help support for educational professionals, but also from a number of so-called ‘quangos’, quasi non-governmental organisations at armslength of the government, yet tasked with the (support of the) implementation of government policy. In this paper, we will look analytically, and critically at central government policy and implementation in the UK with particular reference to mobile learning in the context of the wider e-learning strategy. In particular, we will look at the trajectories set up by policy documents as well as the work of the British Educational Technology Agency (BECTA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from formal education at primary, secondary, further and higher education into the use of digital technologies outside formal education and the world of work. We will examine the government’s conceptualisation of informal and mobile learning, assess its appropriacy and discuss the role, and potential of mobile devices for learning within it.
• Klaus Rummler: Soziale Segmentierung und die Mediennutzung jugendlicher 'Risikolerner'
  Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich,
  
  Soziale Segmentierung und die Nutzung von Mobiltechnologie. Bildungsbeteiligung und Mediennutzung in der Perspektive jugendlicher 'Risikolerner' in Deutschland
  
  Klaus Rummler betrachtet verschiedene soziale Milieus in Bezug auf ihre sozio-ökonomische Lage und allgemeine Werthaltungen und analysiert ausgewählte Geschmackskulturen in Bezug auf ihr Medienhandeln und ihre Distinktionsbedürfnisse. Dabei geht er auch auf ein konkretes Fallbeispiel ein.
• Ben Bachmair: Bildung in der mobilen Kultur - Bildungstheoretische Antworten der Schule mit Blick auf das Handy (Part 2)
  Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich,
  
  In seinem zweiten Beitrag greift Ben Bachmair Aspekte aus dem ersten Referat auf und geht auf ein Projektbeispiel aus Indien ein.
• Ben Bachmair: Bildung in der mobilen Kultur - Bildungstheoretische Antworten der Schule mit Blick auf das Handy (Part 1)
  Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich,
  
  Ben Bachmair entwickelt einen kultur- und bildungstheoretischen Hintergrund für die Analyse von jugendkulturellen und schulbezogenen Handy- und YouTube-Aktivitäten. Dabei legt er besonderen Wert auf das Konzept «Aneignung» und verortet es im Spannungsfeld von vorgegebenen Strukturen und subjektiven Handlungsmöglichkeiten. Er plädiert dafür, dass Schule handy- und Internetbezogene Medienkompetenzen anerkennt, übersetzt und – soweit möglich – integriert.
• Judith Seipold: Mobile learning at the interface between formal and informal learning - Discourses and didactic implementations of applications for mobile phones and their relevance for formal learning in school
  International Conference on multimodality and learning - New Perspectives on Knowledge, Representation and Communication, Institute of Education, University of London, June 19-20, 2008
  
  The focus of this paper is on discourses and structures of applications for mobile phones which allow harnessing informal learning contents and contexts into formalised learning settings such as schools. Mobile applications are e.g. ring tones, games and software, which are promoted in commercials on television or in magazines, or which are available as download from the internet.
  The basic assumption underlying this analysis is that mobile applications have specific ways to address users on a content related and discourse level, as well as on a didactic level.
  In order to allow an analysis which aims to show that school can adopt such ‘extracurricular’ elements on the basis of contents, structures and discourses without running the risk of loosing it’s ‘authority’, the fact that each media content can also be used against its original intention (according to the user’s ‘preferred reading patterns’) is not considered in this first approach; as well as that media content is – in the light of societal fragmentation and individualization – no more able to transport any universally valid author generated meaning.
  The analysis will proceed in three steps:
  1. Traditional media offer emerged in culturally stable contexts: children’s television programme offer stable structures, orientation and didactics.
  2. New media contents as equivalent to television programmes? Assumed discursive and didactic implementations of applications for mobile phones.
  3. Getting realistic: individualised use of applications tends to reject producer intended orientation purpose but can be implemented in school by identifying discourses and structures with relevance for school.
  Basis (step 1) for the analysis of applications for mobile phones is an analysis on television programmes for children. As one result, a categorisation was developed which considers orientation and reflexivity as basic implementations of TV programmes providing knowledge for (everyday) media literacy:
  1. ‘Orientation in the media offer’ works on a didactic level by instruction.
  2. ‘Orientation in everyday media use’ works on a didactic level with discussion.
  3. ‘Orientation in the ‘circus of signs’’ works on a didactic level with destruction and construction.
  In step 2, and from the perspective of media producers and their intentions rather than from the users’ perspective, some applications for mobile phones are analysed exemplarily to approach their potential didactic implementations according to the three categories instruction, discussion and de-construction derived from the programme analysis of children’s television.
  Step 3 aims to show practice of using applications for mobile phones in the light of individualised and personalised use of new media, which might most probably implement the rejection of step 2’s assumed orientation and didactic intentions for the actual use. Nevertheless, the attempt will be made to show discourses and structures which can be adopted by school, respecting the users’ preferred reading patterns as well as curricular needs.
• Klaus Rummler: 'At-risk learners' patterns of mobile media usage
  3rd Symposium "Cultural Transformation and Learning", University of Kassel, June 12-14, 2008.
• Judith Seipold: Multimedia and multimodal convergence and consequences for transformative context generation with mobile phones
  3. Symposium "Cultural Transformation and Learning", University of Kassel, June 12-14, 2008.
• Ben Bachmair: Mobility, education and m-learning
  3. Symposium "Cultural Transformation and Learning", University of Kassel, June 12-14, 2008
• Gunther Kress: Comment and Discussion
  TU Dresden
  Gunther Kress (Centre for Multimodal Research, Institute of Education, University of London): Comment and Discussion
• Klaus Rummler: 'At-risk learners' in a pedagogic perspective
  TU Dresden
  
  Workshop at the Symposium 'Kulturen der Bildung' - 21. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (DGfE), March 18th 2008.