Mobile Tools and Technologies for Learning and Instruction

The fast and widespread adoption of mobile devices has enabled major changes in the way individuals, groups of individuals, businesses, and governments go about their daily activities. With mobile technologies as the catalyzing agent, education too is experiencing its biggest change in more than 150 years. This entry first discusses the development of mobile devices and how they are used in the classroom. The entry then discusses more recent innovations in mobile technology and the challenges teachers face in using these tools.

In 1991, Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm computing device, commented on the inevitability of computing being incorporated into mobile devices. This was quite prescient, inasmuch as 1991 was 4 years before Microsoft’s Windows 95 Operating System helped transform the Internet from an early-adopter ...