Overview

CoSN’s newest initiative, Leadership for Mobile Learning (LML), will address the capacity of district leadership to overcome the barriers and develop, plan, implement and manage policies to effectively use mobile devices for the improvement of teaching and learning.

According to the New Media Consortium’s 2010 K12 Horizon Report, mobiles are on the forefront of educational technology trends.

The mobile market today has more than 4 billion subscribers…. The global network supporting mobile devices of all kinds now covers more territory than the electrical grid. A massive and increasing number of people all over the world own and use computers that fit in their hand and are able to connect to the network wirelessly from virtually anywhere. Tens of thousands of applications designed to support a wide variety of tasks on a host of mobile devices and platforms are readily available, with more entering the market all the time. These mobile computing tools have become accepted aids in daily life for everything from business to personal productivity to social networking. The range and number of educational applications for mobiles are growing at a rapid pace, yet their use in schools is limited — more often constrained by policy than by the capabilities of the devices they run on.

Through this project, CoSN intends to explore and develop resources that will support school leaders at this critical juncture of exponential growth in the public’s use of mobile devices. Specifically, we will examine the impact of mobility on school cultures, the digital divide, and informal learning. We also intend to provide practical resources to guide school administrators with mobile learning implementations. Our goal is to provide current, unbiased information that can be utilized by school leaders when making decisions for their school districts in support of student learning.