In my initial post, I questioned why the formal learning environments stick to traditional learning environments, desks and chairs and podiums. I believe innovative teachers will take the students out of the desk with their mobile multimedia devices to explore and apply instant knowledge in the real world. A student learning about plants can be with plants and not at a desk. A physics student learning about trajectories and velocity will be experimenting, sorting data and applying the abstract formulas as real data with new mobile devices. The interesting part is, mobile learning is about instantly accessing the knowledge and not about developing the next new application or game. It is about connecting the real world with the knowledge at your fingertips, instantly. Applied knowledge during the moment of curiosity!
Things like QR codes and other AR content is about mobile teaching! Associating the specific content to a real world item. This is what makes it different from mobile learning. A learner can just do a web search.
The biggest issue to come with mobile education will be allowing learning to be in control of the learner and not only the teacher.
Agreed. Mobile education provide the means for excursions outside of the classroom, which, if designed correctly, allow the learner to be more in control of the learning. All students need to go beyond the biology textbooks and powerpoint slides, and stand in creek beds identifying and observing all of the creatures and plants they find. Aspiring biologists always would have done excursions like that, but the democratization of mobile tools makes it possible for all to have the experience, and become a more knowledgeable citizenry on important matters of the environment.