Nick Jeans (Content Team Manager, SY e-Learning Programme)

Mobile Learning using small handheld computers (Personal Digital Assistants - PDAs) or Smartphones (mobile phones with larger screens and access to the Internet) offer the potential to use e-learning in less formal settings, outside the classroom. The most obvious advantage is their compact size and portability. They require minimal storage space, and students and teachers can take them almost anywhere - to the library or on field trips.

In South Yorkshire, mobile devices are currently being used to create newspaper articles as part of a student journalism project and to develop digital heritage guides for local areas of interest. They are excellent tools to support learning, having the capacity to produce Word documents, photographs, video and sound-recording.

Schools across South Yorkshire are using GPS and hotspots to develop guides around the Shirebrook Valley, Rother Valley and Cannon Hall and they are also being used on field trips to identify local flora and fauna. They offer huge potential by providing learning opportunities for young people to re-engage with formal education, making contact between students and teachers easy at all times, without obliging the learner to be at a desk or even sitting at a PC or laptop.