Special Issue of Educational Technology & Society

 

“Innovations in designing mobile learning applications”

 

Handheld devices are becoming more prevalent primarily because they provide useful tools which assist one’s work and learning. Many of today’s youth have their own handheld devices on hand for social communication and for personal information management. There is a significant amount of research currently available regarding short messages and multimedia messages, which promote greater usage of handheld devices for entertainment or information retrieval, besides basic voice communication.

Recently, sensor technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), RFID and other environmental awareness peripherals have started to appear embedded within the handheld devices. These new additions enable further value additions to the functionality the handheld devices can provide, with potential to appeal to a greater global audience, and in case of technology-enhanced learning, they bare the potential for facilitating learning in context.

This special issue is devoted to innovations in designing learning applications for handheld devices. The focus is on the integration of the pedagogical and technical strengths of these devices while considering contextual and other factors that influence the learning process.

The aim is to cover various aspects of innovation in learning application design for handheld devices in the context of practice, methodology, and theories to improve the usages of handheld devices or effectively enhance learning and training. This special issue welcomes original ideas, along with supporting design and validation, in following areas (and other areas within the scope):

• Ø  Innovations in Human Computer Interaction design of mobile learning applications
• Ø  Multimedia reorganization technologies in learning for handheld devices
• Ø  Innovations in context awareness and situated learning design for handheld devices
• Ø  Pedagogical strategy-enhanced learning application design of handheld devices
• Ø  Innovations in collaborative and socially networked mobile learning applications
• Ø  Enhanced learning portfolios with multimedia handheld device support
• Ø  Innovations in methodologies of mobile learning application design
• Ø  Bridging web-based world and physical world with handheld device support
• Ø  Innovations in amalgamating entertainment, gaming and learning applications for handheld devices

Special issue guest editors

• Yueh-Min Huang (National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan)
• Wu-Yuin Hwang (National Central University, Taiwan)
• Kuo-En Chang (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan)

Important dates

• Submissions due:        15 September2009
• First decision:        25 October 2009
• Revised manuscripts due:    30 November 2009
• Feedback on revised manuscripts:    15 January 2010
• Final manuscript due:    15 Feb. 2010