1794 Where is Mobile Learning Going? Anna Trifonova and Marco Ronchetti Dipartimento di Informatica e Telecomunicazioni Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy {Anna.Trifonova, Marco.Ronchetti}@dit.unitn.it Abstract: M-learning is a quite new, exciting and promising field. Papers on this domain are spread through several conference and workshops proceedings, so it is rather difficult to have a complete view of the field. This paper aims at helping, by reviewing the existing work, and classifying the research directions that try to answer the questions of how m-learning will help reaching the goals of a better learning, and how it will be different from the rest of e-learning. Finally, we try to foresee some directions for successful m-learning research. Introduction Computing technology has been applied to learning since decades, but it has really flourished with the advent of the Web. In recent years the quick growth of mobile technologies is promising a new revolution that might be comparable with the Web. The forecasts are (Steinberger 02) that by 2004 about 63 millions handhelds will be sold, and that approximately 38% of them will be smart phones, integrating PDA functionality with features for communication. And the forecasts are already getting true (Scott 02) – since according to DoCoMo more than 37% of Japanese population owns Internet-capable phones. More and more mobile devices with improved capabilities are appearing on the market. Lots of mobile clients already support Java (J2ME) making it easier and less costly to develop portable applications. Mobile learning (m-learning) is a field which combines mobile computing and e-learning. Will e-learning undergo a revolution like it happened with the Web? We do not know, but we must try to answer the question, by trying to imagine how mobile devices can enhance e-learning or modify it. Many people are working in this new field, and it is increasingly difficult to have an overview of what is going on, since most papers are dispersed in many conferences, and some reports are only available as gray literature. In the present paper, we present an overview of what is going on. By no means were we able to discover all the interesting papers that have been published in the field, but from the inevitably partial view we try to let emerge the trends that characterize the field. Defining M-Learning There is a common agreement that m-learning is e-learning through mobile computational devices. In general by mobile device we mean PDAs and digital cell phone, but more generally we might think of any device that is small, autonomous and unobtrusive enough to accompany us in every moment in our every-day life, and that can be used for some form of learning. We shall begin by enumerating the different ways such a device can help us. In first place, they can allow to interact with people, via voice and through the exchange of written messages, still and moving images. A second possibility is to consider them as tool for accessing content, which can be stored locally on the device or can be reached through interconnection. Under the same category we might include accessing services that can be seen as dynamically generated content. The functions that are offered by such devices are therefore not different from what can be done with other devices, in the same way as mobile telephony is not intrinsically different from residential telephony, but the change of boundary conditions induces a new use of the media. Also, the different interface that such instruments have (small screen, small or no keyboard) has an impact on what is reasonable, useful and even pleasant to do on such devices. For instance, reading a digitalized book on a Palm is today barely acceptable, and reading it on a cell phone is today a laughable idea. Even browsing the Internet is an experience not comparable with doing it on a PC. So while some research concentrates on how to best perform the same action in a changed environment, some other focuses on what actions are best suited to new conditions . On this last aspect, the ability to