Exploring the use of cellular phones for pervasive elearning

The wireless Internet stretches the concept of self-paced learning towards anywhere-anytime learning. It supports the seamless continuation of interaction with learning resources and services even when a student is away from the desktop PC. There is, however, much doubt about the use of omnipresent ICT devices like cellular phones for pedagogically valuable learning settings. In a recently concluded EU project we have examined the potential of such devices for learning by developing a Java-based application, called Histobrick. It supports spontaneous short study phases while students are on the move and particularly aims to provide a ubiquitous tool for examining and deepening a student's knowledge about statistic distributions and their most important characteristic numbers. The pedagogy behind histobrick is inspired by recent ideas about learning in constructivist settings and the findings of game-based learning. The paper sketches the rationale behind histobrick, discusses some technical challenges we met, presents the final solution, and reports on a first evaluation we performed with a small sample of students.