UNESCO released a report last week introducing three exciting new projects that promise to shape how policies are developed for mobile learning programs.  Within the year, UNESCO will develop and release a set of policy guidelines, commission and publish ten working papers, and introduce four pilot projects in teacher development in Mexico, Pakistan, Nigeria and Senegal.

The report was a summary of project goals as well as an overview of discussions and ideas organized by participants at UNESCO’s first Mobile Learning Week (MLW).  The event which was held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris last month drew approximately 30 experts in mobile learning and 100 participants from the fields of mobile technology and education to discuss the use of mobile technologies in the classroom.

Policy Guidelines:

The most challenging but promising of the three UNESCO initiatives is the development of a set of policy guidelines due to be released by the end of 2012.  There are currently many examples of the use of mobile technologies in the classroom but few are supported by – or the result of – effective and sustainable policy-making initiatives.  Through discussions between UNESCO, MLW participants, and a growing global community of mobile learning educators and leaders, these new guidelines will be broad enough to encompass different cultural contexts, stakeholders, and technologies so that they can be used by national governments and educators and evolve with new developments in mobile technologies.

Discussions surrounding this topic generated general considerations and challenges including:

• Consideration must be given to the perspectives of the stakeholders (mobile network operators, teachers, students, etc.) and their interaction with each other
• Guidelines should be flexible and be able to adapt to new technologies and their applications
• Costs of internet access and personal-ownership of devices remains a challenge
• Efforts should be made to dispel negative views of mobile technologies within the classroom
• Lessons should be learned from past examples of successful and unsuccessful projects
• Mobile technology should support a well developed curriculum and pedagogy and not become the focus of the content

10 Mobile Learning Working Papers:

To provide research information for the policy guidelines and teacher development projects, UNESCO has commissioned ten working papers: five that will investigate mobile learning policies in the five major world regions (Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and North America) and five that will investigate mobile technologies for teacher development and support.  Drafts of the papers were presented and discussed at the MLW.

The five papers on mobile learning policies won’t provide an in-depth analysis of each region but should give a general overview and provide examples of policy development.  The papers will explore the pervasive lack of mobile learning policies around the world, observing the misconception by some policy makers that mobile technologies are distracting from learning and should be banned in schools.  They will also include lessons learned from success stories of initiatives supported by governments and tech-savvy model teachers.

The additional five papers will examine professional development for teachers using mobile technologies in the classroom as well as how professional development can be delivered through mobile technology to teachers across the five regions.  These papers will observe how mobile technologies are being used already, how they can be used in the future, and explore the use of mobile technologies with other educational tools and resources.

4 Teacher Development Pilot Projects:

Finally, UNESCO will launch four pilot projects to explore how mobile technologies can be used to provide support and professional development for teachers in Mexico, Pakistan, Nigeria and Senegal.  Though the projects are still in the planning stages, MLW participants were able to provide input to important questions such as “What guidelines and understandings should steer the projects? What does the organization need to do, address, and keep in mind to best ensure the projects it launches are successful?”

To learn more about the MLW participant’s comments and ideas about these new projects and mobile learning policy development, see the full report here.