The Center for Mobile Learning (CML) at the MIT Media Lab invents and studies new mobile technologies to promote learning anywhere anytime for anyone.
We focus on mobile tools that empower learners to think creatively, collaborate broadly, and shape their information environments to be personally engaging and relevant to their own interests. We also work with teachers, mentors, and other facilitators to help them realize the full potential of mobile learning. We believe that teachers and learners should create new mobile technologies, not only experience them as consumers.
Our work covers location-aware learning applications, mobile sensing and data collection, augmented reality gaming, and other educational uses of mobile technologies that support the core values of the CML.
As mobile learning rapidly expands, the CML will undertake projects that:
The CML is led by MIT faculty members who are established leaders in educational computing: Hal Abelson, Eric Klopfer, and Mitchel Resnick.
Abelson is well known for his work in undergraduate computing education and co-author of the classic text Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Press, 1985, 1996). He is a leader in the global movement for Open Educational Resources and a founding board member of the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons. He also co-directs of MIT's Council on Educational Technology.
Klopfer is director of MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program, which prepares MIT students to be secondary school science and math teachers. He is an expert on educational games and simulations and author of Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games. (MIT Press, 2008).
Resnick is famous for his work on LEGO Mindstorms and Scratch, two of the world's best known and most influential platforms for introducing young learners to programming. He directs the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, and also heads the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, the academic program of the Media Lab.
The Center’s first major initiative will be the continued development and educational use of App Inventor, a programming system created at Google that makes it easy for learners to create mobile apps for smart phones by fitting together graphical puzzle-piece programming blocks in a Web browser.