We adults need to get away, as the young people are, from old ways of thinking. Much as we may want to brand it "cheating", calling up your friend to get an answer during an exam is a great example of on-demand learning. Those who laugh about their surgeon getting "just-in-time training" would be amazed at just how many surgical consults go on during operations, and with the eyes and ears that a phone provides, experts could be using their mobiles to train doctors worldwide in real time.

Other questions we should be asking ourselves include:

What could we do with ringtones (already a 3.5 billion dollar business) that hasn't been done? Could we, instead of the cacophony, be making complex music together? Could teachers be using this for music appreciation classes? Could we be embedding other information into the sounds than just who is calling?

How would a phone optimized for learning be designed? What functions should be instantly available, as opposed to having to search deep into menus? What mini-games would be both addictive and improve people's knowledge or skills, such as Bookworm for vocabulary and spelling? What applications could make the entire system better as we learn, such as the ESP Game that adds meta-tags to internet images as we play?
 
 
 
 
We should be asking how we can design the radio features of phones to control their use in classrooms, perhaps limiting their access temporarily to only the teacher's channel. Need kids exchange their sim cards to do this, or are there better, easier ways we can build into the hardware and software?

Can we create programs, or even exams, that we hand out on memory cards for students to slip into their phones? Can homework and exams get marked and annotated automatically?

Can phones replace the handheld devices used in many classrooms and corporate meetings to poll an audience?

Can phone calls from experts (doctors, lawyers, technicians, etc) be captured (with permission), and turned into lessons of best practices and important exceptions, while giving learners a feel for what actually goes on in those peoples' day?

Can classes and schools (or subjects across those) be set up so that all classmates are permanently connected, and can pedagogies be constructed to take advantage of this?

Can every book in the public domain (i.e. all the "classics"), already recorded for the blind, be made available on mp3, and in various phone friendly text forms such as individual paragraphs or RSVP (one word at a time on the screen at a variable rate) for teachers to assign on students' mobiles?

Can experts in 21st century knowledge such as nanotechnology, bioethics, genetic medicine, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, programming, and knowledge filtering hold Q&A sessions with different levels of students and the results be podcast for use on their phones? Can we take advantage of the phone for additional questions as they come up?

Can voice recognition, already used experimentally for student authentication on exams, be used for language learning? With instant translations of whatever you want to say?

Can the ability to capture data through cameras and other sensors such as GPS be used to make our students into real scientists?

Can the highlighted text of karaoke, already used in China to teach English, be used to learn, or interpret second, and other languages?

Can the motion sensors in many new phones be used to help kids exercise?

Can students post, blog, download, read and exchange on their mobiles as easily as they do on a laptop? Can they submit their assignments to and receive their feedback from all teachers via mobile?

How can students learn to program their mobiles (which have more power than the computer in the lunar landing module) to do their 21st century bidding, beyond just downloading and searching?
 
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