Kaohsiung (TW), January 2010 - Based on shared research interests, two IEEE communities have decided to hold their 2010 conferences jointly. IEEE WMUTE (International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education) and IEEE DIGITEL (International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning) will convene in parallel in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Participants at both conferences will be able to interact and exchange ideas, which can stimulate additional exciting concepts for future research. The convergence of the global adoption of smart phones integrating high-quality media capture devices and trends in social networking, participatory media, and cyber infrastructure provide remarkable opportunities for making mobile social media integral to distributed learning environments.
Social networking and user-generated media like YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Flickr are moving beyond the stationary PC onto mobile devices like the iPhone and low-price netbook computers. Social applications are also becoming a new communication and networking method in sectors such as business, entertainment, and education.
Arguably, the impact of mobile social media will be universal, augmenting the face-to-face social interactions that now enable learning and teaching interactions with distributed social media tools. Learners may tap social networks and recommendations for learning in pursuit of their interests over informal and formal settings.
In classroom settings, mobile devices can enrich interactivity and inter-operability of digital expression; they can also potentially provide supervision and decision support for teachers. The well-documented powers of informal learning in workplaces can be served well with social mobile media. Therefore, WMUTE 2010 hopes to initiate a new line of research and practice that highlights both social and technological innovation in order to support and amalgamate contemporary social learning theories.
This theme-based conference will reveal the results of current research efforts in this field and also identify future challenges and research priorities.
