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Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Vasiliki Varvaki

This year, there's been a bit of talk about "Mlearning." What is it? And how does it affect online students?

Training Zone reports:

"Mlearning involves delivering blended learning and elearning material via mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants and iPods. In a 2006 whitepaper he wrote for Epic, Clark argued that mobile delivery could reinforce learning in a way that classroom teaching and other vehicles could not...

Mlearning is particularly useful for collaborative projects and fieldwork, or where employees are widely dispersed and hard to reach, such as in transport, cleaning and project-based service industries."

Many traditional and online schools are embracing some form of Mlearning. Some offer their lectures in mp3 format while others send Twitter messages to student mobile devices. In some ways, this can serve to keep students connected to their classroom. But, it can also interfere with every day life, blurring the lines between home and school. Do students really want to receive a Twitter assignment on their cell phones during dinner?