Ubiquitous learning, ubiquitous computing, and lived experience

Ubiquitous learning implies a vision of learning which is connected across all the stages on which we play out our lives. Learning occurs not just in classrooms, but in the home, the workplace, the playground, the library, museum, and nature center, and in our daily interactions with others. Moreover, learning becomes part of doing; we don't learn in order to live more fully, but rather learn as we live to the fullest. It is understandable to see ubiquitous computing necessary for this kind of ubiquitous learning and sufficient to make it possible. Education would certainly be easier to promote if we could simply identify some new technologies that would make ubiquitous learning occur. But the new technologies are neither necessary nor sufficient for this to happen. This chapter argues that it is our vision for ubiquitous learning that matters most, not simply the technical affordances. We need to define ubiquitous learning in an historically legitimate way, one which recognizes the possibilities afforded by the new technologies without reducing the argument to a technocentric position.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe