Mobile is the future of University

Let us think together:                                                                                                

• Do you imagine that the future of education has become in your hand?

We touch here one of the educational issues that are significant and are in the need to integrate advanced technologies in communications, and make it useful in educational process, and how to take advantage of what we carry in our hands of cellphones to renew focus on improving the decades-long stagnation in classical education by employing technologies in teaching and learning processes, rather than the disadvantages that mar the use, or limiting use to send and receive particular phone calls.

During this century, the development of the concept of e-learning tools and characterized using the Internet, and looming on the near horizon the potential of investment of public wireless communications technologies in education systems by cell phones.

The tremendous accelerated growth in the technology of mobile devices and wireless technology, and increasing popularity of cell phones, all this helps to discover new methods of  accessibility to these important opportunities in education. E-learning based on this principle: education anywhere and at any time. This is what finally realized with the emergence of learning by cell phones.

1 - What are the reasons and justifications about the need to use a cell phone in education?

2 - What are the benefits of education by cell phone to the parties of the educational process?

3 - What services provided by cell phones, which they can accomplish many of the educational tasks?

4 - What are challenges or difficulties could be faced by using cell phones in education?

Technological devices have become at the moment tools which could hardly depart users on the day or night, and the number of users have increased greatly, especially now cell phone devices are cheap.  Many studies have shown that the cell phone is more technological devices use in our hands, and the most important three things we carry are: keys, wallet and cell phone. After more than 20 years of emergence of cell phones, number of users exceeded more than half of the world.

Perhaps that is what was called Robert Conway, head of the Association of GSM to say that in our contemporary world has become impossible to dispense using mobile phone, and with the launch of the 4G mobile phones in 2010 with speed that up to 100 megabits per second.

Cell phone user can do so much; it enables him to install cameras anywhere and follow-up and controls it through the cell phone, and provides a permanent connection to the Internet. In addition to the services broadcast live satellite TV, efficient and high quality, and conduct calls( video and audio), and data transfer with video at high speeds, also includes service as (video audio) on demand, this service allows user to view multimedia files on demand at any time. Many services that are can be used to provide benefits to all parties in the educational process.  This makes us believe that it is possible to take advantage of cell phones in the process of teaching and learning.

Mobile education, is on the whole a true translation of the philosophy of distance education which is based on expanding educational opportunities for individuals, and lower cost compared with traditional education, and not restricted by time or place or a category of learners, and it is not limited to level or a certain type of education, learner get learn according to his ability and speed of learning, based on his expertise and skills. Success of mobile education is in providing educational service fit with the applicants for such service, and it increases the consolidation of the concept of individual or self-education which contributes in translating the concept of democratic education.

Limited opportunities of learning which currently available or in future of large sectors of society in rural and remote areas, resulting from the unbalanced geographical distribution of higher education institutions, or to certain categories of nontraditional students, such as employees, businessmen, housewives and others who wish to broaden their knowledge and culture and develop their professional skills and get appropriate university degree, but they cannot attend regularly to the campus. All these reasons make mobile education the best solution for them. It can also contribute to overcoming the problems caused by lack of financial resources, especially with high cost of this type of education, and the lack of alternative sources at the present time to meet future needs.

The lecturers do not receive salaries but are paid for every lecture in most cases, in addition mobile education does not need huge budgets to create large buildings and classrooms, which usually requires the allocation of funds for management and maintenance, especially in lower prices and the prices of related services can also be contribute to overcoming the problem of poverty in the university library of modern books and periodicals. Students through participation in the Internet phone service can access databases on the network and communication resources of information, which allows the student and researcher an exceptional opportunity to get millions of various titles, books and recent studies through his cell phone.

The features of mobile education:
Is all the time and everywhere, and allows the learner to communicate rapidly with the information network, it is characterized by easily exchange messages between the learners, and the cost is relatively low, small size makes it easy to portable and its high speed.

Mobile Education requirements:

1 - Availability of necessary infrastructure.

2 - Conversion to a formula that suitable for mobile education.
3 - Providing financial support and appropriate budgets.
4 - Create records for students which contain the necessary information to identify the device and the network that will serve them.
5 - Laying the foundations of trade and financial dealings with the company that operates the network.

The majority of these studies indicated that most mobile devices are useful in teaching and learning by facilitating the tasks of teachers, also learning for students has been such interest in the following:

1 - Broadcast lectures and discussions directly to students regardless of their location.
2   - Students can receive ads or urgent administrative decisions and all information which related to their study.

3 - Enables teachers to review assignments and home works of students, and students can find out teachers evaluation.

4 - helps students and researchers to establish whether a small library of books and lessons, as well as reviews and commentaries, and video clips of a particular area.

5 - Using these techniques ensure greater participation of students in education via mobile devices which they use in their daily lives, and easier to putting a lot of mobile devices in the classroom instead of a desktop PC that require a large area.

6 - implementation of processes and tasks in a group/s(partnerships), so that many of the students and the teacher pass the device between them or use wireless network such as Bluetooth and so teachers can use it to distribute work to students easily and naturally.

7 - The renewal in the traditional method of teaching in particular, this will raise the motivation among the students.

Mobile phones can do multi-task learning services:

1 - SMS
2 - MMS
3 - WAP
4 - MSN
5 - GPRS
6 – Bluetooth

7- G3 / G4  

Technical problems and solutions

The following table shows some problems and solutions could be objected that in mobile education 

Proposed solutions	Problem
1) Using of projector technology, which began to spread with most mobile devices to display this information in the air 2) Using of wireless technologies for the transfer of multimedia files to a computer or television sets.	Small size of the monitors
Virtual Keyboard	Small size keyboards
Use memory cards of up to 4GHz	Small memory capacity
Using modern technologies of charging, such as methanol fuel cell from Toshiba that allows the duration of the work is equal to 60 times the duration of the lithium ion batteries is well known. They are not rechargeable, but can be easily replaced.	The necessity of frequented charging
Ggeneral operating system for mobile devices such as Motion experience Interface (MXI) from RADIX Company	Cannot invest the same personal computer software on mobile devices
Using the third and fourth generation of wireless communications	There are still difficulties in transferring video files over cellular networks
Solution to this problem is coming naturally with by the gradual increase in the number of users of mobile devices, and this will drive the emergence of new companies and competition between them for the consumer.	Prices remain high so segments of people are not affordable.

The future of mobile education:
E-learning was a ​​long application idea, but it took his place in the education sector. Therefore, mobile education will take its place as a natural role in the education sector, to open the prospects of education for large segments of society. Therefore, mobile is the future of university.