The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop released a new study today that outlines a potential first-ever national mobile learning strategy, urging the Obama administration to invest in digital learning technologies and teacher training along the way.
The study found that mobile learning technology may represent the next frontier for children, similar to how Sesame Street made TV a learning tool for preschoolers in the 1970s and 1980s. One example cited in the study is MIT’s Augmented Reality Games, which use GPS technology to help students solve real life environmental problems. Other efforts include PBS Kids’ Learning Letters with Elmo, which uses video and text messaging to send literacy tips to parents of preschoolers, and the UK’s Wolverhampton Local Authority’s Learning2Go initiative, which offers 24/7 personalized science and critical thinking learning to over 1000 students on their own schedule.
To reach these ends, the center recommends the establishment of a Digital Teacher Corps, new R&D investments, a White House initiative on digital learning, and—here’s a key point in the study—the lifting of restrictions on mobile device use in classrooms, which runs counter to recent initiatives in cities such as New York, which banned cell phones from public schools in 2006.
Verizon Wireless has completed its $5.9 billion acquisition of Alltel, making it the largest cell phone company in the U.S., according to the 
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