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So, I would not like to see that in a future students will study on a services provided by Nokia, Google, Vodafone, Yahoo, or Facebook - at least not if these comanies business model in their services is not changed.


8. M-learning gained momentum with the One Laptop Per Child project announcement. Given your deep knowledge of the area, what other developments can you anticipate for the near future? Any major technological breakthroughs that you think will play a key role in the evolution of mobile knowledge sharing?

I think we could do much better job by looking for simple solutions and less get excited from the technology. Radio is good. Community radio is great. TV is good. Community TV is great.

We should also see that the computer technology may work nicely with the "old technology". You may already add your phone in your TV. Why not using phones for distributing video learning materials for students and show them with TV sets that are almost everywhere.

We may also use audio speakers to broadcast "mobile radio" in a public spaces. We may ask people to post or record their news with their voice.


9. How do you think mobile technologies could be used in a context like the Bank of Common Knowledge (i.e. a changing, non-fixed platform where people from all sorts of backgrounds meet to exchange knowledge)?

I think you could use mobile in many ways: from "mobile working groups" to documenting the sessions. People could also use their phones to document their own "knowledge": to tell a story, so shot a video and then share or exchange it with other people. It could be a kind of flea market of knowledge.


10. Can you talk about the LeMill project? What exactly is your involvement there? From what we have seen (haven't tested it first hand) It looks like a very interesting platform. Why do you think it has been so successful in eastern-European countries (especially Estonia)?
 
The LeMill is a part of a larger European Calibrate project in where my group has been responsible on the LeMill design and development.

One reason is the fact that in the project there are partners from easter-Europe. On the other hand countries with small language are more open to experiment with this kind of alternative ways of producing learning materials in their own language. Making schoolbooks is simply not a business in such a small market and this leaves space for an alternative approaches. Like in Estonia teachers and the general populations ICT skills are also in very high level.

It looks that teachers in these east-European countries are very willing to show their expertise by making content on LeMill to get it visible in their portfolio. It is a sign of being a good teacher.


11. Like the people at School of Everything say, "Our current education system was designed in the Victorian era to train people for factory work. These days, though, we live in a very different world. And we need a new understanding of learning to go with it." And still, despite the existence of initiatives like the Calibrate Project, many European countries (Spain, for instance) maintain a fairly narrow-minded conception of education strategies, knowledge sharing and the role of teachers in general. What key points do you think should be changed to improve these practises?

A huge question, we're talking about globalization, ICT and education here. I think that things are moving slowly to the right direction. One should take a good care of: (1) teachers, (2) pupils, and (3) the system as a whole.

First of all, I think ICT in Finnish schools do not play very important role, at all. Maybe this - not giving ICT a central role - is the paradoxical best practice of using ICT in Finnish schools. However, we do pay a lot of attention to "learning environments" - in a broad sense.

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