Holding the World in Your Hand: Creating a Mobile Learning Environment

30 What do you do when the world outside the campus seems much more interesting to language students than what you have to offer in your functional but outdated language lab? How do you engage jaded students in such a way that they leave your class wanting to know more about the language and culture of the people they’ve been studying? How do you know whether keeping up with the latest in digital technology will be worth the price and the effort? Three years ago, the language lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison encountered the same challenge many campuses face. Older analog technologies were getting harder—in some cases impossible—to maintain, thus making the move to digital technologies a necessity. A typical solution would have been to digitize existing materials and substitute digital equipment (computers) for analog equivalents (tape recorders), all the while continuing to maintain a fixed-location language lab. Instead, our college administration challenged us to explore more innovative ways to leap into the digital world. Fortunately, we obtained a substantial equipment grant from HP that had as its focus the implementation of wireless (networking) and mobile (portable equipment) technologies.