Mobile telephone ownership is far more prevalent in Europe than in the United States. For example, by the end of 2003, 82 percent, or 13.3 million people, will use a mobile phone in The Netherlands, compared with 54 percent in the United States.
2 A 2004 trend report by the Ministry of Economic Affairs on the use of networks and ICT infrastructure reveals a 10.6 percent growth in mobile connections in 2003 in The Netherlands, compared with 10.7 percent annual growth in the United States. Mobile phone ownership in The Netherlands is quite high among young people.
IPM KidWise showed that children aged 8 and younger hardly ever have a mobile phone, but 79 percent of 10-year-old children do have one.3 When children reach 14 years of age, 98 percent are in some way mobile connected. Our own research4 showed that all 16- to 22- year-old young adults have a mobile phone. Given this high ownership rate, it is surprising that schools and universities rarely use the mobile phone as an educational tool.
When we consider the use of the Internet, which developed roughly in the same period and with a comparable huge impact in daily life and in education, this is even more surprising. In The Netherlands, some small initiatives exist in which short message service (SMS) text messages are used to inform students about schedule changes or exam results.
Sometimes parents get an SMS to inform them that their child is not at school. Also, one project aims to use SMS for mass lectures. Students can ask the presenter questions or reply to questions from the presenter. The presenter can view the incoming replies immediately and respond to them. But in general, these initiatives are small and incomparable to the impact of digital learning environments such as WebCT and Blackboard.
