The phones have also helped create a teaching style that the faculty refer to as “mobile-enhanced inquiry-based learning” — combining mobile phones and a learning theory that teaches through experimentation and questioning

In many ACU classes, one component of mobile implementation is lecture podcasts, which allow students to consume much of the information typically delivered in the classroom on their own time and in their own dorm rooms.

The result thus far is BioBook, a device-agnostic, peer-written, node-driven text. In other words, it’s like Wikipedia on steroids.

Twenty years ago, Seymour Papert, when he was at the MIT Technology Lab, predicted that, "there won't be schools in the future…. I think the Computer will blow up the school, that is, the school as something where there are classes, teachers running exams, people structured in groups by age, [who] follow a curriculum—all of that."[1]

Seymour Papert. 1984. “Trying to Predict the Future.” Popular Computing, 3(13), pp. 30-44.

A know­mad is what I term a no­madic knowl­edge worker –that is, a cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and in­no­v­a­tive per­son who can work with al­most any­body, any­time, and any­where

Know­mads can in­stantly re­con­fig­ure and re­con­tex­tu­al­ize their work en­vi­ron­ments, and greater mo­bil­ity is cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

What hap­pens when the in­vest­ment banker sit­ting next to the ar­chi­tect have a con­ver­sa­tion? What new ideas, prod­ucts, and ser­vices might be cre­ated?

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Presidents Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished barely a year of formal schooling. He self-taught himself trigonometry (for his work as a surveyor) and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer. Martin Van Buren, U.S. president. Little formal education. Began studying law at the age of 14 while apprenticing at a law firm. George Washington, U.S. president, general, plantation owner. Ended his education after a few years of elementary school. Andrew Jackson U.S. President, lawyer. Little formal education; Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian president. With a fifth grade education only, he shined shoes on the streets of Sao Paulo as a kid but later became a steelworker union leader. Scientists Albert Einstein, Nobel prize-winning physicist, discoverer of the General and Special Theories of Relativity. He left school at 15.

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Our nation and our schools and universities should invest in distributed and collaborative learning experiences­—curricula emphasizing the interconnectedness of life and geochemical processes in the biosphere, empathy courses that promote social behavior, cyberspace classes connecting students around the globe, service-learning programs in communities, sharing knowledge in peer groups, and interdisciplinary and multicultural studies—with the objective of nurturing students’ empathic nature. “