"My phone is now my wallet" - Educational Implications Looming

Coming faster than we can track to classrooms near you - and everywhere else: Handheld Internet-connected digital devices combining Cell phones, ATMs, iPods, digital cameras, GPS, voice recorders, PDAs, and WHAT ELSE? Way beyond "Ubiquitous Computing," "Mobile Computing," "Going Wireless."

Together, these little gizmos constitute one of 3 current technology floods with unpredictable, unavoidable - but not uncontrollable - educational implications.

The other two floods:

- Combination of Web 2.0 and Social Networking

- TMI/TMO = Too Much Info / Too Many Options; Can't keep up!

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE FROM: "New Conductors Speed Global Flows of Money: Cellphones Make Transfers Faster, Cheaper," By Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A01

"'My phone is now my wallet,' ...

"In recent years, growing numbers of people in the Philippines, as well as in countries as diverse as Japan and Zambia, have begun using new features on their mobile phones to pay bills, buy goods and transfer cash to relatives in the same country.

But international money transfers by this method have been slower to flourish, in part because regulators are trying to assure this new channel won't be used to launder money. Tightening the monitoring of international cash flows has become a prime goal of U.S. authorities who are trying to prevent terrorist attacks."

"With cellphone use booming across the developing world, from the open deserts of Africa to Bandoy's densely populated neighborhood in sultry Manila, handsets that cost as little as $30 are enabling struggling nations to leapfrog past the need for land-line phones and ATMs."

For full text including the above excerpts, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201462.html