Local literature

Mobile phone technology has evolved so greatly in recent years that phones can no longer be
considered as simple mobile communication devices. Smartphones are mobile devices with
advanced computing capabilities and high-resolution cameras with global positioning systems
(GPS) built in as standard. Experts estimate that by 2013, 280 million (20%) of the 1.4 billion
mobile phones sold will be smartphones. Over the last decade the medical community has
embraced this technology and is realizing its potential in healthcare information delivery,
realtime patient monitoring, research data collection and mobile telemedicine for the provision
of expertise to remote locations. While high-income countries remain at the forefront of
developing the latest mobile technologies used in healthcare, the rate of penetration of such
technologies in low- and middle-income countries has recently exceeded that of their wealthier
neighbours. Low- and middle-income countries have major restrictions on their healthcare due
to a lack of infrastructure, human and physical resources, as well as being burdened by poverty
and disease. Mobile phones have allowed those in the poorest countries to bypass fixed-line
technology and jump straight to mobile technology in a term coined ‘leapfrogging’,2 thereby
having access to many modern means of health provision without the previously required
infrastructure.

As researchers interested in the use of mobile phones, everyday activities provide us with a rich
resource to observe phone usage. We often see people using their phones on the bus, in parks,
cafes, on bikes, in the streets, waiting for the cash machine, in shops - nearly everywhere.! This
public use of the mobile phone provides us with an invaluable resource for looking at the
everyday, actual use of this technology. As this book shows, the social and interactional aspects
of mobile phone use have only recently become a topic of interest. Along with the chapters in
this book, there is work looking at how mobile phones affect the urban society (Kopomaa,
2000), how families and their teenagers co-ordinate their lives together using mobile phones
and how the ownership and payment structure works within these families (Ling, 1999a, b; Ling
and Yttri, in press), the use of mobile phones in relation to the other media (Koskinen, 1999;
Coogan and Kangas, 2000), and how mobile phones are used by mobile professionals as one of
several available resources for mobile work (Wiberg and Ljungberg, 2000). These studies all
contribute to understanding the use of the mobile phone. In this chapter, however, we focus on
a relatively neglected aspect of mobile phone use. That is, the local interaction of mobile
phones, the ways in which phones are used and shared in the local situation of use. From field
studies of public use of mobile phones among teenagers in Sweden, we report on how the
mobile phone has come to be used as a tool for local social interaction, rather than merely as a
device for communication with dislocated others. The collaborative nature of mobile phone use
is very evident from our observations. Mobile phones are often shared, in various ways and for
various purposes. We examine how this sharing is accomplished. Finally, we discuss how this
empirical field data can be of use when designing new mobile technology and services for
young people.
Foreign literature
In August 2004, Duke University provided free iPods to its entire freshman class (Belanger,
2005). The next month, a Korean education firm offered free downloadable college entrance
exam lectures to students who purchased an iRiver personal multimedia player (Kim, 2004).
That October, a financial trading firm in Chicago was reportedly assessing the hand-eye
coordination of traders’ using GameBoys (Logan, 2004). Yet while such innovative applications
abound, the use of technology in education and training is far from new, a fact as true in
language classrooms as it is in medical schools. Practically since their availability, a succession of
audiovisual recording devices (e.g., reel-to-reel, VCRs, PCs) has been used to capture language
samples, and myriad playback and broadcast devices (e.g., phonographs, radios, televisions)
have provided access to authentic speech samples. The espousal of audiolingual theory in the
1950s brought the widespread use of the language laboratory in educational settings
(Salaberry, 2001). Influenced by behaviorism, the lab was progressively replaced in the 1960s
by drill-based computer-assisted instruction, which decades later was itself surpassed by a
more intelligent, interactive and multimedia computer-assisted language learning. The popular
acceptance of the Internet in the 1990s advanced the development of computer-mediated
communications. As technologies continue to evolve, so does their propensity to shrink in size.
"Other technologies that hold the capacity for language learning include PDAs, multimedia
cellular phones, MP3 players, DVD players, and digital dictionaries" (Zhao, 2005, p. 447). Such
portable media—referred to in popular and scholarly literature as mobile, wireless, handheld or
nomadic—are now social staples. Mobile learning, or m-learning, is a burgeoning subdivision of
the e-learning movement, further evidenced by European initiatives such as m-learning and
Mobilearn. In this paper, applied fusions of m-learning and language learning follow, after
which their benefits and challenges are reviewed.

Advances in mobile technology have enabled a wide range of applications to be developed that
can be used by people on the move. Developers sometimes overlook the fact that users will
want to interact with such devices while on the move. Small screen sizes, limited connectivity,
high power consumption rates and limited input modalities are just some of the issues that
arise when designing for small, portable devices. One of the biggest issues is the context in
which they are used. As these devices are designed to enable users to use them while mobile,
the impact that the use of these devices has on the mobility of the user is a critical factor to the
success or failure of the application.
Current research has demonstrated that cognitive overload can be an important aspect of
usability [1, 2]. It seems likely that mobile devices may be particularly sensitive to the effects of
cognitive overload, due to their likely deployment in multiple task settings and limitations of
size. This aspect of usability is often overlooked in existing usability models, which are outlined
in the next section, as these models are designed for applications which are seldom used in a
mobile context. Our PACMAD usability model for mobile applications, which we then introduce,
incorporates cognitive load as this attribute directly impacts and may be impacted by the
usability of an application.
Local studies

Health risks from the use of mobile phones

Widespread concerns have been raised about the possibility that exposure to the
radiofrequency (RF) fields from mobile telephones or their base stations could affect people's
health. Such has been the rapid growth of mobile telecommunications that there will be about
one billion mobile phone users before 2005. Already there are more mobile than fixed-line
users. Developing countries are establishing mobile telecommunications rather than the more
expensive fixed-line systems. Thus, if there is any impact on health from mobile telephones, it
will affect everyone in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) established the
International EMF Project in 1996 to evaluate the science, recommend research to fill any gaps
in knowledge and to conduct formal health risk assessments of RF exposure once
recommended research had been completed. In addition, the UK government established an
independent expert group to review all the issues concerning health effects of mobile
telephones and siting of base stations. Cancer has been suggested as an outcome of exposure
to mobile telephones by some scientific reports. This paper reviews the status of the science
and WHO's programme to address the key issues. In addition, the main conclusions and
recommendations of the UK expert group will be summarised

Mobile Phone Affects Cerebral Blood Flow in Humans

Mobile phones create a radio-frequency electromagnetic field (EMF) around them when in use, the
effects of which on brain physiology in humans are not well known. We studied the effects of a
commercial mobile phone on regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in healthy humans using positron
emission tomography (PET) imaging. Positron emission tomography data was acquired using a double-
blind, counterbalanced study design with 12 male subjects performing a computer-controlled verbal
working memory task (letter 1-back). Explorative and objective voxel-based statistical analysis revealed
that a mobile phone in operation induces a local decrease in rCBF beneath the antenna in the inferior
temporal cortex and an increase more distantly in the prefrontal cortex. Our results provide the first
evidence, suggesting that the EMF emitted by a commercial mobile phone affects rCBF in humans. These
results are consistent with the postulation that EMF induces changes in neuronal activity.
Foreign studies

Review of trends from mobile learning

studies: A meta-analysis
Two previous literature review-based studies have provided important insights into mobile learning, but
the issue still needs to be examined from other directions such as the distribution of research purposes.
This study takes a meta-analysis approach to systematically reviewing the literature, thus providing a
more comprehensive analysis and synthesis of 164 studies from 2003 to 2010. Major findings include
that most studies of mobile learning focus on effectiveness, followed by mobile learning system design,
and surveys and experiments were used as the primary research methods. Also, mobile phones and
PDAs are currently the most widely used devices for mobile learning but these may be displaced by
emerging technologies. In addition, the most highly-cited articles are found to focus on mobile learning
system design, followed by system effectiveness. These findings may provide insights for researchers
and educators into research trends in mobile learning.

Falling asleep with Angry Birds, Facebook

and Kindle: a large scale study on mobile
application usage

While applications for mobile devices have become extremely important in the last few years, little
public information exists on mobile application usage behavior. We describe a large-scale deployment-
based research study that logged detailed application usage information from over 4,100 users of
Android-powered mobile devices. We present two types of results from analyzing this data: basic
descriptive statistics and contextual descriptive statistics. In the case of the former, we find that the
average session with an application lasts less than a minute, even though users spend almost an hour a
day using their phones. Our contextual findings include those related to time of day and location. For
instance, we show that news applications are most popular in the morning and games are at night, but
communication applications dominate through most of the day. We also find that despite the variety of
apps available, communication applications are almost always the first used upon a device's waking
from sleep. In addition, we discuss the notion of a virtual application sensor, which we used to collect
the data.