A reflection of the state of mobile learning in Asia and a conceptual framework

In Hong Kong, south of China, a predominantly Chinese speaking society, a financial capital in the world economy, a shopping paradise for mobile gadgets where we bear witness to exceptionally high penetration of mobile subscriptions and high churn of mobile phones, smartphones, 3G-enabled netbook computers and portable game devices, is also home to a relatively mature life-long learning working population and has a plethora of educational service providers catered for kids and youths, yet the notion of Mobile Learning somehow still lacks both clarity and purpose. However, there are increasing evidence that technology enhanced learning experiments which involves mobile services are jumping out of their lab and becoming pilot tests. Furthermore, we also observed an increase in the awareness of location-based, contextaware, and game-based learning theories with handheld technologies. This paper suggests that future research studies with an Asian context would be beneficial to the mobile learning community in the context of language learning, socialcultural, pedagogical implications, knowledge management, collaborative and informal learning. The paper also presents a novel conceptual framework called Heterogeneous E-Learning Portal (HELP) currently being put to trial and incubation at Hong Kong Cyberport IncuTrain Center for class booking under a mobile, open, heterogeneous, web 2.0 and collaborative environment.