First article: E-learning.

My first article choice came from Mauri's course literature list: Downes, S. E-Learning 2.0.

I think this article was interesting, because I am interested in E-learning.

The article itself is a summary of author's own perception of the possibilities of the Internet and its development, and a collection of weblinks embedded into it. Links to different sources may come in handy with IMKE course (podcasting, E-learning, etc.) or my profession.
The article describes E-learning as becoming an open source for conversation and collaboration as people nowadays use blogging and podcasts rather than consuming one compressed package of online courses. They like to remix and reuse information according to their needs and interests. Students can exchange their ideas without being in the classroom and talking to the teacher.I have moved from ready-made exercises to different wikis and blogs myself, because I believe school pupils enjoy collaboration, peer support and feedback more than doing something where they don't see how they progress. The best feedback is peer support, I think.
In web 2.0 games are also a part of learning since games provide us with examples or simulation of real life, and students can easily impersonate any character and thus learn through their experience. Games may help students memorise things better.
Mobile learning or M-learning is also discussed in the article as it is another form of learning. Some teachers, like Nathan Kerr have used mobile phones wisely, thus giving great example to other colleagues. While reading the topics concerning M-learning, I started to google other M-learning articles and found Stuart Smit'hs "Mobile Learning" which I also read through. Then I found a website about M-learning, where software for developing mobile content is presented. You can download the trial versions for free. Searching further I ended up downloading a verbal synonyms application to my SonyEricsson from GetJar.com to test the efficiency of Mlearning (you can try out one level for free).
While reading the article my thought wandered off from the main topic, which leads me to coming back to the original idea of the article - the Internet has become a powerful source of different combinable and mixable information and resources where reading one type of information can lead to completely different, often useful topics.
Finally, being totally irrelevant from the topic, I started wondering why do people write things differently. I found the definition Mlearning, but I personally prefer it with a hyphen to grasp the meaning better.

Also take a look at Gert's reflection on this article.

I saw that Ilya had read the article as well. Now I have a comment on that (since I cannot post comments on Ilya's blog) - not all students really want to use a computer with their studies. This year when I had the first lesson in computer class with my French students I had an interesting situation where everybody sat around the table (where there were no computers) in the computer class. As I told them that I had prepared a computer-based lesson, they kind of moaned: "Do we have to do this?" I was astonished, and asked if they really did not want to do this. One of them replied: "Maybe if we try it out, we might begin to like it."
At the beginning of the next lesson in computer class they already sat in front of the computers. Perhaps Estonian pupils are not that used to computers in the lesson as we may think. I am sure the situation is changing as well, because computers are used already in the lowest levels of school.