Interestingly, a great many of these solutions exist already. I recently thought a perfect application for mobile phones would be a universal star chart that could adjust itself to wherever you happened to be. Any GPS-enabled phone contains the data you need - place and time - and the screen is illuminated so you can see it at night. "I have that on my PDA", said a friend I asked. So why should it not come with all phones? Things like this would help enormously in getting our young kids interested in science and natural phenomena. What other applications already exist that could easily be offered?

In the UK CTAD in Cambridge is doing interesting things with mobile phone learning. In China there are several companies, including the BBC, exploring the area. My previous article (see above) prompted a reply from a school in Montpellier, France, called Wapeduc, which uses mobiles for education and bills itself as a “nomadic school”.