John Traxler

John Traxler is Professor of Mobile Learning, probably the world’s first, and Director of the Learning Lab at the University of Wolverhampton and of the UK Co-Lab of the American ADL network.

He is a Director of the International Association for Mobile Learning, Associate Editor of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning and also of Interactive Learning Environments, and was Conference Chair of mLearn2008, the world’s biggest and oldest mobile learning research conference. John has co-written a guide to mobile learning in developing countries and is co-editor of the definitive book on mobile learning: Kukulska-Hulme, A. and Traxler, J. (2005) Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers, Routledge.

He works with the University’s nationally-funded Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching looking at innovative technologies to support diverse communities of students and with the University’s Centre for International Development and Training exploring ways of using appropriate innovative technologies to deliver education in developing countries especially sub Saharan Africa.

John has written over 10 book chapters on mobile learning, and talks and publishes regularly often on the profound consequences of universal connected mobile devices on our societies. He has guest edited special editions of three different peer-reviewed journals devoted to mobile learning. He was recently shortlisted for the Handheld Learning Conference Special Achievement Award and received Best Research Paper Award 2009 from the Association for Learning Technology. He will be keynote speaker at IADIS Mobile Learning 2010 in Oporto.

He was invited by the British Council to present at the South African national science festival, SciFest, at Rhodes University, and invited by Microsoft to the Mobile Learning Summit in Seattle and by the Canadian government to the ICTD conference in Bangalore. In 2009 he spent a two-month spell as visiting scientist at the Meraka Institute in Pretoria supporting socially useful mobile technology projects. He has worked with the Pearson Foundation on their Foundation Leadership Summits for policy-makers in four Southern African countries. He also supports and mentors research capacity building in South Asia for the IRDC SIRCA programme, specifically mobile application development for rural healthcare in Cambodia.

He is jointly responsible for national workshops on mobile learning for UK universities and has delivered similar workshops to university staff in Germany, Kenya, South Africa, Canada and India. He sits on the MoLeNET board for FE and advises UK universities on mobile learning projects.

He advises the Swiss BioVision Foundation on appropriate technologies to support Kenya farmers and continues to work with the Kenyan government implementing national support for teachers’ in-service training using mobile phones and video. He has links Avallain AG, one of Europe’s leading e-learning system developers. He was the Evaluator for the EU FP6 m-learning project. He was previously a university lecturer in computer science and software engineering interested in programming paradigms and an adult literacy tutor, organiser and writer in a voluntary community centre. He has degrees in computer science, astronomy and engineering and a research degree in numerical methods.