M-learning, or "mobile learning", now commonly abbreviated to "mLearning", has different meanings for different communities. Although related to e-learning and distance education, it is distinct in its focus on learning across contexts and learning with mobile devices. One definition of mobile learning is: Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies.

The term covers: learning with portable technologies, where the focus is on the technology (which could be in a fixed location, such as a classroom); learning across contexts, where the focus is on the mobility of the learner, interacting with portable or fixed technology; and learning in a mobile society, with a focus on how society and its institutions can accommodate and support the learning of an increasingly mobile population

Scope

1. The scope of mobile learning includes:
2. Children and students using handheld computers, PDAs or handheld voting systems in a classroom or lecture room.
3. Students using mobile devices in the classroom to enhance group collaboration among students and instructors using a Pocket PC.
4. On the job training for someone who accesses training on a mobile device "just in time" to solve a problem or gain an update.
5. Learning in museums or galleries with handheld or wearable technologies
6. Learning outdoors, for example on field trips.
7. The use of personal technology to support informal or lifelong learning, such as using handheld dictionaries and other devices for language learning.

Technical Challenges

1. Connectivity
2. Battery life
3. Interacting with small devices
4. Displaying useful content in small-screen devices
5. Social and educational challenges include:

1. How to assess learning outside the classroom
2. How to support learning across many contexts
3. Developing an appropriate theory of learning for the mobile age
4. Design of technology to support a lifetime of learning
5. Tracking of results and proper use of this information

Technologies
Most personal technologies can support mobile learning, including

1. Personal Digital Assistant, in the classroom and outdoors
2. Tablet PC UMPC mobile phone, camera phone and SmartPhone
3. Personal audio player, e.g. for listening to audio recordings of lectures
4. Handheld audio and multimedia guides, in museums and galleries

Mobile phones and the three new media trends
Mobile phones as medium have become a new cultural phenomenon in the modern society.Cell phones are no longer just phones- they are GPS tracking devices, video and cameras, wireless Internet connections, and pocket calculators. Mobile phones are the primary key related to the three new media trends 'convergence', 'globalization' and 'pluralisation'.

Convergence provides an integration of information technology and communication networks, in which mobile technology is built and a new social practice is formed in the digital environment. A range of wireless technologies and applications are being developed and adopted through the Internet and computer-based digital media, and hence the mobile telephone is invented and used for communication. Therefore, mobile phones play and important role in the process of media transformation that is still often referred to as ‘convergence’.

Media globalization has been made possible by the ongoing changes and developments in information and communications technology. Wireless technology such as the WAP mobile phone allows internet access. Companies such as Nokia using the Multimedia Message System (MMS)have recently developed various ways to deliver texts, audio clips and digital pictures via mobile phone handsets. Therefore, mobile phones have the ability to talk and walk at the same time in a ‘global village’.

Mobile phones bring a new media trend pluralisation that is; digital communications technologies produce variations in information resources across places or groups. For example, Nokia offers a ‘lifeblog’ application for its mobile phone users; it allows consumers to keep an organized multimedia diary of the items they collect with their mobile phones, and post them straight to their blog. Due to the camera phone is networked, sending pictures with email from mobile phone in the wave of the hugely popular online photosharing site  where users can post their photos online, organized by keywords or tags, for the public or just friends. Therefore, with the development of convergence and globalization, pluralisation is naturally produced by mobile phones in the hardware or software platform.