Ambient learning

Confusing sometimes is the amount of terms used to describe merely the same phenomenon.

One of those phenomena is "ambient learning" , also called "ubiquitous learning" and sometimes described as "pervasive learning". It relies to an old idea of ambient intelligence, formulated in the late 1990s.

Pervasive learning, ambient or ubiquitous learning relies to the concept of
"always ongoing" education. It is a social process, that connects learners to
communities or devices, people and situations, so that learners can construct
relevant and meaningful learning experiences that they author themselves, in locations and at times that they find meaningful and relevant. (siobham thomas)

One of the technologies much in use is the RFID chip. This enables users to put intelligence in objects: toys, paintings in a museum, trees and almost every object. Even in human beings. Children could walk through a wood and hear the names of the trees, the way they grow, how old the trees are etc. Paintings in a museum could tell a story, either for children or adults.

One of the experimental applications is for instance the pilot in which people do not need any longer to exchange visit cards: with a simple gadget they can touch each other and exchange all the knowledge. Later they can put it in the computer. For young people it's a thrilling gadget, to be used in disco's. Just touch the object and you know each other's basic facts.

Real world and virtual world are meeting into a new synthesis. Of course we knew already recorders, dvd-players in musea etc., but this application could have a high interactive potential.
In language education, mathematics, history, geography it could play a very interesting role.
There still is little research available at this moment about the (non)sense of pervasive learning.

Ambient learning strongly supports mathetic behavior. Parts of intended
learning, normally provided by a teacher, could be communicated with the object itself.