The convergence of mobile communications and handheld computers offers the opportunity to develop technology that will assist individuals and groups to learn anytime, anywhere. We describe the theory-informed design, implementation and evaluation of a handheld learning device. It is intended to support children to capture everyday events such as images, notes and sounds, to relate them to web-based learning resources, to organise these into a visual knowledge map, and to share them with other learners and teachers. A working prototype system, for children aged 9-11, is discussed and evaluated, as an exemplar of personal mobile systems for life-long learning.

Many universities and further education colleges provide Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). In recent years a new direction has been to extend these to support Personal Development Planning (PDP) and Student Portfolio management. A major limitation of such approach is that the plans and portfolios are owned by the institution, and do not support learning across institutions or in the workplace. We describe the development of an Interactive Logbook (IL) which provides students with a suite of mobile tools for multimedia note-taking, knowledge sharing, learning management and personal development planning. The IL environment is designed to be owned by the student and offers interoperability with a wide range of existing software for learning and office work.

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