Welcome to 2010. I feel a bit foolish writing my first 2010 blog entry when the announcement that might define mobile and ubiquitous computing this year is still a week away, but there have been enough early signs from a range of companies to make some assumptions, and speculate on what they will mean for learning that attempts to take advantage them.

The previous decade has seen computing move from being desk-based to lap and now hand-based, no doubt about it. Laptop sales overtook desktop pc sales, and mobile phone sales have long dwarfed both. In fact sales of Smartphones (or mobile phones that are also computers) will very shortly pass those of laptops to become the main way that we access and share information.

That’s the hardware story. Software wise, I think the picture is less clear as the different design and interface requirements of mobile devices is not something that most hardware makers have yet got their heads around. But there is an emerging way of controlling hardware, and by extension, interacting with information that has come to maturity in the last couple of years, and that is touch, direct contact between our natural selection devices (fingers) and the machines we are using.

Coupled with the release of multiple tablet-like touch devices (such as the several models announced at the CES events, and the expected Apple iSlate in late January), its fair to say that this kind of personalised, more natural computing could be the real hallmark of 2010. I’m excited to see what happens as it becomes possible to move back to a direct hand-eye form of control that has been lost while we used physical keyboards that made us look somewhere different to our fingers, pretty much for the first time in communication history.

So, is learning and the institutions who’s job it is to propagate it ready to embrace a touch-computing future? I’d like to think so. The presence of over 50 teachers at a day exploring the iPod touch in education yesterday – while they were still on holidays – indicates that at least in my Education Department, interest is high. What I love about the potential of simplified, touch-based interfaces I hope to see is that they open up computing to everyone. There is nothing between you and the information and you, and the smaller screen sizes are forcing companies to reduce clutter and non-logical menu’s and buttons. Sounds like the sort of improvements that can benefit students right?