From E-learning to financial mathematics

The mobile computing is a daily standard: mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), smart vehicles, GPS, Smartphones, Tablet PCs, all technologies that are more or less connected with the real needings of the users, providing information to the user on the move. This fact suggests to teachers and students to experiment new interaction perspectives and new teaching/learning methods. Mobile learning is considered as a basis in the future of the different forms of ITC assisted learning methods, even if the existing experimentations in the field are very few. On the other hand, there are still many points to make clear, and not only from a strictly technical point of view. Among those, the most relevant are: • Which is the right learning model for the learning process when the communication is mediated by mobile devices? • How does a model involving m-learning techniques affect the students’ learning methods? • Which are the most useful tools to evaluate the performances of the teaching/learning process if this is ICT-based? • Which type of services can be set up, with profit both for teachers and students, considering both the actual limits and the great potentialities descending from those mobile systems? • What is the impact of this new teaching method on the traditional teaching method we are used to see since the origin of human societies? This paper presents an analysis of these issues, referring to experiences in progress regarding the projecting and the realization of e-learning platforms, equipped with extensions for mobile technologies, and it also refers to a project based on the purchase of the mobile technologies to create a learning community related to Financial Mathematical issues.