Carnival of the Mobilists #193

Volker on Mobile is this week’s host of the Carnival of the Mobilists, with amongst other things – general market overviews, novel handsets, subscription services, mobile learning, how smartphones will look like, an interview with an old colleague, learnings to be drawn from the airline industry (yes, really!) and, last but not least a take on why mobile is not just another media screen.

To contribute to the Carnival, send your entries to mobilists@gmail.com.

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Mobile Learning Round-Up, Week 38

This week’s (well mostly) highlights from the World of Mobile Learning:

Mobile Learning Stuff:

Did You Know 4.0 has been online for about 10 days now. Another interesting iteration of the Did You Know videos, with Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod providing background information on their blogs. The mobile revolution is here!

Learning Is an SMS Away: Mobile Phones in Education is an interesting article about how mobile phones are being used in Africa to connect educators.

What happens when you give a class of 8 year old children an iPod touch each? which is a question they asked at a Junior School in England. Hop on over to see the video that gives you the answer.

Mobile Learning Programs/Projects:

“Campus-In-A-Pocket”:  Mobile Learning Program Provides Anytime, Anywhere Access
to Online Education Resources.

Mobile for Museums: “This site addresses those needs by proving a brief overview of what is being done in the mobile museum world and offers suggestions based on this research on how to economically provide mobile users with a positive experience with your museum.” Interesting site and I hope to see more content there soon. Mobiles and museums are a natural fit, whether the exhibits are indoors or outdoors.

And right at the buzzer I got this one from Shawn Gross, about his Project K-Nect: Students Praise Use of Social Media in Math Class. Students in Project K-Nect have been using mobile phones for math for a while now, and very succesfully. Read the news story to find out what’s in store for them next…

Mobile Events:

Here is a list of events for the month of October as listed by Mobile Active. Interestingly enough, mobile learning conferences are not mentioned…

And of course don’t forget about the upcoming Handheld Learning 2009 Conference in London on Oct. 5-7. I’ll be there to coordinate the research strand, which promises to be excellent and includes speakers from four continents!

Mobile Reports:

Hispanic Broadband Access: Making the Most of the Mobile, Connected Future is a new report published by Mobile Future. According to the announcement, the implications for education are that “Parents are able to keep in close contact with their children’s teachers regarding assignments, behavior and academic progress while on the go thanks to texting, email and mobile connectivity.” While important, I think we need to think beyond the adults having the phones. What about implications for student learning?

Mobile Technology

Here is an interesting post on Gizmodo on Microsoft’s tablet project. The pictures and video look promising, but then, this is Microsoft, so we’ll have to wait and see.

iPhones in K-12

This is my first post from a mobile device, an iPod Touch. I’m investigating possible use of iPhones in K-12. I’d be interested in hearing your ideas.

Handheld Learning 2009: Last General Update

Last update from the Handheld Learning Conference:

Dear Friend

This is the last general update about the Handheld Learning 2009 Festival and Conference, after this one it’s just registered delegates only. >>>

The event promises to be spectacular from the first day Festival to the extraordinary breadth of perspective’s presented and explored in the Conference from an incredibly diverse range of participants from the worlds of art, entertainment, design, education, electronics, industrial design, visual design and more.

A preview of the event can be read here

A copy of the programme can be downloaded here (3Mb PDF)

if you’ve registered already please forward this newsletter to interested colleagues.

The Festival on Monday 5th October is entirely FREE to attend and offers something for everybody throughout the day and evening.

The Conference programme is outstanding requiring an excellent value registration fee of £375 if completed by Friday 25th September (save £50).

Reduced price places for Wednesday only are available for those wishing to attend the Research Strand, UK Policy strands or other sessions during the day followed by Ray Kurzweil’s closing keynote.

Register for the conference here.

Conference delegates are automatically registered for the Festival but those wishing to register for the free Festival only, which includes the Handheld Learning Awards Party, can do so here.

If you’re coming with friends for the party on Monday evening you may wish to reserve a table here.

Please note that we are unable to accommodate registrations at the venue so please register before arrival.

We very much hope to see you soon for what will be a terrific event!

The Handheld Learning Team (meet us)
The Advisory Group (meet us)

brought to you by Learning Without Frontiers

Carnival of the Mobilists #192

A veteran of the Carnival of the Mobilists, C. Enrique Ortiz of About Mobility hosts #192. He reviews great entries from mobile bloggers on topics that include Opera Mini, Mobile Learning, App Stores, HD voice and Mobile music.  

To contribute to the Carnival, send your entries to mobilists@gmail.com.

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Mobile Learning Round-Up, Week 37

This week’s highlights from the world of mobile learning.

Mobile Learning Stuff:

More and more schools are dumping paper textbooks for their electronic counterparts. According to ABC, “For generations, school meant books — lots of books. But not anymore. Around the country, from high school to grad school, textbooks are getting harder to find. Technology has made the library something that can fit into the palm of your hand.” Interesting discussion as always in the comments section. The article provides some examples of schools who are ditching textbooks, but the story isn’t really that new.

Image Credit: Gizmodo

A report related to this (via Andy Black), is the DLC’s A Kindle in Every Backpack.

The most important benefit of eTextbooks is their ability to improve educational attainment. For less money than is spent on conventional textbooks, eTextbooks, over time, could deliver a regularly updated, interactive, and 21st-century education to our children. There are multiple reasons the technology offers an improved educational experience.

The report goes on to say that advantages include the ease of updating content quickly and universally (and cheaply, I might add); flexibility in choice of content by teachers without having to worry about cost; they aid integration of classroom learning; and provision of critical resources to struggling schools.

Image Credit: BBC News

From the BBC: Mobile app sees science go global

A mobile phone application will help professional and “citizen” scientists collect and analyse data from “in the field”, anywhere in the world. The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles – on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species – in a web-based database. The data is statistically analysed and plotted on maps that are instantly available to those same phones.

This story is a great example of mobile learning at its best, with user access to collected data (almost) in real time.

And here is another one, via the M-learning Is Good blog: The Fidelity of Mobile Technology Continues to Deepen, which discusses NVIDIA’s ARhrrr technology.

In the U.S., Universities Plan Course to Navigate the Mobile Learning Curve, as increasing numbers of students have smartphones. Examples cited are from Stanford, Illinois State, and Dayton. According to the article:

Developing a mobile strategy should not be the sole responsibility of the college IT department. Mobile communications plans can be driven by the admissions, student life associations, athletics, marketing and alumni departments as well, and they can all work in harmony to provide integrated and effective programs that help your school stand out among the rest.

However, when it comes to the use of mobile phones for learning, Cell-phone college classes face hurdles, as eCampus News reported the week before. Standardization of mobile phone technology is still a big issue,

Until things get a little more standardized, it’s a real big pain,” said Matt Cooper, instructional technology specialist at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J., where he developed the Mobile Learning Initiative, which lets students in 20 classes complete course work on mobile devices, even without an internet connection. “There’s too much to plan for. … [Creating online courses that fit every cell-phone interface] is a pretty high standard to strive for.”

We experienced that for ourselves during the SIGML forum in Washington DC this year, as we had to create three different versions of a set of QR codes (bottom of page) so that they would work on Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Blackberry devices.

Mobile Learning Projects:

Mobile camps in Africa are helping budding developers gain the skills and understanding they need to create useful mobile applications.

Mobile camps may be building the next generation of mobile programmers by helping to develop a new field of study in African higher education. Recent camps have produced tools for social development and provided educators with new skills.

A mobile camp or bootcamp is “a crash-course session”, usually spanning 2-3 days, during which “participants gain an insight on mobile computing technologies as well as acquire practical skills in the use of current platforms, frameworks and tools used for the development of mobile applications” notes Strathmore University. Recent camps have included competitions to spur development of mobile tools.

And as the Senegalese bootcamp website states: The bootcamp is over … but this is just a beginning…

Mobile Events:

This week’s mobile events (and announcements) include:

MobileHCI 2009, Bonn, Germany, September 15-18, 2009 (http://www.mobilehci09.org/), the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services.

Mobile Innovation Week, Toronto, Canada, September 12-16, 2009   (http://www.mobileinnovationweek.com/). MOBILEINNOVATIONWEEK in Toronto will showcase global mobile thought leaders, developers, innovators, institutions and industry professionals coming together for an exciting and engaging series of events all focused on exploring new mobile Internet frontiers, applications and business ideas.

Another upcoming event is The Mobile Application Stores, Strategy and Deployment conference, in San Diego, CA, October 8, 2009 (http://www.mobileappevent.com/). Mobile Application Stores is a partner seminar of International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment. Mobile Application Stores is the only conference to focus exclusively on the business of mobile applications and will focus on the tremendous opportunities in the mobile apps stores ecosystem. The event is designed to give a complete understanding of how to capitalize on this dynamic market. Featured speakers for the event include:
•       Dr. Jin-Sung Choi Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Head MC Global Product Planning Team, LG Electronics Korea
•       George Linardos Vice President, Product Management, Media, Nokia
•       Ilja Laurs Founder & CEO, GetJar.
•       Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer,OMTP
•       Mike Merril, CEO-Smart Phone Technologies
•       Ajit Jaokar, President-futuretext
•       Chetan Sharma, CEO, Chetan Sharma Consulting
•       Jouko Ahvenainen, Founder, Grow VC International
•       William Volk, CEO, PlayScreen
•       Sena Gbeckor-Kove, Chief Technology Officer, imKon

Mobile Technology News:

On Sept. 15, Microsoft started shipping its Zune HD, but only in the U.S. No need for Apple to be worried, methinks….

According to the ReadWrite Web blog, one of the top 5 web trends of 2009 is the mobile web and augmented reality: “What’s perhaps most encouraging however, is the entirely new class of mobile apps we’re seeing. Augmented Reality is the most obvious example.” Great post that summarizes the trends well and therefore  worth a read. And of course, the potential for the use of these tools in education is endless…

Carnival of the Mobilist #191

Welcome to Neil Barrett of Burning the Bacon with Barrett at the Carnival of the Mobilists, whose installment of the Carnival talks about “Mobile learning, Aural AR, SIM cards, and the impact of technology on our lives, … while adding a little “Canadianana” to the mix.”

To contribute to the Carnival, send your entries to mobilists@gmail.com.

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Handheld Learning 2009 Awards Voting Is Open

Great excitement as the finalists for this years Handheld Learning Awards for Innovation & Best Practice have been announced and are now online for public voting via non-premium rate SMS. This means that for those people who have free txt messages as part of their phone contract voting costs nothing, the system also accepts SMS votes from Skype and in an effort to be fair to those voting from overseas we count every vote from a non-UK origin phone as 2 votes.

You can review the finalists and voting details at:

http://bit.ly/ScAbB

Information about the awards event can be found at:

http://bit.ly/a6tog

Voting ends on Monday 28th September and the winners will be announced at the Handheld Learning Awards Party hosted by Jason Bradbury on Monday 5th October so put this date in your diary!

Please show your support and appreciation for the innovation of international practitioners and tell us who you think should take home the most prestigious awards in the field of learning, teaching and mobile computing.

The Awards party brings the 12 hour, FREE to attend, Handheld Learning Festival to a close on Monday 5th Oct before the main Handheld Learning Conference begins on the 6th Oct.

If you’re not a delegate for the conference but would like to come to the free Festival then please register at:

http://bit.ly/jWhLG

There are still full conference passes available as well as day passes for the conference on Wednesday register at:
http://bit.ly/18mx1H

Review the amazing programme – from Malcolm McLaren to Ray Kurzweil at:
http://bit.ly/oGTc1

Confirmed speakers at:
http://bit.ly/5auQI

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Mobile Learning Round-Up, Week 36

Well, this mobile learning round-up may become a regular feature here, hence the week number on the post. We’ll see… Lots of interesting stuff again this week:

Mobile Learning Stuff:

Texting? No, just trying to read chapter 6. According to the author of this New York Times article,

IN our digital age, miniaturization rules. This is a welcome thing — in most cases. Squeezing two billion transistors onto a small chip? All good. Squeezing an enormous printed textbook down to iPhone-size? Not so good. … Once cracked open, two facing pages supply about 155 square inches of real estate … The iPhone has a grand total of six square inches of display. In my opinion, no amount of ingenuity will enable textbooks to squeeze into a credit-card-size space.

Apple uses a tagline in its iPhone commercials — “There’s an app for that”— to convey the idea that its phone is adaptable to almost any purpose. But an app that makes the double-page spread in a printed textbook easily readable on the iPhone? There’s no app for that.

And yes, there is no app for that. the makers of the eTextbooks app for the iPhone are completely missing the point. A mobile device is not designed for displaying huge amounts of texts, let alone text that seems to be directly scanned from the textbook!! (take a look at the image from the NYT article and you’ll see what I mean). Just another ploy by textbook companies to make a buck, but I dont’ think this one is going to fly.

Image Credit: NYT

Mobile Learning Projects:

Image Credit: Projektschule Goldau

Schwyz, Switzerland. As a part of a 2year mobile learning pilot project, a class of fifth graders receive a free iPhone 3Gs. The kids can also use the mobile in their time away from school. The idea of the project is to help them integrate the phone into their “learning lives”

(via the mlearningblog).

I like this concept of “learning lives”, which nicely captures the affordances of mobile technologies for learning. A cursory look at the school’s blog (translated version) shows that this is a new project that aims at the following:

The children should use the device inside and outside the school as part of their personal learning and working environment and thus emancipated, and learn to deal critically with the future increasingly available information and communication technology (ICT).

Image Credit: Apple

ACU’s iPhone initiative: A year later (again via the mlearningblog), is an older post, but an interesting one nonetheless, because it reports on a conversation with the project team at ACU that to date has rolled out one of the largest iPhone projects in an educational setting. While they reported some of their earlier findings at the Mobile Learning Conference 2009 in DC, they now provide some more substantial findings (more of these to be presented in the research strand at Handheld Learning 2009 in October).

Podcasts:

Image Credit: Learning in Hand

The always prolific Tony Vincent has posted iPods Episode #18: iPod Touch Basics, a brief overview of what beginning users should know. Includes video and text transcript. Very useful…

Mobile Technology News:

Image Credit: Engadget

Of course the big event this week was Apple’s It’s Only Rock and Roll (held on 9/9/09 no less). It did not feature the release of a new iPod Touch with camera as many had speculated. Are there  some glitches with the device, will we see it soon, or ever? In anticipation of the event,  prices on various current iPods were slashed. The big news at the event was the release of a new iPod nano with video camera (see also here), pedometer, mic and speaker, as well as an FM radio (beating Microsoft to the punch?). Interesting choice, and it turns out that all the hype around a new iPod touch with camera was just hype, or was it? I’d have rather seen the touch than the nano with a camera for educational purposes, but it seems that Apple is really focusing more on the devices’ price points and maybe is looking for a way to build an iPod touch with camera at a decent cost. While cost was not a real focus of the presentation, it seemed to be implicitly present nonetheless.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft, not wanting to stay behind, is trying to revive mobile, according to BBC News. Analysts are calling this effort (Windows Mobile 6.5) “lame, lame, lame, to say the least,” said Paul Rubens of Internetnews.com”.

Image Credit: Engadget

Meanwhile, ASUS is planning a dual screen Eee reader, that is slated to become one of the cheapest e-book readers out there.

Image Credit: Gizmodo

Palm is following its Palm Pre with the Palm Pixi, a smaller version of the Pre. No wifi though and it seems to be somewhat less powerful.

So … all in all another busy week in the world of mobile and mobile learning!

Handheld Learning 2009, the Best Is Yet to Come…

Update for the HHL 2009 Conference:

With only weeks to go until our communities annual conference activities are somewhat hectic at our new trendy kinder bunker in Shoreditch , 70% of our delegate allocation for the conference has now been taken and with schools and universities now coming back on stream after the break the remaining places are sure to go.

http://www.handheldlearning2009.com

If you haven’t yet registered and didn’t benefit from the early bird scheme we have a special code for our members which is revealed if you go to the HHL site in the Speak Easy Lounge, log-in and visit this link:

http://bit.ly/escqs

The first day of the conference is FREE to attend A full 3 day pass that includes all sessions, refreshments, lunches and social receptions is £375 A one day pass for Wednesday 7th Oct which includes the research strand, UK policy strand and Ray Kurzweil keynote is £225.

Latest news about the conference including press releases (Ray Kurzweil vs Malcolm McLaren vs Ofsted) and latest newsletters can be found at:

http://bit.ly/ObLsR

Finalists for the Handheld Learning Awards have been announced at:

http://bit.ly/RUWVB

Voting via non-premium rate SMS will start at the end of this week.

We are still seeking learners age 6-16 who would like to come to London to present on the first day of the conference (FREE to attend for ALL) as part of the Learners Y Factor. More info at

http://bit.ly/17Zyl5

As always there’s lots of discussion on the forum so please get involved at:

http://bit.ly/Xv9s5

Marc Prensky asks the question “Should a 4 year old have an iPhone?. What do you think?

http://bit.ly/iXd5c

Keep visiting the site and we look forward to seeing many of you at the Conference in October!

All the best,
Graham and The Learning Without Frontiers Team (graham@learningwithoutfrontiers.com)

http://www.handheldlearning.org
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