Friday, August 31, 2007
Mobile Education
Mobile Education - Technical Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Technologies
1.3 Usage
1.4 Advantages
1.5 Barriers
1.6 Future (Tendencies)
Appendix
* The Dynamic Frequently Asked Questions (DFAQ) is an intelligent and dynamic anonymous collaborative knowledge sharing tool. It is an anonymous knowledge sharing environment, designed to give students access to knowledgeable peers, tutors and lecturers. Artifacts of DFAQ result in a useful diagnostic resource for students' learning difficulties hence impacting on teaching and curriculum design.
This application uses the communicative competence of SMS texting among students to address some of the educational challenges, in particular the under prepared students, diversity, and large class sizes. When a question is posted into DFAQ two processes are automatically activated. First, the question waits is a publicly visible queue for a response. The public waiting space allows peers to read the question and where possible respond. Second, an email notification is sent to a forum manager or convener or educator for his/her information. Although most questions are responded to by peers, occasionally questions may require an educator’s response particularly course administration type of questions.
The ICT application is being used to add value to student learning. The seamless integration of the SMS and the web interface coupled with communicative competencies and anonymity has had some impact on student learning. There are four ways by which learning has been impacted: firstly, exposure to other students’ questions mirrored their own understandings / misunderstandings; secondly, the anonymity created a feeling of a safe environment which empowered students to ask and respond to questions; thirdly, students were able to monitor their own growth / development through observing their own changes in the way they asked questions; fourthly, the educator received feedback on where the students learning difficulties lay and was able to quickly respond to their learning needs.
* MobilED initiative is designing learning environments that are meaningfully enhanced with mobile technologies and services.
MobilED designs scenarios and guidelines of how mobile technologies could be used for teaching, learning and empowerment of students within and outside the school context.
MobilED designs concepts, prototypes and platforms that will facilitate and support the scenarios and guidelines developed.
MobilED tests, evaluates and disseminates the scenarios, guidelines, concepts, prototypes and platforms in real contexts with real people.
MobilED aims to design and develop two products that are freely available for anyone to take in use. The expected outputs are:
MobilED KIT – a box with mobile tools, software and a guidebook that one can take in use in a classroom or youth club to carry out collaborative mobile learning projects.
MobilED SERVER – a technology platform that makes it possible to take most out of the MobilED KIT. Governments, organizations or operators willing to support use of mobile phones in collaborative learning projects may install the technology platform.
* Air-castTM Self Serve is a web interface which clients use to instantaneously create and launch a range of SMS services based upon a predefined set of business rules. Although this application has been aimed at the business sector, it certainly has lots of potential for the education market. So, how could this tool be used for m-learning? The interface is straight forward to set up and has a set of options that allow the user to develop a complete SMS portal that can, with some lateral thinking, be set up as a student survey tool, formative assessment area, student knowledge trail and lots more. It essentially works on the basis that the information the learner requires is added by the trainer to an SMS generating database via their desktop computer. This information can then be accessed through most mobile phones by way of a trigger code sent to an assigned phone number. Issues with this system are still primarily associated with the cost of the calls and who pays. Access to the web interface is charged by the company as a monthly fee.
5th Finger won the Most Effective Business Application Award 2005 for their Air-cast™ Self Serve campaign (www.mmaawards.com.au)
* Chinesepod is an online learning content management system for learning Mandarin.
“ChinesePod is a new way to learn Mandarin. Whether you’re going for a jog, preparing for a business trip to China, or just looking for a challenge, everything about ChinesePod is designed to get you communicating in Mandarin – fast.”
There are 3 key elements:
· Podcasts: With daily podcast audio lessons, we deliver professional, native speaking teachers directly to your media player, on topics suggested by our users.
· Tools: Consolidate the lesson materials with additional exercises, personalized word bank, interactive tools and much more
· Community: Complement your learning by interacting with a global community of teachers and fellow learners in our lively blogs and forums
There are seven ability levels to choose from, from Newbie to Advanced, and business lesson topics like “Initial Client Meetings”, “Getting Tough on Employees”, “Chinese Guanxi” and “Business Introductions”.
* Fit2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Fit2Go is a linear and quadratic function graphing tool and curve fitter. Students can view a phenomenon, identify variables, conduct experiments and take measurements in order to construct models to the phenomena. Fit2Go supports activities of exploration and modeling. It supports data collection by proposing a model that can appropriately describe the user's data. This tool highlights the numerical aspects of a phenomenon and together with Sketch2Go form a comprehensive view on models and modeling. The special design of Fit2Go makes it a tool for constructing conceptual understanding to mathematical facts that are usually known only as "rules of thumb". Everyone knows that a single line is defined by exactly two points. Fewer would know that three points define a single parabola. Proving it is a task that high school students can perform: either in their algebra course by solving a system of equations or in their Analytic Geometry studies implementing the geometric properties of parabola. Fit2Go that provides a wide repertoire of choices that would fit given sets or subsets of data promotes questions and conjectures thus can motivate formal solutions and proofs.
* Graph2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. The special design of Graph2Go makes it a special purpose graphing calculator, which operates for given sets of functions' expressions. Graphing calculators help to do mathematics and are instrumental in teaching and learning mathematics. It is an environment that could support conceptual understanding of functions in general and School Algebra and Real Analysis in particular. Especially, connections between graphical and symbolic representations will be enhanced. A major agenda of algebra teaching is equipping learners with tools to mathematize their perceptions. A multi-representational approach has the potential to shift the focus of solving even traditional problems, from assigning and solving an unknown data to analyzing the various processes and relations among those processes. Thus, the integration of multiple representations of function opens up opportunities for developing a wider range of solutions to traditional problems. Zooming-in to the use of the graphics calculator, researchers point on four patterns and modes of graphics calculator use: computational tool, data analysis tool, visualizing tool, and checking tool.
* Quad2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Quad2Go is a handy tool that offers ways of learning about quadrilaterals by generating examples, observing, and experimenting with examples as the basis for generalized conjectures. Explorations with Quad2Go are especially appropriate for students of 11-12 years. Teaching geometry students of this age focuses on critical attributes of quadrilaterals and on the hierarchical relations among them. Learning means identifying critical attributes (those that can be found in any example of the concept; "four sides", "two pairs of parallel sides", or "two pairs of equal opposite angles" are some of the critical attributes of a parallelogram) and non- critical attributes (e.g. "two long sides and two short sides" or "two acute angles and two obtuse angles") Learning in this sense means learning to analyze the attributes of different quads, to distinguish between critical and non-critical attributes of different quads, and also learning the hierarchy among quads. Quad2Go provides many examples of randomly constructed quads. Each example can be changed by dragging either its vertices or sides.
* Sketch2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Sketch2Go is a qualitative graphing tool. Graphs are sketched using seven icons representing constant, increasing and decreasing functions that change in constant, increasing or decreasing rate. It is a tool that encourages visual exploration of phenomena by qualitatively observing the way they change. Sketch is a diagrammatic representation that attempts to help the viewer to focus on the principles rather than on tedious details of the represented phenomenon. By phenomenon, we refer to processes outside of the mathematics (e.g. physical temporal phenomena) or to mathematical phenomena (e.g. a function with three extremes). Moving students beyond plotting and reading points, to interpreting the global meaning of graphs and the functional relationships that they describe, has been identified as a major goal for development and research for mathematics education. Technological tools such as Sketch2Go enable to bypass algebraic symbols as the sole channel into mathematical representation and motivate students to experiment with a given situation, and to analyze and reflect upon it, even when the situation is too complicated for them to approach symbolically. The visual analysis that emerges from work with such tools is different from that which arises from work with algebraic symbols or numerical tables.
* Solve2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Solve2Go supports solving equations and inequalities via conjectures based on visual thinking. Conjectures can be refuted or supported by examples from the tool and should be proved utilizing symbolic manipulations on paper. In many mathematical investigations, we encounter the need to compare two functions. Solve2Go supports comparisons of two types: Equations - when we want to know for which values of x the two functions are equal. Inequalities - when we want to know for which values of x one function is greater than the other. When the two functions involved are linear, we call the comparison a linear comparison. When at least one of the functions is not linear, we refer to a non-linear comparison. Non-linear comparisons form a wide and rich field of study.
* Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. It's an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.
Moodle for Mobiles targets Japanese mobile phones 98% of which at present support CHTML. MFM is a parallel interface to Moodle that works on mobile phones. It includes :
User login
Course navigation
Multi Language support.
Activities in a Moodle course can be mobile enabled by a teacher so that they are then available to be used on students’ mobile phones.
Quiz and Feedback modules
* Bridgeit combines existing mobile products and satellite technologies to deliver digital, multimedia materials to teachers and students who otherwise would not have access to them. In practice, teachers use mobile phones to access a library of science, math, and English videos. Once selected, videos are downloaded via satellite to a digital video recorder connected to a television in the classroom. Through Bridgeit, distance learning programs are immediately accessible to teachers and students.
The program is implemented through a unique cooperative partnership between Nokia, the International Youth Foundation, Pearson, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The importance of this cooperation extends to local program partners; Globe, Seameo-Innotech, Ayala Foundation, Chikka, PMSI.
* CEBENOT a service targeted for students and their parents to view their children’s school status, grades, exam dates etc. And is offered to education institutes by Telsim.
How does CebeNot work?
Parents or students which are member of the system would send an SMS to 0542 351 3847 and these SMSs will be forwarded to the school. After reviewing the message, the school will send the corresponding answer by the same system. All operators can use this system.
How are students added to this system?- All other operators can use the system- 0546 351 3847 service number is issued- A representative is assigned by Biotekno and at special location desks, the system is explained to students and their application is taken.- After 3 months of usage a setup fee is taken.- Recorded student information is combined with Cebenot and with the educational institute- With SMS the necessary link is established with the student. Wrong formatted messages are corrected.
Advantages of the system: - Students can receive grade, status and date reports. - The institution can directly send this information to its students. - Institutions can receive profits from card sales.- Institutions do not pay for setup or operation services
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Technologies
1.3 Usage
1.4 Advantages
1.5 Barriers
1.6 Future (Tendencies)
Appendix
* The Dynamic Frequently Asked Questions (DFAQ) is an intelligent and dynamic anonymous collaborative knowledge sharing tool. It is an anonymous knowledge sharing environment, designed to give students access to knowledgeable peers, tutors and lecturers. Artifacts of DFAQ result in a useful diagnostic resource for students' learning difficulties hence impacting on teaching and curriculum design.
This application uses the communicative competence of SMS texting among students to address some of the educational challenges, in particular the under prepared students, diversity, and large class sizes. When a question is posted into DFAQ two processes are automatically activated. First, the question waits is a publicly visible queue for a response. The public waiting space allows peers to read the question and where possible respond. Second, an email notification is sent to a forum manager or convener or educator for his/her information. Although most questions are responded to by peers, occasionally questions may require an educator’s response particularly course administration type of questions.
The ICT application is being used to add value to student learning. The seamless integration of the SMS and the web interface coupled with communicative competencies and anonymity has had some impact on student learning. There are four ways by which learning has been impacted: firstly, exposure to other students’ questions mirrored their own understandings / misunderstandings; secondly, the anonymity created a feeling of a safe environment which empowered students to ask and respond to questions; thirdly, students were able to monitor their own growth / development through observing their own changes in the way they asked questions; fourthly, the educator received feedback on where the students learning difficulties lay and was able to quickly respond to their learning needs.
* MobilED initiative is designing learning environments that are meaningfully enhanced with mobile technologies and services.
MobilED designs scenarios and guidelines of how mobile technologies could be used for teaching, learning and empowerment of students within and outside the school context.
MobilED designs concepts, prototypes and platforms that will facilitate and support the scenarios and guidelines developed.
MobilED tests, evaluates and disseminates the scenarios, guidelines, concepts, prototypes and platforms in real contexts with real people.
MobilED aims to design and develop two products that are freely available for anyone to take in use. The expected outputs are:
MobilED KIT – a box with mobile tools, software and a guidebook that one can take in use in a classroom or youth club to carry out collaborative mobile learning projects.
MobilED SERVER – a technology platform that makes it possible to take most out of the MobilED KIT. Governments, organizations or operators willing to support use of mobile phones in collaborative learning projects may install the technology platform.
* Air-castTM Self Serve is a web interface which clients use to instantaneously create and launch a range of SMS services based upon a predefined set of business rules. Although this application has been aimed at the business sector, it certainly has lots of potential for the education market. So, how could this tool be used for m-learning? The interface is straight forward to set up and has a set of options that allow the user to develop a complete SMS portal that can, with some lateral thinking, be set up as a student survey tool, formative assessment area, student knowledge trail and lots more. It essentially works on the basis that the information the learner requires is added by the trainer to an SMS generating database via their desktop computer. This information can then be accessed through most mobile phones by way of a trigger code sent to an assigned phone number. Issues with this system are still primarily associated with the cost of the calls and who pays. Access to the web interface is charged by the company as a monthly fee.
5th Finger won the Most Effective Business Application Award 2005 for their Air-cast™ Self Serve campaign (www.mmaawards.com.au)
* Chinesepod is an online learning content management system for learning Mandarin.
“ChinesePod is a new way to learn Mandarin. Whether you’re going for a jog, preparing for a business trip to China, or just looking for a challenge, everything about ChinesePod is designed to get you communicating in Mandarin – fast.”
There are 3 key elements:
· Podcasts: With daily podcast audio lessons, we deliver professional, native speaking teachers directly to your media player, on topics suggested by our users.
· Tools: Consolidate the lesson materials with additional exercises, personalized word bank, interactive tools and much more
· Community: Complement your learning by interacting with a global community of teachers and fellow learners in our lively blogs and forums
There are seven ability levels to choose from, from Newbie to Advanced, and business lesson topics like “Initial Client Meetings”, “Getting Tough on Employees”, “Chinese Guanxi” and “Business Introductions”.
* Fit2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Fit2Go is a linear and quadratic function graphing tool and curve fitter. Students can view a phenomenon, identify variables, conduct experiments and take measurements in order to construct models to the phenomena. Fit2Go supports activities of exploration and modeling. It supports data collection by proposing a model that can appropriately describe the user's data. This tool highlights the numerical aspects of a phenomenon and together with Sketch2Go form a comprehensive view on models and modeling. The special design of Fit2Go makes it a tool for constructing conceptual understanding to mathematical facts that are usually known only as "rules of thumb". Everyone knows that a single line is defined by exactly two points. Fewer would know that three points define a single parabola. Proving it is a task that high school students can perform: either in their algebra course by solving a system of equations or in their Analytic Geometry studies implementing the geometric properties of parabola. Fit2Go that provides a wide repertoire of choices that would fit given sets or subsets of data promotes questions and conjectures thus can motivate formal solutions and proofs.
* Graph2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. The special design of Graph2Go makes it a special purpose graphing calculator, which operates for given sets of functions' expressions. Graphing calculators help to do mathematics and are instrumental in teaching and learning mathematics. It is an environment that could support conceptual understanding of functions in general and School Algebra and Real Analysis in particular. Especially, connections between graphical and symbolic representations will be enhanced. A major agenda of algebra teaching is equipping learners with tools to mathematize their perceptions. A multi-representational approach has the potential to shift the focus of solving even traditional problems, from assigning and solving an unknown data to analyzing the various processes and relations among those processes. Thus, the integration of multiple representations of function opens up opportunities for developing a wider range of solutions to traditional problems. Zooming-in to the use of the graphics calculator, researchers point on four patterns and modes of graphics calculator use: computational tool, data analysis tool, visualizing tool, and checking tool.
* Quad2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Quad2Go is a handy tool that offers ways of learning about quadrilaterals by generating examples, observing, and experimenting with examples as the basis for generalized conjectures. Explorations with Quad2Go are especially appropriate for students of 11-12 years. Teaching geometry students of this age focuses on critical attributes of quadrilaterals and on the hierarchical relations among them. Learning means identifying critical attributes (those that can be found in any example of the concept; "four sides", "two pairs of parallel sides", or "two pairs of equal opposite angles" are some of the critical attributes of a parallelogram) and non- critical attributes (e.g. "two long sides and two short sides" or "two acute angles and two obtuse angles") Learning in this sense means learning to analyze the attributes of different quads, to distinguish between critical and non-critical attributes of different quads, and also learning the hierarchy among quads. Quad2Go provides many examples of randomly constructed quads. Each example can be changed by dragging either its vertices or sides.
* Sketch2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Sketch2Go is a qualitative graphing tool. Graphs are sketched using seven icons representing constant, increasing and decreasing functions that change in constant, increasing or decreasing rate. It is a tool that encourages visual exploration of phenomena by qualitatively observing the way they change. Sketch is a diagrammatic representation that attempts to help the viewer to focus on the principles rather than on tedious details of the represented phenomenon. By phenomenon, we refer to processes outside of the mathematics (e.g. physical temporal phenomena) or to mathematical phenomena (e.g. a function with three extremes). Moving students beyond plotting and reading points, to interpreting the global meaning of graphs and the functional relationships that they describe, has been identified as a major goal for development and research for mathematics education. Technological tools such as Sketch2Go enable to bypass algebraic symbols as the sole channel into mathematical representation and motivate students to experiment with a given situation, and to analyze and reflect upon it, even when the situation is too complicated for them to approach symbolically. The visual analysis that emerges from work with such tools is different from that which arises from work with algebraic symbols or numerical tables.
* Solve2Go is one of the products developed by the Math4Mobile project, which examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the cellular phone for teaching and learning mathematics. Solve2Go supports solving equations and inequalities via conjectures based on visual thinking. Conjectures can be refuted or supported by examples from the tool and should be proved utilizing symbolic manipulations on paper. In many mathematical investigations, we encounter the need to compare two functions. Solve2Go supports comparisons of two types: Equations - when we want to know for which values of x the two functions are equal. Inequalities - when we want to know for which values of x one function is greater than the other. When the two functions involved are linear, we call the comparison a linear comparison. When at least one of the functions is not linear, we refer to a non-linear comparison. Non-linear comparisons form a wide and rich field of study.
* Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. It's an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.
Moodle for Mobiles targets Japanese mobile phones 98% of which at present support CHTML. MFM is a parallel interface to Moodle that works on mobile phones. It includes :
User login
Course navigation
Multi Language support.
Activities in a Moodle course can be mobile enabled by a teacher so that they are then available to be used on students’ mobile phones.
Quiz and Feedback modules
* Bridgeit combines existing mobile products and satellite technologies to deliver digital, multimedia materials to teachers and students who otherwise would not have access to them. In practice, teachers use mobile phones to access a library of science, math, and English videos. Once selected, videos are downloaded via satellite to a digital video recorder connected to a television in the classroom. Through Bridgeit, distance learning programs are immediately accessible to teachers and students.
The program is implemented through a unique cooperative partnership between Nokia, the International Youth Foundation, Pearson, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The importance of this cooperation extends to local program partners; Globe, Seameo-Innotech, Ayala Foundation, Chikka, PMSI.
* CEBENOT a service targeted for students and their parents to view their children’s school status, grades, exam dates etc. And is offered to education institutes by Telsim.
How does CebeNot work?
Parents or students which are member of the system would send an SMS to 0542 351 3847 and these SMSs will be forwarded to the school. After reviewing the message, the school will send the corresponding answer by the same system. All operators can use this system.
How are students added to this system?- All other operators can use the system- 0546 351 3847 service number is issued- A representative is assigned by Biotekno and at special location desks, the system is explained to students and their application is taken.- After 3 months of usage a setup fee is taken.- Recorded student information is combined with Cebenot and with the educational institute- With SMS the necessary link is established with the student. Wrong formatted messages are corrected.
Advantages of the system: - Students can receive grade, status and date reports. - The institution can directly send this information to its students. - Institutions can receive profits from card sales.- Institutions do not pay for setup or operation services
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Learning for the new society by Dr. David Metcalf
I have not watched this web conference yet but it looks like it is another good resource on m-Learning:
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/shared_space.cfm?main=keynotes
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/shared_space.cfm?main=keynotes
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Learning with handheld technologies
This is a handbook from FutureLab technologies.
Introduction and context
Wolverhampton Local Authority wants to improve ICT skills across the city and believes that the personal ownership of handhelds could contribute positively to this by increasing collaborative learning and consequently raising standards (as measured in SATs scores). Additionally, the LA aims to reduce the digital divide, foster links between home and school and enable student enthusiasm to lead innovations in learning and teaching, thus helping to embed ICT within the curriculum.
Main aims of the project
The overarching aim of the Learning2Go project was to explore the pedagogical aspects of implementing handheld technologies as collaborative tools, leading to ubiquitous computing. The participant schools (both primary and secondary institutions) aimed to discover the potential of handhelds when distributed as a personal, owned resource. The learners had total ownership of the devices for use both at school, and at home. Schools had diverse aims which included: to discover the potential of the handheld as a ubiquitous tool for Year 6 pupils and to increase parental involvement with school-based learning as a result; to allow children to share and have the opportunity to use the handheld whenever they deemed it appropriate; the provision of 24/7 access to technology via handhelds to encourage student independence and motivation; to raise standards in mathematics and impact positively on attendance, punctuality and behaviour; to increase access to ICT, develop a positive attitude to learning by the students and raise SATs results; to widen access to ICT; to increase ICT in the curriculum with a view to raising standards in KS3 science SATs; to allow for collaborative learning and provide fun, thus encouraging pupils to take responsibility for their own learning.
Source: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/handbooks/05_05.htm
Introduction and context
Wolverhampton Local Authority wants to improve ICT skills across the city and believes that the personal ownership of handhelds could contribute positively to this by increasing collaborative learning and consequently raising standards (as measured in SATs scores). Additionally, the LA aims to reduce the digital divide, foster links between home and school and enable student enthusiasm to lead innovations in learning and teaching, thus helping to embed ICT within the curriculum.
Main aims of the project
The overarching aim of the Learning2Go project was to explore the pedagogical aspects of implementing handheld technologies as collaborative tools, leading to ubiquitous computing. The participant schools (both primary and secondary institutions) aimed to discover the potential of handhelds when distributed as a personal, owned resource. The learners had total ownership of the devices for use both at school, and at home. Schools had diverse aims which included: to discover the potential of the handheld as a ubiquitous tool for Year 6 pupils and to increase parental involvement with school-based learning as a result; to allow children to share and have the opportunity to use the handheld whenever they deemed it appropriate; the provision of 24/7 access to technology via handhelds to encourage student independence and motivation; to raise standards in mathematics and impact positively on attendance, punctuality and behaviour; to increase access to ICT, develop a positive attitude to learning by the students and raise SATs results; to widen access to ICT; to increase ICT in the curriculum with a view to raising standards in KS3 science SATs; to allow for collaborative learning and provide fun, thus encouraging pupils to take responsibility for their own learning.
Source: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/handbooks/05_05.htm
Saturday, January 6, 2007
yiibu.com - A mobile content creation company in UK
They have some mobile learning applications as well. It is worth spending a few minutes on this website.
Mobile content to enhance your everyday moments
During idle moments on the subway, in-between meetings, or running to soccer practice—mobile devices are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives.
They're also one of the most ubiquitous forms of personal expression and often say as much about you as your profession, the car you drive, or what you choose to do in times of leisure.
Yiibu creates small lifestyle and learning applications for those 'in-between-moments' you spend with your mobile devices.
No shoot-em-up games, stock trackers or productivity applications—just good old fashioned long-tail content for young and old.
What we offer
Call us to discuss how we can help you with:
- mobile content design and development
- mobile user interface design for games, content and mobile marketing products
- mobile content strategy and consulting
- Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 development
Want to add that special flair to your upcoming games, mobile marketing or content products?
We also have over 10 years experience in vector based illustration, game UI and character design—with a particular focus on kids' content and entertainment industry projects . Contact us to view our full design portfolio.
'Stanu San' character developed for Moket.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
A tale of two experts on m-Learning
Trend:
By Eva Kaplan-Leiserson
The term has been bandied about for years now.
Chris von Koschembahr
Chris von Koschembahr is IBM’s Worldwide Mobile Learning Executive. He was responsible for many of the company’s early e-learning successes and, more recently, created IBM’s first m-learning solutions.
Koschembahr is adamant that those who define m-learning solely as courses delivered on devices with tiny screens have a too-narrow view. In his definition, mobile learning is “the new possibilities that are available to people given the mass deployment of devices that everyone now has in their hands and the new connectivities that are coming.”
Often, those new possibilities are much simpler than what people imagine as mobile learning. They can include, for instance, simple Web lectures consisting of PowerPoint presentations and audio narration—IBM learners have “consumed” more than 1.5 million of these since 1997—or even just what IBM calls profiled notification.
With this solution, learners outline their interests and needs and then relevant information is pushed to them via text messages on their cell phones. They can receive, for example, a notice about a new course added to the curriculum they’ve been working on or a reminder that the online Webinar they’re signed up for is about to begin.
The point is, Koschembahr says, that mobile learning is easier than you think, and you can get started immediately.
For those looking for fuller-featured solutions, IBM offers them as well. But full-featured doesn’t have to mean complex. IBM coined a phrase that’s starting to gain traction in the m-learning arena: “develop once, deliver many.” In other words, don’t develop content specifically for mobile learning. Code your content in such a way that you can create it once and consume it in a variety of ways (for example, online, offline, via CD-ROM, on PocketPC, and so forth).
The power of m-learning, according to Koschembahr, is its immediacy and ability to fill learners’ dead time. For example, via IBM’s offerings, a pharmaceutical salesperson waiting at the airport can be notified that the FDA just approved a competitor’s drug and then receive a link to a Web lecture on how to sell against it.
In another example, a sales associate on the floor at an electronics store who has a few minutes of downtime can scan the barcode of a product and learn more about it. He or she can even scan several similar products and access a comparison matrix to learn about their differences.
Q+A
EKL: Obviously IBM is really putting m-learning into practice. But where do you think the view that it’s been over-hyped has come from?
CK: I think what happened, and thank goodness we fixed things, was that everyone in the marketplace was spinning out this term m-learning. And it’s cool, but people don’t buy m-learning. You can take advantage of its capabilities for a business application deployment for a sales force, field force, and so forth, but people don’t buy m-learning. It’s a capability.
We gave it almost too much focus and drew attention to it, but pretty quickly we learned to back off and weave it through our existing offerings as a differentiator for us and a competitive advantage for the customers. We found that we need to get in the middle of these discussions with an important triad—the line of business (LOB) executive, the CIO, and then the CLO—and be the catalyst.
The LOB exec is the person who is going to drive an m-learning deployment. Clearly no one would ever deploy a device just for learning. But the LOB executives certainly would because they’re trying to give a competitive advantage or be more efficient. I use the term enablement. The CLO can say, if you have connectivity out to our endpoints, think about what you can distribute in a profiled fashion.
EKL: Is there anything that differentiates content that can be delivered via m-learning and content that can’t?
CK: Oh, anyone who tells you that anything can be delivered is not telling the truth. It’s garbage in, garbage out. You’ve seen some presentations even in a boardroom where there are some flowcharts that are inappropriate even in that context. If it’s bad up on screen, it’s going to look really bad on a mobile device. Screen resolution is lagging. But, if you saw this simple Web lecture, this PowerPoint with the audio, it looks really good on a PocketPC.
You’ve got to start thinking outside of the box of these current devices and make some assumptions and let’s get on with it. [New devices are coming along all the time.] So then, yes, just about all content will be much more appropriate on these type of devices. Right now we’re in this in-between state where it’s getting very doable but not everything is deliverable.
EKL: Is the reason m-learning has been slow to come to reality because the technology just wasn’t there yet?
CK: I think too quickly people thought m-learning was learning on the little screen. They said there’s no way. Because everyone I spoke to, when I quickly said, let’s just look at the lowest common denominator of SMS, they all got it.
Secondly, I was presenting at learning conferences but not to the people who had to make the decision. It‘s the LOB guy. So it was almost like we were preaching to the wrong people. So what we’ve done differently is, while we still approach the CLO, we pretty quickly ask if there are any LOB initiatives that he needs to support, and whether we can broaden the discussion.
The last ten years have been about companies redefining themselves and engineering themselves. We called it e-business. The next wave now is to go the final mile out to the front line. So the line of business folks are deploying the next wave of ERP. We just need to get in there and say, hey, we could be enhancing what you’re already trying to do.
EKL: How long before m-learning is widespread in any incarnation?
CK: I’m going to say five years. There’s still so much device stuff. It’s not moving quite as fast as I’d like it to be. But everything’s getting smaller and more fully functional. There are still some human issues. For example [if we put PC displays in eyeglasses], do I always want to see my PC screen while I’m walking down the street? Am I going to bump into people?
There’s never going to be one device that everyone carries for the near term, so instead we say, why don’t you just face up to that and deal with how do we do the lowest common denominator, and then provide additional access to people with better devices. And just make it a stepped approach like that. That’s the only way to do it.
Clark Quinn
Clark Quinn has been involved with e-learning for more than 20 years, having designed his own major in computer-based education as an undergraduate. He has a doctorate in cognitive psychology, is executive director of the consultancy OtterSurf Labs, and co-founded the Meta-Learning Lab [www.meta-learninglab.com].
In 2000, he wrote an article for the Line Zine e-magazine, “mLearning:
Q+A
EKL: What’s your definition of m-learning?
CQ: E-learning through mobile computational devices, and a lot more. It’s beyond the traditional e-learning view, including performance support and emphasizing contextualized and minimalist approaches, and beyond.
EKL: In your opinion, what is the ideal type of content to be delivered via mobile learning?
Minimal! It can be any content, but it can’t be a lot. I don’t think m-learning is e-learning lite, however. I think it’s a different relationship. For one, it’s closer to performance support. What it can and should be is an adjunct to some initial concept presentation, but one that keeps the learning active over a long period of time with smaller bits, something we don’t do with e-learning.
Given what we know about learning, we should be working on small bits over time regardless. With a mobile solution, we could be doing that and using the events in our lives as the practice, not some artificial simulation.
EKL: Does anything need to be different from an instructional design standpoint for m-learning content?
CQ: Yes! Traditional instructional design has this all-encompassing model, and it doesn’t know how to cope with a minimalist, and a long-term, approach. M-learning is more a mentoring relationship than an instructional one. What is the right form of content to perform now but learn a little bit along a long trajectory of development? How often, and how do we do it in the context of real-life activities? These are questions that should drive a research agenda.
EKL: In 2000, you said we’re just on the cusp of achieving the potential of m-learning. Where are we now in 2005? To some people it may seem like not much progress had been made.
CQ: If we’re still on the cusp, that’s more due to the economic downturn over the past few years than a fundamental flaw in the logic. To be fair, there’s been a steady increase in the infrastructure (greater penetration of phones, increase in networks, and so forth), that makes it a more attractive and practical proposition now. I actually think we’re now past the cusp and on our way. After being on the stump for mobile learning for the last couple of years, we’re beginning to see some action: initial contracts, some experiments, and so forth.
EKL: What have been the biggest obstacles to m-learning deployment?
CQ: There are some platform issues: People seem to be held up thinking whether they should design for Pocket PC or Palm, whether to do a phone or a PDA solution, and so forth. [But] I think the barriers have been more organizational. People have not been in an experimental mode, the vision is still low in the organization, decision makers are not there yet.
EKL: What’s making m-learning more feasible today than when you wrote that article in 2000?
CQ: The obvious advance is in the devices: better screens, phones, networks, and so forth. But I think the more important advance is in various efforts towards standards, things like XML giving us content separated from formatting and allowing customization for the delivery medium, and for things like Web services and meta-tagging that allow us to more accurately address the information need.
EKL: Can you give a few examples of the best mobile learning implementations you’ve seen recently?
CQ: Actually, the ground-breaking implementations aren’t that new. Elliot Soloway’s GoKnow has been developing apps that let kids collect and share thoughts for a while now. The use of tablet computers in medicine is relatively old. A couple of years ago Knowledge Anywhere produced an application that taught mobile communications salesfolks how to use their PocketPC phones to stay in touch and demo to their customers.
Much of the new stuff is in research labs and isn’t hitting the workplace yet. Interestingly, one new idea, context-aware systems, is being led by museums, where proximity to a display triggers appropriate activities.
EKL: Do you think mobile learning is more hype or reality right now, or somewhere in between?
CQ: I think m-learning is more potential than reality now, but I don’t think it’s over-hyped. There really is incredible opportunity. The gold rush hasn’t happened yet. When it does, yes, there’ll be hype, but it’s still nascent yet.
EKL: What are your predictions for mobile learning?
CQ: First, as companies begin to see the advantages of supporting long-term learning as well as contextualized performance support, we’ll see an upward trend in custom content development for mobile learning. Second, as companies increasingly single-source content, moving from separate and redundant production to populating content models to meet a variety of needs, this content will be made available through mobile interfaces on demand. With the appropriate models of context and content, we’ll see workflow learning-like push models.
EKL: Anything else you’d like to add?
CQ: I want to raise a flag here in regards to self-directed learning. We can’t yet guarantee that we have such learners (to the contrary). So just providing access is not sufficient, we need to push support. I think we can do one more thing, and we should: help individuals learn to learn. Hence my involvement in the Meta-Learning Lab. That can be accomplished through a layer on top of our learning systems. Imagine, a learning system that not only meets your immediate needs, but develops you over time!
Published: April 2005
Source: http://mlearning-world-swicki.eurekster.com/Mobile+Learning/
Will mobile phones replace the PCs in the future?
A new survey suggests that today's youth--and minorities in particular--are using cell phones more and more as mini personal computers, sparking a revolution in ubiquitous computing. The survey could have important implications for school leaders looking to design programs that appeal to their students and younger stakeholders.
Young adults and minorities are leading a revolution in how Americans use their cell phones, according to a new survey with important implications for education.
Young adults and minorities are leading a revolution in how Americans use their cell phones, according to a new survey with important implications for education.
People ages 18 to 29 and minorities are more likely to use their cell phones as personal computers, digital music players, cameras, and more--a phenomenon that school leaders and content providers should consider when developing programs aimed at students and young staff members or parents.
"We've got everything on my phone," said Mark Madsen, a 24-year-old college student from Chattanooga, Tenn. "I use it mostly for the phone, but I also play video games and use the MP3 player. I pretty much use it all the time."
Almost two-thirds of young adults use their phones to send text messages. More than half use them to take pictures and almost half to play games. They use these features, as well as internet connections, about twice as often as cell phone users overall.
Minorities were far more likely than whites to use the phones to take pictures, send text messages, and use the internet, though the minority rates were influenced by enthusiasm among Hispanics--who tend to be a younger population, the poll found.
"We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone, and the internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the internet in the 1990s," said Howard Rheingold, an author who has taught at Stanford University and written extensively about the effects of technology.
You may continue to read the article in link below:
Source: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6228
Similar article comes from Australia:
Schools have a blunt approach to mobile phones: ban them in the classroom. But in a radical reversal, a new push has emerged for students to use them as the learning device of the new century.
I bought a cell phone recently. 
It is a Sony Ericcson 810i and it helped me to put together my MP3 player, Radio, Web Browser (very limited though) and Digital Camera all together.
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