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