Slideshare on Open Context Model - featuring Unitec (slide13-14)

Fred Garnett's presentation on the "Open Context Model of Learning" features the use of Thomas Cochrane's (Unitec, New Zealand) research on learner-generated contexts and learner-generated content using WMDs (Wireless Mobile Devices) and Web 2.0 as examples of implementing the Pedagogy-Andragogy-Heutagogy (PAH) continuum - see slides 13-14 in the embedded presentation below.

Open Context Model of Learning & Craft of Teaching

View more presentations from London Knowledge Lab.

iPhone OS3 Features announced

Apple iPhone OS3 features: http://tinyurl.com/detdar


iPhone OS3 overview http://tinyurl.com/coydrt


Overview of updates in slide below (From GSMArena, and Engadget)

Apple Presentation http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0903lajkszg/event/index.html

http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/

Great list of new features, BUT still no video recording or Flash support!!! BOO!

IADIS 2009 Conference presentation

From Barcelona 24/02/09

Lots of questions - good discussion generated, time for coffee now!

From Barcelona 24/02/09

New Media Consortium Emerging Technologies 2009 Report

The 2009 Report identifies Mobile Devices as an emerging technology with time-to-adoption of one to two years.

■ Mobiles. Already considered as another component of the network on many campuses, mobiles continue to evolve rapidly. New interfaces, the ability to run third-party applications, and location-awareness have all come to the mobile device in the past year, making it an ever more versatile tool that can be easily adapted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity, and social networking. For many users, broadband mobile devices like the iPhone have already begun to assume many tasks that were once the exclusive province of portable computers.

Identified emerging technologies in education include (in order ofadoption timeframe)

1. Mobiles


2. Cloud Computing


3. Geo-Everything


4. The Personal Web


5. Semantic-Aware Applications


6. Smart Objects

http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc/2009-horizon-report-released

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf

Smartphones & the future of Music Sales

NZHerald article on future delivery of music – via smartphones!

Schweizer, K. (2009, January 24). Musicians turn to tech-savvy audience: Smartphones and the internet prove popular with both artisits and fans. Weekend Herald, p. C5.

"Most music will eventually be accessed over smartphones such as Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry, said Terry McBride, who manages Sarah McLachlan and Avril Lavigne."

"The smartphone is changing the music industry because of its platform and I predict most consumption of music will be through a smartphone in the future," McBride said in Cannes.

Read full article HERE:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10553302&pnum=0

Some Mobile Learning Options:

1. Eee PC 901,
2. Nokia N95 with bluetooth folding keyboard,
3. Nokia Xpressmedia 5800,
4. Nokia E90,
5. 3M MPro110 pico projector
6. Apple iPhone (not shown)
7. Palm Pre (not yet released)
8. Nokia N97 (not yet released)

You may notice an absence of windows mobile or Blackberry devices - this is by choice ;-) . I'm interested in devices that students will want to own and use, rather than 'business' focused devices.

A way forward for learning

Here's a thought-provoking post!

A way forward for learning: "

Teemu Arina has a link on his blog to an article he wrote for his company blog on ‘Horizontal technologies for learning.’ The following definitional distinction between LMS and PLE is huge. It is a key insight into why education has barely moved into the connected age and why social technologies are, as he says, ‘a way forward’:

Horizontal integration is a way forward. In the eLearning sector many vendors have created eLearning solutions primarily for educational institutions. These technologies are supposedly designed for learning but that is not true. These technologies are institution-centric and vertical by nature. The concept of Learning Management System (LMS) was wrongly named. Better fit for a name would be Teaching Management System or Institution Control System.

No student would use the current so-called learning environments during their worktime or freetime. In 2006 I was at EC-TEL where Scott Wilson asked the audience full of educational technology specialists, ‘how many of you use a LMS for your personal learning?’. Surprise. No hands.

Social technologies are different. Blogs and wikis are already being implemented by learners themselves. Call them Personal Learning Environments (PLE) if you want but the key issue here is that they are based on user-centric design.

(Via Smart Mobs.)

Blackberry Storm 9500

The Blackberry Storm 9500 touch-screen smartphone has been getting some good reviews, including from Mac users! e.g:
MacWorld review

The Storm has a couple of features that give it an edge over the iPhone in specifications,

• Cut and Paste


• Higher resolution camera: 3.2MP


• Video recording

However, it BIG limitation is the lack of WiFi!!! WiFi has become a BASIC feature of smartphones, and is critical in educational settings as WiFi provides cost-effective (FREE) access to the Internet on campus for students, whereas the 3G only Storm will cost $$$ for EVERYTHING the students do! :-(

Blackberry are still in a business users mode!

Mourning the End of the Mobile Projects

Students mourn the return of their smartphones at the end of mobile learning projects at Unitec 2008!



Mourning the N95



“This is what I am left with!


It cannot…


Take Photos


Email


Check the wind


Make videos


Be my friend


Tell me where Ennismore Rd is


Or how to get there


Take more photos


Do other internet things


Film this


Be my calendar,


Reminder,


Or memory


(I have a bad memory)


The screen on this is tiny


There is no -


Sports tracker


Bouncy ball


Keyboard


VOX


Location Tag


YouTube


Plus all the rest


I miss my N95


Everything else


Doesn’t


Cut


It”

Mobile Learning Reflections

A series of student reflections on some of the Mobile Learning Trials at Unitec 2008.

Diploma Contemporary Music - iPod/iPhones

Bachelor Product Design (Year2) N95

Bachelor Product Design (Year1) iPhones

Diploma Landscape Design - Sonyericsson P1i

Txttools

Txttools is an SMS (short message service, or text messaging) solution for organizations, including education. There are two main ways to use txttools:

1. Web interface at http://www.txttools.co.uk


2. LMS plugins for Blackboard or Moodle

Features:

• Create groups


• Integration with user profiles in Moodle or Blackboard - i.e. txttools plugin recognises groups, and mobile phone numbers in user profiles.


• Database of sent and received txt messages


• Statistics monitoring - showing sent/received status of messages for each user.


• Automated actions via administrator defined keywords


• Automatic registration of users by txting a keyword to a dedicated txttools number


• Cost confidence - cost = annual license fee, not per message.

Below is the Web Management interface for Txttools:

Moodle Txttools plugins screenshots:

DipMusic iPod/iPhone Trial Overview

I've put together a 10min overview of the Diploma of Contemporary Music iPod/iPhone Trial for 2008 - makes for fun viewing!

DipContemporaryMus Mobile Trial Overview

Student Smartphone Usage

A quick survey of what students are using their N95 smartphones for (Bachelor of Product Design, Year3, 2008)

MLearn2008 Pics

Link to Picasa slideshow of MLearn2008 pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/thomcochrane/MLearn2008#slideshow

MLearn2008

Nokia Xpressmedia 5800

The Nokia touchscreen smartphone is finally official. See a Flickr slideshow of the device here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahintampa/sets/72157607671323920/show/

Overview here: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5800_xpressmusic_hits_it_off-news-612.php

More here: http://www.nokia.co.nz/5800xpressmusic

MLearning Case Studies

The MLearning trials at Unitec this year have mostly been going really well, particularly the Bachelor of Product Design trials. Here's a few resources overviewing these trials:




MLearning Slideshow:



MLearning Overview Workshop Notes:

http://ctliwiki.unitec.ac.nz/index.php/MlearningWorkshops

BDesign student presents Vox blogging to Certificate students

Well done Noel on a great presentation on the benefits of blogging for Product Design to the Certificate students - give that man a chocolate fish ;-)

Captured using N95 & uploaded to YouTube:

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A snippet captured via Flixwagon & forwarded to YouTube:

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Media Streaming on the iPhone

While the iPhone works great with YouTube, using the YouTube application, it does not play friendly with other Flash video sites (at least without 'jailbreaking' it!).

The iPhone dosen't support Flash video - which the main browser video versions of most web - based video sites, such as www.ted.com videos are formatted as, HOWEVER, the iphone happily plays and streams .mp4 video! So finding the .mp4 video link from sites such as www.ted.com videos actually do stream nicely OTA (Over The Air) directly to the iPhone. See screenshots below ;-)

To do this:
Browse to the video site on Safari on the iPhone. Select the 'RSS' feed links on the iPhone, you can then stream OTA .mp4 video or audio directly from sites like www.ted.com. The iPhone uses an online feed reader to do the conversion for it: http://reader.mac.com, which then displays a Quicktime plugin icon, selecting this icon will then stream the audio or video directly OTA to the iPhone YAY!

Be aware that streaming media does not store it on the iPhone - if you want to watch/listen more than once, it's best to use the iTunes links on your PC to download the video/audio to iTunes on your PC, then sync the downloaded files to your iPhone for offline viewing!

The "Myth" of the cost of Mobile Web2

We had an interesting interjection in our Mobile Web2 presentation at eFest - claiming SMS is cheaper and does 90% of what we can achieve via Mobile Web2!

Sadly this miss-information is rife! Lets bury that myth right now!

1. SMS is NOT a media rich, collaborative, user content creation tool! Mobile Web2 is!

2. Costing 20c($0.2NZ) per 160 character message, it is the equivalent of the minimum 3G data, which is charged per kilobyte or part thereof.

Casual 3G data now costs $1NZ for a 10MB per day 'data cap' ($1 per MB thereafter) - soooo, for the same price of 5 x SMS messages (approx 5kb) you get 10MB of rich media using casual web2!!!
OR, to get the equivalent data in SMS messages, it would cost 10000 x $0.2 = $2000NZ. HHhmmmm - who's being more cost effective now!

New iPods and 2.1 iPhone update

iPod receives speaker and headset with microphone and voice recording application - so now you can create multimedia content with the iPod. However I'm disappointed the iPod didn't get updated with a camera as well!

There's also some cool wireless MIDI controller apps available for iPod Touch & iPhone from Silicon Studios - MIDI Controller apps.

IPhone 2.1 solves looong sync times - YAY!

also discovered some NZ developed iPod/iPhone apps by ORSOME.

Check them out at the app store.

Thom