Monday, June 21, 2010

App Stores, new hardware and mLearncon 2010

Did a catch up over the course of last week on technology in teaching and learning. First up, App stores.Popular mobile operating systems all now have an app store of some kind or other. Apple's itunes App store has over 200,000 apps for iphones and ipod touches.  Other app stores include the up and coming Android with it's market, blackberry world, Nokia's ovi stores and Palm's app catalog

There are also sites which provide assess to multiple platforms with this report featuring getjar and others including Handago recently acquired by Pocketgear and also Handmark and Appboy. For free apps,
Mobango provides a comprehensive list featuring all the popular OS. I will be keeping at eye on these and may put in a formal project to further explore how many of our students actually access and use apps and how readily CPIT caters for students' mobile usage. Also if some apps may be useful in some specific content areas and the apps availabity / integration with Moodle.

Caught up with Engadget's posts from the last two weeks and a few new hardware of interest to the education community. Firstly, an etext book called the kno which is like two ipads joined together. Innovative and a good way forward into interactive books and how to leverage possibilities for learning using ebook technology. Secondly, launch of the iphone 4 OS with video calling capabilites using 'facetime'.  will be interesting to see if anyone develops this one further to allow for conference video calling on mobile phones to be a reality. And the launch of the new Xbox360 and kinect provides educators with another challenge, to harness games technology to enhance learning.

Ingnatia from ignatiawebs was attending mlearncon 2010 organised by the elearning guild in San Diego. A foretase of mlearn 2010? Of note was the presentations by Toni Ahonen on the future of learning.

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