Iphone 10 years old this month - has mlearning become established in education?

This NZ article, provides a historical overview of the evolution of the smart phone and its impact of the technological landscape. In ten years, we have seen phone companies come and go. However, the continuing influence of smart phones on the world has been and continues to be far reaching. The article, as with this other one from the BBC, describes the iphone as a key transformative technology for the last decade. The smart phone has afforded access to a powerful computer to over 2 billion people. As reported in another article, peopleare enamoured by smart phones and we are emotionally attached to them as the conduits to social media.

On the teaching and learning side of things, the advent of the smart phone must surely be one of the most important contributors to mobile / mlearning initiatives. With the smart phone, ready access to the internet via WiFi, the untethering of knowledge, content and the ‘sage on the stage’ approaches to teaching and learning accelerated. Tablets have added another dimension to the ways in which smart phone technology may be leveraged. 

Many of the ‘cutting edge’ applications discussed at mlearn in 2006 – 2010 are now common place. A recent NZ project, provides salient examples of the breathe and scope of mlearning in the NZ tertiary sector. However, the potentialities of mlearning are still largely untapped. In large educational institutions, two barriers have taken time and patience to surmount. The first is the security aspect around institutional IT systems, the second the provision of adequate and robust WiFi. BYOD is one way to move through the IT security challenge but BYOD use hinges on ease of access to WiFi. Blended learning and the integration of TEL via mlearning to support active learning through inquiry, project or problem-based learning becomes normal.

Learners having access to a wide range of resources now require skills to evaluate and collate material. To be able to bricolage, one has to know what, where and how to look for information and then to critically appraise the material and incorporate into informing how to solve an existing or new problem. Learning shifts from learning content to learning how to think. Teachers, especially ones assisting learners to learn a specific occupational, need to now be able to help learners learn how to ‘become and be’. Therefore, there is an important shift in pedagogical focus, from learning how and why to learning how to extend beyond the here and now. 

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.

blogging with a phone

As a subset of evaluating web site creating websites using mobile phones to create eportfolios, I have also been keeping an eye on developments in mobile blogging. There has always been the capability via Nokia’s lifeblog or with the Nokia using a variety of other apps but several recent developments have made it even easier to blog using a variety of phones.

To start with, NZ Telecom’s recent launch of its XT network not only provides faster mobile web surfing speeds but also promotes phones that allow direct access to bebo and a poster at the local telecom store also promoted access to facebook and twitter.

Vodaphone offered and promoted access to Web 2.0 sites from the middle of last year, sites including trademe, bebo, youtube, facebook and Wikipedia.

Sue Water’s provides a good overview of how to blog using an iphone.

Coupled to the above is the ease by which it is now possible to sent a photo, video, audio file or text to social networking sites that were part of our original evaluations (vox, multiply) and to traditional blogging platforms like blogger and wordpress.

So the choices are increasing and this might have to be the way to go with mobile eportfolios if the evaluations for creating mobile websites as eportfolio sites using mobile phones becomes too difficult.

iPhone coming to NZ in July

Exciting news for m-learning enthusiasts in the local paper on the arrival of the 3G iPhone to NZ. Vodaphone will be offering these for sale on July the 11th – only about 30 sleeps away. There is no indication of the price yet but most people who are keen to get their hands on one will be hopeful that the prices will be similar to the ones in the US of A.

Thom Cochrane has been off the mark quickly with his evaluation of the iPhone. On my part, I have had a look at several ‘unofficial’ iPhones plus an iTouch and have to say that the touch screen interface is intuitive and an improvement on the one on my Treo 700wx. Roll on July when I will get my hands my own and I can try out the touch screen applications on Jane Hart’s site.

mlearn2007 reflections

Enjoyed mLearn 2007 thoroughly and am looking forward to mlearn2008.
Had some time last week to reflect on my learnings from mLearn2007. I was in the North Island, completing third year interviews with apprentices, the last lot of interviews towards my PhD. I did a fair bit of driving pass the beautiful spring green paddocks around Wellington, Wairarapa, Masterton and Hawkes Bay. Traffic was light so there was time for some serious introspection.

Some items pertinent to my own teaching context and mlearning projects were:-
Ascendance of mobile phones as the tool used for the delivery of mlearning.
However, majority of phones still only capable of voice and SMS L
Interest from developing countries on the potential of mobile phones to improve access to learning for people who would not otherwise be able to access information we now take for granted in the developed world.
Severe disadvantage of mobile phones (as compared to PDAs) is their ‘locked’ or ‘walled garden’ telecommunication company’s imposed structure.
More papers on the perceptions of students to the concept of mlearning including primary school, ‘international’ and disabled students.
Maturity of mlearning projects using PDAs – especially in the UK.
The need to relate our learning about mobile learning to actual pedagogy in schools and tertiary education. How can mobile learning change things – for the better – in particular to engage students in taking more control of their learning via access to a wider range of resources than available in ‘traditional’ classrooms.
Educators still need to ‘show the way’ as students are focused on using their phone (a very personal item) for their own social needs.
Not as many papers on location based mlearning as last year.
Still limited use of web based sites for mlearning, so our mlearning project is still pushing the envelope.
iPhones are will challenge the way in which other mobile phones are designed.


Sue Waters has archived a collation of various perspectives on mlearn2007 on a wiki, made up of various links to elluminate sessions, blogs and twitter notes. The elluminate sessions were ‘attended’ by several keen practitioners who could not physically be at the conference. The way in which technology allows us to ‘revisit’ a conference or participate without actually being physically present shows possibilities for distance education. However, face to face interaction is still not replicable as it brings up all sorts of opportunities for serendipitous discoveries.