Update on mobile learning - the future of mobile communications

Getting back into mobile learning after a few months steeped in educational research.
Judy Brown who maintains mlearnopedia provides a good overview & updated presentation on mobile learning on slideshare. Over a hundred slides! but covers reasons for using mobile learning, tools, sites and examples.

I uploaded my mlearn2008 presentation on to slide share late last year and see that it has been viewed over 200 times! This from no real adverts or indication that I have put it up. I had originally put it up with the intention of comparing slideshare with other presentation tools like flowgram. Unfortunately flowgram ceased a few months ago & I did not get around to putting the links up. So the number of views caught me by surprise & reminded me of the power of the internet for sharing & networking.

While on slideshare, I decided to have a look around to see if there were other presentations to update myself on mobile learning. To start with, came across this one on phone design trends. It’s two years old & the trends are supposed to appear by next year. Some seem to be already available, especially several versions of jewel encrusted gold plated mobiles. I was really taken by a crystal mobile phone (wow) but the wristwatch phone was supremely nerdy. Other ones that caught my imagination were the robot phone (really cool) & the flexible phone (a great idea).

Also discovered MOCOM 2020 – a think tank on the future of mobile technology via their presentation on the mobile future into the year 2020. Their by-line is “you can only create what you can imagine”, so the site has a survey to find out if you agree with some of their predictions & a user friendly interface to allow you to join up as a friend of their site. The presentation is very slick & does present many plausible scenarios for the future. There are two you tube videos embedded, the first one is a call to join up with the conversation and the second summarises the think tank’s ideas. There is a good overview of mobile developments from 1906 to the present & then on to 2020. Great ideas & much food for thought. No real mention of mobile learning but the possibilities are inferred & I can see many applications if some of the scenarios eventuate (& some are highly likely).

Starting on mLearning pilot

Nick Ford & I put in a joint application to the CPIT Foundation for funds to run the mLearning pilot. Our bid has been successful, so it is now time to put our pilot plans in place.

As a forerunner, the local paper did a write up about the project. The main goals of the pilot are to test out the various parts of our mlearning project with a cohort of first year apprentice bakers. It will be a bringing together of all the things we have learnt thus far with the various trials reported on this blog.

A couple of interesting items which I will explore in the next couple of weeks before adding into the pilot as possible eportfolio repository alternatives are:-

• Comic Life (via Thomas Cochrane’s blog that points to Joao Rivera’s blog on using comic life to chronicle boat building
• Mahara, the NZ open source eportfolio site and
• Slideshare, since a few apprentices have started to use powerpoint for their year three portfolios on gateaux / torten and breads.
  

It will be exciting times ahead!