Working with Springdoo - audio content & assessment

I have made contact with the folks at Springdoo., who are actually a company called Telemessenger Solutions Limited. As they are a Christchurch based company, I was able to organise a f2f meeting with them. Their overall platform provides the conduit for delivering voice and data by integrating the use of the telephone (both land line and mobile) with the internet. Like many other innovative companies I have had the privilege to meet up with, Telemessenger is represented by enthusiastic, helpful and go-getting people.

Besides Springdoo, they also offer another solution that is pertinent to e or mlearning. The Aristotle platform allows the telephone to be used as a medium of interaction. At the moment, Aristotle is used to provide motivational / business training to corporate customers. It is also available via the web for individuals who are keen to have a ‘virtual mentor’ help them meet personal goals. The application of Aristotle to a mlearning environment means that audio delivery of content, assessment activities and student support becomes feasible. Student preferences for time and day to be contacted on their phones can also be automated. This means that a tutor does not have to work at odd hours to call students who are working shifts that start late at night or early in the morning. Voice recording of student responses can be directed to the tutor’s email for downloading and commenting on or for follow up.

Using audio makes use of the prime function of a phone. However, there has been discussion recently on several blogs I follow about how young people use their phones. For example, 80% of young people in Ireland use the phone for everything else but talk on it! Recent posts on the Oxford University moodle discussion site by Tomi Ahonen reveals several changes in behaviour by young people that can be attributed to mobile phone or game console use. One was the slow pace of young people when they are walking on the footpath while they are checking their txt messages. The other was how his young nephews preferred the use of the standard play station console to play car racing / grand prix type games to using an actual car steering wheel configured to allow car driving games to be played.

We therefore need to be circumspect about how we make use of a phone like interface. We need to find out if the use of voice would be something that a typical young apprentice would relate to. So it looks now that we have another possibility to investigate. We need to see if the audio content / assessment push via a mobile phone will be suitable for the context I am hoping to use mlearning in.

Evaluating moblogging, plogging and vloggin applications

Our ongoing evaluation of moblogging tools continues! I have been trawling the list of Web 2.0 applications by Bob Stumpel et.al which is found on Sacred Cow Dung blog.

There are thousands of sites on the list, so I concentrated on looking at sites that mentioned ‘mobile’ and found these in various categories like blogging 2.0, communication 2.0, community 2.0, images 2.0, multimedia 2.0, test2speech 2.0, voice2mail and voicemail 2.0. I checked out sites that allowed plogging, vlogging and audio messages to be posted to email.

Even though some of the sites had a ‘mobile’ description next to them, they tended to be more desk bound PC capable. Examples of good PC based applications include sharpcast (a plogging site), Waxmail (voice emails can be send as MP3 files using Outlook), Orb (allows voice emails to be posted via email or skype, also supposed to work mobile phone to skype but I did not try this out). I also found Photobucket, a PC based application but there were excellent online tutorials on how to use it.

I then googled “mobile to voicemail”, “mobile picture sharing” and “mobile phone picture sharing” to see try to uncover as many sites as possible.

Many of the mobile sites uncovered by checking the sacred cow dung site and googling had constraints that made them unsuitable for use in our mportfolio trial. Constraints included:-

• only being able to use the site with certain telecommunications providers,
  rabble (sharing photos on mobile phones) & spinvox (converts voicemail to text) were examples of this.
• the service being available only in certain countries, for instance, spikemobile mblogging is any available in Australia.
• the software only supported certain types of phones Nokia’s excellent lifeblog facility and webshots falls into this category
• some of the sites also required the use of macromedia flash or similar to run the application, springdoo is a good example.
• A few sites had costs attached to their use, splashdata supports many phone configurations but costs US$29.95 to access.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of searching for and testing moblogging sites, one promising site was left.This one is presently usable from New Zealand using my Treo 650 for access.

xanco provides a mobile photo archiving and sharing service. This is a European site. Set up was very straight forward and the site displays well on my Treo. It is also easy to use and photos are emailed directly to the site from your phone.

The search continue. Using a mobile phone to collect evidence will be a project that will take some time to sort throug. Along the way, I am collecting good data on the factors that make mobile phone based moblogging and plogging sites easy to interface and work with.

Limitations of Web 2.0 applications in setting up eportfolios

I have had several weeks to explore various web 2.0 applications. So far, the ones I have looked at have severe limitations with regards to moving beyond a ‘scrap book’ level for the compilation of eportfolios.

All of the sites assist with the storage of photos / videos and a limited amount of text. However, they are more suited for use as archives from which the photos can be drawn from to form a bigger more complex product. Blogs, webpages, WIKIs and eportfolios are all likely candidates to use the Web 2.0 sites like flickr to store photos and other multimedia materia. When you need to use the photos in your blog etc. you tap in to your store of photos.

Although some of the sites are actually build to be accessed and worked on using mobiles, none of them are particularly user friendly. Most of the sites do not work very intuitively either so that a novice using a site has to fumble around for quite a while before working out what to do. Some of the sites that are not specifically set up for use via mobile phone have too much information on their front page. This then leads to problems with downloading the page and then scrolling through lots of text and hyperlinks to try to find how to log on into your own storage area.

So Web 2.0 applications that are simple photo / video storage sites are not suitable as standalone applications for setting out eportfolios. So it looks like I will have to adapt my plans. I will probably still use one of the web 2.0 applications as a repository to archive photos. It is relatively easy to post a photo on to a site like flickr from a mobile phone. Once it is there, I will need to work out how to ‘add value’ to the image so that the collection of images ‘tell a story’ of how competency is acquired.

As text is cumbersome to input using a phone, I will need to look into how we could collect audio files (say of methods for making products) and use predictive text or menus to enter recipes.

Evaluating some moblogging sites

I have started using my Treo 650 to evaluate various moblogging platforms. These include boltfolio, busythumbs, kaywa, lifeblog (Nokia phones only)and winksite. There is quite a comprehensive list of photoblogs and moblogs along with a good introduction on what they are capable of on livingroom.org

I am unable to test the lifeblog site as I do not have a Nokia phone. However, I will keep this site on the list so that an apprentice with a Nokia phone could try it out.

So far I have found that boltfolio & other PC based photo / video archiving applications like fotolog and phlog take a long time to download on to a mobile phone. The pages also do not display very well & there is some difficulty with accessing important buttons / links.

Kaywa has a charge of 99 Swiss francs annual fee to use. Beyond an average apprentice’s budget. So I am down to, busythumbs, buzznet and winksite. I have also decided to see if I can find an apprentice with a mobile phone that is supported by Shozu to make use of flickr.

winksite stands out with its fast page downloads and clarity of navigation. It is a site built for mobile phone access. However, I am finding it tricky to post on to the page I have set up but am working on it. The other three are more straight-forward as the photo I need to post on the site just needs to be MMS / emailed to the site’s email address.

Next week, I intend to assit apprentices sign in to a page that they will be assigned. I am setting aside an hour for the task. During the week, I hope that we will have time to have a play with the sites using each apprentice’s mobile phone. At the end of the exercise, they should have access to the site and have set up a page that they will be able to post their photos to.

Just being able to upload photos into an archive is very much a basic level eportfolio. I need to find out how much text we can embed within each photo and see how feasible it is to put in the text using a mobile phone. I am also keen to explore the concept of attaching an audio file with the photo. This is a better way to input descriptors into an eportfolio using a mobile phone. So I will need to work on finding out how to do this & find some sites that will allow this to be done.

Getting to know my Treo 650

Part of the research funding for the mportfolio trials has been used to purchase a Treo 650 & to pay for the monthly Telecom fees to make use of the phone. So some thoughts on how the conversion from Treo 180 to Treo 650 has gone, along with my learning experiences as I familiarise myself with the new Treo.

The Treo 650 arrived two weeks ago & I have been busy setting it up. So far so good but I haven’t been able to get the Palm desktop to start up on my PC. Apart from that, everything transferred well from my Treo 180 into the Treo 650. I emailed the Palm support centre & they emailed back promptly with some suggestions. I went through the very long list of instructions (quite clearly set out) & things improved, I could now hotsync. The Palm desktop however still refused to open, so I emailed Palm support and they very promptly emailed back another list of instructions. I am impressed with Palm support, mainly for their prompt replies and their clear instructions.

Meanwhile, I am accessing the various parts of the Palm desktop via clicking directly on the .exe files from my C:/ programs folder. Seems to work with installing ebooks and manual hotsync. The web browsing capability is working so I have started checking bloglines. The Versamail (email) is also up and running. I have also put in a 2G SD card & am storing photos & music on it. Realplayer came along with the Treo & this works well although some of the music on my CDs had to be converted before I could transfer the music onto the Treo (a time consuming process). I also bought a audio plug converter from Dick Smith for $2.50 so that I could fit my existing stereo ear plugs into the smaller audio plug on the Treo. Music quality is OK & I will be working on transferring a few podcasts from my MP3 player on to the Treo.

The backlit colour screen on the Treo 650 is just wonderful after the drab black & white screen on my faithful Treo 180. Navigation around the various applications, using the keyboard and installing applications are all familiar tasks. I am weaning myself away from using the stylus and trying to do as much as possible using the directional keys and the keyboard. One handed key entry is a bit difficult as I have small hands and I am more used to holding the Treo in my left hand & using my right hand to key in text. However, I am getting to grips with it & using my left hand to do most inputting.

I have also tried out the camera and video (eats up memory). Picture quality is quite good but I have not printed out any pictures yet, just displayed on my PC. Next week, I will be working out how to moblog with various Web 2.0 applications. It’s the foundation of my research evaluation so I am looking forward to putting in a couple of days of learning by doing.

Trialling eportfolio compilation using mobile phones

I have been putting together this year’s research proposal & it’s just been submitted to the faculty research committee for their approval. The objective of the research project is to look into using moblogs or ‘enhanced’ WIKIs that are accessible using mobile phones. Apprentices will be asked to connect with these web based applications to collect, collate and organise photos and text that will form the base of a portfolio for the purposes of completing work based skills.

The main focus will be to evaluate how user friendly the apprentices find each type of software. As the majority of apprentices will not have access to personal computers, it will be important to find out how much of the eportfolio compilation can take place using just the mobile phone to take photos, add text descriptors, send the photos and accompanying text to the website, collate and organise the photos and share these with their peers.

As a tutor, I would like to find out how much information can be gathered using the mobile phone and whether the evidential material will be sufficient for me to make a decision about an apprentice’s competency. I am also interested in the underlying process that will take place as apprentices work through the requirements of collecting evidence, archiving and collating their work. In my experience, a lot of thought often goes into compiling portfolios and it would be good to see if this thought process is reflected in the composition of the eportfolios that apprentices will be working on. I am also interested in finding out whether the process of using a particular application with a mobile phone would constrain or enhance the portfolio experience for apprentices.

From the CPIT point of view, I will need to find out the advantages and disadvantages of various web based software. Then, when we built a customised platform for student eportfolios, we will have a better idea of what works or does not work. Using mobile phones as the main interface between users & their portfolios will be an added challenge to setting up a customised eportfolio platform.

Future of mLearning (a mashup)

I have been trying to keep up with the onslaught of articles, blogs and podcasts about mLearning and eLearning. The more I read, the more I gravitate towards the view that mLearning will become mainstream. Mobile learning brings together many traits that make us human. We are social animals, we learn much from interacting with others and we learn best when our learning is situated (as when we are trying to solve a problem and need to work out how to go about it). Mobile phones with web access provide the references, contacts and networking for these processes to take place.

In an interview with Judy Breck reported on mtrends, the many possibilities for providing more equal access to educational opportunities for women in the under -developed world was discussed. The interview tracked some very good examples of how mobile phones have allowed people in underdeveloped countries to bridge the digital divide. Mobile phones have provided the opportunity to make contact with the wider world and to have access to knowledge bases via the web.

Web 2.0 applications open the door to mobile users who do not have access to computers, servers and networks. With a web browsing capable phone, anyone with a mobile phone is able to gain access to their own web space from almost anywhere in the world. People are therefore able to access information when they need it from wherever there is mobile access. They are no longer disadvantaged by lack of access to libraries, learning in a bricks and mortar based institution and computer networks.

As you can see at the comprehensive list of Web 2.0 applications by Bob Stumpel et.al via Sacred Cow Dung blog., there are hundreds of applications that are now accessible with an internet capable computer. Not all are accessible via mobile phones yet and some applications might not be suitable on a mobile phone. What I learn from this is that there is a lot of work being done out there and we are only at the beginning of development in this area. Due to the nature of how Web 2.0 has evolved, the development of new applications has been user led. Therefore the possibilities for education are going to be really significant!

Derek Wenmoth’s chart on online environments via Leigh Blackall’s blog, shows the progression into social learning & connectivism from the learning models of behaviourism and constructivism. The convenience, ubiquity and overall social application that a mobile phone allows, makes it a prime candidate for building some of the means by which social learning and connectivism can take place. mLearning becoming a platform through which learners, their mentors, the learning content and community of practice can interact, develop, network, synthesise, reflect and do the things that good learning should be about.

This article by Dion Hinchcliffe via Alexander Hayes’ blog provides us with a glimpse of what is taking place in Web 2.0 application development. Mash ups, composite web applications that are partially constructed from the services and content from other web sites are growing at a phenomenal rate. A fully online web based software environment is not too far from being available anytime, anywhere. The technology is already available, time is required for the capabilities to be realised and tapped into. All of these developments make for interesting times for those of us who are exploring the educational use of Web 2.0 applications.

UMPCs and their contribution to mLearning

I followed with interest the hype around the launch of Origami on various websites & blogs including Endgadget & Palmaddict.

Two weeks ago, pictures of the actual Ultra mobile personal computers (UMPCs) became available along with more details about their capabilities. A good article on the models available can be found at I4U news
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I have mixed thoughts about how useful UMPCs will be for mobile learning in my context. For business professionals, I think that UMPCs will open up a whole new area for exploring professional development using UMPCs. This is especially the case for business people who are on the go as part of their work and who tend not to be office based. The bigger screen size and multi-media playback capabilities supported by access to the web increases the content dissemination aspect of mLearning. However, there is more to mLearning than just access to content.
In my context, I think that the following will be the barriers to adoption of UMPCs for mLearning.

• Cost of the device will be prohibitive to the average apprentice. Unless I can find a generous hardware distributor who is willing to part with a class set of UMPCs (around 20 will be a good number). Asus, Founders and Samsung, I hope you are reading this blog!
• The UMPC will have to be especially robust to stand up to the conditions the average apprentice will put on the machine. A mobile phone would live in the user’s pocket, but the UMPC is too large to fit into a pocket & will have to lie on a flat surface somewhere while the apprentice is working. Opportunities for covering the device with flour or for liquids to be spilt on to it will be high. Dropping the devise on to a hard concrete floor will not do it any good either.
• It will mean learning how to use a new device. I have always been taken by Helen Barrett’s catch phase of using familiar tools to learn unfamiliar tasks and using familiar task to learn how to use unfamiliar tools.

I can see the advantages that moving on to a UMPC would bring:-

• Larger screen size than on post PDAs & mobile phones
• A Windows based operating system
• Mobility but need to check on the battery power
• Multimedia content
• Has WiFi & Bluetooth
• PDA, digital still / video camera, iPod rolled into one machine

Current elearning packages will run & we can develop more interactive learning packages to run on UMPCs which are either web accessed or on CD ROMs or on memory cards. In the next few years, UMPCs will become more mainstream and they will provide a good platform for a whole host of mLearning applications. For the moment, they offer us a glimpse into the future when ubiquitous, converged devices will become the norm for the mass market.

Using sitemeter, tagging and culling bloglines

I installed sitemeter on to this blog at the end of October last year. It’s a free service and a weekly email is posted to my email to remind me to check up on this blog’s visitor traffic. Apart from the initial excitement of seeing the number of visitors increase steadily (now over 200!), I have learned the following from using site meter.

Sitemeter does a cool job of counting the visitors to your site. You can also:-

• display your site visitors by location / country of origin (listed or as dots on a world map),
• the page on your blog they enter by,
• amount of time and number of pages the visitor reads and
• how your visitor found out about your blog (referrals - search engines, aggregators).

I have found the last application a good learning exercise on the use of tagging. Although the bulk of the visitors to my blog enter via search engines, many enter via tags put up by blog readers on aggregators like del.ico.us and jot.com. Following the links back to the source often brings up interesting related sites, blogs etc. that I can then add on to my own aggregators.

This month, I have had to do a vicious selection exercise on bloglines to trim down the number of blogs I follow as some of them accumulate into the 100s of articles in just a couple of days. The large volume really means that I end up skim reading the majority of the articles. I am therefore not doing much justice to the writers of the blogs & also probably missing important bits that I should be taking note of.

I am now down to several really good reflective blogs, some of my favourites are blogs by archichoke (who are you?), Barbara Ganley, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Leigh Blackall and Jeremy Heibert.. I have also kept semi commercial blogs like Palm Addicts (which does a good summary of many of the other commercial blogs like Endgadget and some of the Treo blogs like Treonauts), Techcrunch and texually.org. I have also taken to checking on other subscribers to the blogs I follow on bloglines to see what blogs others follow & this has helped me consolidate my own list of blogs to keep reading.

This all leads towards a distillation of information that is pertinent to what I need to find out now. However, I still trawl the web, googling or blog hunting whenever I have a few minutes to see what is out there. A surprising amount of information is being generated and I always find something interesting, relevant, thought provoking, new or applicable to my teaching context.

Video Ipods & ideas for Mlearning content dissemination

Last week, I travelled up to Wellington with my daughter to settle her into a university hostel. Young Joanna is embarking on a four year degree in design. I will miss her because we have a good mother / daughter relationship. But another reason I will miss her will be because she is the source of much of my learning as a digital immigrant. Both my children have been avid users of digital technology. Jonathan my son, is our in-house IT expert. One of the reasons may have been that they were both introduced to computers as toddlers. So, apart from a succession of computers from the Commodore VIC 20 onwards, we have lived with a procession of game consoles / game boys and then a progression of mobile phones and ipods.

As a going away present, we provided Jo with sufficient money to upgrade her 4G Ipod to a video Ipod. During the inter-islander ferry sailing from Picton to Wellington, I had the opportunity to have a play around with the video Ipod. She only had one sample video on as videos take up lots of memory. The rest of the Ipod was filled with hundreds of photos of friends, a few of home , several dozen photos of our dog, Arthur and thousands of songs.

What struck me was the clarity of the photos & the absorption of watching the video (with earphones attached for sound) on the small Ipod screen. Sound quality was also sufficient to block off the conversational noise of the other passengers sitting next to us. The 60G memory on the Ipod is currently unavailable on any current mobile / smart phone on the market, but smart phones like the Treo 650 have SD card add ons. So in the not too distant future, mlearning content could be disseminated not only as podcasts but also as vodcasts which are downloaded on to SD cards. Vodcasts could also be stored on mini disc, like the ones that play on portable play stations (PSPs). We can then post vodcast on SD cards or mini discs with content to be covered. Our students insert these into their mobile phones to play them when they need to access the information. Note that the prime function of PSPs is for playing games. However, they are now a good example of a convergent piece of hardware as they also have WIFI access to the internet, can be used to store and display photos and able to also store and play music.

My ideas for dealing with the dissemination of content to mobile phones is starting to firm up. There are many viable options, many of which are not quite possible on mobile phones as yet. However, I think that the vodcasting option should be attainable in the next 2 – 3 years. 25 years ago, I bought my first computer – the VIC 20 (5 kB RAM but only 3.5 available to user & 16 kB ROM). This year, I am about to purchase a Treo 650 (23MB non volatile memory & it comes with a standard 128 MB SD flash card – but I will probably upgrade to 1GB). What will the next 25 years bring?

Web 2.0 applications for educators on pbwiki

Over the summer break, I had a play with using pbwiki. Learning by doing is what I do best so I transferred a draft of a document I started putting together late last year. The document lists the many Web 2.0 applications that are turning up on Techcrunch and other blogs that I follow. I have sorted the applications into categories like blogging tools, collaboration & knowledge sharing, multimedia audio, visual and collation, mobile applications including MoSoSos, Wikis etc. Although the site is still ‘in the process of being constructed’ it now easier for me to follow what all these applications, tools, platforms are for and how they may be usefully applied by educators towards improving learning opportunities for their students. Another pbwiki site provides a good explanation of the applications & theories behind social software.

pbwiki has shown up on several blogs written by techie educators and it seems to the wiki that is especially recommended for use by primary school level students. So I applied for a password and started up a wiki on Web 2.0 applications for educators. The set up process took all of 2 minutes. Learning how to use the wiki took me a few tries but once I worked out how to get text to be underlined, bold, boxed and hyperlinks to display, I was away. This took about half an hour relying only on the instructions provided by pbwiki. Over the last couple of months or so, I have copied & pasted my original document on to the wiki. So if you would like to help maintain the wiki, just email me & I will email you the password providing you with editing rights.

At the moment, pbwiki does not have a mobile option but I can see a similar platform being build up for eportfolios to be delivered to a repository. We will need the following:-

• a WYSIWYG text interface,
• a simple way to upload pictures and
• perhaps a set template for where things should go.
• a mechanism for signalling that an update has been made by the student and then emailed to the tutor will also be helpful.
• be mobile phone friendly to use
• ability to not only archive but re-collate / organise content

Many of the content / knowledge sharing and WIKI tools that are listed in Web 2.0 applications for educators are possible candidates. I will need to work out a way to evaluate these tools with apprentices. Apprentices will need to upload photos & input text into their eportfolio using their phones. I can then evaluate the process with them to see how they easy or user friendly the software was to make use of. From my point of view, I will need to look at how reliable and valid the evidence collected in the eportfolio is towards completing the required unit standard.

I will need to think this through & then present a research proposal to the powers that be to see if CPIT will agree to the evaluations taking place. If anyone out there knows of a free application that will do what I have just described in the paragraph above and has worked with and evaluated it’s potential, please let me know.

New Year Resolutions - plans for 2006

Its back into the fray with classes to prepare for, new students to orientate and former students to be cajoled into taking on the next elearning course on their list. I have had a good summer break. There has been time to catch up on friends and family, sort through, read, catalogue and reflect on literature collected over the year and to get much of the methodology chapter for my thesis organised and drafted. I also fitted in several good tramps that have helped me re-create myself mentally, spiritually and physically.

Well, what will this year bring? The National Certificates for Baking should be registered at NZQA early this year. A re-write / total reorganisation of our full time Certificate in Baking course will need to be done to align the programme to the new National Certificates. Apprentice block courses will now become much more focused on consolidating workplace practice and theory of baking knowledge. Assessments that used to be carried out in the workplace will now have to be carried out during block courses. No extra time has been put aside to allow all of the extra assessments to be done. I have put together a checklist of how we could go about assessing workplace based learnt skills. Much of the evidence gathering for these workplace based skills will now be done via mobile phone contact. eTXT will be used to support apprentices between block courses to cover:-
Underlying knowledge unit standards
Formative assessments
Evidence gathering for workplace based units

I am keen to trial the above and to explore how Web 2.0 applications can be used to bring more razzmatazz into the process. Apprentices who are happy to chug along with mainly paper based evidence collection and collation can go ahead and do it that way. However, I will encourage the more technically inclined apprentices to experiment. How this will wash with the moderators will remain to be seen, but there needs to be some rewards for apprentice who are prepared to blaze the trail for others. I am keen to set up a space, either on our current Blackboard based LMS, or on any one of the more easy to use collaborative project / enhanced Wiki tools to help apprentices build their eportfolios. There also is a need to see how the technology can be accessed just using mobile phones.

In all, looks like another interesting and challenging year to look forward to. At the end of this year, I will track progress to see how many of the plans I have put into this blog eventuate. I am excited about the possibilities and the potential of mobile learning. This year, its time to find out how far I can push the envelope!

Summer Break

I am looking forward to the summer break. In New Zealand, this goes from just before Christmas until the middle of January. Many Kiwis leave the cities to spent time at the beach or by the lake in their baches / cribs. Apart from the usual festive celebrations with family and friends and a massive catch up with reading etc. towards my studies, I traditionally go on several tramps (hikes, backpacking / bushwalking) with a group of friends. All the trips are into the Southern Alps, tramping for 3 to 7 days involving some climbing up to passes or saddles, camping by mountain streams and hopefully good views of mountain tarns, snow clad mountains and alpine flower filled valleys.

Tramping is a good way for me to reflect on various aspects of my learning over the course of the year. I find I return to work & studies with renewed vigour after particularly challenging but rewarding trips into the NZ mountains. I suppose it’s because I have been able to leave a lot of extraneous thoughts behind & the long walking days provide me with an opportunity to revive, renew and nurture the intuitive side of my brain. This poor area of my brain is often hammered over the course of the year by too many doubts cast by bureaucratic structures and the demands of maintaining academic integrity. However, out in the big outdoors, all the edifices put up by institutions and administrators seem to become minuscule compared to the majesty of the mountains and the challenges presented by track conditions, river crossings and the changeable NZ weather. My physical & mental self has to give of it’s all to get to the next summit / saddle/ col and then on to the next camping spot. My back brain is librated to do it’s thing! I have taken to taking along a piece of paper & a cut down pencil (I am a minimalist tramper – nothing that weighs more than a gram & is not useful is carried in my pack) to record flashes of inspiration that seem to cascade through my brain as I work my way up another hill.
Will be back blogging by the end of January. Thank you to the readers of my blog & a good Chrismas & a happy new year to all.

eLearning 2.0?

As a follow up on my blog last week on Web 2.0, I have been reading several articles about eLearning 2.0. eLearning 1.0 being the much more structured, institutionally organised version of current forms of eLearning compared to a more ‘free form’ view of how learning can take place in the schools and workplaces of the future with eLearning 2.0..

Several writers steer clear of using the term eLearning 2.0 as elearning is evolving rapidly with the influx of Web 2.0 innovations. The overall message is clear for educators. Opportunities to take learning to the learners, at their time, venue and convenience are now possible using a myriad of Web 2.0 applications. The emphasis in learning (especially for adult learners) is to changing to provide opportunities for learners to connect & to build their own content. Our task as educators is to work out:-

• what fits into our particular learning context,
• what teaching / learning philosophy we are using to help learners learn
• the level of expertise our learners have with new technology,
• the type of learning that we would like to foster with our learners
• the depth with which our learners are willing to delve into the complexities of working with emergent technology tools
• the most ubiquitous delivery interface (ie desktop computer, laptop or tablet with WIFI, PDA, mobile phone) that is appropriate to our learner profile

As educators, our responsibility also lies in ensuring that technology is used as a tool to enhance learning for our learners. We need to:-

• keep up with the play,
• evaluate the possibilities of new applications with regards to their uses in teaching or support of learning both within and outside of our subject context
• be prepared to put time into experimenting and trialling new applications before we unleash them on to our learners
• be willing to think outside the square
• ask hard questions of our institutions about their preparedness to take on new ways of interacting with students for administrative and record keeping processes

Other questions revolve around our philosophies on the appropriateness of introducing the use of technology into our teaching. Although technology is often viewed as a tool, the overall pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives will need to be analysed. Questions include:-

• Is technology also changing the way in which we interrelate with our peers, colleagues, students, family etc? My answer is YES but how is it impacting on individuals. What is the degree of change? Who are the change agents?
• How is this push by technology to always be connected changing the way in which work, social networking, education are being viewed?
• For example, is microlearning a valid construct that may become mainstream in corporate and workplace learning settings?

A good summary of the implications of Web 2.0 technology on education provides examples of how educators could make use of currently available Web 2.0 software. However the article does caution that there is a vast plethora of software out there that may become overwhelming. There is also encouragement for educators to try out the software to find out the possibilities in education. Another article by David Baird discusses the promises Web 2.0 bring for social networking. Examples of how flickr can be used in the curriculum are provided. So lots to think explore, digest, think through and perhaps apply into my teaching for the next year.

The impact of Web 2.0 on education

Over the year, I have been following with interest, the development of Web 2.0. A good summary is found in a paper written by Tim O’Reilly. Web 2.0 emphasises the use of the web as a platform for ‘social software’ with the users of the software generating the content. Blogs and WIKIs are the most common examples of the application of Web 2.0 for educators.

The prospects that web 2.0 offer education have also been discussed on the blogs of George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Jay Cross. Essentially, Web 2.0 web based software has the potential to change learning from educators transmitting and students absorbing of knowledge to being able to both teacher and student being able to connect with, evaluate, re-engineer, innovate and apply knowledge.

Web 2.0 is a continually evolving platform. I found Steven Brook’s edugadget via the edublogger’s frappr site. Steven is one of 4 Kiwi edubloggers who are registered on frappr. Frappr itself is a good example of a Web 2.0 software application as it allows many people with a similar interest to post their contacts so that they can then make connections with each other. The edublogger frappr site came through Steven Harlow’s blog which I follow via bloglines. The whole process of how my learning about Web 2.0 has progressed is another example of how the social networking aspects of Web 2.0 work.

Steven’s edugaget had a link to a site he had set up on Ning to check out how many Web 2.0 pieces of software any reader of his blog would be familiar with. This really opened up a whole new area of exploration for me! To keep up with the ever increasing number of software applications that are being launched as web 2.0 applications, I now follow techcrunch. Not all of the items of software launched will survive. However, users are the ones who are driving the way in which Web 2.0 works, so applications that meet specific user needs and are user friendly to use are the ones that are becoming more main stream.

The exciting thing for me is that many of the ways in which mobile technology is evolving is also in synch with what is developing with Web 2.0. Software that allows the people to find each other like friendster, blog, share photos via flirkr, play, download and create podcast on odeo and collaborate on writing webpages like Writely are also being made available via mobile phones. At some stage in the development of mobile technology & Web 2.0, one hopes that there will be the opportunity for educators trying to build platforms for mobile phone based portfolio collation to tap into available software to get the task done. An integrated package would be the ideal but trialling with software that is free to use and accessible via the web is a good way to work out the logistical challenges.

eTXT trial results

Well, I have had an exciting couple of weeks. Each morning, I used eTXT™ to post out questions to participants in the trial. I would check about 11am each day to see how many responses to the questions posted in the morning have been received. Participation rates were good. 10 of the 19 participants continued to put in answers for most of the questions and 2 other participants texted in intermittently.

In summary, in week one, I texted 2 food safety questions a day to participants along with a short text message explaining what to look for in the question type.. I trialled multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank, sorting and matching questions types. In week two, I texted out questions on how the participants perceived the food safety question from week 1. Questions included what question type the participants preferred; how each question type displayed on the mobile phone screen; which questions were easiest to read and which were easiest to respond to plus how many questions a day would be manageable in a workplace situation.

The main findings from the trial was that participants preferred questions that were easy to read and easy to respond to. Participants were prepared to view questions that required scrolling on their mobile phone screens if the answers to the questions were in turn easy to input. Multiple choice questions were favoured most, followed by sorting and matching question types. Although short answer and fill in the blank questions displayed well on mobile phone screens, participants found it difficult to compose text messages that would fit into the 160 character limit to fully answer these questions. Participants also had a preference for no more that four questions a day to be delivered to their mobile phones.

Undertaking the eTXT™ trial was a very good experience. Although eTXT™ was very easy to use, the type of questions, the number of questions that can be posted out on each day and the user experiences in responding to the various question types was very enlightening. Much work needs to be done to ensure that questions are written so that they are easy to understand, display well on mobile phone screens and are simple to respond to and mark.

Trialling formative question types has provided important information on how to best use eTXT ™ to support the mlearning at CPIT. Text based mobile phone communications supported with synchronous voice interaction with distance students are solid platforms to begin with. Future developments to extent the uses of mlearning with work-placed based learners can now be spring boarded for CPIT from projects next year to offer either food safety or bakery unit standards.

eTXT trial week 1

Week one of the etxt trial has progressed well. I am especially encouraged by the prompt replies I am getting from my apprentice participants. Last week, I texted all the apprentices who had volunteered to help with the trial. This group of apprentices came to CPIT on a second year block course back in August. I introduced the concept of the mlearning trial to the class of 16 apprentices while they were at CPIT. All in, a 5 minute session. 10 of the apprentices filled in a form volunteering to be part of the trial. Of the 10 I texted last week, 9 replied, with 8 agreeing and 1 declining to take part. All replied within the space of 2 hours of the text message being sent out to them.

During week 1 of the trial, at least 5 of the apprentices replied to food safety questions being sent out to them. I had already posted several messages to them to say that it was not compulsory for them to answer the food safety questions. So the response has been very heartening.

Text messages work better than email messages as apprentices are connected to the phone all the time. They check their phones for messages at every opportunity and I have noticed that smokers tend to check phone messages while they are on a smoking break. Several years ago, an apprentice told me that the only way he could get a break at work was to become a smoker. Otherwise, the bakers at his bakery worked from 2am to noon without a break! I think that the realities of the workplace, especially in a trade like baking, mean that being provided with the opportunity to take snack sized bites at completing work towards their unit standards works well. After a 10 to 12 hour day of hard, physical and often hot work that also demands maximum input from their cognitive senses, bakers are often too tired to make the effort to put in more hours in front of a computer to do work necessary to completing their qualification. Providing some incentive and motivation by way of sneaking in some learning moments using mlearning will hopefully pave the way for more reflective learning to take place when the time does come for the apprentice to ‘hit the books’. Therefore, I see mlearning as a good way of starting apprentices on an on going cycle of working towards their qualifications. In my context, mlearning should be used as a support tool, not be the primary way in which content is delivered to apprentices.

Keeping up with how mobile technology is progressing

I have been lurking on the Oxford University moodle discussion site on next generation mobile applications. The site facilitators include Tomi Ahonen, Ajit Joakar and Peter Holland. Tomi is well known for his work on forecasting future applications for mobile technology. Ajit has written a book called the Open Garden which discusses how to build commercial applications on the mobile internet and how innovation can be fostered within the mobile internet.

So far, the people who have introduced themselves on the discussion site are working mainly in the ITor telecommunications industry in mainly technical and marketing positions. So it has been an interesting perspective for me to have a look at the commercial aspirations of various individuals and companies..

The discussions range from the mundane to ones that really provide good information into the present applications of mobile phones. In particular, there have been several posts that have discussed the ramifications of present applications, using what we can do now to launch pad more innovative ideas and applications.

One of the most important things I am learning by checking on the discussions since the forum started at the end of August has been how quickly a community has built up. The other thing I have picked up is the positive energy and enthusiasm evident in various posts. The technology that allows so many people who have a common interest to come together to share their thoughts and ideas is really good to experience.

How can I replicate this for my apprentices? I would like to see that the community of apprentices that is formed becomes a support group that helps apprentices work through workplace assessment issues, evidence and portfolio gathering challenges and other topics that apprentices would like to discuss with each other. As it is, many apprentices are isolated in their workplaces where often they are at the bottom of the workplace hierarchy. Their struggles, which might seem to be extremely difficult for each individual, can often be more easily surmounted with the support of their peers.

Block courses that apprentices attend once a year could be use as the seeding points for a mobile community of apprentice bakers to start the process. The technology is literally in their hands as all of them have a mobile phone. They only need a platform for their discussion forum to take place. However, writing emails / moblogs are not something that the majority of apprentices would relate to. Perhaps we could start a discussion forum using audio /podcasting formats. Would it work? How could the discussions be threaded? How are we going to archive & then display the discussions on a mobile phone? Again, more questions than answers.

Starting on eTXT but still looking out for alternatives

Well, I now have access to eTXT. My research proposal for trialing mlearning formative questions should be approved by the beginning of November. Meanwhile, I am having a play with eTXT. Its easy to use although I have to use the eTXT web as the Novell based Groupwise email platform is not supported by eTXT.

Cost are NZ$99 to set up the system. After that, it’s a NZ$10 a month charge and a charge for each SMS posted.

So far, I have transferred various contacts etc into my address book. I have also drafted formative questions on food safety and the evaluation questions for the trial on Word. Copy and paste works well so when the time comes, there is very little time required to mass txt all the research trial participants.

I am happy with how easy eTXT is to use. However, the limitation on 160 characters and the use of text only have placed constrains to my plans to use mlearning in a more creative way. I am following with interest Auckland University of Technology’s (AUT) Studytxt initiative. Peter Mellow, a 2004 flexible learning leader, has set up revision questions on anatomy for his students. Students need to pay between 30 to 50 NZ cents to download the questions. Questions are text based as with eTXT.

The University of Applied Sciences in Austria, in association with Nokia, have been working on an interesting mobile learning engine (MLE). The MLE allows multimedia images to be downloaded to student mobile phones. MLE itself can be downloaded from the site. There is also a copy of the paper in English presented at the 2004 Multimedia Applications in Education Conference. Learning objects for MLE are written in XML. This allows for the creation of interactive questions. Questions written for dissemination on mobile phones can also be viewed on a computer. I plan to have a more in depth look into MLE as it provides greater synchrony with my visions of mlearning.

Writing content for mLearning 2

Following on from my last blog, I have been working on constructing formative questions to be trialled on etxt. There are distinct limitations to the size (160 characters) and overall format (text only). However, working within these, it is still possible to provide a range of question types. These include multiple choice, short answer, “cloze test” / fill in the blanks, sorting and matching question types.

During the trial, I will probably send out 2 questions a day over a working week. A total of 10 questions. After that, it will be a case of asking participants

• which question type they preferred.
• how many questions they would be able to respond to during their working day.
• would having all the questions sent out on the same day be manageable?
• how each question type displayed on their mobile phone.
• which question type was the most difficult or cumbersome to read.
• which question type was the most difficult or time consuming to put in an answer to.

I also did some further exploration into the methods for disseminating comic strips to mobile phones. Only 3G capable phones receive the comic strips due to the amount of data that has to be transmitted. Specialised software is required to convert conventional pictures into the comic strip form suitable for transfer via cell phones. There are some good examples on uclickmobile of what is possible with current technology. Clicking on the examples at the bottom of the uclick mobile website brings up good examples of their daily comic mobile cast. Short snippets of content for learning are ideal resources for conversion into a graphical / comics presentation style. Who wants to read dense screens of text on food safety when a simple comic could convey they same message? The comic strip format would be suitable for short, discreet learning outcomes or be used as adjuncts to larger learning units.

A start may be made by using a slide show concept which is contains a small amount of text and a simple diagram to extend on the short text description that is provided. The slide show could also be supported by an audio file as most G3 phones now have the ability to also be used as MP3 players. The slide show could then be supported by a short 2 to 3 minute podcast.

Writing content for mlearning

I have been exploring guidelines for putting content on to mobile phones. It’s all part of my last course towards completing the Graduate Cert. in Applied Elearning. This last course requires a project to be completed that is relevant to each student which uses some form of elearning technology. I am working on a mlearning project using mobile phones to deliver formative assessments to students. Therefore, one of the important parts of the course is to work out how best to display multiple choice and short answer questions to students.

As a start, I intend to use short txt messages. There are limitations here on the number of characters (not more than 120) and small screen size of mobile phones that only have a txt messaging function. I am keen to push the envelope to see how this technology can be improved. Using flashcard type displays will be an option.

Moving beyond just using SMS txting, I am attracted to the concept of using more visual displays. These do not necessarily have to be colourful displays done in flashlite but simple scrolled comic strips. The Japanese have a lucrative market in manga comics distributed on cell phones as reported by all about mobile life. There is also a link from mobile life to test if manga is displayable on your mobile...

I have also found several good articles on how to set up content on to mobile phones
This web page has an especially succinct guide on developing content for mobile phones. Another good resource has been one on how to make small devices look good with other articles via the main page of an opera group on development of mobile content.

Displaying content on mobile phones

Blendededu com recommended this juicystudio site for it’s clear guidelines on how to set up a web page / web site. I would highly recommend the site to all educators preparing sites that require on screen reading. The original objective of the juicystudio site was to prepare a site that would be suitable for viewing by the cognitively impaired. However, the guidelines provided are very sound and relevant to many other users.

Only some of the guidelines set out in the article above are pertinent to displaying text on to cell phone screens. I think that the guidelines on structure are especially important as navigating through text or websites displayed on a cell phone screen needs some practice. Having clear cut navigational guidelines helps to keep the scrolling on a cell phone screen down to a minimum.

After mulling through the above article, I did a google search to find out if there would be any similar guidelines written about how text or webpages should be laid out for easy access and small screen readability. Several PDA / book reader type software came up. I have been using palmreader on my Treo180 for sometime now. Before that, I used cspotrun. Both are serviceable, straight forward to download and use readers for ebooks. I found that they both provided clear displays, it was easy to navigate from one page to the next. They both had usable functions for moving between pages / chapters etc.

eBooks will be a challenge to replicate on the smaller screens of most cell phones. Looking at screen after screen full of text on a small screen does not appeal to most users. I then found this site from mobilemagazine.com that explains how using ‘rapid serial visual presentation’ – RSVP, could help display text on a small screen much more efficiently. RSVP allows each word to be ‘flash carded’ on to a cell phone screen one after the other. Software that allows RSVP to be used is downloadable on to a cell phone from buddybuzz.com. Buddybuzz is the work of B. J. Fogg from Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab. The buddybuzz website is also a really fine example of a clearly set out and visually attractive website.

I will need to try this out to see how applicable this is to mlearning. I can see that it will make a big difference with regards to display and readability. However, will the reader be able to retain a long sentence, or the stem and distractors of a multiple choice question to actually make a response at the end of the reading? We will need to test it out on our students to find out. We might still have to display the whole paragraph / multiple choice question after the same content has been displayed using RSVP. The students can then read the content / question first using RSVP and still have a reference to look at when a response is required to the content / question.

I will be interested in finding out if anyone has used RSVP for mlearning applications as at the moment, RSVP provided by buddybuzz is linked to several newsfeeds and blogs. I am not sure if all content for RSVP has to be set out in a specific way. I have emailed the folk at buddybuzz to find out and look forward to their reply.

Possibilities with mlearning tools

I have been keeping an eye on the Mlearnopedia site. The site is well worth visiting as a good introduction to mlearning. The site for developers is a particularly good place to find out about the technicalities of putting material together that is suitable for mlearning. There are good links to various companies like Go-test-go, Macromedia , Hotlava and Devdirect that provide platforms for the development or delivery of mlearning material.

I registered and had a play with winksite’s free mobile website development. The process of setting up a site that is accessible via a web enabled phone, PDA or PC is very straight forward. Most of the sites that have been set up are text based. The sites come up on a pop up window on my PC in a mobile phone / PDA window display. Clicking on some of the ‘full article’ links tends to bring up a standard website. I have not (as yet) tested this on a web enabled mobile phone to see how these sites actually load up onto the phone.

A pretty nifty tool that is user friendly and has loads of potential for use. Winksite also offers single click access via mobile devises to mobile chats, blogging, syndicated feeds, a simple process to share field notes, meeting agendas, etc. However, for use with mobile phones, web browsing capabilities need to be available. I can see that sites like Winksite will increase as more people start using their mobile phones and PDAs for simple text communications like email and blogging. Many of the articles I now read on PalmAddicts and Treonauts have been composed on WAP capable PDAs or smartphones and posted directly on to the websites or blogs.

The use of this form of communication opens up many opportunities for educators. In particular, the ability for groups to work together to gather, collate, reflect on and present their learning in a form that is readily accessible and synchronous. At the moment, I have a group of second year apprentices on their block course. These students come from a variety of cities in New Zealand More than half the class of 14 have WAP capable cellphones and almost all have pix capable phones. They take photos of their products and then show these photos to each other on their phones. Maintaining this sharing of pictures and information is now possible when the students return to their home towns. Portfolio collection and collation can now become a peer supported exercise. Our goal is to provide the platform for it to take place and then to provide the forum for the portfolio to be show cased (and assessed).

Mobile phones as cognitive tools

An article by David Jonassen titled Technology as Cognitive Tools: Learners as Designers provided me with lots of ideas to think through. The paper presents the view point that the application of technologies (like using computers for teaching and learning) as instructional tools should be reconfigured. Technology, the hardware and software to create teaching / learning sessions, should instead be thought of as ‘cognitive learning tools’. Technology should be given to the learners, for them to use as tools for knowledge construction. Instead, technology is now mainly used by teachers, instructional designers etc as a media for disseminating content.

As quoted from the paper above, “cognitive tools are both mental and computational devises that help to support, guide and extend the thinking processes of users.” Jonassen’s argument is that we should be using the capabilities of computers in particular to enhance learning opportunities for students. Instead of just using computers to provide content, students should be using computers to create their own content.

George Siemen’s latest paper titled Connectivism:Learning as Network Creation also goes down a similar path. This paper is an extension on his previous work on the concept of ‘connectivism’ as an updated adjunct to theories of constructivist learning. The ability to form networks is part of how learners construct meaning for themselves. These networks are formed not only within the learner, but are now also more likely to be formed externally by the learner to various sources of information, expert blogs, wikis, creative commons resources / websites etc. The learner is also able to contribute more easily to the knowledge formation of others by posting their material on blogs, wikis, websites etc.

Both of the above articles focus on the use of computers that are based in an office or home. The wider use of mobile phones extends the implications of the above articles into a mass market. Whether or not mobile phone uses realise it or not, they are all contributing towards changing the way in which the mobile phone is being used along with opening up opportunities for connectivism. We in education need to be aware of these implications. As the mobile phone changes from being ‘just a communication device’ for voice, text & pictures, we need to think about ways to use the mobile phone as a ‘cognitive tool’ and how this use would impact on connectivism for learners. I intend to mull over these concepts, so more of this in the near future!

Games, education & mlearning

A blog by Greg Costikyan via the mobile-weblog brought into focus several important things that I needed to think through. I have always had an interest in the use of games in education. I was familiar with the work of Marc Prensky on the use of games for learning, well before attending his informative session and workshop at last year’s efest. Living with two teenages also means that I have been continually exposed to the evolution of PC based games, game consoles and multi-user game platforms.

Greg’s various presentations and writings are an excellent resource for researchers into the field of game design. Of especial interest to educators, is a link to Chris Crawford’s seminal book on game design. Although written in 1982, the precepts of game design outlined in his book still hold true and many of the ideas and concepts he puts forward have great relevance to how educators could improve in their engagement of learners.

Greg’s most recent work has been in the development of mobile games. The main gist of his blog is about how mobile phones are (as yet) not designed for playing games on. We could say the same for education, mobile phones are firstly a mobile communication devise. All the other add-ons that current mobile phones are sold with, are basically accessories to the phone. What game designers and educators are trying to do, is to use the mobile phone as a tool for their own purposes. We are therefore trying to fit in the restrictions of mobile phones, rather than thinking about how mobile phones could be configured to help promote socially constructive learning /gaming.

The other thing Greg brought up was the multiple platforms (operating systems) that have multiplied with the number of brands and models of mobile phones. Google brought up thousands of sites to download mobile games. I did a quick check of a couple like games loft and my phone games. All of them had specific phone models you clicked on to access the games that would be downloadable onto that specific phone. It does not bode well for anyone thinking about putting together interactive learning games for use on mobile phones.

Cogitive apprenticeships & mLearning

The gist of my paper presented at the NCVER conf. last month was how mlearning could be an opportunity to use the principles of teaching referred to as cognitive apprenticeships (CA). My interest in CA started at least 10 years ago during my studies toward my BEd. I found that my teaching methods aligned well with the teaching methods that were described / attributed to CA. I then made a conscious effort to plan my teaching sessions based on CA principles and to put into practice CA teaching methods. To date, I have found this to be a very worthwhile exercise. I find that I connect well with my students in face to face classes using CA and based the development of my online teaching content on CA as well.

mLearning does provide a rich resource for using CA with distance learners. Here is an excerpt from my paper where that conveys some of the possibilities for CA with mlearners.

Dabbagh & Bannan-Ritland (2005) in chapter 5 of their book Online learning: Concepts, Strategies, and applications provide guidelines on how to use cognitive apprenticeship models in on-line learning, and I am going to reiterate these with an emphasis on the guidelines that are especially pertinent to mLearning application.

• Promote mentoring and coaching:- building a mentoring and coaching relationship between tutor and apprentice learner is improved with the use of synchronous communication via the mobile phone.
• Support modelling and explain expert performance:- these are again much easier to do synchronously over the phone then via asynchronous text based emails. The text based email may form a base from which more modelling and explaining can take place, but apprentices respond better to verbal instructions. Mobile phone technology also provides capabilities for pictures and short text to be transmitted synchronously during phone based support sessions. These are useful techniques for supplementing voice only communications.
• Focus on mastery within the context of the knowledge domain:- competency at practical tasks and hints / tips for conducting simple ‘experiments’ can be conveyed via mobile phone using the phone’s camera or video function. These save time in not having to prepare long text or verbal explanations on what to do or how to complete practical tasks.
• Support increasing complexity:- Text based content provided to learners provide initial anchors from which further scaffolds may be constructed to expand understanding and application of new knowledge and skills. Examples that help scaffold the apprentice from one activity to the next, are often better explained via pictures and voice coaching than through lengthy emails.
• Encourage collaborative learning:- contact with peers becomes more informal and immediate when SMS and peer to peer networks are used. On the current elearning courses, apprentices have resisted using text based discussion boards despite concerted efforts to encourage posting.
• Support articulation of understanding and reflection on performance:- Using mLearning tools to build up an eportfolio is one way to assist learners in reflecting on their skill acquisition and provides them with the opportunity to show case their work.
• Promote enculturation of students into authentic practice through activity and social interaction:- mLearning provides flexible learning options for apprentices in their workplaces. mLearning tools can be used to enhance workplace learning by helping to built supportive relationships between tutor, apprentice, workplace trainer and employer. A phone call is many times more personal and immediate than a form letter.

More learning about mlearning delivery

My blog explorations and contacts with colleagues in Australia have yielded information on mlearning projects that is relevant to what I am trying to also achieve in New Zealand.

Attendance of two recent conferences have also provided me with much food for thought. At the CTA show & share seminar, held at the University of Canterbury on June the 24th, several presenters presented interesting applications that had relevance to m-learning. One of the most important insights I gained, was the use of voice recording capabilities and mp3 sound files. As I am so much a visual learner, I had been mulling over how to distribute our current text based content over mobile phones. Well, we could use text to voice software to transfer the text into audio format and distribute content as text or sound files.

The NCVER conference (5th - 8th July) went well in Wondonga. I made contact with several people working in the flexible delivery area. Margot McNeill of the New South Wales Dept. of Education and Training provided me with several contacts of Voc. Ed. Teachers working with mlearning delivery. She also pointed me to the work of Marcus Raggus in horticulture. Which let me to the EDNA mlearning site. This site was also introduced to me by Caryl Oliver of William Angliss TAFE. The EDNA site had an interesting discussion on how to work through one of the inherent disadvantages of using mobile phones for mlearning. The small screens on most mobile phones often make it difficult to show images. Well, how about using the mobile phone as a projector?

So two important mlearning challenges – distribution of text based content and small screens on mobile phones, now have alternatives that can be further explored.

What I will be up to in Australia next week.

Next week, I am presenting a paper at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) Australia conference. The NCVER research conferences have been part of my professional development for the pass 4 years. The conferences have provided me with a good opportunity to touch base with what Australian researchers in vocational education have been working on. I have also been able to fit in visits to TAFEs that teach similar subjects to my own and also try to work in a side trip to touch base with my supervisor at Griffith.

This year’s conference is to be held at Wodonga TAFE. From New Zealand, I travel to Melbourne and then take a v-line train to Wodonga. On the way back, I will spent a few days in Melbourne to call in on some corporate customers and also to visit William Angliss TAFE where I have arranged to meet up with Caryl Oliver. Caryl was chosen to be an Australian flexible learning leader in 2004. Her main topic of interest has been new and emerging technologies and its applications to vocational learners in the hospitality and tourism areas. So I hope to be able to learn about some of her experiences with the use of mobile learning in a blended learning environment.

My paper is titled:- mLearning:- Opportunities for introducing cognitive apprenticeships into trade based apprenticeship training and is basically based on some of the reflections that have been collated on this blog. I will put a link in to the paper once it appears on the NCVER website.

Keeping up with the play

A couple of months using the facilities on PubSub to keep an eye out for material on mLearning has provided many interesting sites and blogs to follow. Using bloglines has been a godsend in helping to collate all the various blogs I now follow. I have now managed to get into the routine of checking bloglines a couple of times a day and to filter the information into some sort of organised fashion into the Word file I keep for assorted information. When I find the time to retrieve and read the information, the gems are then recorded on to my card index and transferred on to Endnotes. It is about the only way I can find to archive all the information I collect on the various topics I have an interest in. Magpie should have been my online nic but that was taken by someone else already.

When I started this blog, I was conscious of the fact that mobile phone technology was moving along at a fast pace. Now, I can see that it is starting to gain a real momentum and that there is an explosion of ideas, improvements, capabilities and applications. Not all of these ideas may make it into the main stream but many of the learning ideas put forward in the paper by Marc Prensky are already achievable with current phones and telecommunications providers.

I have found the following sites worth following for glimpses into the world of mobile phone development.

• Engadgets provides a good start for any technology watcher. I have however tended to concentrate on the Engadgets Handheld area as this is where the mLearning action is. This is a good site to check out the hardware that is coming up and what people are doing with their handhelds.
• Textually.org provides an insight into the mobile phone world and is especially useful for keeping up with what is happening with text messaging applications.
• Mobile weblog is a great site that chronicles developments in the mobile technology world. Although it maintains a mobile marketing focus, many of the articles describe developments that also have uses and implications for us in education.
• I love my now ancient Treo 180 (I have had it for just on 2 years!), the Treo 650 is on my current wish list. The Treonauts blog and the Treo Addicts site provide up to date articles on how to get the best out of the Treo. Information on Treo developments, software and accessories are also provided along with the latest goss on what is happening at Palm.

If readers of this blog come across useful sites for information relevant to mLearning, please drop me a line.

Authoring systems for mlearning

My search of authoring tools specific to the needs of mlearning using mobile phones came up with very little. In a report prepared by Ericsson, detailing many of the initiatives of 2001, the majority of the software used to prepare material for delivery on mobile phones tended to be written ‘in-house’ as customised software packages for use with specific projects and specific phone types. In my last post, studystack recommended looking into the use of J2ME as a development platform for cell phone applications. A good recommendation that I will pass on to the techies at CPIT.

The majority of the ‘off the shelf’ authoring systems available for mlearning cater to the PDA market. Hot Java is one example that has filled a niche in the market by providing solutions for corporate trainers using mobile technology to meet their training needs. More established authoring tool providers like Trivantis have a version of their popular Lectora software available for developers of mlearning on PDAs. One example of an off the shelf programme is Go Test Go Inc .which is targeted specifically at the ‘test’ taking market, allowing tests to be downloaded and completed on cell phones. Hyperfactory’s project with L’Oreal provides some scope for further development and will need to be further explored.

There is a movement towards putting together authoring software for distributing learning material on to mobile phones. The move by macromedia to develop Flash Lite for mobile phones is one important step forward. Flash is only one part of the requirement for mlearning authoring software. Cameras on cell phones are also starting to be catered to, with Flickr offering download services for mobile phone cameras that allow photos to then be copy & pasted into blogs, web pages etc. and a more cell phone / pda camera friendly package on splashblog.

The ‘testing’ software discussed above can only take mlearning a short way towards my mlearning vision. The capabilities with various software offering a way to archive and work with visual material collected using cell phone cameras is also a start into how a mportfolio could be collated. Therefore, the hunt for a comprehensive mlearning management package continues.

If any readers of this blog are aware of or come across potentially useful mlearning authoring software, please drop me a line.

Should we issue a phone?

Back to blogging after a short 'break' and a full on teaching schedule in the first two weeks of the second term. One of the conundrums posed by going into mlearning is whether a phone should be issued to students who will be enrolled on the mcourse.

The interim report from the European m-learning project suggests that participants in the projects were issued with the devices. Although many of the participants were unemployed, homeless and living an itinerant lifestyle, very few of the phones issued were misplaced or damaged.

The advantages of standardising the mlearning delivery tool include:-

• Common OS for all mlearners on the same course
• The ability to standardise instructions for the use of the phone to complete various learning related tasks
• Only one model to deal with from the technical support point of view
• Easier to source one model and have it sponsored by one phone supplier / telecommunications provider.
• The need to configure existing LMS to work with one type of phone.
• Providing all learners with similar capabilities so that all learners can start on a level playing field.
• Being able to choose the phone that will fit the types of learning activities that the learner profile directs the learning design towards.

However, issuing a specific smart phone for the use of mlearning might be viewed negatively by students. To start with, a substantial number of students will already have a phone, therefore, issuing a phone specifically for the use of mlearning means that the mlearning phone could be seen to be the ‘work’ phone. A number of students I have spoken to about the concept of mlearning are also very reluctant to use their existing phone for mlearning as well. They see their own phone as being a personal item that is reserved for non-work activities.

If we do decide to issue a phone the other decision that has to be made is what sort of phone will be issued? For the purposes of the pilot course, a 2G phone capable of SMS will be about all that is required. There is a wide range on the market and these can be purchased at very reasonable prices. However, my thinking is that we would probably run the pilot using the student’s existing phones. The pilot course will only be using very simple SMS capabilities and issuing a phone that is perhaps inferior in capabilities to the phones that some students already own, will be a step backwards.

However, to move the whole mLearning project forward at CPIT would eventually require us to explore the issues that will be brought about by tapping into the capabilities and possibilities of 3G phones and ‘smart phones’ like the Treo 650

SWT analysis of learning gap

Justifying the choice of the topic to be used for the mlearning pilot is the next step in the process of producing an elearning solution for an identified learning gap. This gives me the chance to look into the pros and cons and any other glitches that will come up in developing a mlearning solution for the learning objective.

The proposed mlearning project to be piloted will offer the following:-

• A support system for the completion of a workplace unit standard
• Content will be distributed in the form of a workbook
• Templates (hard copy not electronic) will be provided for the gathering of on job evidence
  This evidence can take the form of photos, recipes, job sheets, rosters, verification sheets from supervisors etc
• Fortnightly contact will be made with the apprentice to work out where they are at with the collection of evidence towards proving their growing competency in the skill required
• Once a term (4 times a year) contact with the apprentice’s employer to assist them in understanding how competency standards work and to report on their apprentice’s progress
• Formative assessments (multiple choice) will be distributed fortnightly to ensure the underlying knowledge requirements of the unit are being met
• Summative assessments (theory and practical) will be completed on block course

The above is based on an instructional philosophy that situated learning in the workplace will work if it is supported by appropriate support systems. The principles of cognitive apprenticeships will be used during fortnightly contact with the apprentice to nudge them into better networking and consolidation of theory to practice. Social constructivism is encouraged so that the workplace takes an active role in helping apprentices complete their competencies.

Strengths of the proposal include:-

• Strong links between what is learnt at work and what needs to be completed for competency based assessments
• Good opportunities for apprentices to apply theory of baking to actual work practice
• The advantage of building up good rapport between tutor and apprentice
• Bringing employers into the picture and helping to establish a community of practice in this area
• Base data on how mlearning and portfolio gathering works can be gathered
• A pool of tutors who will have worked with the system and developed expertise in the teaching method

Weaknesses of the proposal include:-

• Lack of workplace support for the use of mlearning eg. The workplace does not allow mobile phones to be used in the workplace
• Need for apprentices to still have to put up with quite a bit of paper work and several different tasks to be completed (eg paper based portfolio, mlearning formative assessments, mlearning ‘tutorials’ via tutor contact with the apprentice, summative assessments that are completed off job)
• Time needs to be taken to train staff to undertake cognitive apprenticeship contact via cell phone

Technical challenges, of which I probably only have a small understanding of, are:-

• Different models of phones with varying capabilities and telecommunication suppliers
• Dependence on an ‘outside’ firm to provide support systems for mlearning
• Technical glitches in the system
• Lack of comprehensive coverage in many rural areas on NZ (so an apprentice living in a small town might have good cell phone reception at work but nil access at home if he / she lives well out of town)

My ideas are firming up but there is still much to be investigated and thought through.

Identifying a learning gap

Serendipity has provided me with the next process to use in working out the most likely learning activity /outcome that could be used to set up a pilot mlearning project. The next topic on the Grad Cert applied elearning course was to identify, substantiate and present a learning gap that could be solved using an elearning solution.

Potential learning gaps could be identified as being a:-

• Content fit or new content area – a new topic to teach so it is worthwhile putting some effort into exploring flexible delivery options or blended delivery
• Dynamic content – a course that has rapidly changing / developing content
  Conceptual difficulty – something that is difficult to teach in a f2f situation (eg. Handling customer complaints) or takes a long time to set up (eg. Certain experiments or simulations) or where concepts that fit the ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ category.
• Access issues – could be equipment that will only allow 2 to 3 students at a time to view a demonstration, or very expensive / state of the art equipment that unsupervised learners cannot be let loose on or equipment / ingredients / processes that are difficult to obtain easily for hands on exercises.
• Efficiency issues – a learning concept put onto multimedia might allow students to have multiple attempts at trying out new skills without embarrassment, challenging students with tasks that provide them with the opportunity to work out / construct their own knowledge at their own pace etc.

At the moment, it would be good to try out a unit standard that combines some concept learning with competency in a practical skill. Situating the completion of competency in the workplace will also make it more suitable for piloting as a mlearning project. Therefore, the learning gaps could do with access and efficiency issues with some conceptual difficulty thrown in to provide a major challenge for learning design to work through.

At the moment, there are many unit standards to choose from that will fit the above criteria. One option is to choose one that is small enough to run the pilot with but not so small that it takes too short a time to run. I will also need to work out how many apprentices might be working through the unit to be used so that a viable number is provided for the pilot to be tested out with. I would like to have a group of at least 10 to work with but up to 20 will be even better.

The next step would be to work out the strengths, weaknesses and technical difficulties for the above, so tune in next week for how it pans out.