Evaluating mobile web site platforms to set up portfolios using mobile phones

My available ‘research time’ over the last few weeks has been to desktop & blackberry test a range of mobile web site platforms. I am trying to find an easy to use site that allows eportfolio evidence to be directly uploaded on to mobile web pages. Thereby enabling the creation of an eportfolio by using only the mobile phone. I found a website which previews, reviews and archives useful mobile webpages. The mobile version provides an example of good mobile webpage design.

A host of mobile web sites platforms have emerged over the last year or so. Most tend to have desktop based interfaces. In general these were all easy to use, with good visual layout and icons that make sense. The influences of web 2.0 type user interfaces prevail.

As an example of how quickly mobile website development platforms have developed, just compare winksite, one of the original mobile website platforms to jag a relatively newer one via celladmin. One is dated and although easy to use as a whole, it is not so simple to, for instance, add a picture. The other, although desktop based, provides a 30second interface to put up mobile greetings, invitations and sites and allows easy links to linkedin, myspace, facebook & google.

Most of the sites were optimised for development of the webpages via desktop computers. Included in category were wirenode, mobfive (in Swedish), swiftmob, jag and mofuse. Good examples of desktop interfaces include mobisite galore, zinadoo. tagtag, mobilemo, wapple and wapamama. All of these are optimised for setting up webpages on a desktop / laptop and not directly from a mobile phone.

There was one which worked well on mobile phones but required input in HTML, not an easy option on a mobile phone. Phn would be difficult for students to use as a tutorial on HTML will be required first. Mobisite galore may be suitable as you are able to set up a customised template first & then input more items are required.

Two possibilities have emerged for further trial. Mobilikey provided the facility to create, update and post pictures to personal mobile websites via the desktop or directly through their cell phone or mobile device. The interfaces is quite user friendly. To post a picture, video or voice file, you basically email the file across. There is no preview screen, so you need to wait for the pictures to come through before you can view whether they have synched across.

xtgem is more visually attractive but harder to use via mobile phone. In order to include pictures etc. the browse button does not work on the phone so there is a need to store pictures etc on sites like flickr. Generally less intuitive to use compared to mobilikey. Plus in the preview screen, there is a embedded link to a site to view videos of girls! which will be an incentive for apprentices but does not wear well for me!

Another quick way is to make use of Nokia lifeblog. However, to date, very few students own a Nokia phone with internet access! Plus software needs to be downloaded on to a PC for ease of access to manipulate / collate the photos / videos and other blog items.

Also possibility of using the mobile learning engine which is a plug-in for Moodle. Links from various repositories for photos / videos etc. can archived on Moodle. Moodle site can then be the ‘aggregator page’ for a range of evidence.

Will put a few more sessions into testing out possibilities before evaluating a few with students.

Presentation at Aoraki Polytechnic staff professional development day

I was invited to do presentation at the Aoraki Polytechnic staff development day last Friday. I had a pleasant drive down to Timaru with grand views of the snow covered Southern Alps for company. The staff development day is one day when all staff at Aoraki come together to learn, network and re-create. Although Aoraki is based in Timaru, it has satellite campuses from Dunedin, Oamaru, Ashburton and Christchurch. The day is therefore a good way for staff separated not only be subject discipline areas but by geographical location to convene.

The day began with welcome in the three national languages of New Zealand, Maori, English & NZ signing. The CEO started the official talk fest followed by updates the various campus managers.

Keynote by Sue Lindsay on daring to be different.A good presentation on strategies for success and resilience in challenging times set the scene for the rest of the day. My presentation was well attended. I described the CPIT baking tech online & mportfolios underpinned by the precepts of cognitive apprenticeships.

This was then followed by brief presentations on the Aoraki Foundation learning project (taking a different approach to CPIT by using short staff development powows) and the Aoraki use of Moodle as an LMS.

Drove back to Christchurch into cold and wet weather which persisted through the weekend :(

Wolfram Alpha

This came through on Derek Wenmouth’s blog. The wolfram alpha site is a computational visualisation tool. It is an interesting way to bring information together and especially useful for visual learners. It is at present a good resource for subjects that have some form of statistics or numeric emphasis to them.

A good video provides a series of examples. Examples from subjects associated with stats & numbers include maths, economics, geography (demographics). There are also interesting uses in using the site to calculate nutritional values, medical type measurements, climate and an extremely fascinating area of genetics (enter a gene sequence & see what happens!)

The site is an extension of the work of Stephen Wolfram’s work with mathematica and a new kind of science (NKS) which is to study science using a ‘principal of computational equivalence’ to discover links & synergies between various aspects of applied research in science.

The layout of the wolfram alpha pages allows display on mobiles. Chunks of information are also ‘micro’ providing sufficient information to do further exploration. Hopefully, a mobile version will be available in the not too distant future as some of the applications are imminently suited to mobile uses. For example, I would use the nutritional values one quite often & other ones on demographics / anagrammer/ current weather etc. can be useful when you encounter information that needs to be clarified & a desktop is not available.

Personal content management and mobiles

I was catching up on reading as preparation for writing a couple of papers for conferences. The concept of personal content management (PCM) came up via doing a Google search. Personal content management can be thought of as being a subset of personal information management (PIM). One way of bringing together personal information would be via mindmap tools like personal brain.

However, I was more interested in mobile versions of PCM and this dissertation on facilitating personal content management in smart phones by Antti Aaltonen provided useful reading. Antti is also one of the authors of a book on personal content experience: managing digital life in the mobile age which is a report on the work on a group on Nokia researchers. This site is always a good one to keep up with the latest on mobile technology.

The book covers a good overview of development in the past decade on an increase in mobility of people and their devices along with the growth and increasing importance being placed on personally generated content. Factors which enhance the development of PCMs include the ability to access content, share this content and through this sharing re-live the experiences stored. Confidence that the content will not disappear & that it can be kept private if required. Seeing the content as part of a bigger whole and being able to exploit ‘mobility, metadata and context’ to further extend on personally created content. Good links can be made with the concept of PCMs, eportfolios and narratives. This book actually uses five personas (two 16 year old students, a 28 year old activist, a 40 year old artist and a 56 year old plumber) through out the book to help explain the concepts introduced.

Of interest was the motivation towards mobility explained by our innate desire to be mobile (new nomads) and our short attention spans (five seconds!). I have recommended the book to the library and will do a more thorough evaluation of the book when it arrives.

Prezi

Prezi came via Ignatia webs. It’s a interesting presentation tool which provides a visually exciting alternative to the ubiquitous powerpoint. There are good examples in the prezi showcase including this one on why blog.

A good learning site is included which models the possibilities for using Prezi although less visual / interactive learners will appreciate the manual which provides good summaries.
Prezi is very intuitive to use. When you place an object or text on to your ‘frames’ the prezi wheel appears. This allows you to rotate the object, resize (zoom in/out) or move things around. Very cool!

I had a play and put together a presentation in about an hour, learning as I went along and experimenting with the options. Did not manage to remove some of the ‘frames’ but overall a useable presentation which I will tidy up next week.

The presentation can be assessed via the web or you can download as a zip file and run without actually having to be web connected. File is very large but opened smoothly on to my desktop.
This is possibly the best find so far this year (apart from Google books & xtimeline)

21st century elearning - virtual schools

Yesterday, I attended a presentation by Professor. Niki Davis, University of Canterbury and Bridget Somekh, Canterbury fellow from Manchester Metropolitan University on 21st century elearning at a CPIT lunch time meeting convened by Nick Ford.
An example of 21st century elearning was presented via case studies of virtual schools. This was defined as primary and secondary school students being able to learn from a teacher who was not situated geographically in the same school.

Case studies were presented on the Florida virtual school, Iowa learning online and an example from the UK called ‘not school’ convened by Anglia Ruskin Ultralab (now disbanded). Each virtual school had different organisational and funding structures and met various objectives. What most had in common was the ability to provide access to specialised teachers who were recognised as leaders in their field.

Many virtual schools are set up around video conferencing facilities so that a teacher is able to teach more than one class at a time, one in physically in front of them and another linked to them via video conferencing. This provided opportunities for students in smaller schools and in rural / remote areas to study subjects they were interested in. The UK example catered to students who had been removed from the school system or who had reasons that prevented them from attending school (eg. Victims of bullying).

All in, interesting to learn about the diversity in virtual schooling, be provided with examples of teachers who exemplify good elearning practice and view the technology currently in use.

Mindmapping tools #2 & timeline tool

These came via Jane Hart’s great blog.

First up, personal brain. This provides for the construction of a traditional mindmap. It is very user friendly and intuitive to use. It has comprehensive features which allow you to link to your files, webpages etc. so that it becomes an extension of your usual filing / folder system on your desktop. A guide to ways to use personal brain is a good summary of the uses for mindmaps.

The other was dropmind which is available as a web version or desktop version. This is a more visually exciting platform & the web version allows multiple users to edit and share a mindmap. Presentations can also be generated. The user guide is a pdf file (compared to personal brains series of videos) but the interface is intuitive and user friendly and should not be difficult for students engage with after a short introduction.

Another interesting concept is xtimeline. This nifty site has a collection of timelines ranging from the history of tea to economics to notables like Steve Jobs and Beethoven. There is also a history of the internet which is open for public editing. You are able to make use of the timelines posted by other users as a resource or built ones yourself. Each node in the timeline is a link to more information including pictures and videos. Individuals or groups can work on each timeline so this resource is ideal for use in education.

All not suitable for mobile use as yet but xtimeline has potential due to it's ability to organise a lot of information into a small start up page & then provide the links greater information depth via each node.

Blogging good practice and with youme

This week I am facilitating a discussion forum with a group of tutors enrolled on the ICT for education course. My brief is to introduce the concepts of blogging & start discussion on how to use blogging in either their own personal development or as a teaching / learning tool.

There are guidelines to corporate blogging which mirror the CPIT guidelines for staff who maintain blogs. What I needed to find is guidelines for educational blogging. Found a good overview by Jeremy Williams via Google Scholar which also includes an appendix on resources on blog methods and blogs in learning.

So far, the uses of blogging proposed by course members were to make use of blogs to improve on student reflection. I wanted to move the tutors beyond this so that blogging could be used in a more synergistic manner for students to record their learning journey; network with other people (not in their own class) studying in the same area; share, discuss & evaluate their learning with others in the class; archive the resources that they find & record their initial reactions so that they are able to compare these with later perspectives. In short, guiding students towards the left hand bottom corner of the matrix proposed by Scott on post about matrix of some uses of blogs.

Also, this week, Tricia Lewis (with Stephanie Roberts) presented a session on using blogging to help students learn English as part of the School of Humanities sharing of good practice series. Trish & her brother set up youme to encourage students (familiar with social networking) to practice their English via blogging. 300 students now use this site although not all are blogging regularly. The site has features with are user friendly to use including allowing students to blog, chat & take part in discussion forums. Groups of students can be brought together in clubs. This makes it easier for the teacher to work with students as they engage with blogging & for the students in each class to share their work. Great stuff & good to see most of the tutors in the language area taking up the challenge to make use of blogging to enhance student learning.

ITF presentations now online

All presentations described in previous two blogs now available online. I browsed through a few of the ones I did not attend as I was attending the other session running concurrently.
The most useful ones were:

Literacy & numeracy or qualifications – which matter more in employment, and does participation in upskilling differ by industry group by David Earle, Elliot Lawes & Paul Satherley of the Ministry of Education which came out of the ALLs surveys now summarised.

The ETITO development of industry relevant strategic training plans by Dr. Dominic Madell & Dr. Heather Lees.

ITO literacy & numeracy good practice from Dr. Nicky Murray of the ITF, Helena Parsons from Quartz Clarity & Dr. Gene Kumekawa from the TEC.

ITF research forum day 2

Day two began with a presentation by Dr. Karen Vaughan on conditions & strategies for making the most of workplace learning. Understanding challenges presented by workplace learning presents the opportunity to work on strategies to improve learning in the workplace. Workplace learning defined as on the job + off the job + integration with business strategy. 21st century workplace learning needs are impacted on by speed of adoption of technology, globalisation etc. challenges include the tensions between knowledge & skill, hierarchies & roles, and learners & motivation. Others include how workplace interactions are enacted, the complexity of the task, what regulations cover the business, how much technology needs to be introduced or utilised, how market forces impact, the workplace culture, suitable learning strategies, involvement peers, mentors & learners in goal setting, availability of feedback & knowledge sharing (reflection) and opportunities to practice & take some risks.

Concurrent sessions follow the rest of the day. First one I attended is from Helen van der Werff, from the Horticulture ITO on increasing the impact of industry training investments in the horticulture industry. Based on qualitative nation wide survey of 19 businesses & interviews with 4 ITO training advisors. Harvey & Harris (2008) 7 drivers of productivity used to access productivity & learning to performance process (Brinkerhoff, 2002), logic of training, a high impact learning management (Brinkerhoff, 2001) used to inform the study.


Second presentation from the Department of Labour on skills in demand: past, present & likely in the future from Dr. Ram SriRamaratnam, Richard Manning and Xintao Zhao. This covered brief overview of skill concepts (types & measures), employment skills (their mix & content), high level skills categories and skills demand (2003, 2008 & 2013). Demand also include additional / expansion demain, replacement / retirement demand. In summary, still a need for ‘skilled workers’ into the future due to forecasted replacement & retirement demands.

After lunch, first session up was from Paul Mahoney from the Ministry of Education on factors associated with success in industry training and modern apprenticeships – what the data tells us. Over 180,000 industry trainees / apprentices in 2008. Analysis at the moment focuses on credits & national qualifications completed as proxies of success. Two reports, one of industry training & one on Modern apprenticeships just produced. In industry training, 35% of students entering complete their full course within 5 years. Similar levels of completion to polytechs / private providers & rates in UK (27 – 40%) & Australia (45%). Females more likely to complete than males. Some industries in NZ have higher levels of workplace based training completions for both trainees & modern apprentices. Older workers more likely to complete.

Then attended session on a comparative analysis of stakeholders’ evaluation of NZ industry training strategy within the tourism & public sectors from Lois Parkes of Victoria University. Lit review reveals, interest in skill from publick policy & business perspectives, assumptions that skill = qualification, investment = outcome, many economies have fallen short of the high skill = high wage vision. Evaluation was based on a positivist bias therefore stakeholders perspectives & experiences are not taken into account. There is a research gap as not the whole range of stackholders perpectives have been collected, collated & compared.


Last session of the day was on embedded workplace training: benefits for the health & disability sector by Liz Stephenson from Careerforce & Rose Ryan from Athena Research. Embedded model of training is defined. Features of how organisations obtain maximise, support & evaluate cost effectiveness. Learning and assessment were part of workplace practice, support provided by Careerforce workplace advisors to assist trainees in using workbooks, learning resources & trainee verification. Embedding requires a high level of commitment & resourcing but costs are offset by reduced turnover / recruitment & improved quality of service. Embedded model helped to overcome barriers to learning amongst non-tradtional learners.

The conference ended with a plenary session for questions & answers facilitated by Jeremy Baker & with questions from the floor to the three keynote presenters, Professor David Ashton, Dr. Johnny Sung & Dr. Karen Vaughan.

ITF vocational education research forum Day 1

The annual NZ vocational education & research forum was convened by the ITF (Industry Training Federation) over two days this week. It is heartening to see vocational education research flourishing in NZ, in part via the provision of contested funding from Ako Aotearoa to conduct research in the tertiary sector. This year almost 200 people attend the 2 day conference compared to about 40 at the first conference 6 years ago.

This year, the conference was held at Victoria University’s Rutherford House. Conference opened with a warm & pertinent welcome from Hon. Anne Tolley, Minister of Tertiary Education.

First keynote was from Professor David Ashton, from SKOPE at the University of Cardiff & the University of Leicester. He spoke on the topic of the global auction of skills: implications for sector approaches to workforce development. Two main arguments were put forward. One that there should be (but is not) a relationship between how much money is put into training & the returns on investment. Secondly, the influence of multinational organisations on training direction which is not in synchrony with national interest. The study was based on surveys / interviews etc in seven countries & four core sectors. Presentation started with a good overview on labour markets etc over the last couple of decades related to changes in the organisation of production due to globalisation. He presented the idea of ‘skill webs’ & how they have evolved from low skill (high skilled work remained in home country, dependent on quality of national ed. system & rewards determined by national internal revenue) to strategic skill webs (global supply of skills, internationalised skill strategies). This presentation provided much food for thought as to how a small country like NZ is going to be able to contribute, utilise & ameliorate the effects of globalisation. With the advent of ‘virtual R & D teams’ working via ‘digital taylorism’ the world is ‘flat’ & participation by NZers becomes easier but also more challenging with competition from countries like China, India & Russia.

Concurrent sessions then ran. First up motivating learners to complete qualification through workplace leanring by Karen Moses, R & D senior advisor for LearningState (the ITO for state sector organisations). Concern on low completion rates of tertiary learners (including apprentices & trainees). 70% of learning happens through work & life experiences, 10% through training & 20% through coaching and mentoring. A workplace assessment model based on Cheetham & Chivers (2005) model of professional competence. Examples of how this model works was then provided. Key motivator was relevance of learning, learning that may lead to future careers, learning which was challenging & provided social opportunities for interaction, qualification a form of legal tender, RPL & RCC available. Self direction was a sign of motivation in learners & readiness to learn emerges from the need to learn.

After lunch, I attended the session with Dr. Peter Coolbear , Dr. Kirsty Weir & Dr. Warren Sellers from Ako Aotearoa on enhancing the value & impact of research into voc. ed. & training. Ako Aoteoroa is funding 18 million a year on various projects to tertiary education. The presentation was on how to ensure the research leads on to best possible educational outcomes for all learners. An inventory of voc. ed reseach in NZ from 2003 – 2008 reveal 118 pieces of work but much of this is not widely disseminated or known by practitioners. Pasteur’s quadrant was used by Tooley & Darby (1998) to identify type of research needed to improve practice. Integrity of method suggested as most effective way to ensure research outcomes are effective and have impact on practice. Ako selected 40 projects & mapped these against the quadrant for methodological integrity & potential impact. 21 of the projects were ‘health sector’ based with the other 10 spread across other types of workplaces. 70% were in the quadrant indicating low methodological & potential impact. Limitations included unclear results, work not build on previous literature, little triangulation, quantitative research measured perceptions & lack of generalisable findings. Ako will work together to help foster user generated research and to support & encourage practitioners to take advantage of use-inspired research,

Then a session from Dr. Johnny Sung, University of Leicester on the varying nature of industry-led VET training. Instigating ‘sector skills councils’ may not lead to actual industry –led training. Four broad types of industry led VET systems were examined. Analysed via nature of employer / industry led varies hugely between systems, way funding channelled through sectoral system, way employers may influence qualifications & training content, employers role in creating training places. Into the models of employer involved, employer modelled, employer owned & employer driven. An associated paper on the role of employers in sector skills development provides background & good information.

My session came after afternoon tea. I presented on a small part of my thesis, the concept of ‘proximal participation’ in helping young people ‘belong to a workplace’. The apprentices in my study ‘fell into the trade’ after working in the bakery as cleaners, dishwashers, retail assistants and catering assistants. These support / peripheral jobs provided the opportunity to ‘belong to the workplace’ by building relationships with the other workers in the bakery, trying out the baking lifestyle and viewing the practice bakery work. As proximal participants, they could adopt an identity as an observer. In order for proximal participation to be effective, time span of the engagement with the work had to be long enough to allow relationships to build.

Last session from Elizabeth Valentine, CEO of ATTTO & Steve Hanrahan, CEO of HSI. They spoke on career maps & pathways into the tourism and hospitality industries. Project revolved around providing career maps, articulating career paths, national map of provision and defining a process for “lifting the bar” funded by the TEC. Project was to assist with preparing the two industries for the Rugby World cup in 2011 & then the Cricket World cup in 2015. Example of the career mapper database for baristas was presented as how the career maps were constructed.

Blackberry 8110 usability & suitability for mlearning

I have had a week to play with the Blackberry over the Easter. Mobile access was patchy (as expected) but I could still assess the other PDA functions. It took me a couple of days to become comfortable with the one handed / left handed use of the trackball cum blackberry key to access various menus. Using the ‘sure-type’ keys with each qwerty key providing access to two alphabets took more time to get used to. The prescriptive text entry system tended to be quite good at working out what needed to be inputted. So my typing speed did increase over the 4 days of practice. Use of camera, video etc. was also easy to learn. Picture quality was OK. Photos could be viewed easily with zoom, rotate etc. available. Voice recording was also good & easy to use.

The GPS was limited so will need to source google maps & upload for better capabilities. What was available was easy to use including the ‘where I am’ function. I also read up a recent ‘wired’10 uses of GPS article on the uses of GPS in daily live. I found some of the applications to be invasive of my personal privacy but can also see many useful adaptations that can be taken for using GPS in educational settings.

The form factor (size) & price of the Blackberry, makes it more accessible to the student market. However, due to the Blackberry being marketed to the business sector, it will not be on the radar of most apprentice learners. However, it has capabilities that make it suitable as a corporate mobile learning tool due to ease of use & ready linking to corporate email systems. This means that content dissemination (text, slideshows, photos etc) along with discussion forums etc. can be based on email. This makes mobile learning easier to institute as all tutors are familiar with email. Incorporating social networking sites like twitter for ‘chat’ type synchronous sessions is also much easier to introduce. So there are possibilities worth exploring which I will discuss with our elearning team.

Blackberry 8110

The powers that be at CPIT have changed telecom providers which means a change in the mobile phones supported by the institute. So my trusty Treo 700wx (which I have been allowed to keep for it’s PDA functions) has now been replaced with a Blackberry 8110. None of my students will have a Blackberry L but the Blackberry seems to be making inroads in to corporate mlearning. Blackberries interface with Blackboard LMS but we have shifted to Moodle. However, it is always good to be able to trial mlearning on a multitude of mobile phone OS & the Blackberry will be added to our collection.

I will be spending much of the Easter break getting to grips with how to make the most of the Blackberry. Will be away tramping so it will be a good opportunity to find out what sort of mobile phone coverage the Blackberry has, test out the GPS / camera / video & assorted PDA capabilities and work out how long the battery charge will last J The West Coast is aka as the ‘wet coast’ for it’s damp climate. Although the forecast seems to me mostly dry, it will be a good test of my ability to keep the phone dry & to see how well it works under non-ideal conditions.

As a first impression, the size & weight is much better (from the trampers point of view!). The Blackberry is about 1/2 the weight & 2/3 the size of the Treo. The trackball which runs most of the menus on the Blackberry is pretty intuitive to use. Without reading the manual, I figured out how to access email, SMS, web browser etc. practiced using the ‘suretype’ system as the phone does not have a full qwerty keyboard but an adapted one with two alphabets to each key (laid out as per qwerty). After that sending email, SMS was simple although slower as I am used to using both thumbs on the Treo. With its smaller size, the he Blackberry handles better with just one thumb and my left hand is always not as easy to coordinate as my right.

Voice dialling was quite nifty but I have yet to get the media manager on the desktop manager to work, although backup, synchroniser & application loader (loaded mobipocket reader) all work OK.

So will report back on progress next week.

Pockets of potential report

Here is a great report Via Derek Wenmouth on using mobile tools from the company that brought us Sesame Street .

This is an American report to try to nudge the American government into greater support for mobile learning. It provides a good overview of projects that have taken place in Europe & Asia along with many guidelines on how to leverage mobile learning into education along with the reasons why. Most of the projects reported use handheld devices (pdas, game consoles) instead of mobile phones but the overall intent of the project is to provide greater access for learning opportunities to all children regardless of the digital divide. Handhelds are one way to provide access to the internet & learning objects without having to set up the infrastructure required by desktops.

It provides a succinct (albeit American viewpoint) on mobile learning & its promises, pitfalls and real potential. Key & challenges in mobile learning are summarised. There is an ‘update’ on the relevant market trends and innovation that have brought mobile learning closer.
There is also a good summary of the goals of mobile learning including “understanding that mobile learning is an unique element of educational reform; developing mobile learning by building learning interventions; promoting mobile learning by engaging the public and policy – makers in defining the potential of mobile devices for learning; Preparing teachers and learners for mobile learning by providing training on how to incorporate mobile technologies; and stimulate mobile learning by generating new support for digital learning.

That an organisation that has promoted pre-school education for decades is now involved in advocating mobile learning is really a promising sign that mobile learning is becoming mainstream. President Obama has been reported as being attached to his Blackberry & his election campaign made astute use of mobile technology to connect with & involve his supporters. All of which leads to better appreciation by naysayers of the power of mobile phones to bring about social change. Is education then not about change in attitudes as well?

21st century educators

Following up on all the other blogs on 21st century learners, I did a bit of web surfing, looking for ideas of how to engage staff more into using ICT in their teaching. Each year, there is an increase in the number of students who use ICT in their leisure time. A student who does not use a mobile phone is a real rarity. Yet, many staff still teach the way they were taught. I am continually experimenting with the students on adult education courses. For me, it’s a way to practice & hone my ICT skills and I am privileged to be teaching staff. The staff on DAE courses are a group of committed tutors who are passionate about teaching but most importantly also open to new ideas. One of the formative presentations on the adult learning DAE course is to present a short session on one adult learning theorists. This year, I have asked them to do this using the pecha kucha approach. There was some trepidation when I suggested the idea but great buy in after I presented the session on ‘lifespan development and adult learning’. Everyone is now looking forward to the sessions.

Some of my approach is listed in David Warlick’s blog on 12 ways to become a IT literate educator (found via via Marian Thacher’s blog ). Many of the suggestions revolve around sharing, learning new skills together, experimenting and then evaluating and sharing the results with others. Which works well when staff are in a course together. One of the primary objectives of the DAE courses is for staff to network & learn from each other.

What of other staff? Marie Jasinski’s article archived on the Australian flexible learning network provides some direction. The three components of integrating innovation are the innovations, the innovators & adoptors & the organization. The type, attributes, market needs, benefits & pedagogical impact of the innovations need to be taken into account. There is a chasm between early & mainstream adopters & therefore there needs to be support to bridge the knowledge & also the technology vs pedagogy chasms. The organization needs to have a culture and systems that include infrastructure leadership, commitment & be able to provide adequate support. These guidelines provide a bit of a wake up call for me & for the staff development team.

Using Audacity

Several years ago, I downloaded Audacity the free, open source software for recording & editing sound. However, I have only used it to record the occasional voice clip & to play back digital recordings for purposes of transcription.

I attended a lunchtime session a couple of weeks ago by CPIT Japanese language programme, Henk de Groot on how he used audacity to create audio files for his teaching & student learning.
The session was well attended & Henk provided very good hints including
how to convert recordings from analogue sources, in most cases, it is less time consuming to just re-record in digital!

-best to use a microphone that is not multi-directional and a cheap one works just as well as a really expensive one.

-size of sound files – mp3 smaller & no difference in quality for voice compared to .wav files which are 6 – 8 times larger.

Henk also showed us how to edit an audio file and to especially view the file as a visual pattern. Deleting, cutting & pasting and cleaning up the file was demonstrated. Viewing the file as a visual pattern a good way for me to understand how to handle audio files as I am much more of a visual than an audio person.

To save the file, it was best to export as an mp3 file using another free programme that had to be downloaded once and stored on to you C drive. Clear instructions can be found here.
I am now more confident in using audacity :)

Edubloggers to follow

Have set aside one day a week to concentrate on ‘research’ of which mlearning is one. Have been able to put some time to writing three research proposals for funding, one of which is now delivered and awaiting on a decision. The other two are in the draft stage with one due in early May & the other in early June. Also contemplating if I will fill in an application to obtain funding to get across to the US of A for mlearning 2009 as conference attendance funds are low at the moment due to the current economic climate.

This morning, I did a catch up on mlearning to see if there would be new activity in this area. Two bloggers stood out, Jacqui Sharp & Jamin Lietze. Jacqui Sharp has two blogs, one on web 2.0 in education & the other on ICT in teaching & learning. Jamin, a primary school teacher is evaluating eportfolios for use by his school. He does a comprehensive job.

Both are passionate teachers New Zealand teachers which is a good sign for the NZ ICT scene. Their interest in ICT is sparked & fed by the work they do with their students. The both blog regularly, providing examples of their work & using visuals to good effect. Both provide me with good examples of how to set up interesting, exciting to look at & useful blogs. I will use these blogs as examples when I do my usual guest tutor spot on the CPIT ICT Certificate in Adult Teaching course. Not only to show examples of teachers blogging but to provide evidence of the ICT work that young primary school kids are being exposed to as soem of these will be our students at polytech in a few years to come.

21st century learners

Last week, one of our CPIT staff developer Robin Graham ran a lunch time Better Teaching session on learning design.

The concept was part of Robin’s work at the University of Gloucestershire on extending her work on ‘design for learning’. Design for learning was a project supported by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC ) in the United Kingdom. The evaluation for the project provides an overview of what took place & some of the findings. The Australian Universities Teaching Council also conducted a project on learning design. Some exemplars for various activity focuses provide examples of the visual way in which a focus on learning activities removes emphasis on content & channels lesson plans towards assisting student learning.

One of the books recommended as a background to learning design was ‘Rethinking pedagogy for the digital age’ which has limited reviews on Google books . This book is by Helen Beetham & Rhonda Sharp provides a good overview of how teaching & learning has moved from associative to cognitive / constructive towards situative / participative paradigms.

Siemen’s latest blog provides a link to A Handbook of emerging technologies in learning which is also available as a wiki. Again a good overview of how society is moving but education is still stuck in an increasingly disjunctive model. Learning is moving from ‘content to process' & from 'knowing to being'. Education is still premised on teaching content.

Then this week, via Will Richardsons’ blog comes an article by Margaret Weigel, Carrie James, & Howard Gardner in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Learning Media on Learning: Peering backward & looking forward in the digital era. It’s one of the many projects emanating from Project zero a long term research project on how people learn. The article contains a good table that summarises the way in which learning has changed along with the associated shifts in pedagogies & instructional & cultural media. In summary, the article proposes:

“Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person's own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning.”

21st century skills

As a follow up to last week’s blog, the article from Dean Shareski commenting on Stephen Downes caused me to reflect more deeply on my work with students compiling their eportfolios on social networking sites.

Dean was writing about the 1 minute videos that were being produced to apply for the best job in the world and Stephen was commenting on how very few young people ten years ago would have the skills to produce the videos and yet, now, it is a skill that is crucial in the best job in the world scenario. How many of the young people who produced these videos learnt how to do them at school? As an example, my son is an adept video producer. In the last couple of years at school & at university, he produced a slew of videos with his friends – some of which garnered prizes at the annual university ‘ed woods video’ awards. How did he learn how to video? Well there was one 5 day ‘holiday’ course when he was 15 & the rest has been via doing, sharing ideas & skills with friends etc. From this, he then went on to become actor, director, producer, video editor, camera person, sound recorder, sound remixer etc.

Following on to working with my students on their eportfolio, the latest tutorial this week was for me to check on their progress (good work by most) but the main questions from students was not on how to use the technology but on what constitutes a good eportfolio. So the students, after one short introductory session & a couple of weeks to play with the concept have grasped the usefulness of eportfolios & now want to make the most of their opportunity to gather, collate and showcase their work.

What of tutors & educators? Ray Tolley reports on the ongoing work in encouraging educators to adopt new technology. He writes:- “Mal Lee in an e-mail reminded me of Clay Shirky's book, 'Here Comes Everybody'. In reply I quoted back at him one of Shirky's many conclusions: ‘Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies– it happens when society adopts new behaviours.’ Until schools (and for that matter all learning institutions) begin to adopt new behaviours in terms of Teaching & Learning styles and until teachers begin to demand the technologies that will support this new thinking we will never experience revolution. “
I have introduced the concept of eportfolios to a few tutors on Diploma in Adult Education courses working on individualised learning projects. So far, no takers!! They prefer to stick with a traditional paper based report. However, I will work on this. If tutors themselves experience the excitement, creativity and sense of freedom tempered by responsibility that students using social networking sites for eportfolios are experiencing then they will be more open to the idea of introducing eportfolios to their own students.

Trades students as users of technology

A couple of interesting blogs / presentations / articles on perceptions of students as users of technology were timed at the exact time I started off another group of students on the mlearning project last week. This is a small group of full-time bakery students who I am asking to evaluate several web 2.0 sites for the purposes of compiling eportfolios.

Janet Clarey’s blog provided a good overview of multi-generational learning in the workplace . Will Richardson then recommended Ken Robinson’s book, “The Element: How finding your passion changes everything” as part of his blog on personalizing education .

Many of the observations in Janet Clarey’s blog link in well with my observations from the last couple of years about young people and technology. In particular, mobile vs computer literacy, digital learners, young travellers using technology and boy racers. So it is great to be able to read them in one place & especially to see that digital natives vs digital immigrants has been put to rest.

The group taking part in the evaluations have just started on a one year Certificate in Baking programme. I am asking them to evaluate vox, multiply & comiq by collecting photos, short video clips & recipes that will provide evidence of their journey from novice bakers to being able to bake a good repertoire of products. All have taken to using the technology very well and I am already fielding interesting questions on how the sites may be made more useful, user friendly and visually attractive. The students range in age from school leavers to ones in their early thirties. A couple needed a bit of help to get started but all the rest were conversant with desktop protocols. All the below thirties have social networking sites but not all use them regularly. Everyone has a mobile phone & several have high end smart phones.
I will be doing the official evaluation of the three sites with the students just before Easter, so it will be interesting to see how each of the sites do.

Mobile internet devices

Mobiles, netbooks and cloud computing are all identified as the top ten trends for ICT in education, the future of the internet and the latest NZ horizon report via Derek Wenmouth's blog.

Mobile internet devices (MIDs) are a progression from netbooks. These devices do not have mobile phone functions but provide easy access to the internet. Nvidia has announced the launch of a range of MIDs including a US$99 HD Mobile Internet Device called the Tegra.
The Tegra MID delivers 720p and 1080p video playback, full Wi-Fi & 3G connectivity, software that supports web 2.0 applications, software solution that includes MS Windows CE OS & long battery life.

If the price tag of under US$100 eventuates and the device actually makes it into the NZ market, this will be a good device to trial for our mlearning pilots. The main advantages will be the cost (less than for netbooks) and the ability to surf the web. I will plan to trial a blended type course using the technology. In particular, to find out how distance students & students in several geographically separated sites could work together on projects that could assist with better learning.

Added to the above is news that Nokia might be getting into the laptop / netbook market. Nokia’s newest smart phone, the nokia n97 is being promoted as the nearest thing a mobile phone gets to being a computer. However the price at €550 (NZ$1340) before taxes etc plus a lukewarm review will mean that this is beyond the reach of all of the mlearning pilot target student profile.

Six ways to make web 2.0 work

Via Jane Hart comes a timely article from the Mckinsey Quarterly on six ways to make web 2.0 work.

Last week I participated in a planning meeting for staff developers & an Education strategy group meeting on ‘Working on the Teaching and Learning Plan - Priorities, Realities and the way forward’ at. The Ed Strag group at CPIT is made up of senior management & is a think tank / talk fest / networking group which discusses various organisational strategies so that implementation of said strategy is democratised.

I have always seen the opportunities that Web 2.0 provided as a good way to assist with knowledge sharing, networking & knowledge creation within CPIT & the ITPNZ sector. I blogged previously on the power of wikis & especially about the books by Tapscott on wikinomics & Wikipatterns by Mader. Recently I had a brief read of Enterprise 2.0 implementation by Aaron Newman & Jeremy Thomas via Google books.

Small changes have taken place over the last two years at CPIT to improve organisational communications. Our CEO forums are all archived & there are opportunities for staff to join discussion forums on CPIT wide issues. However, getting people to engage with web 2.0 type tools in the workplace has been an up hill struggle. So the six recommendations come at the correct time to trigger some thinking about how CPIT could leverage web 2.0 to assist in promoting ongoing learning within the organisation. The recommendations are along with present context are:-

1) The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top:- We seem to have buy-in from the top but I don’t think the bottom knows about it.

2) The best uses come from users—but they require help to scale:- This is where staff development & IT need to assist. Staff development with providing pertinent training where required & IT with more user friendly ‘help’ facilities.

3) What’s in the workflow is what gets used:- Attempts have been made to include timetabling, planning and work plans into one area but at this time not all the elements are ready & so there is an interruption in workflow to do any planning or communication as our main groupwise calendars do not talk to our main timetable management system or to the organisational wide strategic planning database.

4) Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets:- We showcase people who have good ideas but perhaps we are not using the correct forums, methods or not promoting these occasions well.

5) The right solution comes from the right participants:- Identifying the right participants is a key & then supporting, nurturing and promoting them. This is something we can still improve on.

6) Balance the top-down and self-management of risk:- We need to study this one more and adjust to our current context.

Web 2.0 is a tool that can be used to improve the flow of knowledge & innovation within our institute. This is especially so when faculties, schools and divisions are still working within vertical silos. There is still a need to harness the wisdom that is all over the institute by providing the right tools, building awareness of these tools & providing the right support at the right time so that the use of these tools can be maximised.

Google Books

During the summer, I put several weeks into extending on a first draft of my PhD thesis. One of the tasks was to ensure that all the references cited were accurate, down to page numbers for quotes. I have worked on ensuring that all the references I come across are written up on to index cards. Each index card details the bibliographical details along with pertinent page numbers etc. of relevant quotes. An important part of the index cards is information on where I found the journal or book. This is so that if I need to return to the source I will be able to do so. All of the information is eventually transported across to Endnotes which makes citing and referencing much easier.

Well, as usual, I missed a few but then I found Google Books offers limited previews of many of the books I needed to get back to. So I managed to find all the pertinent missed pages by looking them up on Google books. This caused me to explore the capabilities of Google books for further reading. I set up my library over a couple of hours of browsing. Now, most of the books are but a couple of clicks away instead of a trip to the university library on wet weekends. However, nothing beats browsing a shelf of books & being able to serendipitously unearth books that are real gems.

The ability to access such a large number of books is a real asset for all educators and researchers. Even though most of the books are only available as ‘limited preview’ there is enough provided in the books to provide a good sense of the overall content of the book. I have already referred a number of books I found & previewed on to our library’s list of books to obtain. The ability to set up a library also provides educators with the ability to build specific libraries that their students can dip into as well. All of which leads to less trees being felled to provide ‘readings’ to students. The advantage of having all the content online also means that I am able to (if I wanted) access my library on my phone which came in useful over the weekend when discussing evolution with a walking friend. I was able to access my library & show her a copy of Richard Dawkins – The selfish gene while we were up on the Port Hills 300m plus above Christchurch. Layout of the webpage was a bit wonky but I see today that Google books is now configured & available to Adroid & iphone users. Hopefully they are going to set out a Windows Mobile version soon.

Blog talk radio

Liz Kolb who blogs on ‘from toy to tool; cellphones in learning’ also runs cellphones in learning at blogtalk radio – a really good resource that reports on what educators are doing with their cell phones. The episodes so far include text messaging projects on cellphones, creating professional development for teachers interested in using cellphones for teaching and learning, ideas for using cellphone cameras and rules and regulations for cellphone use in schools.

The site works on my Treo as well, I could not play the radio programme / podcast directly but could download the programme and then play it back. Download time was a few minutes, so not too trying & the file was not too big. The cheaper way to do this would be to download on to my laptop & sync across to the Treo.

So this is another podcast that I can listen to when I walk the dog. Podcasts are a good way to distribute content. However because I am not a very audio person, I find it difficult to remember details that I listen to & it is difficult to take notes while walking the dog. I will need to find out from my students whether they listen to podcasts. I know that most listen to music or the radio but few listen to radio programmes that have a lot of talk. It will also be important to find out the amount of time that students are willing to listen to podcasts and what content they will be most interested in listening to.

Plans for 2009

Refreshed & re-invigorated from some grand tramping trips into the NZ outdoors followed by several weeks of thesis writing interspersed with challenging walks into the high country, I am looking forward to the year.

This year, I begin a full year in staff development and staff education. I will really miss teaching baking. Mainly because the rhythms and rituals in baking have been so much a part of my life. My identity as a person has been very much moulded by being a baker & teacher of baking. I will miss the students, my colleagues & the opportunity to get my hands into lots of dough. However, I am looking forward to the challenges that the new role will bring. I am excited about the enhanced opportunities to work with staff & the possibilities for embarking on research projects that will contribute to improving teaching & learning within the institution.

It will also be good to not be ‘wearing too many hats’ & I can concentrate on getting more done in greater depth. I will have two projects on the boil while I apply for more funding. One project will be to interview beginning trades tutors to gauge their perception of their new roles as trades tutors. As an institution we need to work out better ways to induct trades tutors into the craft of teaching. At the moment, we provide a generalist introduction to teaching & learning in the form of Certificate in Adult Teaching courses. These courses have a strong emphasis on adult learning principles. However, many trades tutors may perhaps relate better to the concepts of workplace learning & find these more relevant to their teaching. It’s something we will need to find out more about.

The other project will be to further the mlearning / eportfolios project. This will keep me focused on maintaining my knowledge & expertise in the use of technology in learning & provide fodder for this blog.

I will also teach various courses that are part of the Diploma in Adult Education level 6 and workplace assessment courses. This will provide me with the student interaction I will need to keep me grounded in the reality of teaching as researching & working with technology can lead to becoming removed from the actual nuts and bolts of working with a class.

To start off the year, I spent an afternoon browsing through the ForumOxford on Next generation mobile applications. It’s always a good read & I found & read some especially good information on ‘mobile phone as the 7th mass media’, ‘the wireless future’, the ‘future of mobile’ ‘Web 3.0 & the EU’ & ‘sensor based interaction & cloud computing – quoting Tim Reilly – “we can imagine the future of mobile: a sensor-rich device with applications that use those sensors both to feed and interact with cloud services. The location sensor knows you're here so you don't need to tell the map server where to start; the microphone knows the sound of your voice, so it unlocks your private data in the cloud; the camera images an object or a person, sends it to a remote application that recognizes it, and retrieves relevant data. All of these things already exist in scattered applications, but eventually, they will be the new normal.”

Latest horizon report places mobile learning (with phones) & cloud computing as within a year of becoming main stream. Hmm, the future is closer than we expect!

Off to another interesting year.

Reflections on 2008

It has been a busy year! I have learnt much via the mobile portfolios project. Working with the capabilities that ‘cloud computing’ offer has led to many ‘lightbulb’ moments as I come to understand the possibilities for using the many tools available online to enhance learning opportunities for students.

Attending & presenting at both mlearn2008 & handheld learning 2008 provided opportunities to network with many kindred spirits. It was heartening to hear encouragement from many people including Andy Black, Inge de Waard & Tony Bates on the concept of combining mobile with web 2.0 to compile eportfolios. I think that it does take people who have a good understanding of the concepts to appreciate what the CPIT mobile portfolios project is about.

Presenting workshops & papers at many conferences this year has made me realise how far our project is ahead. Especially when we speak to educators who have never looked a bebo page OR to enthusiastic tutors who cannot access web 2.0 sites from their workplace and have to read their student’s blogs at home! OR to teachers from schools where mobile phones are banned and who have never sent a text message. Yet, there is much room for optimism. Most people now have heard of youtube and a large majority have watched youtube videos. Youtube videos have replaced actual video tapes as the main way to entertain students when there is a lull in a theory session! It’s these tutors that I now nab to work with on using web 2.0 tools that require them and their students to become active participators & not just spectators. Students & tutors could make their own vodcasts or podcasts, work collaboratively on concept / mindmaps or comic strips as alternatives to blogging and make better use of the innate creativity their students have to learn together.

So I am looking forward to a couple of weeks of rest & re-creation. Just returned from an 8 day tramp around the Cobb Valley and now looking forward to celebrating Xmas with the family. Then another 3 day trip to Black Hill just before the New Year & a 5 day camping /tramping trip around the Mt. Richmond Forest park at the start of the year. After that it will be a good three to four weeks of thesis writing, working on the final draft J before the 2009 work year begins.

Creating websites / portfolios using mobile phones

Due to the rejection by the TEC of the CPIT / Unitec mlearning project, I need to chug on with work on exploring how to make eportfolios more feasible using mobile phones. The overall project applied for was to use the pilots that Thom Cochrane at Unitec & myself have been running to come up with concrete guidelines for the use of mobile learning in the tertiary sector in NZ. Our concept has always been to make use of mobile phones & to harness web 2.0 sites so that the mobile phone was used as the ‘computer in my pocket’.

Feedback from the TEC was much better this time around. “This is a well articulated application, however the focus is on technology rather than learning, and the best approach to achieving learning outcomes. The outcomes expected from this project are not clear.” However, it still means that I will have to find another source of $$ to continue with mobile learning research next year.

The eportfolio collation of our project has had to resort of desktop computers to access sites like Google pagecreator, vox, multiply and comiq. However, many of our students still have very limited access to desktops. Therefore there is a need to push the envelope with the use of mobile website creators and to evaluate if they may be useful as eportfolio collators & disseminators. Much of this work will also be relevant to content creation on mobile phones so the project will also inform me with regards to how to best make use of mobile phone websites creators in mlearning.

A trawl through google reveals several sites to work with next year. These include ones that need re-looking at like winksite & wirenode and newer ones like mob5, mobiSiteGalore. swiftmob and zinadoo. For a start, some desktop research using a variety of phones to sort out access & usability issues will need to be completed. Once the sites have been sifted through, we will need to trial them with student phones. A basic eportfolio needs to have photos, short video clips and text. We will still link up the student sites via Moodle so that other students and the tutor are able to view individual sites. Technology has moved along rapidly so our project needs to keep up with the play as well.

Whakakotahi: Communities of Practice , West Coast Tertiary teaching & learning conference

Yesterday afternoon, I travelled across to the West Coast to present a workshop at the inaugural West Coast Tertiary Teaching & Learning Regional Conference sponsored by Ako Aotearoa & Tai Poutini Polytechnic.

I was teaching all day yesterday so just managed to catch the opening of the conference that evening which featured a powhiri followed by welcomes from Russell Nimmo, chair of the West Coast Tertiary Education Forum, Dr. Peter Coolbear who is Director of Ako Aotearoa & Geoff Knight, ex- motorcycle gang member turned opera singer. Dr Coolbear introduced the audience to the work that Ako Aotearoa is taking on to improve the educational outcomes for all learners through. This is accomplished by the dissemination of funds to further research in the tertiary sector and providing opportunities for the building of communities of practices. Geoff Knight performed two opera pieces and gave a very inspirational, well delivered and thought provoking presentation. In particular, he was lucky to come across key mentors and supporters at crucial times of his life & these provided impetus & support for him to develop his gift.

The conference is a wonderful initiative to provide professional development to tertiary teachers based on the West Coast of New Zealand. A beautiful area which has a low population spread along 600 kilometres.

This morning started off with a keynote from Dr. Marion Bowl, from the University of Canterbury who spoke on communities of practice (COPs) & how the concept could be useful for both the formal & informal tertiary sectors of the West Coast. She also covered the factors that hinder or inhibit the formation and continuation of COPs, the supporting factors that encourage COPs to form & grow in organisations & at a local level eg. Buller ACE sub-network.
Workshops followed on a range of topics. I presented one, so only able to attend one by Peter McRae from Tai Poutinit about developing a programme beyond unit standards. Feedback from employers in the civil plant industry was that skills, knowledge & licencing were important but attitude was the most important. Therefore work attitudes need to be integrated into pre-trade programmes.

The after lunch keynote was from Dr. Tony Barrett (ex-Lincoln University) on how the social nature of learning shapes our student’s identity and ability to build knowledge. Activity, learning & identity are interlinked. Social activities are part of learning and becoming. COPs are easier to analyse than to describe ie COP formation is organic & based on the context, social organisation etc from which they evolve therefore to impose rules on how they form, stops them from forming in the first place. A good overview of the concepts of COPs including the need to offer authentic learning experiences, the roles of learners in COPs & the need to identify processes important to the understanding a concept and then making them visible to the learner.

A plenary panel session with Dr.Coolbear, Dr. Barrett, Dr. Bowl & Dr. Sheila Granger (principal of Buller High School) on learning as a social process followed afternoon tea. This consisted of questions collected from the audience & answered by members of the panel. Most of the questions were on the concepts for COPs, how to involve more people, keep the COP going, ignite passion for learning etc. The discussion moved across to the role of technology in supporting COPs & the ways in which technology may be used to better connect with learners. There was also a need for institutions to provide support to staff who are working on projects that have goals of improving learner outcomes. Suggestions for future conferences included having more students attending / presenting & looking at other models for structuring / organising a conference.

A successful conference was then closed by Marja Kneepkins who is the campus manager for Tai Poutinit Polytechnic (Westport campus) who provided a personal summary. A poropororaki then officially closed the conference.

Another way to connecting mobile learners

After mlearn2008 & Handheld Learning 2008, I indulged in a spot of travel and joined a bus tour that took me from London to Rome via Paris, Lausanne, Venice & Florence. All up, 10 days of travel which provided a quick overview & introduction to the possibilities for more travel in the near future.

As usual I took the opportunity to make observations about the uses of technology by both the tour company & the tour participants. The young English tour director (who also spoke French, German & Italian fluently) make copious use of her cell phone to liaise with a multitude of local tour guides, hotels, restaurants, shops & other tourist attraction operators. The majority of the tour participants were aged over forty but the dozen or so younger participants were queued up in front of the hotel internet or would pay for the hotel wifi access every time the tour checked into a hotel.

During the tour, several visits were made to tourist attractions like Versailles, the Vatican & Sistine chapel & the Coliseum & Forum using the ‘whisper tour guide system’ or similar. This was an FM radio system that supplied a transmitter to the tour guide & a receiver plus earphones to the tour participants. The tour guide could then discourse on the various aspects while tour participants wandered around inspecting the area or reading visual material. The entire tour could listen to questions posed by the more inquisitive tour members & participants who were ‘wanderers’ could keep track of where the main body of the tour was without becoming totally separated from their tour group.

The sound quality was good even over quite long distances & between several rooms. So this technology would be very useful in some areas we teach in at CPIT which have a high level of noise. Examples include the bakery, mechanical engineering & panel beating workshops. Classes that take on field trips should also benefit from this system along with practical sessions that spread learners out over a wide area (building, horticulture etc). I will need to see if the elearning team is interested in investigating this option plus I will have to look at how to better use Twitter as another way to replicate some aspects of the FM link up with hardware the students now all carry with them & as an option.

Tablet & rugged UMPCs for mobile learning

As a follow up to looking a UMPCs & netbooks as alternatives to mobile phones, I did a bit of desk research on how many possibilities there might be. Googling netted a currently incomplete comparative chart on Wikipedia.

The Kohjinsha range was recommended to me by the team at Canberra Primary School in Singapore as one of the hardware possibilities for their mlearning project. The school is a ‘future school’ @ Singapore & involved in rolling out mlearning to the entire school over the next two years. There are also a large number of schools in the Uk who are using game consoles like the Play station portable (PSP) & the Nintendo DS for mobile learning.

Therefore I googled Kohjinsha & New Zealand and found the Australian / NZ distributor for the Kohjinsha series. Emailed them to find out if I would be able to have a look & play with one. The email reply came back promptly from the Tegatech Sydney office & the NZ representative contacted me.

The price of a Kohjinsha in NZ is pretty steep (over $2000!!) which would allow the purchase of 3 or 4 asus eees. However there is the added lure of the tablet & touch screen. The agents also emailed specification for three ruggedised UMPCs which would be more suited to use in a trades workplace environment. All of these are tablets as well. They included the GETAC , the Eo TufTab & a sahara tablet. All looked great but very expensive!

The above caused me to look at tablet netbooks that would help obviate some of the evaluations of the small keyboard & screen we have had from apprentices with the current crop of 7” to 9” screen size netbooks. Not many around but there should be more in the next couple of years. Looks like we will have to keep working with mobile phones for the moment.

Checking out tech gadgets in Singpore

I have not been to Singapore for almost four years, so took an afternoon to check out the shopping centres which specialise in IT & mobile tech gear. Here are some observations on changes I saw in the tech gadget shopping centres in Singapore ie Funan IT & Sim Lim Towers & Sim Lim Centre.

Mobile has grown. In the three places I visited & other city & suburban shopping malls, shops that stock mobile phones outnumbered generic electronic goods stores which stock consumer products & computer gear. The range of brands (there are many Chinese & Japanese branded phones I have never come across) & models is mind boggling.

Trends for higher end phones seem to be larger screens, at least 3” across for a better web surfing experience. Phones that can take photos up to 8 megapixels & touch phones were the latest trend. Wifi capability on phones has to be a given. Singapore has many readily accessible Wifi hotspots – wireless@SG hotspots. The international airport terminals offer free internet & free WIFI! Inspired & perhaps indoctrinated by the seductive TV ads of the iPhone, touch screens are seen to be a standard requirement. Slide out keyboards are not cool as it leads to having to carry a ‘brick’ around. The preferred look was for thin, sleek phones that allowed you to clip-on your choice of faceplate. Clamshells were being superseded by touch phones.

Net books abound. I managed to test drive the MSI Wind U100 with a 10” screen along with netbooks from Toshiba & Dell. The asus eee 7” was often sold (or offered for very low prices) with mobile broadband / mobile cards for ease of use. I was not able to find a Kohjinsha UMPC which has a touch tablet but will make a more concerted effort to trace one back in NZ. In Singapore, netbooks are seen to be alternatives to the poorer connectivity speeds & expense of using a mobile phone to surf the web by mobile white collar professionals who tend to carry a mobile phone & a laptop as a norm. The netbook replaced the laptop but they would still carry a small ‘hand phone’ for phone calls & texting.

The trend is therefore for greater mobility, smaller sized hardware to access the web by free WIFI & increased capability, speed, memory capacity etc. at cheaper prices. Looks also count. Smart phones that look like the iPhone are preferred to those that look like a Nokia N96.

The other item I picked up on was the ability to link your iPod to your car stereo system, something my son had rigged up in my car as well. I also came across an auto audio firm that would link your ipod to the in-car DVD to allow you to play downloaded videos.

Many mlearning projects target their content development on students who are commuters. In NZ, many of our students do not use public transport instead they travel around in their own cars. Therefore, our focus, when creating content for our students, is to ensure that the content is accessible via formats that do that require regular input from the student as they might be listening to the content while they are driving. Also the time our students (within Chch) spend driving to work etc. is relatively short compared to the hours of commuting that people in Europe & Asia complete. Construction of revision content etc. suitable to playback on an mp3 player should therefore be shorter snippets & perhaps more repetitious as our students are not just passive commuters and have to concentrate on driving as well as revision.

reflections on mlearn 2008 & Hand Held Learning 2008

Spending over a week of immersion in the world of mobile learning provided me with a large amount of information to digest. However, looking back at my notes, I see several patterns emerging that I will carry into the mlearning projects at CPIT.

My basic premise for using students’ own devices (ie mobile phones) & web based platforms is sound. The ongoing work on making computers smaller (ie netbooks like the Asus eee, mobiles more web capable plus increased mobile access to the web means that we are well placed to make use of the building capabilities of cloud computing.

I will need to stay with the overall vision to form eportfolios based solely on mobile phones. There are now many more sites that are mobile accessible, including sites like wirenode, winksite & mob5 which allow mobile phones to be used to set up mobile websites. Capabilities for these for forming eportfolios are still basic but things are moving along to make our vision possible.

Mobile phones will still be the most ubiquitous mobile tool as they now number over 3 billion. The ability of game consoles to take on various operating systems (eg the Nintendo DS) will hopefully be replicated at some stage with mobile phones as well. Although material can be accessed direct via the web, having the ability to distribute content etc on SD cards or similar might be more convenient for some learners. The use of game consoles might be an option to explore with other projects at CPIT

The use of netbooks opens up many possibilities for bringing ICT into the classroom & creating blended learning opportunities in any learning space. In particular, the ability to work on collaborative projects, find information easily, create individual & group resources & to make use of serendipitous learning opportunities. Most web capable mobile phones are also suitable for this teaching method but the cost of web surfing on the mobile phone & the poor reputation mobile phones have in the education sector put mobile phones into the ‘too hard basket’ for this. Will need to lobby for better WIFI coverage at CPIT & to investigate the funding options available to provide class sets of netbooks.

Sharing of resources, content, eportfolios etc. need not be only via the web, bluetooth capabilities on many devices, memory sticks, SD cards etc. are also methods that can be useful for mobile learners to archive & share their work. Need to explore this with regards to the various learner profiles we cater to at CPIT to see which option for transfer of digital material is going to be most useful.

Smartboards seem to be standard in British classrooms. Using smartboards with powerpoint presentations seem to be a real waste of smartboard technology. I will need to have a better play with the ones we have at CPIT to work out the best way to model the interactive capabilities of smartboard technology. In particular, the possibilities for collaborative work in conjunction with mobile devices & blended learning.

There is a great deal of innovation taking place around the world. Passionate teachers are going that extra kilometre to make learning more realistic, authentic, creative & collaborative for their students. Mobile learning enables the classroom to be more easily networked with the ‘real world’ & for students in one geographical location to make contact with students studying similar topics in other places. These are skills we all need to make the world a better place to live in. Teachers who model these skills not only teach their students the importance of these skills but also reap the benefits from their own connectivity.

Flexibility combined with a good underpinning of pedagogy is important when working with any project that is of a cutting edge nature. Persistence combined with the ability to make pragmatic choices are also important attributes!

Handheld learning 2008 day 3 - school project showcase

Again several sessions going on so I made the choice to attend the Schools showcase to better understand what is going on in the school sector in the UK. Although there is a dependence on using PDAs in many of the projects, the advent of netbooks means that many of the handheld projects now have greater transferability across to other hardware platforms.

The session was started off with Tony Parkin with encouragement to check up the ICT Register to find schools working on various projects.

First up, Stephen Quayle presents a session on using Mediascape to promote PLTS frameworks based on work from the Foulston City Learning Centre. This project includes 80 primary schools & 14 secondary schools. The project provides students with activities to complete during ½ day visits to ‘stately homes’.

Asif Anwar then talks about using the bluetooth feature on mobile phones for resource swapping at Birkdale High School. Students developed resources using & shared these with each other leading to better engagement not only with their phones but to greater engagement and enjoyment with learning.

Philip Griffin presents the mobile classroom & PIC learning project from Radstock Primary School. Nokia N800 tablets, desktops & the Uniservity Learning Platform were used to work on a ‘choose your own adventure story project’. Learning was personalised, learners set up their own assessment criteria & had the opportunity to be creative, self-directed & practice & learn many important skills.

Using the PSP as a learning device at Birmingham East City School is presented by Richard Healey. The PSP was not only used in the classroom but also on field trips and homework activities.