Mobile Learning

YouTube and Google Video are all very well, but there’s an awful amount of lip-synching teenagers and viral advertisements to wade through to find videos that are licensed for and suitable for use as mobile learning video content.

While still in Beta, a new site being set up with a focus on instructional video content, called VideoJug. This CNet report highlights some of the potential uses of, and sources for, the site’s content – which is quite sophisticated and has lots of very interesting clips already available.

technorati tags:video, mobilevideo, instructionalvideo, mobilelearning, m-learning, mlearning, youtube, googlevideo, videojug

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denCIty is a student project originating in Germany, which is intended to create “virtual networks of real places”.

QR-Codes (2D barcodes) are used to physically tag buildings and urban sites. Using a mobile phone, users can take a picture of any QR-Code tag, which provides information on the location on the user’s mobile phone.

The example on the right shows the denCity system used to obtain information on a karaoke bar, which in turn links to information on other related locations (other karaoke bars) – with maps showing their bearing and distance from the current physical location.

In a learning context, denCity could be used to tag locations with interactive, location-specific information, to provide a contextualised, situated learning experience. It could also be used to link to other related locations in the area, providing learners with a real life “treasure hunt” of information. And the “guestbook” attached to each location makes for a more interactive and communicative learning experience…

Arrrr! A real-life Treasure Hunt, eh, with codes and all? Can anyone say “Polly want a QRacker”?

technorati tags:dencity, 2dbarcode, m-learning, mobilelearning, mlearning, qr-code, qrcode, situatedlearning, cellphone

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M-learning is starting to really take off, with more and more attention from developers, platform and application providers, and the mainstream press.

This article, written for developers, explores the possibilities of creating content with using Adobe Captivate (a program that provides animated screen capture, text/audio captioning, and authoring), and publishing resources as Flash Lite 2 “Learning Objects” for mobile delivery. Flash Lite 2 is a version of Adobe Flash for delivering animated and interactive applications to mobile devices.

A tutorial and some useful advice on development and deployment is provided.

technorati tags:flashlite, flashlite2, mobilelearning, learningobjects, mobilelearningobjects, mlearning, m-learning, adobe, captivate, flash

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There’s a great series on creating podcasts being authored at the Pod Pedagogy blog. While the article is written for users of Soundtrack Pro (for Macs only), Part 1 has excellent thoughts on why podcasting can be a Very Good Thing, and good tips for a podcast production setup in general, while Part 2 has more good ideas on recording and optimising podcasts that have general application.

technorati tags:podcast, podcasting, mobilelearning, m-learning, mlearning, ipod, soundtrackpro

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Early in our August Community Networks Forum (where the current theme is m-learning), respected educator Stephen Downes made this comment:

I think the killer educational resource for PDAs (and esp. pre-packaged content for PDAs) will be photo-recognition.

When the built-in or string-camera in the PDA is presented with an object (say, a flower) it will be able to recognize the object and present appropriate learning materials (matched to the person’s previous learning, etc) and materials from the community.

That thought was eerily prophetic… for last week, Google annouced that they had bought photo-recognition software company Neven Vision, a company that produces a product called i-SCOUT, which they describe as a “visual Google”:

The image recognition algorithms can recognize anything from an ipod to a picture of the Mona Lisa to the flower in the above picture. Link this to a database of images and you have yourself a pretty nifty search platform for anyone sporting a camera phone.

Perhaps one day, we may have mobile devices capable of telling us what we’re looking at and providing us with learning opportunities relating the world around us to the learning paths we’ve set for ourselves:

It’s the ultimate fulfilment of situated, immersive, contextualised and connected learning, and it could be just around the corner…

technorati tags:photorecognition, google, mlearning, mobilelearning, m-learning, situated, contextualised, immersive, education, personal, pda, pocketpc, cellphone

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