Mobile Learning

I gotta share this, it is fantastic.

Alex Hayes, who’s been involved in promoting, leading, and innovating flexible and mobile learning for a number of years, has just posted up his retrospective on the last 2 years of mobile learning, which he will be presenting at the National TAFE Construction Conference, September 5-7 2007, hosted by my very own Canberra Institute of Technology.

Leigh Blackall describes Alex’s slideshow thus, and I must concur:

“It is a beautiful presentation, innovative in its creation, extensive, participatory, self explanatory… … A celebration!”

Alex has put in a lot of work, gathering opinions from national and international teachers, mobile technologists, educational technologists, researchers and more. His experiences – and the other experiences shared in this slideshow – provide some great insights into where we’ve come from… and hint at where we’re heading to with m-learning.

[slideshare id=97869&doc=28082007-alexander-hayes3361&w=425]

Great work, Alex!

Alex Hayes via Learn Online

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GPS (the Global Positioning System) uses satellites to help users to navigate, with accuracy as good as half a metre or so. But while most of us are happy to have a simple 2D or “tilted” fake 3D GPS display to guide us, Asia is developing GPS systems that look more like first-person video games:

If this technology becomes more widely available, it could be terrific for educators. Imagine being able to create virtual “learning checkpoints” which exist in a student’s GPS/cellphone/PDA that they can visit to “collect” learning experiences. These checkpoints could show up as different hovering icons in the 3D display, rather like this screenshot from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where an “enterable doorway” icon is shown behind the character:

A learner could physically walk around locating checkpoints, which could trigger all kinds of activities on their mobile device: for example, a video or animation (e.g. explaining a feature of their physical location), a link to an internet resource, a discussion (perhaps using video or audio), or an assessment. A learner could also simulate walking around physically – it would be just like walking around in a video game – to visit or preview some of these resources without actually being there.

Even more exciting: perhaps GPS units could also upload location data for each student involved in a particular learning stream , so that you could see the avatar of other learners physically or virtually visiting various checkpoints on your GPS simulation. If you were physically at a site with other learners, you could identify them from their avatar, and could have a real-life discussion about the location you’re visiting; if you’re visiting virtually, you could ask questions of real-life people, actually at the scene, who could upload their own images, videos, or comments from the site to help other learners.

And unlike a video game, where you run around collecting fake points and accomplish made-up missions, imagine immersive, real-life games where students collect real and authentic learning towards actual qualifications…

Technabob via Gizmodo

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