Mobile Learning

There’s a great conversation going on on the blog of teacher Siobhan Curious, concerning the permissibility of mobile phones in the classroom. As a classroom teacher, Siobhan’s first instinct is to confiscate mobile phones that disrupt her classes; and to tell you the truth, I can certainly see situations where this would be the appropriate thing to do.

As I said in my comments to her post (you will just have to go over and read them for yourself if you want the gory details), mobile devices provide opportunities for both disruptive and constructive applications in educational settings. Just as it’s possible to use a cassette walkman or iPod in a negative way (e.g. listening to music in class) and a positive way (listening to a language e-book outside of class; or recording a class lecture for later review), a mobile phone is a tool that can be used politely, thoughtfully, or even positively; or negatively and counter-productively. Teachers, as classroom “moderators,” should have the freedom to decide which uses fall into which categories.

I would classify accepting a call and beginning a phone conversation with a friend in the middle of a class disruptive and rude – just as rude as starting a conversation with a neighbour in the classroom. But some teachers may be happy to permit students to video chemistry or physics experiments for later review, for example… or to make a video of the teacher solving an algebraic equation, to help their understanding of the deductive process when they have to complete their homework later.

(via Stuart Smith at 3 Sheep Musings)

technorati tags:mobile, phone, mobilephone, cellphone, cellular, classroom, class, school, education, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, disruptive, constructive

Further extending the concept of blogging beyond blogging mobile-ly (moblogging), Locoblog automatically uses embedded GPS data in uploaded images to associate each image with a location as soon as it is uploaded; these locations are then viewable on a Google Maps map embedded in a viewer’s web browser, where they can be browsed sequentially or visually (using the map).

It’s a pretty neat concept, although I’d like to see several few features added to make it a really *great* tool:

1. The ability to add text to an uploaded image to provide commentary and context for the images
2. The ability to add a textual description and sample image for each “journey” and display these chonologically, to allow the various journeys to be browsed like blog posts
3. The ability to either personalise the presentation and content of each blog; or syndicate/embed the locoblog content in another, customisable blog (e.g. WordPress).
4. RSS Syndication for each blog.

Despite having some limitations, it’s worth checking out if you have a GPS-enabled mobile or an external Bluetooth GPS receiver.

technorati tags:locoblog, location, based, blogging, moblogging, photos, gps, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning

If you own a Nokia mobile phone with a camera there’s a chance you might be carrying around a wireless webcam in your pocket. A free, newly released (beta) software bundle for Symbian 60 v.3.0 and v.2.0 mobile phones now allows you to use your mobile phone as a webcam for your laptop or personal computer.

Wwigo, from software developer Motvik, is a free application which turns your mobile phone camera into a wireless Bluetooth webcam. It installs a “receiver” application on your PC as well as a webcam application on your mobile phone, and the video captured by your mobile is wirelessly transmitted to your PC. The video that is transmitted to your PC can be used in Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, YourTube and Grouper applications for vlogging or video chat, and the quality is as good as – or better – than any off-the-shelf dedicated webcam.

However, because there’s no wires attached to your mobile phone, you can use and move it within a 10m radius of your PC while capturing video to your PC the whole time. And because the video is being recorded on your computer – not on your mobile phone – it doesn’t matter how much memory you have on your mobile phone; the length of the video capture is only limited by the size of your computer’s hard drive – not your phone’s memory.

My phone, a Nokia 6110 Navigator, isn’t listed as a compatible phone model, but it worked fine with Wwigo. Video quality was first class: as good as my $190 dedicated, top-of-the-range webcam at home.

If you’ve been looking for a way to record your lectures or presentations using your organisation’s networked computers, this could be the solution for you. You don’t even need to carry a laptop with you around campus: just your mobile phone and a Bluetooth USB dongle to plug into your organisation’s computers, to save your recorded sessions directly to your computer or your network.

Here’s a test snippet captured using Wwigo; the quality is somewhat degrated by the conversion on YouTube:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/aXU9-W5HDgs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

technorati tags:Wwigo, Motvik, Bluetooth, Wireless, Video, Webcam, M-Learning, Mlearning, Mobile-Learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, education, freeware

Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, provide a means of determining a person’s location and altitude on earth to within a metre or so. They are commonly used in car navigation systems to allow the driver to receive instructions to a location, but they have other applications which are being pursued by other mobile device manufacturers such as camera makers (to enable photos to be tagged with location data about where the image was taken) and mobile phone manufactuers.

Nokia, in particular, has recently invested millions of dollars in GPS research as well as buying a number of companies associated with GPS technologies, and have started introducing GPS as a built-in feature in some of their handsets.

I recently acquired a Nokia 6110 Navigator – a slim slider phone with a large screen and built-in 2 megapixel digital camera – for free, when I renewed my A$49-a-month Optus contract, and having now used it for a month or so, it’s probably the best phone I’ve owned for years. This handset features a built-in GPS receiver, which allows me to get free voice directions when I’m driving, cycling, or walking around, as well as a full visual map display. It’s as good as many dedicated in-car GPS systems I’ve played with.

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Because the GPS is built on the Symbian Operating System used in most Nokias, the GPS can also be extended to work with third-party applications… and this is where it starts to get interesting for m-learning. Applications can be developed for this phone which utilise the GPS system for recording location data.

One application I’ve played with is Sports Tracker, a free application from Nokia Research Labs. This allows me to record my workouts – walking, cycling, skiing or jogging, for example – and analyse the data later. The application also displays real-time performance graphs, such as my speed at various points in the route, in both numerical and graphical form. This requires surprisingly little memory to accomplish; a 1-hour session takes only 45kB of data to record on my phone.

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An application like this would be immediately useful for learners in any field where analysing location, speed, or altitude over time would be useful; those involved in the Sports/Fitness industries, aviation, or delivery services, for example.

What makes the application even more useful, however, is that the data can be exported in various formats, including the industry-standard GPX format. This means that I can use the GPS data to accurately determine exactly where media I create has been created. For example, using the free progam GPicSync, from Google, I can determine the locations of my photos along my route, and view the context of the images using Google Earth‘s 2D and 3D views, which allow panning, zooming, and rotation.

This application makes GPS useful for many other areas of learning, including sciences such as forestry, botany, zoology, biology, environmental science and forensics; as well as some you might not immediately think of such as marketing and advertising (taking pictures of advertisements and their locations), architecture, and logistics.

2D view in Google Earth, showing my walking route and the locations of the photos I took. Other data can be superimposed such as roads, points of interest, and other locations in Google Earth:

3D view in Google Earth. 3D is activated using the controls visible in the top right corner of this image. You can pan, zoom, and rotate the image to see “around” 3D objects.

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If a number of photos are taken in one location (or close to each other) they can overlap; Google Earth “splits” these when you click on the overlapping icons to make selecting the phto you’re interested in easy:

Clicking on a photo icon brings up a view of the photo taken at a location:

Update: You can now download a demo of a Google Earth KML file with GPS-tagged photos in my file-sharing box in the right margin: the file is called “Mogo Zoo Google Earth Demo.zip”

technorati tags:nokia, sportstracker, gps, 6110, navigator, mobile, phone, cellphone, gpicsync, google earth, geolocation, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, gpx, photo