Mobile Learning

I’ve previously written about Winksite, a service that allows users to create free mobile websites using a CMS-like interface (simply switching on or off various tools and editing options).  Now there’s a new free mobile web site hosting and authoring service called Wirenode, which (instead of a CMS-like, “Web 1.0″ interface) uses a Web 2.0/AJAX interface to create mobile websites and integrate Web 2.0 services including Twitter, LinkedIn, RSS, image galleries, or other “widgets”.  The integration also works back into Web 2.0, with a Wirenode widget available for Facebook and Mobile Facebook.  Awesome!

Unlike Winksite, which is almost completely textual in both content and presentation, Wirenode incorporates media and interactivity, which may even be uploaded by the user, and there’s even an analytics tool for users who like to see how many visitors/students are checking out their mobile site.

It’s a terrific tool to help teachers or students create and present information in a mobile format, and a must-see for other educators interested in utilising mobile devices for enhancing and supporting teaching and learning.

(via Learning Elearning)

Tags: wirenode, m-learning, mlearning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobile, website, site, web, mobileweb, 2.0, web2.0, mobile2.0

Here’s today’s awesome m-learning find: a website where anyone can create a multiple choice quiz which is compatible with the vast majority of current mobile phones (it runs as a Java application, which most of today’s cellphones support).

The site is called Mobile Study, and the finished multiple choice quizzes can be downloaded to a mobile phone from a computer, by visiting a URL with a mobile phone browser, via an SMS message (a small allocation of free messages is provided for each account), or even by using a QR Code (which you should be able to do if you’ve been following my thread on 2D Barcodes!).  If you or your students prefer Social Web applications to mobile ones, it’s also worth noting that quizzes can be made for Facebook, and if a walled garden is your course approach of choice, yes, quizzes can even be imported into Moodle.

Given that there are a large number of ACT Innovative E-Learning Projects that have, as a component, various formative assessment needs, this site should prove to be extremely useful!

You can try out some of the sample quizzes here – they can be done online to give you an idea of how the quizzes provide feedback, or you can install the sample quizzes to your mobile phone for the full m-learning experience.

Happy quizzing!

(via Ignatia Webs)

Tags: quiz, quizzes, assessment, jar, java, jad, mlearning, m-learning, mobilelearning, mobile, learning, mobile-learning, education, mobile study, mobilestudy, mobile-study, qr code, qrcode, 2dbarcode, 2d barcode, qr-code, 2d-barcode

Lastminute.com and Coolgorilla have made their talking phrasebooks FREE for a limited time (they used to cost £3 each).

These talking phrasebooks are great for learning languages “on the go”… the applications allow you to choose a phrase in English, and your mobile phone then “speaks” the phrase translated into whichever language you’ve selected.

Languages include French, Spanish, German, Portugese, and Greek… with topics including travel, accomodation, shopping and romance.

Use your Nokia or Sony Ericcson phone browser to go to http://www.mobilephrasebooks.com/ to download the phrasebooks you want, directly to your phone.

(via Pocket Picks)

technorati tags:languages, spanish, french, german, portugese, greek, travel, accomodation, shopping, romance, mlearning, m-learning, mobile-learning, mobile learning, LOTE, phrasebook, cellphone, lastminute.com, coolgorilla

Tony Vincent at the Learning In Hand blog reports that K12 Handhelds has made some great poetry resources available, for use on Palm and Windows Mobile devices, as well as laptop and desktop PCs:

• Two mobile references in the (free) Mobipocket e-book format: a brief overview of “Types of Poetry,” and an anthology of some of the best classical poems.
• A Poetry Scavenger Hunt in Microsoft Word format, which can be viewed and completed on PDAs with Word software, or on a laptop or desktop computer.
• A brief poetry types quiz in Quizzler format.
• Links to additional supporting materials online.
• A guide to using these resources for classroom activities.

These are great resources, and provide good examples of what can be developed for mobile platforms using free authoring and reading software.

technorati tags:k12 handhelds, pda, palm, windows mobile, mobireader, quizzler, poetry, english, literature, literacy, education, language, poems, verse, forms, m-learning, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning

I’ve come across this product called iPoint, which provides a fantastic way to create your own, customised maps, with your own “points of interest” on Windows Mobile devices, which can contain active web links, images, and descriptive text. I’m still playing around with it, but it just might be the most flexible, customisable situated learning software I’ve yet encountered.

Unlike other map services like Google Maps for Mobiles or Smart2Go, iPoint allows you to upload your own maps – which means it can not only be used for outdoor, public settings, but could also be used to mark up the interior plan of a museum or gallery, or even a fictitious or hard-to-reach location (e.g. the surface of the Moon, or the Starship Enterprise).

The maps are loaded onto your Pocket PC and don’t require an internet connection to explore, unless you want to take advantage of the ability of the software to embed clickable web links into your point-of-interest information for each location.

The editing tool for PCs is easy-to-use, and the maps run quickly and seamlessly on my Windows Mobile Smartphone.

Unfortunately, this is not a free product, but for just US$10, it could provide a (relatively) low-cost solution for situated mobile learning approaches, with a very easy-to-use interface for both both editing and accessing information.

I’ll update this post if the vendor, iTravel, is able to provide any information on educational pricing or bulk discounts for schools, and if I’m able to provide a fuller review.

(via SolSie.com)

technorati tags:ipoint, itravel, map, navigation, situated, learning, education, m-learning, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, windows mobile, pda, smartphone

Judy Breck at the Golden Swamp blog has drawn my attention to this page on the Adobe website, enabling developers of mobile content to make it available through various mobile phone network and service providers. For m-learning content developers, this is an opportunity to unleash your content for public consumption. As Judy states most insightfully:

Here is a call that should be answered by education if we expect to improve learning in our digital age. There is money to be made as well as ignorance to be diminished by selling mobile content for sciences, history, geography, technologies, literature and the 3 Rs.

I have one m-learning product concept I’ve been working on that I’m particularly keen to release, an immersive and engaging edu-game that has already proven successful on desktop PCs that could easily be adapted to a mobile environment. Now if I can just find some time to build it…

technorati tags:m-learning, mlearning, adobe, flash, lite, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, education, content, development

I’ve always loved science. All through my education, “Mad Scientist” was up there in my preferred 10 occupations after leaving school. I was a Gold Member of the Double Helix Science Club at the age of 12, and had numerous letters, photos, and competition entries published in the club’s magazine, The Helix. I was lucky – for me, science was made a lot of fun.

The E-Learning Queen blog points out this potential to make learning fun and engaging through video, and in particular, looks at pop-science serials such as Numb3rs and Bones, in which maths and anthropology (respectively) feature extensively in the deeds of derring do. The spate of “Diet Coke and Mentos” videos on YouTube was also highlighted as a potential learning tool; the videos of Bellagio-like fountains and rockets of soft drink were virally shared by tens of millions around the world.

Who would have thought that this kind of viral media could actually be used as a means of teaching science? For, as stated on the E-Learning Queen blog,

And yet, if one watches the videos alone, it’s somehow unsatisfying.What’s missing? It’s the explanation. They never say HOW or WHY the reactions happen.

The answers came one night in an unexpected way. The boxed set of DVDs I had ordered had arrived. I was watching Season Two of Numb3rs when the characters in the series re-enacted the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment for an Applied Math course, and accompanied the explosions with an explanation. The answer involves surface tension. It’s about surface tension. There is extreme change upon the sudden introduction of a gum Arabic and gelatin disc into a liquid under pressure (due tothe carbonation), where the only way for gas to escape is through a narrow neck creates a rapid phase change. The way the surface tension changes is explained here.

This experiment, a catalyst for a physical reaction, provides a model for learning content, too. Sites like YouTube become repositories of viral video content that could be used by educators as catalysts for learning. Introducing a topic (such as “Surface Tension”) with a Mentos fountain is one way to engage students in online and mobile learning, and make them keen to understand the why and how.

These little chunks of sweetness can bring about big reactions – from our students.

technorati tags:diet coke, mentos, popular science, double helix, science, club, surface tension, learning, educational, design, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning

The library service in my state has just implemented an online electronic library. With just your library card (and PIN) here in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), you can now download any of hundreds of books in electronic text or audio e-book form. Most of the books “expire” after a set “loan period,” (using Digital Rights Management), but this is still an innovative way to allow library patrons to access resources

• without having to physically visit a library
• enabling more concurrent borrowers of a particular resource than physical books or recordings would allow
• enabling borrowers to conveniently store, carry, and access borrowed resources using the portable media players, PDAs and mobile phones. No more heavy library bags!
• without having to worry about physically returning library books or getting slapped with overdue fines

There are, of course, other online electronic libraries such as Project Gutenberg (which also has an Australian Archive). These usually have great classic titles – on which the copyright has expired – but can’t make the latest publications available.

The new online ACT Public Library Service enables some of the latest and most popular releases to be accessed and used far more flexibly and conveniently – a very good thing indeed for mobile learners here.

(via  Online Teacher Network)

technorati tags:library, online, e-book, ebook, pdf, gutenberg, education, mlearning, m-learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, drm, loan

Wattpad have launched a site enabling users to create their own digital, text-based stories, and make them accessible to mobile devices.  The text is compressed before being downloaded to the user’s phone, a few pages at a time – strategies designed to minimise waiting time for content. 

The Wattpad reader allows users to search for and browse new stories, and download them remotely.  Alternatively, stories can be downloaded to a PC and transferred to mobile phones using a cable or Bluetooth connection.  Other services, such as Winksite, already allow users to create their own mobile web content, so I guess the particular attractions of Wattbook are the remote search/browse, and the “upload from PC” options that most other services lack.

This kind of service would be well suited to providing short-ish texts (for example stories, case studies, or references), since even with the free PC upload option, I’d imagine it would be cumbersome to read anything very lengthy on a mobile phone screen.  However, I could conceivably be wrong in this assumption, as several users have uploaded the complete novel Eragon and other longish print books (e.g. A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Life of Pi) into Wattpad form.

With the PC upload option, it’d be more flexible and powerful if Wattpad were able to save images into their books (even if these could be configured to be stripped out of remotely downloaded books), but other educators may well find this a useful resource nonetheless.

(via Pocket Picks)

technorati tags:wattpad, stories, story, digital, storytelling, mobile web, mobile, web, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, cellphone, mobile phone, cellular

Australian IT and security company Swann has just released an innovative new product that merges their specialisations in security and IT – enabling users to create their own streaming video channels for mobile phones, direct from a webcam.

The SW241-MVK Mobile Video Kit (which I bought on the weekend to try out) is able to stream video that can be viewed in a web browser or on a mobile phone – all 3G, and many 2G, phones are supported.  The software can even alert you using sms, mms, email, or voice alerts on your handset if the camera detects motion or movement, and commands can be sent to the camera from the mobile phone to stop or start recording, for example.

In terms of mobile learning, I can see a number of applications, both present and future.  For example, this product would make it simple to become a participant in any real-life situation, using a mobile phone, including a lecture, a demonstration, or a meeting.  Alternatively, short, recorded “chunks” of learning content could be archived and indexed for remote, mobile, anytime/anywhere access, enabling just-in-time, situated and contextualised learning experienced facilitated by remote digital mobility.

A very cool product from a true Aussie innovator!

technorati tags:mlearning, m-learning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, swann, mobile, video, webcam, record, streaming