Mobile Learning

This forty-eight minute podcast presents a session from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conferece. The session, "Interactive Services on Mobile Devices for Higher Education," consists of a panel from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington discussing a new initiative to develop and test a wide range of information services accessible through mobile devices. This session compares the relative costs and advantages of applications based on SMS text messaging, WAP browsers, and Java MIDlets as well as the structuring of the relationship between the faculty start-up and the institution to develop and pursue the resulting initiatives. A PDF is also available for this session.

This session features:

This 14 minute podcast features an interview with Lisa Hinchliffe, Head of the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hinchliffe was co-presenter for a session entitled, "Moving to Mobile: Exploratory Services and Applications in Libraries".

Cell phones and other mobile devices are ubiquitous and offer increasingly robust operating systems, user interfaces, and hardware sophistication. The potential of these devices for accessing the richness of library and information content, services, and applications provided is largely unrealized. This is particularly unfortunate in considering library outreach to undergraduate students. Several projects are in development at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to explore possibilities for communication, content delivery, and instruction through mobile devices.

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There was an article in the BBC News Today entitled "Burgers Paid for by Mobile Phone."  It basically outlines a system that is going into place in Japan that allows people to pay for their orders at McDonalds with a cell phone.  This doesn't have much to do with instructional technology, I just think it is cool!

The article points out the benefits of a program like that for marketing and tracking consumer's.  While I don't believe McDonald's isn't already tracking what is most popular, I do think that there is a lot of potential there. 

I attended a Educause Webinar last week given by Ellen Wagner entitled "Mobility Matters: Why Learning Professionals Should Care."  The seminar itself was great, packed with all sorts of great data and information.  But what stood out to me was two points she made during the seminar.

Today’s Australian reports that Optus, Australia’s second-largest telcoms player, plans to spend $AU 800 million building a new 3G mobile network. Optus says the new communications network would reach 96 per cent of the Australian population, with services commencing in 2008. This would vastly extending the coverage of Optus’s existing 2100MHz 3G network, co-owned with Vodafone, which is restricted to metropolitan areas.

The telecoms market in Australia is notoriously uncompetitive, and the benefits to consumers of a new, or at least broader access, 3G service could be considerable. This is particularly true for the inhabitants of rural communities, who are currently tied into services from the formerly government-owned Telstra. Opening up the 3G market could ultimately have real benefits for rural schools, for whom improved access to 3G services could mean an opportunity to scale up their use of mobile learning.

In my final preconference interview before the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting, I talk with Bryan Alexander, Director of Research for the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). Alexander is presenting the 3:00-4:00 PM featured session on Monday, January 22; his topic is "First-Generation Ubiquitous Computing: Social, Mobile, and Gamelike."

Our conversation starts with Alexander explaining what NITLE is and what it does, and how his role as research director allows him to explore emerging trends in teaching, learning, and technology. He then discusses some examples of how gaming, social software, and mobile technologies are converging to create the ubiquitous computing environment of which he speaks. Alexander also highlights the implications this developing environment holds for higher education, as well as the importance of gaining and maintaining historical perspective on these changes.

For more information about NITLE, please see http://www.nitle.org.

It's official. Talking on your cell phone about nothing is good for you.

Kate Fox, researcher at the Social Issues Research Centre, University of Oxford, argues the case for mobile gossip in "Evolution, Alienation and Gossip: The role of mobile telecommunications in the 21st century".

• Mobile gossip is good for us
• Mobile phones are the new garden fence

Expect to see this report cited a lot in PR fluff from mobile telecoms firms...

This is another podcast related to ELI’s upcoming Spring Focus Session on mobility and mobile learning. Hosted in conjunction with the University of Maryland–College Park, the event will take place on March 29-30, 2006, at the Inn and Conference Center–University of Maryland University College.

The interviews we are podcasting in relation to the session are intended to shed more light on some of the issues that will be discussed during the event. In this conversation, I am joined by Julie Little and Matt Gray in discussing the development of mobile learning at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We also talk about how the integration of mobile technologies into Matt’s course provides a specific example of the university’s success in this area.

In addition to interviews like this one, ELI also plans to capture and post presentation audio from the focus session. Both the interviews and session audio will be posted under the following tags:

ELI 06 Spring Focus Session

ELI 2006 Spring Focus Session: Mobility and Mobile Learning

This interview continues the series of discussions the ELI is podcasting in relation to its 2006 Spring Focus Session, Mobility and Mobile Learning: The Next Phase of Anytime, Anywhere Learning, scheduled for March 29-30 at the Inn and Conference Center–University of Maryland University College.

In this conversation, Marilyn Lombardi discusses the Duke University Digital Initiative, which was originally known as the Duke iPod Project. Over the course of the interview, Marilyn provides an overview of the program, its successes and challenges, and the lessons learned that led to its transition from the iPod Project to the Digital Initiative. She also addresses issues institutions should consider in pursuing mobile learning projects.

Marilyn Lombardi is a senior research scholar in Duke’s Information Science and Information Studies (ISIS) program as well as a senior strategist in the university’s Office of Information Technology. She also serves as a Scholar-in-Residence with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

In addition to interviews like this one, ELI also plans to capture and post presentation audio from the focus session. Both the interviews and session audio will be posted under the following tags:

ELI 06 Spring Focus Session

ELI 2006 Spring Focus Session: Mobility and Mobile Learning

On March 29-30, ELI will host its 2006 Spring Focus Session, Mobility and Mobile Learning: The Next Phase of Anytime, Anywhere Learning, at the Inn and Conference Center - University of Maryland University College in Adelphi, MD (adjacent to College Park). In conjunction with the event, we are conducting a series of podcast interviews to get a better understanding of mobility and mobile learning issues.

In this interview, Gardner Campbell joins me to discuss the rapid growth of mobility in American society and the related expansion in higher education's interest in mobile learning. Gardner is the Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA.

In addition to interviews like this one, ELI also plans to capture and post presentation audio from the session. Both the interviews and session audio will be posted under the following tags:

Just read on cnet about the European Commision - a gov't organization - is taking on a task similar to Google's library project; essentially digitizing the entire collections of some of the major libraries of the continent. Overall I find these projects exciting for the opportunities that open up for just-in-time learning and just-about-everywhere learning.

A critical step for space designers will be to create spaces wehre learners will want to congreagate to discuss the artifacts that they access on their mobile devices. How can designers encourage learners to sit in the same physical spaces while they each do their own work (or work on some collaborative project?). Just becasuse everything is available online through the window of a personal device, doesn't mean that leaners should strive to be solitary while learning.

cnet Article: Europe's Digital Library Taking Shape

Google Library Project: Google Book Search Library Project