Does mobile learning have the potential to drive innovation in education and training? What are the characteristics of mobile learning that teachers need to know to design appropriately for mobile learning contexts? Join us for a discussion with Thom Cochrane, Academic Advisor and Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at Auckland University, who argues rather than specialist technology skills, teachers need to understand the mobility of learners and how learning takes place beyond the classroom. Thom will share his research and learning from having implemented 35 mobile learning projects, exploring new learning spaces and ways of accessing information, communicating and collaborating in the real world.

How do I attend?

On Thursday at 12 Noon, point your web browser at this online meeting room address:

http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/tafeconnects <http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/tafeconnects>  

Log in with your DEC username and password – or just enter as a Guest.

Start the discussion now

Have you tried mobile learning? What did you do? Were students more active in their learning? How did it go? Post your experiences on the eCommunities forum at: <http://ecommunities.tafensw.edu.au/mod/forum/view.php?id=612>  at any time before or after the session.

You can also browse the mobile learning resources <http://ecommunities.tafensw.edu.au/course/view.php?id=80&topic=1>  on eCommunities.

To catch up on previous sessions

Past recordings are on the TAFE Connects website <http://ecommunities.tafensw.edu.au/course/view.php?id=99> .

In summary, the sessions are:

Thurs Oct 20: Language, literacy and numeracy
Thurs Oct 27: Adobe Connect for learning
Thurs Nov 3: Design for mobile learning
Thurs Nov 10: Social media: identity and privacy
Thurs Nov 17: Exploring eAssessment
Thurs Nov 24:  Moodle and Equella together forever

Sessions are at 12.00 Thursdays at https://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/tafeconnects

Google has announced that its social networking site Google+ is now public and open to anyone (no invitation required). So Google+ can now be used as a tool to support teaching and learning. Key Features of the SNS

Circles: allows you to categories your followers (for example: friends, family, colleagues, students, classes) you can then share information with certain ‘circles’.

• This is good for teachers as they can create a class circle and share information: media, links, documents only with their students. Student will not be able to see information shared with other circles.
• Students can create study group circles to support each other’s learning

Hangouts:  allows up to 10 people to video chat with one another.  You can invite specific people to join a Hangout with you, although it’s worth noting that anyone who joins can in turn share the Hangout’s URL and invite others. As being in a Hangout appears in all the participants’ Streams, it does mean that these are public gatherings. Google’s Hangout technology recognizes who is speaking during a session and that person’s image takes the “big screen” while other participants appear in small tiles below. Hangouts is a way for other Google+ users to connect in real time using their phone’s front-facing camera.

• Guest Speaker
• Teacher access to student in remote locations
• Meetings
• Group discussion or  project collaboration

Mobile App: Google+ has a mobile app that can be downloaded to a smartphone or tablet.  Great for mobile learners.  However at the moment the Hangouts feature is only available on Android-based smartphones with the same functionality expected soon on the iPhone.

• ability to learn any time, anywhere

+1: +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, the +1 is stored in your profile page , you can show your +1′s tab publicly or choose to hide it.  +1 can  be shared with specific circles. they also become a factor into Google’s search algorithm.

• Teachers can good resources, websites, links with students
• Students can also contribute great resources to class circles
• A place to store and manage your favourite sites

useful resource: 21 ways to use google+ to support learning

This week’s session is: Creating, editing and sharing video

Video is a powerful teaching medium that appeals to many different student learning styles. Join us this week as we examine different ways that video can be used in teaching. We will explore how you can use videos found on the web in your training. We also look at tools and resources to get you started in making and editing videos and sharing them online.  

How do I take part?
On Thursday at 12 Noon, point your web browser at this online meeting room address:

http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/tafeconnects <http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/tafeconnects>

NOTE: We are now using Adobe Connect Version 8 – log in with your DEC username and password – or just enter as a Guest.

Can I catch up on previous sessions?
Recordings and resources are now available through our eCommunities website – follow the link on the front page to TAFE Connects: http://ecommunities.tafensw.edu.au/
 
TO LOG IN TO ECOMMUNITIES: Use your regular DEC Username (firstname.lastname) and Password. To learn more, take a look at the movie called “First time here?” on the eCommunities homepage. If it asks you to “Enrol”, go ahead – there are no assessments!

Just under 4000 items produced by the Centre for Learning Innovation and the Australian Flexible Learning Framework have been added to the TAFE-wide Learning Materials collection.

Each item includes comprehensive metadata and access to the resource content is via the View and Download links.

The View link can be used by teachers to link to the resource from a Learning Management System. Download links to a zipped version.

To access all the TAFE learning resources available in Equella:

Log in to Equella: https://share.tafensw.edu.au/share/

Click on the TAFE-wide Learning Materials collection

image by apple

Not just religious icons heading to OZ this week but what has been dubbed the “Jesus Phone” is transubstansiating in Apple and phone carrier stores today throughout Australia. Apple pilgrams queued in freezing conditions to honour it arrival. It’s fitting offcourse that  Jesus should return as a mobile phone and not just any phone but an Apple iphone, destined to capture the hearts and minds of the masses.

Nothing quite matches an Apple product launch for hype and buzz, and the iphone3g is no exception dominating tech stories in the blogoshere and mainstream press for a month or so prior to it’s launch. Off course this is the second generation iphone with the first being launched around 12 months ago. Australia missed out on the first iteration, although many users were able to connect hacked versions on OZ networks. In many ways the new model titled iphone3g is an evolutionary step or a version update rather than a new product, but with all they hype you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

So what’s the big deal, here is a brief summary of its distinctive features

• it supports 3g, meaning you can access the internet on halfway decent speeds.  woopie do you might say, many phones have had this functionality for ages, well amazingly the first gen iphone was not!!
• it brings together the itouch ipod (touch sensitive screen interface), 3G phone & PDA style functionality. In this sense it’s represents a convergence
• I has GPS functionality and using google maps positions you on a map and provides you directions to a specified destination. No it’s not real time, like car navigation systems which vocalise direction turn by turn. Instead you get a fix and it maps a route and you read the instructions, just like google maps on your computer. I suspect this is just the beginning of GPS enabled tools to be rolled out on the iphone3g, so watch this space over the next 6 months.
• Has a decent web browser built into the OS, Safari. In this scene it the real web you are looking at rather than one served up especially for mobile users via a intermediary server.
• Apple has allowed 3rd party developers to create and retail applications through it’s iphone – App store. Should be some interesting apps emerge in this space
• It has an accelerometer built in so it can detect movement. Will have to see what innovative ways this could be used, but think the wee meets ipod and you sort of get the idea
• Apple has allowed the phone to be utilised on multiple networks. For OZ customers this may appear normal but in the US the first iphone was only available on one network AT&T for which Apple was much criticised.
• Has support for email applications such as gmail and corporate exchange servers like we use in DET. Should provide some competition to the Balckberry product which has been very popular with an older generation of  enterprise/business/corporate users addicted to email
• Has a camera or be it a rather crappy 2 megapixel with no flash, auto focus or video recording capability.
• Has wide wireless connectivity including 3G & HSDPA for mobile networks, wifi, bluetooth (although limited to headphone support), GPRS & A-GPS (mobile network based) positioning
• The wifi is useful as it allows users to browse the web in hotspots rather than via the more costly mobile network
• Oh yes unfortunately no MMS so you will need to email your pics to another mobile user or moblog
• Finally it’s flash based memory in 8 and 16 Gb options. The Itouch is available in a 32 Gb version so I expect we will see this in the iphone3g soon.

One thing it has done is reinvigorate interest in the mobile phone as as a network based tool rather than just for voip and sms. Hopefully we will begin to see other phone manufactures lift their gain and provide more social networking support in phone designs.

Well that is about it, for better or worse I will purchase one once the hype & dust has settled a little and post a more informed review.

For info on plans see

Optus

Vodafone

Telstra – no idea of a link here, tried their website to no avail, they are offering it though.

Presenters: Jo Kay and Paula Williams eLearning Consultants

Synopsis

This session presented an overview of currrent mLearning technologies.

Topics included:

• What is mobile learning
• How is it currently being used in education
• What tools are classified as mobile learning
• How to embed mtechnology into my current teaching practice
• Implementing mlearning with Web 2.0 applications for anywhere, anytime learning.

myLearning wiki page

image by sridgway

Synopsis

Interview with Daniel Darcy from New England Computer Solutions about their RFID technology for the educational uses. Interview by Stephan Ridgway @ the mlearn07, 6th international conference on mobile Learning
16–19 October 2007 Melbourne Australia. Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre.

See a full podcast of the conference @ TalkingVTE

image by sridgway

Recently I had opportunity to attend the annual mlearn07 conference, the 6th international conference on mobile Learning, held 16–19 October 2007 at the Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre.

mLearning or moblie learning is not my of my strengths, so it was a great opportunity to learn more about what is happening in the area and how educators around the world are using networked mobile technologies to enable teaching & learning.

There was an incredible array of speakers, primarily from the higher education sector, however numerous presenters form the VET sector as well.

The thing I came away with  was that mLearning has matured from being a novel concept to being embedded in teaching practice in many educational organisations. It was great to see examples of quality teaching & Learning practice and learn what technologies were used, what worked and how it was implemented.

While an attendee of the conference, I was also asked by the organisers to podcast the event. This was definitely a challenge as it was over 3 days and beyond the keynote speakers, there were 3 simultaneous break out panel sessions running at any given time. I will blog in more detail about how I achieved this, but basically I used 6 Ipod Nano’s and Belkin TuneTalk Stero recorders to capture the audio from each session.

I have podcast these recordings on my TalkinVTE podcast
The best thing is to use the mlearn07 tag below so as to filter only the conference posts

http://talkingvte.blogspot.com/search/label/mlearn07

For more information on the conference and images taken by participants see the links below.

Conference website

Conference flickr stream

Stephan Ridgway, Learning & Innovation