>... Chris Nash who takes a long cold look at how the mLearning
>revolution failed to
>deliver on its promise of personalised anytime, anywhere learning
>... http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/content/view/60/
The availability of better cheaper smart phones and the application
of social networking to education may see a new lease of life for
mLearning in 2010.
For several years I have been teaching the design of accessible web
sites to students at the Australian National University
people is not that exciting, so I showed the same techniques applied
to mobile devices:
But each year I have had to find new commercial mobile examples, as
the companies I showcased the previous year gone out of business by
the next year. Mobile web seemed to be a technology which was never
going to be mainstream
This year things went slightly differently, not only were there some
companies still in business after a year, but I was able to
demonstrate the course lecture notes on one of the student's phones.
What has happened is that Apple's iPhone has made large screen smart
phones more popular and easier to use. Also the web browsers on the
phones have grown in sophistication and standards compliant web
design has reached the point where it will work with the phones.
The university installed Moodle this year. The default Moodle web
format is designed to be reasonably accessible and standards
compliant (hopefully other learning management systems are simialr).
As a result the content is readable on a large screen smart phone
(curiously the audio lecture Podcasts didn't work on the iPhone, even
though they are in Apple's format).
Being able to display lecture notes on a phone is not that exciting.
But if combined with collaborative learning techniques it can be. The
students don't just passively absorb information from the system,
they have to discuss with each other and search out information.
My masters Green ICT Sustainability course
andragogy described in: "Computer Professional Education using
Mentored and Collaborative Online Learning", David Lindley, IJCIM
Special Issues on e-learning, Vol.15 No. SP4, November, 2007:
This will just use the relatively crude web based forums in Moodle.
However, there is the potential to use more sophisticated social
networking, as implemented in Mahara
we will see adaptions of these to make them work better on a smart
phone, using more than just emulation of a desktop display.
Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington@tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617 http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University
**********
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