Feeling overwhelmed by the total onslaught of apps that sound a lot like … other apps?
Nielsen estimates that 24% of US Adults use apps on their phones. They see mobile apps as “an important new part of the technology world of many Americans”
But if you are one of the remaining 76%, and are starting to develop “App Fatigue”, never fear! Those fine fellows at Sesame Street have an app for that!
Our m-Ubuntu project in South Africa hits the news in USA!
I have blogged about m-uBuntu before – a growing family of schools in South Africa who are using “cell phones” to transform how they teach.
We have been out there a few times, and were very excited to hear it being reported on by “The Word”, a US radio channel who spent a while in Cape Town visiting two great mobile literacy projects there:
You can here the recording here:
Well done the the m-uBuntu team! It is the perfect example of collaboration, empowerment, and shared learning.
- based in South Africa
- dreamt up and managed from Washington
- funding from Sweden, UK, USA
- feet firmly planted on South African soil
- championed by Learning Worldwide (Theo), Duke University (Lucy), Tribal (Geoff & Jess), diGameworks (Jeff) and many other friends
Even the learning itself follows the principle of “u-Buntu”, helping one another to help ourselves. This is not an initiative trying to push unwelcome solutions – rather they are helping the South African Education system rise to the challenge of supporting more students with less money.
(by Andrew Merryweather - @merryux - our UX guru)
The iPad, loaded up with a few off-the-shelf apps, is revolutionising the way archaeological digs are run.
As an ex-archaeologist I keep an eye on digital trends in the digging world, and came across a great post on Apple.com about an old friend and colleague Dr Steven Ellis of the University of Cincinatti and his digitally-enhanced fieldwork at Pompeii. He is using iPads, with simple off-the-shelf apps to collect data in a simpler, and more shareable manner than ever before.
Computers and archaeology have a long history, but excavators have been waiting for mobile tech to hit the right balance of portability, usability and power to really have a big impact on the way they conduct fieldwork. The latest generation of mobile devices, and especially the iPad, has hit the sweetspot.
Ellis credits the introduction of six iPad devices at Pompeii with helping his team solve one of the most difficult problems of archaeological fieldwork: how to efficiently and accurately record the complex information they encounter in the trenches.
This kind of digital data collection could be a learning opportunity in the making. There's a chain ready to be created which takes live data from field projects (in any scientific discipline, not just archaeology), being captured by fieldworkers on iPads, iPhones, and other devices, and feeding it up to a web site, from where it could be pulled directly into a classroom.
It's not hard to imagine a collection of classrooms 'partnering' a dig, and getting data piped straight from the trench to a few iPads of their own. Activities could be built around looking at the latest photos and maps each day, discussing the latest finds, following the life of the project from start to finish.
M-learning with a twist?
If you like the sound of this, please also check out Nick Short’s work at the Royal Veterinary College. He is using Android devices, and off-the-shelf Google tools to support Vets in Africa collect and share some extremely valuable data
I get a constant flood of statistics reminding me how many mobile users there are in the world, but despite that, every now and again something pops up that makes me say … “what!”
Have a look at this infographic from CellPhones.org pulling together a range of stats about SMS usage in the US.
Any surprises?
1: that an average teen sends 3000 messages a month!
That one I get … and am making a mental note to update my teen’s phone contract
2: that between 6 – 10% of interviewees thought it was OK to text while making love!
Doh … sorry. That one I just don’t get at all. Maybe I really am still a digital immigrant after all!
Handy list of references at the bottom of the graphic
The big news of the moment amongst App developers, is the surprise announcement by Apple that they are relaxing some key restrictions on how Apps can be made. In particular they say:…we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.As one of a small (but enthusiastic) set of app developers striving to make cross-platform apps, this is a HUGE deal.
Living in the middle of “mobile learning”, it feels totally obvious that mobile is important, and that it fundamentally changes the way we look at information … but I can’t help noticing that not everybody else shares my view!
(shocking, I know!)
That’s why I really like Bryan’s presentation – with (quite a lot of) simple, non-technical images and statements he manages to capture the excitement, the challenges, and the diversity of the mobile landscape
I especially like the simplicity he uses to get the message across – if I wasn’t already enthused, I would be now! Thanks, Bryan
I had the honour of meeting one of the Global VPs at TATA today, and getting a small insight into the extraordinary power of the Indian market for technology.
One part of our discussion was about the recent announcement of a $35 Android powered tablet targeting education
Yes – you heard that right. $35 !
(it is not quite that simple, of course. An Indian manufacturer has made a lovely prototype, and has offered to supply 1m of the devices for $35m, which the government is considering to buy for education)
But = still. $35 for an Android powered tablet (with all the extras you would expect) does sound awfully compelling!
What do you think?
Let us know your comments, or if you find further links to it
There are a few m-learning conversations that pop up again and again when talking to clients about mobile courses. It often starts with a seemingly simple question:
“I want richly interactive content for any phone”
“Will it do Blackberry? And iPhone? And Nokia?”
“all my students need to have the same access to learning”
These are good questions, and the obvious response to any is “yes, of course”, because we would all like equality between mobile users. But there is a painful reality that (right now, in 2010) makes this an impossible dream:
The painful reality about making m-learning content is that there is no single solution to push richly interactive mobile content onto every possible phone. Rather, there is a spectrum of possible solutions: On one side, going for the richest possible interactivities (but narrowing down to single platforms) and on the other side going for the widest possible phone coverage (but limiting interactivities to the very lowest common denominator)
Examples on either side of this spectrum would be some of the delightfully interactive apps you can get for the iPhone (which exclude all other devices) vs several SMS / text messaging solutions (which work on just about any phone)
This spectrum is just the reality. There is no getting away from it. if somebody tells you otherwise they are not seeing the whole picture.
M-learning developers have been trying many creative approaches to cover as wide a range on this spectrum as possible, but it is technically impossible to cover it all. Examples are:
- making a different app for each device, playing whichever bits of the same central content that device supports
- delivering media-only courses (video or audio) that make up for lack of interactivity with wide device coverage
- using 3rd party players (like Flash, or eBook readers) to render a common course format to different devices
- putting content online, in the browser, and allowing the web-server to decide which versions suit your device
In all of these scenarios, there is a functionality sacrifice (because you are not exploiting device specific features, like GPS), but the benefit of create-once but used-by-many.
So, if you are thinking of making your own mobile content, my best advice is to be pragmatic about this spectrum of solutions. Instead of starting with the big dream (“for every single device”) rather start a little more pragmatically by narrowing the range of technologies you are looking at, and them work backwards to see which type of authoring tool or technical approach works best.
A popular example of a narrower range is "smartphones", though depending on who you are trying to reach out to it might also be "phones with decent browsers".
Another good subset (if data rates are not an issue) are phones with decent browsers, since the latest smartphones and high end featurephones all have a pretty good web browser, which is a lot more standardised than their operating systems.
Currently, my team in Cambridge cover the spectrum via a hybrid approach. We build for iPhone and Blackberry by hand. We have a java (j2me) engine we use for old-skool phones. We use a hand-made authoring tool for WindowsMobile / Android / UMPC / Linux / Windows / Mac (also sold commercially as MyLearning Author). We use another handmade tool for SMS activities (SMS Quiz / SMS Survey).
A lot of our current research work is looking at a hybrid between our MyLearning app (building installable learning apps) and browser-based content (wider cross-device support), so that we can get the best of both – with content that can be installed like an app, runs both on- and off-line, and uses the browser to play back courses wherever possible.
Our work with m-uBuntu has suddenly gone global - two weeks ago we were sitting in a rural school in South Africa, and this week we are in Washington, DC with four of the students presenting our work!
We were picked as one of 3 projects to showcase Mobile Learning to the White House officials who spearhead technology-assisted learning initiatives in the US.
By “we”, I mean Tribal (Jess) and Duke University (Lucy), masterminded by the ever energetic Theo at LearningWorldwide who turned this dream into a reality.
At the event, a Global Digital Media and Learning competition was launched in collaboration with Presidents Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative, ‘challenging designers, inventors, entrepreneurs and researchers to create digital environments that promote building & tinkering in new innovative ways’.
Following Jess’s travelogue, it seems that the highlights were a double whammy of:
See what the students themselves have to say.
This is deeply moving stuff. Children who had not even touched a mobile phone before using it to build literacy skills. And the project is working!
Go m-Ubuntu! it is a pleasure to work with you.
Martha Lane Fox drawing the links between mobile + web + social networks + mobile-entrepreneurship
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants/8551890.stm
It is a 3:40 minute micro-interview from the current BBC series “Digital Giants”. She isn’t saying anything new, but makes the same point that keeps popping up everywhere at the moment …
- mobile is everywhere!
- it is about inclusion, as much as about trendy gadgets
- ignore it at your peril
These points apply to teachers, and teaching too!
I am surprised how often I still get into conversations that start “but do you think mobile learning might work?”.
Of course it works!
In Africa. In Europe. In America. In India. In Australia. For young. For old. For rich. For poor. It may take different shapes, but mobile learning is working well, and is coming whether you like it or not.
Surely it is far better to learn how to make it work well, now, than be a victim and be overtaken by it in 3 years time!
I am just back from a very enjoyable hour spent in the House of Lords with Lord Lucas, discussing new technologies for learning and looking at some of our mobile learning works.
A very interesting man. Like other IT-savvy Lords, he uses his blog and to be open and honest with his views – and has a special interest in home-access and support for parents.
He was very enthusiastic about many of our learning technology initiatives, especially any that encourage providers to have less dependence on short term funding initiatives, and more on successful learning.
In particular, he liked:
Wow – heady stuff!
I learned a new term - “target chasing” – both providers, and suppliers focussing on current government targets and losing sight of the real goals of education that underpin that (and was secretly relieved that he felt our initiatives / tools / approaches didn’t fit that category!)
I hope that he left the meeting as enthused as we did … I assumed so (but maybe that is just British politeness!)
There has been a flurry of news over the past few days including the words “US Military” and “mobile Apps”
part one:
DARPA, home of the pentagon’s technology research gurus, has announced it wants to buy an “AppStore” to use for distributing mobile apps to soldiers.
This is newsworthy on several fronts:
1: DoD (department of defence) are thinking of using normal, everyday-type connectivity (3G), on normal, every-day type devices! (Android)
2: They plan on taking their own 3G coverage with them, to save relying on the possibly unfriendly locals when in far away lands
3: they have dropped both WindowsMobile and iPhone in favour of Android
4: they plan on asking the open market to bid for funding to make apps
Read those again. Bog standard kit. Mainstream networks. Open standards. Open market for apps. Wow.
part two:
A couple of days later, DoD announces the A4A (Apps for the Army) initiative to encourage software-savvy soldiers to propose and make apps (mobile and other).
There is only enough funding for 100 lucky soldiers, but this is clearly just the beginning because …
part three:
DARPA are expected to announce that they are looking to buy apps. If you have a good idea for an app, and the technology skills to make it, they might well be in the market to buy it.
“Flurry of news” is definitely the phrase, here. Until a few weeks ago I had seen hardly any publicity from the US military around mobile learning. Here in the UK, there has been a bit more, with people like Major Roy Evans who has been doing some innovative trials in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You can here him talking about it here (though you will need to ffw the first few minutes, which have no sound!)
Publicity. Nice projects. But quite small trials.
Now, all of a sudden the US has significantly upped the game and leapt for a very mainstream, and imminently achievable solution. Wow!
Bring on those Android Apps, and as Google says, “don’t be evil” :-)
As memories of Christmas feasting slowly fade, it is a good time to take stock of the year ahead … and Rudy de Waele (of m-trends.org) has been doing exactly that. He asked all of his mobile gurus what they predicted would happen in the next 10 years, and published them yesterday.
It is kinda long, but full of some great, thought-provoking stuff.
My biggest complaint would be that he has missed out learning entirely. The next 10 years are filled with mobility in every shape and size … except for learning!
