The power and potential: a panel session discussing m-learning

There was a lot of buzz about mobile learning at this year's Mobile World Congress. More than at any previous event. Significants I was able to be at included:

1: GSMA Seminar on the future of mEducation:
A packed out event including sessions by Graham Brown-Martin (slides here); Our own Peggy Johnson, EVP at Qualcomm (slides here); George Held, VP at Etisalat (slides here) followed by a debate with Florence Gaudry-Perkins (Alcatel-Lucent), Vanessa Lucio (Telefonica Learning Services) and others

2: Launch of a report from the Broadband Commission on technology and education

3: Live panel discussion between Qualcomm, mEducation Alliance and Etisalat looking at the future of this (no longer emerging) idea of m-learning. Click below to see it:

(clicking will take you to their site: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/ff)

Our conversation was streamed out, live, to all the huge screens around Barcelona, which was a bit surreal! The contributors are:

• Geoff Stead (me) - Head of Mobile Learning at Qualcomm (@geoffstead)
• Rebekah Levi from Mobile Education Alliance
• George Held from etisalat

Kept in order by Mark Smith

I'm very pleased to see m-learning hitting the mainstream, despite the often muddled assumption that it is one single thing (rather than the diaspora of opportunities it really is!)

Mobile Learning interview - geoffstead

While in the states I met up with Ewan MacLeod of MobileIndustryReview who was enthusiastic enough about our mobile learning work to interview us for his site.

As he was new to m-learning (and a good interviewer), the video ended up like a crash course in mobile learning. What works. what doesn't. What we are up to.

Check it out. You'll get our current thinking on the industry, as well as the first public info about the work we are doing to mobilise the US Department of Defense. They are using our mobile toolkit to roll out m-learning across vast numbers of their learners.

Go live within the month.

 

Ewan, thanks for the enthusiasm.

Do you agree with the points in the interview? I'd love to hear your comments.

mobile phones: the e-readers of choice in South Africa

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:

• M4Lit – Mobile Phones for Literacy. Young people writing mobile stories. Championed by the excellent Steve, Ana & Marion at the University of Cape Town
• m-Ubuntu – Helping transform teaching in impoverished classrooms, and empower resource-poor teachers.

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.

Digital Giant – Martha Lane Fox on mobile web

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!

mLearning in the House of Lords

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:

• m-learning (of course), both in the UK and the 3rd World. We was particularly interested in some of the big UK successes, like Wolverhampton’s Learning2Go, which for some reason hadn’t yet crossed the House Of Lords radar. 
  
• NCETM – the National Centre of Excellence in Teaching Maths that we run to support CPD in all maths teachers across the UK
  
• The online learning portals we run for Sainsbury’s, McDonalds, Wetherspoons, KFC and other employers (using our AdvanceLearningZone platform and an army of amazing home-based tutors & mentors)
  
• The learning Score – A lesson planning tool that is still in Beta, and just creeping out of our labs which we are lucky enough to have endorsed by many of the great and good in UK learning technology

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!)

Mobile trends for 2020

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!

Mobile Trends 2020 - but without anything for Education :-(

Meet Derek Wyatt – the mobile MP

I have just finished an enjoyable few hours with Derek Wyatt MP – a true champion for new technologies as well as the first MP to have his own iPhone app!

He blogs. He flickrs. He tweets. He podcasts. Radio5Live named him as the “fastest emailing MP”. His website has overtaken the local paper as a source of up-to-date local news. He even streams all his speeches and interviews. But more than that, he has been working on many of the “back end” policies and campaigns that keep our online-world turning.

Wow. And I thought I worked hard.

It turns out he is a great fan of our work – both in the mobile world, and more generally with our e-learning and technology tools and he gave us some great advice about taking what we do in the UK out onto the world stage.

But what about his iPhone app, I hear you ask?

It is not yet live, but when it is it will give his constituents (Sittingbourne & Sheppey in Kent) mobile access to local news, as well as yet another way of getting hold of their MP

Stylish

We have a tradition in our office of “Knowledge Shares” – a public soapbox for anybody who has something to share to teach the rest of us, and Derek gamely volunteered a very entertaining 30 minutes of thoughts, advice and gossip ranging from learning technologies, to the 500 emails he gets a day, to some juicy stories that stay within our walls in Cambridge!

A true comedy moment happened when we inadvertently served scotch eggs and pork pies for lunch – it turns out he was outed in the news as a closet lover of pies and eggs.

A great day. Finished when he needed to rush back to Westminster for an un-expected vote in parliament. This is the first time we have met and I hope not the last.

elearningdebate – but what are we learning?

I spent several very fun hours at the Oxford Union last night, enjoying a (non)debate on the whether e-learning is up for the challenge of preparing learners for tomorrow.

The good and the great of e-learning were there. Entertaining arguments were put forth both for and against. It was very enjoyable, and a great brand-positioning event for the sponsors.

But the frustrating thing is that there WAS no REAL debate! Both sides seemed in total agreement that:

• right now, there is some great e-learning, and some rubbish e-learning
• we should all strive to make it better / more inclusive / richer / more collaborative
• the term “e-learning” is sometimes shackled unfairly to the driest-end of the page-turning (“paper behind glass”) spectrum, when really we all know that it should embrace all digital modes and media
• e-learning is never the sole solution for all students. But it is a growing part of the solution for many students (including some who would never have studied without it!)

 

So – ermmm – not too much of a debate then!

 

Maybe I missed something. The twitter universe seems more positive. it just felt to me that much of the argument ended up around semantics and word definitions. Both sides effectively willing us to vote for them if we wanted e-learning to get better. In the end the NOs got more votes than the AYEs, but only by all asking us all to vote on the same thing!

That said – the speakers were fantastic fun, with some great quotes, we all enjoyed it.

 

The saddest bit for me was that there was hardly ANY mention of mobile learning, and mobile connectivity. It seems that for most of the speakers “e-learning” is still stuck on a big-screen multimedia PC connected to the web with a high speed cable.

Doh! get with it guys!

 

The real benefit of Learning with Technology is all about reach. Getting to learners where they are, when they need it, on their own terms. if you can’t do that with your e-learning you are missing the best bits of the experience!

 

thanks again to all involved

mobile learning in a taxi …

BLOOM-ing marvellous! We are in the closing stages of a great project called BLOOM, which is all about using m-learning in the workplace (in this case, for the transport sector).

Have a look at this great little video of our mobile learning solution being used by Taxi drivers while waiting on the rank (errm … no … not while driving!)

A great example of how mobile learning can help you reach the parts other types of learning can’t

 

Hope you like it – and please leave us comments with your thoughts. We are thinking of releasing a couple of other, similar case study videos if there is demand for them

Is Classmate PC the king of touch?

Something we love about the latest Classmate PC is the addition of a touchscreen.

One of the strongest "form" messages we get back from the various m-learning trials we run, is the appreciation of "touch" as an interface. That and easy access to multimedia features (like cameras, voice recording, speakers etc)

That - and the ability to work together, sharing devices.

PDA-style devices, like the many HTC / WindowsMobile gadgets have always scored really well on these, and looking at this interview with one of the classmate researchers, they are taking the message to heart with their latest version

Are touchscreen UMPCs the pen and paper for students of the future?

 

This may well be a critical addition, enabling Intel’s Classmate PC to emerge as leader of the pack out of the swamp of chaos engulfing OLPC at the moment ...

Come on OLPC ... don't give up just yet ...

m-learning interview ...

Getting started with m-learning?

Interested in what works?

Jo and I were recently interviewed about all the work we have been doing in m-learning, trying to summarise what works, and what doesn't.

If you have 10 minutes to spare, sit back and have a look.





message to the m-veterans: please send us your comments and thoughts to the blog!