UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2013 - free resources

The joy of momentum! UNESCO has come out firmly in favour of mobile learning, and published a series of very well researched guidelines on how to make use of it. See below to links to all the resources.

To quote them:

The Symposium allowed UNESCO to launch its most important mobile learning publication to date: The Policy Guidelines for Mobile Learning. ... the Guidelines provide practical advice to policy makers seeking to transform increasingly ubiquitous and affordable mobile devices into tools for learning. Existing policies have very little to say when it comes to questions of whether and, more crucially, how to incorporate mobile technology into education. The flagship UNESCO publication … helps fill this void. 

It was a great honour to be one of the speakers at the symposium, a gathering together and sharing of experiences between many of the global leaders in mobile learning.

My session can be found here: 

I did a 3-way combined session with Lucy Haagen and Theo van Rensburg Lindzter, whose presentations are here:

• No, They Can’t Wait - Lucy Haagen (M-Ubuntu)
• Millennials as Mobile Educators - Innovative Youth Workforce Development Solutions - Theophilus van Rensburg Lindzter (M-Ubuntu)

 

For ALL the other presentations, and media from the event, see below:

• The keynote presentations can be downloaded from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/unesco-mobile-learning-week/keynote-speakers
• All the actual symposium presentations can be downloaded from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/unesco-mobile-learning-week/speakers
• In addition, there was a free webinar session after the symposium, which you can see at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/unesco-mobile-learning-week/webinar/

So what did we think? Great opportunity to meet with fellow innovators from across the globe. The UNESCO guidelines are a valuable resource for all. But as champions for "out of school learning" we felt that there was a large, and gaping hole. What about "out of school / adult / working learners"? The focus was too much towards school age learners.

A lot of thought had gone into how to impact government policy, and improve access to IT in schools. But very little focus was put into those areas that fall outside the remit of school, yet are still very much within the remit of UNESCO. Encouraging new, and enlightened opportunities for adults, by increased access to learning and training at home, and at work. 

This was acknowledged in one of the closing sessions, when Fengchun Miao from UNESCO mentioned this omission. We look forward to supporting UNESCO in putting this right!

Mobile Learning Guidelines - essential reading for learning leaders

Those nice folks at UNESCO continue to champion mobile learning. Earlier this year we praised their grass-roots style Mobile Learning Series, and now they have taken that one step further by developing a set of guidelines for policy makers and learning leaders to help them benefit from m-learning. As they say in their report:

This year the number of connected mobile devices, the vast majority of which are mobile phones, will surpass the world’s population for the first time in history. Yet despite their ubiquity and the unique types of learning they support, these technologies are often prohibited or ignored in formal systems of education. This represents a missed opportunity. The learning potentials of mobile devices are impressive and, in many instances, well-established: they can help address a number of pressing educational needs in new and cost effective ways. In a world that is increasingly reliant on connectivity and access to information, these devices are not a passing fad. As mobile technologies continue to grow in power and functionality, their utility as educational tools is likely to expand and, with it, their centrality to formal education. For these reasons, UNESCO believes that mobile learning deserves the careful consideration of policy makers.

The guidelines were initiated (by several of my peers) at a workshop earlier this year, and are now consolidated into some great advice, available for all. If you are a learning leader, or policy maker I advise you to download their Draft Policy Guidelines. If you are quick, you still have a chance to send in your comments (by 2 Sept). The final Guidelines will be released in 2013. enjoy!

MobiMOOC 2011 - a summary

The first ever MobiMOOC (Massively online course on mobile learning) happened earlier this year.

Were you there?

If not, we have saved all the links, and best bits into our MobiMOOC 2011 summary.

MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses, normally free to access. This one was the first ever focussed on mobile learning, initiated by the endlessly energetic Inge De Waal (@ignatia) , for the uninitiated) is

The aim was:

‘Getting you up-to-date with mobile learning and providing the tools to plan, develop and implement a mobile learning solution in different environments via collaboratively discussing and exchanging knowledge through a variety of learning activities.’

Discussion was spread between live sessions, online fora, and the MobiMOOC website, but are already starting to get a little lost in the ether.

To help capture a small fragment of what happened, the Tribal research team pulled together all the links / references / project info shared during the course, and have frozen it in time in our MobiMOOC 2011 summary.

Help yourself. We hope that some of the info shared during this amazing event is of use to you. And keep your eyes on the main MobiMOOC site in case we do another next year!

How do we keep all our mobile devices charged?

We own and manage a lot of mobile devices. Like between 100 - 1000 depending which ones you count.

Most of them are Windows Mobile, which means they are fairly power hungry, and need regular charging, but with this many devices, how do you safely and securely avoid tripping over cables, and sitting on devices?

Plan 1: is our magical, homemade cupboard. It gets rave reviews by the visitors to our office. If you have ever had to look after multiple devices, you will know why!

Plan 2: A bloke called tony has made a mobile version in a toolbox! I just discovered it on his learninginhand blog.

Another great, lateral thinking plan!


Geoff

Converting phone video to play on your PC

In the mobile learning world we seem to be forever converting media from one format to another. This is often because phone manufacturers are pushing the envelope in compressing media (especially video), but the PC players are a bit slow to keep up.

This is exactly the time to turn to the Open Source community, and today's post is to point out a few excellent sources of free media conversion.

To play back the file without converting it:
Use VLC media player to play just about any media file.

If you just want to convert the damn file:
Try http://media-convert.com who will convert just about any file to just about any other vaguely relevent format. So upload your phone-video, and get it returned as a wmf or mpeg that will play back nicely from your PC

Alternatively, download super which is ... well ... super at converting most files into most other file formats.

If you are a developer:
Our mediaBoard product needs to support just about any format of media from any phone, and convert it into a web-friendly format, and for this we use the excellent, open source FFmpeg component. If you need to convert your media files, they are well worth checking out.

Thanks to these sites, and the developers behind them for helping out countless of our m-learning users over the years!

G

Stop ActiveSync asking about partnerships!

Every now and again I stumble over a small technical solution that makes a big difference to my sanity. Here is an essential one for anybody managing multiple PocketPC devices.

If, like us, you use your PocketPc as a shareable learning device and NOT as businessman's tool you will know the frustration of having to tell ActiveSync NOT to form a lasting friendship with your devices everytime you connect them. This is especially true if all you are doing is uploading files to them.

Well, did you know you can turn this off?

You can configure ActiveSync to always assume you want to be a guest.

The trick is that you need to change a registery setting, but Bob, one of our mobile developers, has kindly created this little utility so you can do it yourself:

You will need to download and open our handy ActiveSync Dialog Tweaker utility

To switch "Guest only" mode on, run this file: active_sync_guest_only.reg

To switch back to "Ask me" mode, run this file: active_sync_guest_ask.reg

You can run both of these files directly, just say Yes when it asks if you want to add the information to the registry.

hope these tips find a use somewhere in the mobile ether!

:)

Smallprint1: any registry settings are changed at your own risk

Smallprint2: Guest only mode will only work if no partnerships have already been established on the desktop.
If a previous partnership has been established, the ActiveSync UI can be suppressed by clearing the Open ActiveSync when my device connects checkbox in ActiveSync's Connection Settings dialog.

Pocket PCs: storing them and charging them safely

If you are responsible for managing a whole lot of PDAs, where do you store them? How safe are they? How can you keep them charged up?

We currently own about 300 PDAs, and have had to set up and manage more than that number for other people as well. It makes you very aware of every step of the way, when it comes to setting up the devices, pre-installing good software, and getting them ready to give to learners.

Here are a couple of top tips we have found helpful:


1: storing them safely, and keeping them charged

this was our biggest logistical challenge, and we spent quite a while looking for commercial alternatives, but in the end we did it ourselves

We bought a large, lockable, metal cupboard; drilled air-vents and cable slots in the back; and ran extension leads into the multiple shelves. At first we were worried about too much power drain, but in fact the power drain is really minimal, and the cicuit copes fine with the load.

(thanks to Dom who made it, and Santa who manages it!)

2: installing the same software and settings to multiple devices:

This is ridiculously time consuming, unless you have discovered backing up and restoring to your SD card. Your PocketPC has an integrated backup utility - probably somewhere like Start / Programs / XBackup.

• First, set up one device with all the settings / themes / contacts you need.
  
• Then use the backup software to back up the entire device to an SD Card.
• Then put the card in a new PDA, and use the same program to restore. This will replace all files and settings with those of the earlier device.
• (of course, if you have different types of PDA, this may not be advised. It works fine when they are all the same)

We have tried many other software based alternatives, including OTA (over the air) upgrades, but none have yet beaten the SD backup on cost / reliability / speed.

3: Unlocking / upgrading / supporting different PocketPCs

The more years pass, the more different brand labels I see on different devices. And the more I struggle to know which is which! But there has been one constant: the fantastic xda-developers.com. If you want to figure out your Blue Angel from your Wizard, have a look at the wiki (at wiki.xda-developers.com). You get the low down on which model is which

And what about support? From our experience, we have NEVER had decent technical support from ANY of the phone companies who have supplied the devices. This is because, very often, the support desk has never even seen the devices. They get made in Taiwan by HTC, and then come straight to you. If you want technical tips you need to rely on the world-wide community. So, for tips on how to upgrade the operating system, or fix a problem you are having try the forums (at forum.xda-developers.com). They are great.