Tribal's m-learning resources spread across the UK

We are very pleased to announce that all of our mobile learning tools and resources are being made available to all of the MoLeNET winners!

 

32 projects, covering nearly 100 FE colleges across England will be sharing the £6m LSC funding. They are trying out a wide range of different approaches to m-learning. Some are about consolidating lessons already learned, and others about pushing new boundaries.

 

Any learners and tutors across those projects, who want to, will be able to make use of the full suite of Tribal's m-learning tools and resources:

Mobile content: http://www.m-learning.org/products/pocket-pc-learning-resources.htm

Authoring tools: http://www.m-learning.org/products/mylearning-author-for-pocket-pc.htm

mediaBoard: http://www.m-learning.org/products/mediaboard.htm

SMS Quiz:  http://www.m-learning.org/products/sms-quiz-author.htm

 

We wish them all well, as well as the newly formed "Mentors and Champions" - a group of rapidly-becoming-experts, employed by MoLeNET to support and inspire the different projects, and share best practice. Included in their numbers are:

• James Clay (Gloucestershire College)
• Elaine Coates (Learning2Go, Wolverhampton City Council)
• Jill Purcell  (Learning2Go, Wolverhampton City Council)
• Nigel Davies
• Di Dawson
• Bill Lockitt
• Ron Mitchell (Tower Hamlets College)
• Mick Mullane (York Coast College)
• Lillian Soon
• David Sugden
• John Whalley

Good luck mentors!

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

mobile assessment?

We have had a lot of interest from schools and HE recently about using mobile quizzes, and mediaBoards for assessment. In fact, I was taken a bit by surprise by the eagerness of different practitioners to assess learner skills - though in hindsight I guess it makes sense.

Assessing learners and learning with technology is both a complex and a rewarding process.

There are many examples of rather crude multiple choice assessments being used as gauges to measure knowledge and understanding. This basic approach has a valid place, but to deal with some of the higher-level knowledge, understanding and "practical-skills" required by many HE and FE learners it is critical to offer a broader range of tools and methodologies, embracing e-evidence as well as multimedia statements from the learners about what they have achieved.

Here are some examples of partners we have been lucky enough to try these ideas out with:

• Mobile, multimedia evidence: Leeds Metropolitan University is using the mediaBoard to collect and collate pictures, sounds and texts captured by their phones, while working directly with clients.

• Mobile skills assessments: London Foyer association used roaming PDAs configured with our locally installed skills checks to assess the basic skills levels of all residents, across 45 different residences. Each learner logs in, takes a few tests, and logs out. Results were stored locally, and then bulk-uploaded to the online tracking system over the air.

• Text message skills checks: We have rolled out contextualised SMS Quizzes to over 150,000 learners across 20 different industries as an "awareness campaign" to get them back into learning

• Online skills checks and, if needed, detailed (adaptive) skills assessment: We currently provide this service, accompanied by learning resources, to plug skills gaps for several very large UK-based employers. This scale of assessment requires robust, audited and quality reviewed systems of delivery, tracking and security

so - this blog post was mostly an update on where we are at with "mobile assessment", as well as a chance to mention the various partners we have been working with to try it out.

Thanks all!

Create-A-Scape: another futurelabs adventure!

Create-A-Scape looks like a great, free set of tips and resources to enable teachers and pupils to create digitally-enhanced, personalised learning experiences.

You use HP’'s Mediascape authoring toolkit to ‘attached a collection of location-sensitive sounds and images to’ the local landscape, and then you discover tham all using mobile technology.

From what I can see, it looks like a really well polished set of tools to get teachers started. Visit the Create-A-Scape website to see for yourself.

more mediaBoard-style action

At the risk of sounding a bit like a stuck record, I still think the apex of creative, constructive, empowering mobile learning with ANY phone is all about sending and sharing media. I tend to go an about the mediaBoard, in this regard, but I only just stumbled on another, game-play variant called the Go Game.

Techologicaly, it is way behind the mediaBoard. But where it scores is in the efforts that have been made to pre-create different adventures and scenarios. The Go team host the game for you, and plan out all the activities (instead of leaving it up to the local teacher).

there is a good, promo video that describes it well, as does the text, below, thanks to textually.org

One of the pioneers of the alternate reality game, The Go Game has provided a cell phone driven, urban adventure game to over 100,000 players since it's first community game in San Francisco's Mission District on December 1st, 2001.

Each team is issued a Superhero lunch box with a cell phone, a digital camera and a map of the game zone inside. Clues are downloaded and solved on the cell phone (which is wireless enabled), providing instant feedback of their performance, speed, rank and time left in the race.

Throughout the game, teams will be solving clever puzzles, finding our secret agents hidden throughout the game zone, and even getting a chance to show off their creativity with photo and video challenges.

These videos and photos are the gems of The Go Game, as they offer a wide variety of creative and hilarious responses which are voted on at the end of the game by all of the players.