Top mobile apps for presenting

We all know that mobile can be very effective in a classroom as a tool to "do stuff". Here is a fantastic round up of all the best apps, and websites that your students can use to record, show and tell what they have done.
Even if you think you know it all - I guarantee you'll get a few new ideas by the time you finish reading this infographic!

How are you planning on using this?
Thanks to Tony Vincent at learninginhand for the excellent round up!

Youth, Work, Mobiles and Poverty: everything you need to know

Across the world, kids are our future. They are also unemployed, under-resourced, and working hard to put things right

If you are interested in youth workforce development, and the empowering opportunities of mobile, I'd encourage you to look at the brand new Mobiles for Youth Workforce Development (mYWD) Landscape Review. It's a meaty read, but contains an excellent summary of most of the current, significant initiatives in mobile development, targeting youth employment across the globe

To quote from their overview:

Youth make up 17 percent of the world’s population and 40 percent of the world’s unemployed, according to the International Labor Organization. A number of factors combine to make sustainable, decent employment an enormous challenge for youth the world over, including low levels of education and technical skills, slow job growth, lack of information about available jobs, and difficulties accessing financial capital to start small enterprises. Decent jobs are especially difficult to find for rural youth, girls and women, and youth with disabilities.

In addition to the growth in youth unemployment, access to and use of mobile technologies among youth worldwide is also expanding. This has created excitement about the potential of mobile devices to catalyze new approaches that address some of the constraints keeping youth from finding and sustaining decent livelihoods. Documentation and evidence of impact in the broad field of mobile technology and youth workforce development (mYWD) is lacking, however, meaning that it has been difficult to identify where mobile technology and youth workforce development initiatives overlap and where mobile may have the greatest added value.

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After a year of hard work, we’ve launched the mEducation Alliance’sMobiles for Youth Workforce Development (mYWD) Landscape Review, an effort supported by The MasterCard Foundation and USAID. The review maps out who is doing what and where, and to the extent possible, discusses evidence of what is working. The body of the report answers questions such as:

• What organizations and programs are using mobiles to help overcome the barriers to employment for youth?
• What type of programming has been implemented and how?
• Where do prime opportunities exist for integrating mobile devices into youth workforce development programs?
• What are relevant considerations related to gender and disability in mYWD programming?
• What factors facilitate or hinder mYWD in specific contexts?
• Are there any research findings that show the impact of mobiles on youth workforce development?

 

If that isn't enough, there is a thorough annexe at the end, listing 80 initiatives and over 275 publicly available documents that have fed into this review

Well worth a read. You can get the review here: http://www.meducationalliance.org/sites/default/files/mywd_landscape_review_final2013.pdf

 

 

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!

Top tips for mlearning: wisdom of the crowd

Last week I ran a session at MobiMOOC2012 with educators and learning technologists from across the world, exploring different pedagogies, and learning theory often associated with mobile learning. Our aim was to explore the gap between the theory, and practice. The week started with a presentation from me, culminating in an open question:

What advice could the attendees (and other MobiMOOCers) offer to others interested in getting started with mobile learning?

Discussions raged on for the rest of the week, with some great suggestions, and observations. The list, below, were our TOP TIPS:

 

 Our collective MobiMOOC top tips were:

• One size does not fit all: choose the tools to fit the need and context
• Let learning design inform the technology (not the other way round)
• ACTIVE Learning: use mobile tools to do stuff - in the classroom, in the world
• Empowerment: allow the learners lead
• Use social media to collaborate and share
• Keep learning strategies AGILE: allow time, and space to iterate
• Start from the CONTEXT of use, involve learners and be creative
• Small, reusable content is more flexible for mobile use

This is what the MobiMOOC class of 2012 came up with. What do you think?

Some additional quotes from attendees that help back this up are:

• Forget what you think the tech can do - what do you want to do?
• Information is everywhere, learners are mobile, m-devices are the bridge between them (Involve real-life tasks into educational activities)
• Let learners do things their way -- congratulate yourself if they do not proceed exactly like you had planned.
• While with technologies there is access to an abundance of information, this does not necessarily imply learning. It is what learners do with this information that leads to learning
• Small-size devices, straightforward activities (Reduce complicated learning procedures).

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!

iBooks 2 – Introducing the future textbook?

Today Apple released iBooks 2, a beautiful new format for interactive books that they hope to use to “re-invent the textbook”.
Steve Jobs reportedly spent the last few years of his life planning to shake up the textbook market, and revitalise education. Today’s event in New York is the first education-only launch from Apple in a long time. Has Steve added to his legacy? Or is this announcement just hype?

The background: Textbooks are big business. They are expensive. The industry is dominated by a few publishing giants. Steve Jobs is quoted as saying the US market for text books is worth $8bn per year. According to Reuters, 90% of this market is controlled by the big three: Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Apple vision is by moving textbooks onto the iPad, they can be cheaper, more interactive, and ultimately more useful as educational reference tools. And at first glance it does look exactly like that.

So what is the iBooks 2 format about?
The iBook format has been enhanced, to allow embedded video, interactivities, quizzes etc. In itself this is nothing new. There are several beautiful eBooks that have been released as apps that do exactly this (like The Elements). But the big difference here is that these capabilities are included in the eBook format itself, so you don’t need to create an app to distribute it. You can do so as an eBook. You can also highlight and annotate the books, and even generate flash-cards to help you learn key sections.

Which textbooks are available?
All three of the major publishers mentioned above have been signed up already. Right now there are only a few in iTunes (none available outside the US), but there is a very lovely (free) sample called Life On Earth, which is well worth a viewing.
Early pictures from the event, here: http://www.theverge.com/apple/2012/1/19/2718539/ibooks-2-first-hands-on-photos

And who else is making the new eBooks? Right now, anybody can!
The best bit about the format is the free iBooks Author which allows anybody to create an eBook, and add media, and interactivities. We are not just talking textbooks here. Anybody with a great book idea can add their own media!

The theory is you can even add rich HTML / Javascript but we haven’t tried this yet. 
If you would like to see more samples, those good people at TheVerge have a bunch of photos of it in action over at http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/19/2718646/ibooks-author-hands-on#2879838

Will this transform educational publishing? Yes, I think so.
Especially in the marketplaces like the US where so much money is currently being spent on the old-skool paper versions.
But I also think that Open Educational Resources will transform educational publishing too. As will other non-Apple platforms. Remember, these eBooks are iPad only. So this is an important step forward for education at large, but not the only way.

Will this transform education? No.
This is the point where technology enthusiasts and real teachers often get “their streams a little crossed”. It is useful to have a richly engaging eBook? Absolutely! Do on-screen interactivities take away the need for any interaction with peers and teachers? Of course not!

So – we are hugely enthusiastic about the new format, especially given the free authoring tools. But also slightly concerned that the hype is masking some more significant issues ahead. As Seb Schmoller says, we probably need to watch and wait to see how many of the details pan out over the next 18 months.

Mobile Learning InfoKit [free download]

Hot off the press, we are pleased to present the Mobile Learning infoKit. Launched at ALT-C 2011

The infoKit offers valuable advice for any organisation starting out in m-learning, as was compiled with interviews and contributions from all the main thinkers, creators and educators in this space

See the overview presentation (below) for a great introduction to m-learning, and if you want more you can download the entire infoKit at http://bit.ly/mobilelearninginfokit

Many months in development, this infokit was put together by Doug and those nice people at Jisc infoNet as a service to the education community. Thanks all!

Google’s App Inventor … liberation or stagnation?

A year ago, Google released App Inventor – a fascinatingly visual, albeit rather buggy tool for developing android apps. Although not robust enough for our commercial development, we loved the fresh ideas about interface, and app building. Perfect tools for learning about coding. Today I found an email in my inbox announcing that Google are dropping support for it.

Google are open-sourcing the code base. Often a sign of a project’s demise. Sounds like bad news for education … or is it?

Use Smartphones in class, say school principals

The National Association of Secondary School Principals have been trying to make sense of the whirlwind that is Social and Mobile Technologies.

They have just released a position statement, summarizing their thoughts on the matter … and it is surprisingly good!

They actively encourage schools to accept smartphones, and social networking as part their educational provision, and offer a range of guidelines and advice to different levels of practitioner.