AR in mobile learning

Are you using Augmented Reality in your mobile learning? Should you?

AR, or Augmented Reality has been high on the hype-charts for several years now, but seems to be on "slow burn" when it comes to m-learning. This post is a quick update on what's happening, where, and what it means for education.

If you are unsure what AR is, here is a great explanation from those nice folks at Common Craft



So pretty much anything that helps you connect the real world around you with the digital, or virtual one classifies as augmented reality. You don't even need to superimpose it on the camera view if you don't want to. Examples like QR-codes, or bar code scanning also connect the real to the virtual, without requiring the real-live-view.

But for now, lets stick with live-view AR. One of the classic (and often quoted) examples of AR in workplace learning is this project from BMW. It isn't really being used, though. It was a demo made over 5 years ago by their R&D people, but if you haven't seen it yet, it tells a great story



Clearly an idea with merit. But what's been happening in the past 5 years? A lot, as it turns out!

Several companies (including my own) have been investing heavily to push this sort of technology out of the labs, and into the mainstream. There seem to be 2 main approaches when it comes to apps:

1: Geographical information, downloadable as layers.


The two main players here are Layar, and Wikitude.  Both offer a free app in the app stores, and allow you to download many different layers of information that will pop up as you move your camera around.

Bear in mind that this is GPS data, so you need to be outdoors, and positioning is not 100%. But, nonetheless, great fun to play with, and surprisingly easy to make your own layers. Fancy setting up a history trail around your town? You can upload all the data as a new layer, and share with any other app users!

2: Visual (and other) Triggers.

But what about augmenting non-geographic things? This is where "triggers" come in, and the advertising world gets even more excited.
Your phone recognises visual images, and triggers an augmented response. Apps like Blippar do this - you have probably seen their logo on film posters, magazines and product adverts. Once you have downloaded the Blippar app, you can scan any known products / posters / images to triggers some form of media to be superimposed over your camera view.

Here is a super-stylish example promoting the new Hobbit movie.


Clearly the result of some slick media work, but the great news is that this sort of magic is no longer in the realm of impossibly expensive. In fact, all the software required to make the AR, and image recognition work for this sort of thing is available for FREE.
That's right, free.

You still need a developer to build it into your app, and some media skills to create something worth showing, but the heavy technical lifting has already been done, and all of a sudden AR becomes a lot more affordable.

The question is no longer "is this possible", but rather "how could I use it for learning"

Blippar use the "one app for all our AR" idea, much like Wikitude and Layar. But increasingly you also find apps dedicated to one specific theme, embedding the same AR capability within them.

Here is a great example that has the added benefit of NOT being about product placement.
The Science Museum in London have an awesome AR trail. As you walk around the museum, you can scan different exhibits to have a real-life 3D version of James May popping up on your screen to talk to you about it. (the app itself isn't free, but you can get a good flavour of it in this video)



Think about this for learning. You don't need a talking person to pop up. You could as easily launch animated diagrams of machines, or straight video clips


The free developer kit I mentioned before is called Vuforia. It is the engine underpinning most of the AR you will see
in the mainstream media today. Right now the majority of the use cases still seem to be in the advertising space, but I'm looking forward to see more educators playing around with AR.

Have you tried AR yet for learning? What did you do?

UPDATE: A few days after this blog post, there was a public preview of Big Bird's Words, a new app for kids that uses some of the very latest Vuforia features to help (surprisingly young) kids find specific words in the world around them. This is even-smart AR, including live character recognition. Super cool!

MobiMOOC - free online m-learning course happening now!

There have been a flurry of reports in the news recently about MOOCs. Massive, Open, Online courses. Several notable startups have waded in (Coursera, Udacity, edX, Ted-ed), and the early results look impressive.

But did you know that Mobile Learning was one of the early adopters?

MobiMOOC 2011 started the ball rolling last year. A massively online, free, collaboration between m-learning gurus from across the globe (see our summary report)

The next one, MobiMOOC 2012 is happening RIGHT NOW. It is part way through, free, and waiting for you to join in as a lurker, a caution contributor, or a down-right enthusiast!

For a preview of the speakers and sessions, explore the MobiMOOC site

I am curating a strand this week, presenting live on both Tuesday (late) and Wednesday (early), with a parallel discussion forum. The title is "Mind the Gap: exploring the gap between m-learning theory, and practice"

Do drop in. I'd love to see you online.

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!

Top m-learning reports of 2012

Filtering out the best, so you don’t have to! Links to our top m-learning reports for 2012:
You know that mobile learning has hit the mainstream when the big guys start to get it … and 2012 is the year that this happened. With solid reports, and reviews from UNESCO, GSMA and other global giants, as well as a flurry from mobile consultancies across the planet!
Here are a few of the best (free) reports:

 GSMA have a whole collection of reports, the meatiest of which is a McKinsey market report. It is good stuff, but bear in mind their audience. This is not about empowering learning. It is about helping network operators (GSMA) understand the commercial opportunities. So good on stats, a little heavy on corporate speak, but a little lame on education. Teachers may find the other reports (Case Studies) more helpful.


 UNESCO have also launched a Mobile Learning Series, with some great reports, and resources. These are the opposite end of the spectrum from the GSMA ones. Very grass-roots up. Trying to understand the impact on individual students, and looking at challenges faced by education institutions. They hosted a mobile learning week earlier this year. If you are new to m-learning I recommend their summary of the week. By reading section 2, you get a crash course in all the current discourse of m-learning!

JISC infoNet in the UK put together a great summary of what is going on in learning technologies (“Emerging Practice in a Digital Age”), and included with it a special section on m-learning: The Mobile Learning infoKit. JISC are all about empowering teachers, so they contain real, grounded advice and guidance. It is a great report, but even better for those visual learners amongst you, there is a great, simple slideshow that comes with it, summarizing all the main themes!

Or if you like your reports more academic, check out IAMLearn – the International Association of Mobile Learning. They have a small sample of their prodigious output online.


m-learning.org – of course it would be remiss of me not to point you at our own m-learning.org site for a wealth of free research, and reports. Or see also the reports section of our MoLE project site

So much for the meaty reports …  for more current news, there are some great developer teams (like ours!) and practitioners publishing tips and tricks. See TribalLabs, MobLearn, Float Mobile Learning, Upside Learning, LearningInHand, IgnatiaWebs, Mobile Learning Edge, or aggregators like mlearnopedia.
But if you REALLY want your news fresh, go to #mlearning on twitter!
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.

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!

Best tools for cross platform app development

As part of our work on the MoLE project we have been revisiting the rapidly growing number of frameworks, libraries and platforms that developers can use to create cross-platform mobile apps 

If you are new to app development, you may know there is a constant debate between app developers, building “native” apps, and mobile web developers, championing “web apps”. The native app developers get better performance and integration, while the web app developers get broader reach and better standardisation

In the middle of this debate are a growing team of developers championing a hybrid of these two positions. Developing code once (like “native”) but deploying across apple / android / blackberry (like “web apps”). This is a rapidly emerging area, with a flurry of very exciting toolkits available.

To keep you up to date, we are very happy to share our recent report:

 

Cross-platform mobile development

a review of the top cross platform mobile app development frameworks, libraries and platforms

 

m-Learning in the USA

The USA has been punching way below it's weight in m-learning for quite some time, but it feels like the giant is slowly awakening:

1: I am on my way to meet the US Navy, who have invited us to run a mobile learning project with them

the details are not yet public, but we hoping to integrate the best of mobile learning with their high-performance e-learning system

2: Tomorrow I will be at a mobile learning "think tank" in Washington DC

mobilelearning09.org looks small, but hopefully perfectly formed ... with a large number of people I have not heard of in the m-learning arena before. Lets see what's happening in the US!

3: A great looking m-learning content site is being launched tomorrow, at http://cc.mlearnopedia.com

In their infinite wisdom(!) Tony Karrer and Judy Brown have linked their content aggregator to our humble blog ... so if you visit cc.mlearnopedia.com don't be surprised to find out about us all over again!

 

We look forward to finding out more, and reporting back on what's happening in US mobile learning!

(I am doing my first "blogging on a plane" ... so not sure exactly when this will go live!)

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!

5 year olds need mobile, playful ICT instead of laptops!

Teaching ICT to primary aged children using tools designed for office-based adults isn't the best approach.

This is the result of a study recently completed at Stirling University in Scotland, which found that it was far more helpful to get them started with the technologies that fit more naturally into their lives: digital cameras, video cameras, electronic keyboard, barcode scanners and mobile phones.

The TES ran a great article on the study this week (pg 34?), and although the full version is not available on the university website just yet, it is expected shortly.

The Tribal m-learning team have had similar, very positive experiences with Key Stage One children using our resources. We recently visited a primary school in Wolverhampton, part of the Learning2Go initiative, and were bowled over by the inspirational mix of PDA activities, class-based learning, and paper-based worksheets.

Robin C, the class teacher, had used our MyLearning Autoring tool to build text based activities, using words from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme. He them made paper-based worksheets to extend these activities further. The mix of book, PDA, differentiated worksheets and class-interaction was very engaging. even the most hyperactive of his 5-6 year olds was totally absorbed in their task.

Kids with a 2 minute attention span were sitting, engrossed, for a good half-hour!

Robin, we think you and your class rock! Keep up the inspiration!

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!

psp, TV, mp3, pda, mobile phones: can we REALLY put learning onto them all?

How do we cope with supporting real, valid, mobile learning on a huge range of devices?

The more time I spend surrounded by mobile learners, the more this question comes back to haunt me. We have used many different approaches and devices already, but still the issue is FAR from simple.

There are a wide spectrum of strategies. At one end we have learning that is VERY device specific - exploiting what each device does best. At the other end is data-pushing, where we have some central resources that get intelligently reformatted for multiple different devices.

But which is best?

Evolving standards for data push us towards the data-push area. I can see the same RSS feed on many different devices. My smart content system will reformat a powerpoint to run on many different devices. A lo of energy has been invested in perfecting data-push, but is that really enough for learners?

At the other, device specific end, think about simple mp3 players. All they can do is audio. Nothing else. But they have a really useful place in learning. Why can’t I listen to key lessons, and reminders?

Or think about camera phones. Encouraging learners to collect media samples can be a rich and rewarding addition to their learning.

But data push doesn't even get a look in on either of these examples. And most mobile web standards are irrelevant.

So where should we put our energy?

My personal philosophy on this is that we need to be able to do both. We should rejoice in the standards, and wherever possible support the emerging mobile web and data standards like XHTML, RSS, Wap, XML, CSS etc. But we also need to make the most of the unique features of specific devices. Just because the web browser on my smart phone doesn’t talk to my camera, does that mean I shouldn’t take a picture as part of my learning? Of course not! But I can guarantee that if all the learning is too standards or even browser centric this will be neglected.

So - I go for both. Some materials can be pushed out to multiple devices. But beware of losing the (possibly even richer) learning that happens with device specific features.

A Beacon award for mobile learning!

We have had a couple of loyal, enthusiastic user-groups who have been involved with mobile learning from our earliest public trials back in 2003 right through to today.

One of them, Pembrokeshire College on the beautiful west coast of Wales, has just won a Beacon Award for their use of mobile learning.

Congratulations to Geoff Elliot and the team!

They have been doing amazing work, and deserve all the credit coming your way. (Geoff is the guy hiding at the back of the photo taken from the college news page)

For those not yet in the know, Beacon Awards recognise imaginative and innovatory teaching and learning practice. In the case of Pembrokeshire they won the FENC award with recognises the leading work they are doing allowing learners to build their own learning via collaboration and sharing.

The FENC ethos is: "Take, Shape and Share" - and Geoff's team have made that work via mobile learning.

This news is so hot off the press, that at the time of writing, the AoC Beacon site doesn't even have this years winners listed yet!

more PSP learning please!

I am just back from the handheld learning conference in London, where I showcased our content authoring, and in particular the PSP materials.

It seems we have tapped into a latent, and unfulfilled need. We know that there are a lot of PSPs out there. What we didn't know was that there were so many people interested in using them for learning. Fantastic news!

(the hits on my blog have escalated by about 10 times since posting about our PSP content authoring)

But now the tricky bit. As PSPs stand, they have great batteries, a fantastic screen, good video playback, but no real educational content. Certainly nothing to compete with the games I can buy for it.

I have met a couple of people in the UK already looking to use the PSP as a glorified memory stick in education. They are about to start trialling PSPs with a couple of schools - but as their website isn't live at the moment, I will not post any links.

This is a good idea, but seems like only the beginning. What we need is tools for educators to be able, more simply, to create more relevent, more meaningful content of their own - personalised to their learners.

At the moment, our PSP authoring isn't scheduled to be included in the release version of Mylearning author. Mostly, because we don't have many teachers interested.

I am sure they exist, so if you are one, and if you think it ought to be included, please post a comment to let me know. The more momentum we can get, the more likely I can get it into the next release!

Lost in translation? Try a podcast!

About six months ago I wrote an article for a becta publication about the future technologies for learning (Full publication available for free from Becta)

In it I quoted an african lady, moved to europe, who created podcasts for her euro-family to teach them her home language. These podcasts were a surprise hit worldwide!

Today I tried to track her down - but she has gone missing. Instead, several other similar sites have sprung up around the world. It seems language learning is alive and well!

To celebrate, here are a couple of sample lessons from the world of free podcast language learning:

Shona (Zimbabwe): "introducing a friend to mum"

• Mhoro mwanangu. Wakadini? / Hello, my child. How are you?
• Unobva kupi? / Where do you come from?
• KuUniversity unodzidza chii? / What do you study at the University?

Shona-2005-07-22nd.mp3 (1.2 mb) from www.shonapodcast.co.uk - an english husband and zimbabwean wife team


Mandarin (China): "preparing for the olympics"


Learn how to vit in when you visit Bejing for the olympics (as if!). In this lesson you find out about “Olympics” and “players” from Jenny and Ken.

chinesepod344_A114_20060910.mp3 (8.3mb) from www.chinesepod.com - a far slicker online tuition site


English for non-native speakers: "2 words a day"

Suffice = be sufficient, be adequate, be enough or meet the needs of.

Sature = to soak something with liquid, to fill something with so many people or things that no more can be added. Supply a market beyond the point at which the demand for a product is satisfied.

JV162.mp3 (2.7 mb) from www.justvocabulary.com - a daily double word dose from sunny South Africa

enjoy!

m-learning in the cleaning sector

We are working with Newham college, running several trials with different work based sectors. We have been getting some great feedback from them, and I have just seen a entertaining little promotional DVD that Newham made showcasing one of the trials with hospital cleaners.

I have uploaded a vastly-compressed version of the video. It is well worth a few minutes of viewing!

If you are interested in getting a higher res copy drop me a comment, and I will point you towards the people who made it.

Feedback from the project thus far looks good. I quote from the project manager:

The experience of the project as it is emerging is that

1. it is hugely popular with learners
2. tutors are beginning to trust it to the extent that they are abandoning paper based materials in its favour (assessment)
3. it is entirely suitable for the small chunks of time tutors have to operate within in the hospital cleaning industry
4. contextualised and generic sfl and vocational materials have been developed for use at all stages of learning, from engagement through initial assessment, delivery, drill and practice, to practice assessment and preparation for national tests - and this is important so that mlearning can be introduced and continue to be used within the working environment (and as part of a blend of materials).
5. the specific sectors of the transport and cleaning industries have a clear strategic use for this technology. There is a good fit with national strategies for upskilling staff.
6. Partners are having no trouble engaging employers - they really see the benefits

mobile literacy?

What are the key skills we need our mobile learners need to have?

Have a look at this great starter-list for mobile literacy on the Keitai site.

It feels like the computer-list is quite a bit more complete than the handheld-one, but they are both fantastic starting points