One day course in mobile learning - a bargain!

Anybody going to MLearn2008? It is happening in the UK this year, and promises to provide a great collection of speakers.

BUT - did you know about the workshops the day before?

Whether you are attending the main conference or not, you are still able to go to the workshops.

We are hosting Generation M, an all-day introduction to mobile learning for only £50 (which includes a licence to the MyLearning authoring tool)

If you looking for a gentle overview of all the current issues, as well as a chance to make some of your own m-learning content give us a go! ... as it says on the brochure:

Prepare yourself for MLearn2008 with a relaxed day of informal presentations and practical sessions. This exciting workshop day will provide hands-on opportunities to try m-learning authoring tools as well as hear from our fascinating guest speakers, Jocelyn Wishart, Karl Royle and Richard Everett – see www.m-learning.org and www.mlearn2008.org for full details of the programme.

It promises to be a great introduction to mobile learning. If you are interested, Sign up here (we are the second one on the list, "Generation M")

MoleNET lives on ... £4m available for mobile learning in 2008/09

The LSC have just this second announced a further round of funding for the MoLeNET project ... £4m to support new projects, or to bulk up existing ones.

 

The same constraints apply as last time:

- consortia need to be fronted by an English FE college

- money is available for capital expenditure only

- colleges need to pay in 20% of the full amount they request, in cash, to fund training and support

- not a long time between now and getting your bids in (6 October 08)

 

Congratulations to the existing projects, who have obviously managed to show enough benefit to learners to have been able to encourage the LSC to make this new money available!

 

More details here: http://www.molenet.org.uk/search/resource-29769.aspx

 

If you want to get involved, and ARE an English FE college, start by looking at what the current projects are doing. There is some very good information out there (if you dig), with some valuable lessons learned. Make sure you can show why your bid is building on the state of the art!

 

If you want to get involved, and ARE NOT an English FE college, now is the time to make friends with one, to come up with a joint project, and to help them bid for it!

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

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.