The power and potential: a panel session discussing m-learning

There was a lot of buzz about mobile learning at this year's Mobile World Congress. More than at any previous event. Significants I was able to be at included:

1: GSMA Seminar on the future of mEducation:
A packed out event including sessions by Graham Brown-Martin (slides here); Our own Peggy Johnson, EVP at Qualcomm (slides here); George Held, VP at Etisalat (slides here) followed by a debate with Florence Gaudry-Perkins (Alcatel-Lucent), Vanessa Lucio (Telefonica Learning Services) and others

2: Launch of a report from the Broadband Commission on technology and education

3: Live panel discussion between Qualcomm, mEducation Alliance and Etisalat looking at the future of this (no longer emerging) idea of m-learning. Click below to see it:

(clicking will take you to their site: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/ff)

Our conversation was streamed out, live, to all the huge screens around Barcelona, which was a bit surreal! The contributors are:

• Geoff Stead (me) - Head of Mobile Learning at Qualcomm (@geoffstead)
• Rebekah Levi from Mobile Education Alliance
• George Held from etisalat

Kept in order by Mark Smith

I'm very pleased to see m-learning hitting the mainstream, despite the often muddled assumption that it is one single thing (rather than the diaspora of opportunities it really is!)

Mobile Bus Stop Merriment!

Who says mobile can't be fun! Qualcomm's guerrilla merriment department do their magic on a local bus stop.



Of course, my own bus trips are never going to be quite the same any more . . .

(Qualcomm are my new employer - long may the silliness last!)

Are the robots taking over? Augment your reality, don't lose it!

When is technology helping, and when does it hinder?
How can you ensure "enthusiasm for the new" doesn't blind you to what is good right now?

I'm not sure I have any perfect answers, but I spent a very interesting hour at the trendy studios at LondonReal being interviewed by Brian and Nic, who were not educators, but wanted to understand what we are up to, and exactly how far is too far to take technology

You can catch the (visual) podcast, below, or scan down the page for a few snippets


Here is a hastily transcribed synopsis, below, to help you navigate your way through:

[6-7 mins] What's mobile learning all about?

[7.30] Thinking about touch screens. Voice control. Google glass.
- what's augmented reality all about
- where's the meaning, and sense in that, and what could you do for learning ?

[10 mins] And how soon with augmented reality be real?

[14 mins] Nic the AR cynic - "is technology swamping our humanity"?
- tech is flooding us like a wave. our choice is how to deal with it
- your mission: how to use it for good!

[16 minutes] So what should we be doing differently at school to prepare for this?
- thinking about the skills you need for future life, rather than narrow focus on a few subjects

[18:30] If you have to measure schools, maybe you should be looking 10 years down the line. How many of their graduates end up doing awesome, new jobs that weren't even invented when they were at school! That's enlightened schooling

[21 mins] Singing the praises of the MAKR / maker movement. Especially some of the cool coding tools like Rasberry Pi and Arduino.

[24:30] Nic again - "Is technology making us more stupid then?"
- all about a trade-off. Using technology to help me, but not letting it remove my humanity
- we need to learn new social skills about living with always on technology. Should you answer your phone while talking to friends?
- introducing Phone Stack - the ultimate game for phone-addicted diners!

[29:30] Ubuntu. Introducing a cool philosophy that helps keep your place in live. Your success is connected to our success, my friend!
m-Ubuntu project: Several pieces on this blog, a talk I did on it at TEDxLondon, and further info here: http://www.m-ubuntu.org.za/

[34 mins] People need people. Adding a bit of "social" into a very dispersed virtual learning environment.
- technology can help fill the gaps

[36:30] Should we all be getting cybernetic implants?
- awesome medical applications
- same story as augmented reality. It can be used for awesome good, but it is up to you to maintain your humanity!!

[39 mins] So are machines taking over? Are we becoming one with the borg?
- humans have always used tools. Technology is no different.

[43:30] Your brain is very good at tricking you. Re-writing your own personal narrative
- technology can help you understand your own narrative a little better
- you can't trust your own recollection of past events!

[46 mins] Who are the technology companies to watch?
1) the big guys, like Google, Qualcomm, HP etc (who have the weight to explore the peripheries of the mainstream)
2) the visionaries. Like Mozilla, Wikipedia, GitHub (who have a bold mission they champion)

[50:30] Has apple peaked? Has blackberry died? Who is winning the mobile mega-race?
- my thoughts? People should stop over-agonising about who is top dog. In reality it is mostly irrelevant to our lives. And often very geographically skewed

[53 mins] What about MOOCs / iTunesU? Are these important? Are they game changers?
- Are they important? Absolutely
- Are they the future? Not as they are right now, though already they are doing some meaningfully open / egalitarian things.
- the next generation of them will move from "broadcast" mode to a more empowering educational model
- Another important angle is OER (open educational resources), as well as sites that help you practice, and build skills like http://www.codeuniversity.com/

[57 mins] How did you end up with your job? Are startups a good place to start?
- You really need the underpinning technology skills, but after that, the real value is in all the other disciplines that get layered on top.
- Startups are great fun, but can be abusive for young techies. If you are joining one, make sure the startup REALLY gets technology, and lets you help shape it. And that you believe in the vision.

[101 mins] Find people who inspire you. Learn from the masters. Mine were all in the tradition of Adult Learning. Empowerment. Education to make a difference. People like Paolo Friere, Seymour Papert, Desmond Tutu as well as my personal mentors (that's you Dad, and Martin!)

Final word: Technology is GREAT for education. But use it as tools to do things, don't slip into the trap of letting it DO things for you.

If your educational technology starts feeling like a sausage machine, with pre-digested knowledge being shoved into you, you are doing it wrong. Turn and run away.

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!

Wave Riding Theory - a fresh look at learning technology adoption

Is there a gap between mobile learning theory, and practice?

How should teachers decide which approaches, technologies, or approaches to adopt with their mobile learning?

As part of my session at MobiMOOC 2012 we explored some of the current theories often applied to m-learning, trying to map them to practice.

Together with my team, we have been deeply involved in mobile learning (both envisioning it, and making it) for over 11 years, but very little of that time has been spent in pure theory, so it was an interesting exercise mapping some of the current theories to live examples, and then discussing with the attendees where the gaps lay (and how we might bridge them)

In the process, we realised that the most crucial step any practitioners needed to take was realising that mobile is coming at them whether they are ready or not. It is not a flood that can be stopped, more a wave that needs to be ridden! This wave-riding theme kept growing, as we discussed the different approaches to coping with the myriad of available devices and approaches, until it became a theory in it's own right!

The basic tenet of this, is an awareness that mobile consumer technologies are rushing towards us whether we are fully prepared for them or not. Already, more smartphones are sold than PCs, and a huge majority of our learners will use their mobile device as their primary reference / communication / collaboration tool (even if it is for Facebook!)

Rather than try to hold back the tide, our role as educational-techies is to help practitioners learn how to ride it. The wave is rushing at us regardless. It won't wait till we have perfected our art. Instead we just need to jump on, and learn as we ride.

We used this surfing-metaphor to look at various aspects of mobile learning, to extract our key advice. The next slides show advice both for Learning Designers, and for Implementers:

1: The importance of trial and error. Start small. Practice. Keep improving.

2: Keeping supple and flexible.

3: Building in resilience. Prepare for the unexpected.

4: Success is as ART as much as a science.

What do you think? Does the wave-riding metaphor work for you?

The mobiMOOC attendees certainly thought so, encouraging me to do this post, and proceeding to work with us to develop their own top tips for m-learning practitioners

I hope you find them useful!

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).

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 interview - geoffstead

While in the states I met up with Ewan MacLeod of MobileIndustryReview who was enthusiastic enough about our mobile learning work to interview us for his site.

As he was new to m-learning (and a good interviewer), the video ended up like a crash course in mobile learning. What works. what doesn't. What we are up to.

Check it out. You'll get our current thinking on the industry, as well as the first public info about the work we are doing to mobilise the US Department of Defense. They are using our mobile toolkit to roll out m-learning across vast numbers of their learners.

Go live within the month.

 

Ewan, thanks for the enthusiasm.

Do you agree with the points in the interview? I'd love to hear your comments.

Mobile Learning at TEDxLondon

Geoff Stead presents mobile learning as a tool for empowerment at TEDxLondon – a TED event dedicated to shaking up education

Original slides available on slideshare

Presentations by the other (amazing!) co-presenters on the TEDxLondon site

Transcript:

I’d like to introduce you to a word. Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is an African concept that doesn’t translate easily into English. It means “I am me because of us”, “I grow myself by helping others around me to grow”.

It is an awesome word. I try to live my life by it. And it is the philosophy behind the projects I would like to tell you about.

Mobile phones have become part of our lives. There are more phones in the developed world than people. The developing world is catching up fast. Mobile connectivity is transforming how we communicate. And where.  And when. It has fundamentally changed how we look up information. It has generated new kinds of job that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. New types of entertainment.  New forms of art.

So why not new ways to learn?

This is already happening - it is called mobile learning. Bringing mobile devices and phones into the class to enhance learning.

Smartphones are like a swiss army knife, packed with school friendly tools:
They are cameras, writing tools, eBook readers, calculators, diaries, reference books. You have the entire web in your hand

But more importantly they are agents for change - encouraging new ways of teaching

    * Learner centered: Learning is mobile and can happen anywhere. It can happen anytime: in or out of school. It can be collaborative. It can also be intensely private.
    * Teacher is no longer the source of all facts, but rather a collaborator and guide
    * The encourage lots of future skills like those listed on the slide

In the UK I mostly work with learners NOT in school. Kids who have dropped out. Young offenders. The unemployed. Adults in training but struggling to read and write. People for whom traditional school didn’t work out. I build software to support their learning – regularly making use of mobile phones as a stimulus. But a few years ago I happened to meet a fellow South African who shared my passion for education, and wanted to take these same ideas back into South Africa, to mainstream schools

And we did! The projects are collectively called m-ubuntu, and use mobile learning as a stimulus to encourage critical debate between teachers, and improve the quality of teaching.

They take refurbished smartphones, with some educational software and tools installed onto them, and use them to improve teaching and learning. The results have been inspiring. Local teachers even won a grant from the US to go to Washington and share what they had learned with American teachers!

But the successes are not down to putting smartphones into poor schools – they are about using them as an agent for change.

The real wins happen when teachers work with other teachers to discuss how best to use these new tools.

<< stepping through a range of photos from the project >>

Of course these happy photos only tell a fragment of the story. There are some challenging new skills to learn for both students and teachers. What happens if they are stolen? Or if students give away personal data? What about internet safety? Or plagiarism. By working on these challenges together, the real value kicks in . Students get engaged and build real life skills

Mobile learning is certainly here to stay. It may be initially disruptive – but isn’t that exactly the stimulus we need to help focus education towards the future?

If you want to try this for yourself, here are my 3 top tips:

1. Firstly – don’t be constrained by pre-packaged learning resources. Think of the smartphone as a tool to do stuff. Record music. Film a movie. Build an app. This is what they are made for, and makes for the best learning.
2. Secondly – It won’t be right first time, but if you try again it will get better. And the time after than even better. It is OK to make mistakes – so plan in flexibility
3. Thirdly – Share the learning with your students. Discuss mobile learning with them. Let the kids learn the details about the phones, and become your technical support. By building autonomy and problem solving skills they will be learning some real future skills

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!

mLearnCon presentation

I have just finished a very enjoyable discussion-filled presentation at mLearnCon – a mobile learning conference in Silicon Valley arranged by the eLearningGuild.

My session was all about helping the mostly US audience look a little wider at international m-learning projects, to see what lessons could be learned for the many current m-learning projects that are starting up right now

See below for the presentation we gave – comments (as always) welcomed

m-learning across the world

View more presentations from TribalSlides

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.

Mobile stats for 2010 and 2011

I can’t help but be bowled over when I try to get my head around exactly how many people are doing useful tasks on their phones.

There are always a flurry of stylish YouTube presentations around this time of year, showcasing the “growth of mobile” – here is one I like:

We are in the midst of some “deep dive” research at the moment, which is cool (because we have very current stats), but it does also turn us into cynics, as we realise how easy it is to over-sell the feel-good factor.

Many of the stats are by their nature skewed. A good rule of thumb is that “the more financially viable, the more accurate the stats”. So if you want to know mobile internet usage in Ghana – you will struggle. But if you want to know which mobile apps are bought most in the USA … easy!

I like the stats, above, as they are a pretty accurate, global summary. We will be uploading some of our own perspectives on this in the future

why mobile changes things?

Living in the middle of “mobile learning”, it feels totally obvious that mobile is important, and that it fundamentally changes the way we look at information … but I can’t help noticing that not everybody else shares my view!

(shocking, I know!)

That’s why I really like Bryan’s presentation – with (quite a lot of) simple, non-technical images and statements he manages to capture the excitement, the challenges, and the diversity of the mobile landscape

 

I especially like the simplicity he uses to get the message across – if I wasn’t already enthused, I would be now! Thanks, Bryan