AMLN

The AMLN site is now in operation. Please contribute to the Google groups conversation as an intro and we will have a host of other features enabled by the end of the weekend.

RFID

Now I’m feeling alittle unnerved when i’m finding things on microchipping primary school kids assets .

And especially considering I’m drawn into speaking with Verichip.

Predictions: 2006

I’ve written something in response to an article I read today located at http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=31-1

My take which I’d welcome feedback on is;

“Education policy in Australia strongly reflects an awareness that mobile communication interaction is part of the greater networked online learning ecology. Despite the resistance to mobile devices being used in teaching and learning a growing number of early adopters are utilising these new and emergent communication technologies to engage, retain and motivate students.

The greatest shift in 2006 will be evidenced by the K-12 education sector embracing mlearning occuring alongside developments in other education sectors. Huge reservations exist with student privacy, security and other related concerns at the forefront of debates involving mlearning in schools.

The interoperable nature of this mobile technology with existing e-learning systems will place a demand on the provision of appropriate networked servicing, professional development for educators and access to reusable learning objects / resources that are mobile enabled - irrespective of the device type.”

Cool For School

….one approach to it all is to take the conservative road and others is to find ways to grow the knowledge and come up with opinions that best suit the project, people, culture, place, time etc.

Rant

I posted this on the TALO e-group the other day and will re-publish it here as a number of contacts and friends have indicated that they lost it amongst the bowels, strings and threads of Googleism.

It was a late night rant and I make no excuses for it’s content so…….Enjoy.

Hi .

My name is Alex Hayes and I’m currently working as an Acting Senior Education Officer with the Centre for Learning Innovation in Strathfiled, NSW, Sydney Australia.

Im fast approaching forty and I’ve got two kids who live in others parts of this large country. I’m going to blog my cat soon and I have lost count of the number of passwords I’m supposed to know for all the logins I’ve generated in the last ten years.

It’s all just guess work for me when it comes to teaching online and so I’ve gone mobile.

I have a weakness for mobile devices and tend to speak in pictures rather than stringing ciphers and signs together like this..blah, bla,blah.

I get confused when people post comments in my blog and send me emails stating that they are unhappy with my attitude. I speak openly and encourage you to suffer for doing so also.

Following up on Rose Grozdanic’s comments - I interact here [ TALO] to GROW knowledge, find out about cool stuff and generally have a laugh. If I do get unhappy then it is usually for a very good reason and that is rare. If everyone was to send a few more SMS messages like this;TALO2006-wherecoolpeoplemeetngreet.

Or;

lets design some wapverts which aggregate to subscriptee’s phones on a weekly basis. Subscribe-receive-download-play-laugh-interact-regenerate.

mLCMS for geeks is the way of the walk.

Maybe going mobile is the answer and maybe we could get rid of this text driven boring thing and do this in a better place such as a customised weblog housing feedcasts and other funky stuff to amuse ourselves with.

Where are the coders in this group for god’s sake ?

Janison…..dont get me started on that one.

Have a phat day

PS. It’s term that denotes happiness and coolness and is something that a teenager told me I should get the other day.

” Get phat and not wack man cause’ all you do is speek geek and mess with the days in my week…..”

Not bad for an ex-student who now earns more than I do

A number of people have asked me in the last couple of years how I got involved in using mobile technologies in teaching and learning.

It goes like this. I first got a mobile phone back around 1990. the phone was a grey “brick” Ericsson and had a battery life of around two days. I used it to make the occasional call and I also experimented with the SMS feature which by default or by fault was free. I found the SMS feature pretty amazing as I could send text and code to others with ease. I have no idea as to what the situation was with SIM cards and so on but i sure a hell know it was a nightamre with configuration settings and there was defintletly no possibilities of networking the device with the internet. In fact I had only just begun to use the internet when I first owned a mobile phone which suprises me.

I payed about $10 a month in fees to telstra at the time in Perth. About a year later after sending myself broke with costs from the phone i purchased the first of my clam shell flip phones which were the latest thing. they didnt fit in your pocket but they worked fine. It was an analogue CDMA phone and the reception was limited to Perth alone. I travelled to Sydney a couple of times that year and was bailed up in the airport for having a phone on a flight.

I started working with mobile phones and with students from memory at the Department of Juvenile Justice and before long I had two contact lists running - one for students and one for the rest of my life. There was no way of seperating the messages in the inbox but I did my darndest to find ways to seperate the call costs and I had a very progressive Team Leader who actually gave me a phone budget for calls taken on the road. Around this time I wondered as to how on earth I could retract the messages from my phone for assessment and accountability purposes - and so began my battle with Telco’s and government departments to acknowledge the power of SMS messaging and the importance of mapping mobile communication for educational purposes other than p-2-p activities.

It became evident in 1992 that I could begin networking or swarming my contacts by simply sending a broadcast SMS message and so I began writing into my general programming contact a number of ways to employ such an idea as a learning strategy. At that stage there was only a single line display on my phone in green and black!

I cant recall when i heard or found out about Flashmobs and Smartmobs but it certainly wasnt for a decade later. I purchased a Nokia CDMA phone in 1994 and was pleasantly suprised by the intuitive framework or archeology of the device and the number of additional features that had emerged with the new phones.

Games, colour screens, calendar, calculator etc. It was at this time that I knew that this was where a lot of the peripherals I was employing in the classroom would dissapear. I soon caught on that a number of my students were prioritising the purchase and ownership of phones and in 1994 I watched with awe as each Telco and mobile content provision (providor) launched into the download arena for ringtones and other bits for phones. I gave up putting calculators into the budget for my yearly acquisiotions around that time as I watched students use the calculators on their phones with great ease anyway.

In 1996 I lost control of my spending on mobile phone bills and realised then how damaging this ability to switch on and connect with others anywhere anytime could be.

Simultaneously I realised that the same thing was happening to others and so began my enquiries into how to minimise costs and how to access the best services for mobile communication without being bled dry. I also began in earnest campaigning with my employers at the time being a private primary education school to also budget for mobile communication contact drawing up a cost plan for calls out to mobiles via landline. In 1998 I discovered ways to aggregate broadcast SMS via PC but not recive it which wasnt realised as a function till 2003 as part of the TxTMe project.

Worldwide mlearning

I was just reading through a few of the TALO group posts and entries last night and then I came across this one located at the Nokia site.

It is interesting to get a world perspective on this phenomena of mlearning.

In fact mlearning is not the only thing I’m looking at for my work detail.

There is huge potential for educators embracing the use of mlearning principles if we could only get half a moment to take it all in and use it effectively in teaching & learning. Oh…..if you thought Web 2.0 had it’s advocates and fairies then of course we must listen to the chain of command from those who think it’s a load of bollocks.

I actually spent ten minutes reading the responses to the Tim O’Reilly radar site.

Scroll down the page a bit here

Scope: Mobile Technologies and the creation of text.

Questions which need answering.

I wasnt angry when I wrote this. In fact, I was feeling very focussed, calm and happy.

A number of questions were sent to me by a colleague ( as part of an email) who also works at the Centre for Learning Innovation, TAFE NSW , Sydney, Australia

I’m wondering about the scope of mobile technology to support the creation of text i.e. to write at length and record ideas. Perhaps this is NOT what mobile technology is good for, at least not at the moment.

Mlearning is the term referencing the potential for educators considering change in global conversation using mobile communication. This concept of connectedness is reaching into areas of primary curriculum and weblogs and moblogs are becoming a core feature of new teaching and learning.

There are views for and against such introduction.

We could also view this ubiquotous device as the portal or device enabling community aid as stated in cell Phone Culture 2005 , ” No contemporary cultural artefact embodies the genius and disruptive excess of capatlism as clearly as the cell phone…………cell phones are game consoles, still cameras, email systems, carriers of entertainment and business data, nodes of commerce.”

My thoughts are that mobile communication composition is part of information creation that the world wide web enables and aggregates. The rise of the machines as predicted has extended to our hiptop.


The interconnectivity of the two - mobile - web are in my view, the key to true creationism [ combination networked Web 2.0 ecology ] - at least in an electronic sense - part of the greater networked global connectivism.

As there are so many elements to the global e-learning picture that are going mobile, it is pertinent that we address how this mobile communication enables us to record ideas and how it grows knowledge as well as engage in the question / debate as to the relevance of such mobile learning.

I am mindful that I am answering these questions in a time when 90 percent of education institutions in Australia prevent the use of privately owned ( handheld) mobile communication technology in teaching & learning. A raging and very relevant issue is also the health risks associated with using mobile communication technology.

I feel ( emotion / passion ) that the real issue or need for enquiry centres on the demystification of this readily accesible resource and the creative facettes as well as articulated pathways which include such mobile technology use in education settings - where text and other content is delivered, to and through such devices.

More importantly however, as evidenced at the Mobilearn 2006 conference, mobile communication is ever increasingly becoming part of internet enabled Web 2.0 conversation. Synchronous chat boards such as MSN and Yahoo used avidly by younger generations ( generation C) are becoming mobile enabled. There is much research being thrown into this area from an e-learning perspective and now from the mobile arena.

I know that costs to connect will drop and communication will take on forms that may involve little or no text whatsoever. The idea that picture phoning is growing as a phenomenon is well evidenced when watching trends and the scope of mobile use widen world wide.

The key facettes of mlearning are exactly as the term suggests - the ability to network, grow, communicate, distill and compose on the run. The speed at which the ‘jigsaw’ of communication in text format is left for other forms when examining mobile communication is what confuses the traditional pedagogical and andrological models for imparting knowledge. Not a gripe - simply a fact - something I observe everytime I open my mouth and blab about mlearning.

It’s our role as educators to ensure that the emphasis is not on the technology rather the enabled learning ( including text ) that ensues. Who cares if TV has gone mobile ?

Is the literacy of writing text so much better supported by QWERTY keyboard, and so difficult with a phone keypad, that really, it is better to forget about extended reflection as an mlearning activity ?

The mobile phone indeed has a key pad with the entire QWERTY suite - dots, dashes and other levels included - a double depressed key length away - however , at stake here is whether text is simply being used to title and tag content which ’speaks’ more than vast volumes of text alone.

It is interesting how these technologies are being considered by educators and students alike .

It is also suprising how quick young people particularly are adept at composing large bodies of textual reference using their thumb alone yet the primary emphasis is on creating less text and as more meaning using less text.

I question ; Is this simply a trend or is the ‘provision of difference’ in mobile technologies actually changing the emphasis of whats important in teaching & learning in general ?

and;

Can we accept now that the proximity of diverse wireless transmissable form that is the greatest and most readily dismissed change in literacy composition to date ? Is there really any reason to adopt such technologies in learning ?

The phone also ever increasingly has a camera of fair quality another key length away, a calendar, audio note taker, calculator etc. The convergence of these forms into a device which is single-digit capable and operated is the biggest step forward in electronic publishing since typewriters went networked digital.

In the case of SMS ( Short Messaging Service) the architecture of mobility demands short, sharp and often confusing interaction. In some areas of the world SMS messaging is one of the largest and growing areas of electronic information transaction and foreign language acquisition - outstripping the use of PC’s due to lack of access. SMS is specific and purposeful and contextual.

Yet in the context of questions asked I consider SMS messaging to be the key example of how mobile communication technology has contributed the most to the ‘text creation’ ecosphere. SMS in schools has been examined in the context of education as far back as 1998 / 1999.

The limitations imposed by network operators has in fact led to new communication modality. The one hundred and sixty character limit of SMS has in fact changed our perceptions of whats cool in communication and opened a vast debate as to whats appropriate and where.

Emails with large text fields on more expensive models of smart phones / PDA’s are seemingly still in ‘clunk’ mode.

Voice activated software and letter recognition software is only marginally assisting in this process although this improves day to day. We are teaching our devices to factor what is important to us and in return we are rewarded with T9 shortcuts - more programming potential.

The main difference I think between mobile generated text forms and with traditional forms of text creation ie. PC is that there is a compression of language into codified ciphers and signs using mobile. This some reason has been relegated to descriptions such as ‘advances in teaching’ yet we know language is an ever malleable and evidence of the ever changing dimension of human interaction.

Perhaps this foundation technology has been dismissed as the revolution in language creation as ‘users’ compose, edit, syndicate and re-generate ideas and concepts in networked format because, it is argued, SMS is merely a socio-pedia rather than a truly enabled publishing form. In the context of teaching & learning SMS messaging - that is the ever evolving generation of text to solve problems etc. - is not acceptable due to the difficulty in capturing the electronic transactions for assessment.

Or are there just different literacies for different key sets, and those who are keypad literate may well be able to express themselves extensively, analytically and reflectively from their mobile phones?

The ability to author picture, audio, video with annotation and publish to the web via mobile communication technologies must surely be this decades digital revolution.

In my opinion seperating learners into ‘differing’ anything admonishes their ability from the begining.

The emphasis rests on educators embracing change in communication as PART of the curriculum and not as a signal that the old is being replaced with the new. The fear factor is never more present than when raised in relation to mobile communication and it’s interoperable web enabled user interface.

It might be suggested that voice recording by mobile would do this job – BUT – what then about the other end – who will listen to it all?

I would…….and i’m sure that a zillion other podcasters / mobcasters would also.

Some reading as to developments in the VOIP MSN live trials have helped me and there are many examples of where mobcasting ( wireless podcasting from phones ) is assisting in the uptake of languages worldwide.

Listening is the first action of doing. [edited] I also think doing is more important that constantly asking questions and hypo-analysing everything…..we breath, we talk, we write and we much around with the keypad.

Three questions amongst many others.

delicious mlearning

The tagging of mobile learning has begun in earnest at http://del.icio.us/mlearning