PDA Coverters

Leigh Blackall over at TALO is seeking some leads on how to convert Quicktime or Flash for viewing through a PDA. I’m sure someone out there has something that would assist. Please drop a reply in the comments.

Cheers.

Neta : Mob Rules

Have we learnt anything from the truckloads of research, case studies, best practice forums and global communication summits etc. which provide the evidence that the Australia’s telecommunication companies are stifling the economic benefits of mobile e-learning (m-learning) ?

Is this issue just economics or is it that the education sector needs also to face it’s own demons ?

Seems not. Let me explain how it occurs for me.

I spent some magic moments today walking around the park, gardening and generally lapping up a beautiful sunny Sydney with my partner, stepson and one fluffy white dog.

I played chess with Chaim and avoided another slaughter on Halo. My partner and stepson now watch Stephen Spielberg’s AI and debate how humans can love a cyborg. The Sims game characters are no longer at risk of burning to death in the kitchen and I’ve managed to get the old VCR hooked up and working again. The phones are charged, the dog’s asleep and I no longer battle sleep deprivation and warranted hostility from a doting family by battling script and closed-loop softwares.

Things have come a long way in a year.

I sit here in this poky little warm house and compose simple questions to complex issues and share these with the world using connected online spaces and places.

Things have come a long way in twelve months for me and this feels like it’s only the begining – the chink through which I look at the bigger picture.

I recognise that things have changed, the world has changed, the way in which I communicate has broadened and generations which I’ve sired and nurture……. connect differently.

These connections are now very different. Easier. Permeant and resonating far deeper than ever before.

I am one of the lucky ones who has access ……..by virtue of paying for it. The morality of encouraging others to also embrace a networked future particularly within an educational context ( and paying through the nose for it ) worries me though.

I constantly butt heads against closed doors, disbelieving network marketeers and educational law enforcement .

It seems we are at the threshold of great change and very fearful of it.

Nothing in the mlearning arena has changed ….at least nothing that sensibly and critically provides open access to the enabling technologies many students and educators seek to mesh with networked e-learning.

To ellucidate I refer to empty shells which could powerfully inform ways forward for learners amid the Australian access and economics ‘internetworked blocking’ debate as Dr. Marcus Bowles put forward critically a year ago.

The rage, the angst and the hands in the air can still be seen in many areas of education where words and wisdom could quell.

Are global communication networks still defending market share by confining mobile data transmissions to high-cost cellular networks ? What is their profit margin ? Where does a ‘deal’ for educators come into the bargain ?

Nowhere it seems.

I’m a small fry in this conversation – I admit that.

I search constantly for evidence that the education sector is ready to support environments that embrace the ‘always on’, to pedagogy that supports ubiquitous handheld technology as a learning enabler, to network access that prioritises what students ‘choose-to-use’ and provides high-speed access to learning materials that are disaggregated as funky transmissable digital learning objects…..as popular with learners as SMS is with mobile phone users.

Why are we still blocking the worlds biggest and fastest growing networked sociopedia ……SMS ?

As a foundational technology, why have we decided that the only use for SMS warranted in educational settings is for punitive measures such as informing on students whereabouts ?

Why are teachers still messaging students from their own personal phones at great risk of any audit procedure particularly as the ‘inbox’ gets full and the only option is to ‘delete’?

These are the same questions I was asking a year ago !

A handful of trials does not cut it for me and many educators want answers, alerted to the evident breach in technology communications protocol and the charges associated with use this technology.

To balance the above I feel heartened to note the http://www.engageme.net/ blog I naively slaved over was made mention by Geoff Stead in the progressive paper Emerging_Technology_Accessibility.

The questions of MMS for educators collectively seeking to realise learning outcomes and engage students with ease and authenticity is shared by many and evidenced in a post picked up by Stephen Downes .

I do seek an authentic counsel with global telecommunications providers who will assist and realise this solution for educators who employ everyday handheld technologies as part of teaching and learning. In doing so we will realise great things. I’m following a number of conversations and drawing a number of blanks here at home.

Here’s a few links to what I’m listening / reading/ watching tonight;

1. We Make Money Not Art
2. Mobile Active
4. Bop Secrets
5. SmartMobs
6. Itu Int
7. Orbiz
8. Why Elearning Fails?
9. Assa Edu
10. 160 Characters
11. CTAD UK
14. FERL BECTA
15. FutureLab
16. Eportfolios
17. BECTA – gold
18. UTA FI
19. Speed Of Creativity
20. WTVI
21.

Everything For Nothing : Web 2.0 Antics

Today I had some serious fun over at http://www.moblog.co.uk/blog/moblobro06

Not only are people actually doing something there, it seems to be a reasonable resonance of the awareness that educators are seeking better ways of working…in spite of the issues they find themselves in due to the aging architectures of the respective institutions.

On the way home I had a chat with Anne Paterson about web 2.0 and then upon retiring back to my computer station console and operating suite, I composed the following thought about how web2.0 rhymes with poo ;

…………………..or maybe the ambiguity of it all is the good part.

Now here’s a thought – the paradox of the web 2.0 question discussion routine is that educators ( organisations) could be creating their own spaces / places and ‘catching’ students at it ….actually setting up free spaces within which you can do what you will…….. like a node on the outside of a well worn wart.

Register a floppy name, chuck in some mash and offer everything for nothing.

Seriously now I can see that connections, web2.0, names and wrap arounds that occur with this concept seem all so feasible. Perhaps I should buy server space and become a content enabler, cramming peoples lives into little digital spaces and zapping them occasisonally for dollars ….or would that make little sense.”

I think I’ll stick to teaching – at least for the next six weeks anyway.