Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

LOL!!!

naughty, naughty 

I would argue that this is excellent practice and should be encouraged. Learning happens in both formal and informal environments not simply within a physical building with somebody dictating what should be learnt and when. Mobile technology and learner mobility is intended to enable uncontrolled learning with a structure defined by the learner (s), e.g. social constructivism.


Do you think that a 21st century skill for learners might be an ability to compare, filter and interpret information from sources such as the Internet? After all we teach children at a young age how to cross the road...

I also wonder whether young learners have greater skills in this area than many of their teachers?


Out of interest, why would you believe that talented teachers require a VLE?

Young learners are already creating blogs, podcasts, social pages etc. Perhaps teachers could interface with these rather than learners having to travel back in time to view primitive pages from VLE systems?

Hi Leeg

As long as you save documents in Microsoft's version of open XML then you should be fine sharing docs between your Windows PC's and WinMob 6.1 devices.

See here for more info.

Just make sure that your devices come supplied with Windows Office Mobile!

In regards to your choice of device this very much depends on the objectives of using the technology, i.e. what outcomes you are seeking. You'll naturally need to consider what level of support will be available to teaching staff and how these devices may be embedded within learning and teaching practice.

If you're wanting to engage kids on their terms have you considered asking them what they'd prefer?

Cheers

G

Well caught James and also well interpreted. I've just returned from speaking at the GoMobile Expo in Malaysia where it's clear that mobile broadband / Internet has taken the lead over wired practically before wired even past go.

For me this demonstrates that access whether it be for social, entertainment or learning is by nature a personal (sometimes shared), mobile experience often requiring a personal device/communicator. As you've said this indicates a future where citizens will expect to have skills associated with finding, using and engaging with information on the move. As oft said this seems at odds with the current thinking on UK home access which still geared around 20th century shared laptop running "office" applications in the home.

 

Hi Leeg and welcome to the forum!

In answer to your questions here and in your other posts. You should speak to the public sector accounts teams of the major mobile operators, e.g. O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone, 3, etc that have good 3G data coverage in your area.

If you're concerned about voice calls you should be able to contract with there operators for data only contracts thus avoiding voice call charges. Some of these contracts do allow a "pay as you go" voice option that allow the student to use the phones for talking also. Subject to your requirements you might also want to consider other technologies such as Sony PSP which have excellent web browsing capability over wireless and are significantly cheaper than mobile phone based devices. You may also find that many of your students already own one!

Be aware of some of the restrictions that have been put on mobile internet devices to limit access to various internet sites. To prevent access to adult material the filters are still quite primitive and are causing a lot of upset amongst students who can't access their favourite non-adult sites. Annoying if they or their parents are paying for it.

There are many devices available and you should decide what you want them for and test a few models with the help and input of your students.

Be aware that if you're using all the devices in school at the same time it is likely that the 3G connections will not keep up as cell antenna's have limited capacity so your devices will need to use the school wi-fi which can also be a challenge and may require a substantial upgrade in infrastructure and bandwidth.

Last but certainly not least is determining how these devices will be embedded within teaching practice and what support will be provided to your teachers.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

 

I'm looking forward to meeting some of our Far Eastern members next week as Handheld Learning heads out to the GoMobile event being held in Kuala Lumpur  (20th - 23rd Nov).

I'll be presenting a keynote in the Mobile Learning and Edutainment strand

More info at:
http://www.gomobile.my/

 

Out of 112 bids for a share of £4 Million, the 30 lucky recipients of funding from MoLeNET Phase 2 have been announced. They are:

Accrington and Rossendale College

Ashton Sixth Form College

Aylesbury College

Bolton Community College

Bridgewater College

Capel Manor College

Chichester College

College of West Anglia

Cornwall College

Ealing Hammersmith and West London College

Exeter College

Gloucestershire College

Grimsby Institute of FHE

Hastings College

Joseph Priestley College

Leeds College of Art & Design

Ludlow College

Manchester College

Moulton College

Redbridge College

Reigate Sixth Form College

Sheffield College

South Thames College

St Helens College

Stoke on Trent College

Tower Hamlets College

Trafford College

Truro College

Walsall College

Wirral Metropolitan College

Well done to one and all. We look forward to learning about how these projects develop at Handheld Learning 2009!

Here's a cool video created by Robin Hood Primary School, Birmingham with the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) that was recently launched on the new NCSL Future website developed to support school leaders and edited by our friend Merlin John:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/uRUTtpk9EHg&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/uRUTtpk9EHg&rel=0</a>

The video echo's much of what this community has been discussing and what was a recurring theme during this years Handheld Learning Conference, i.e. embracing the technology that is already embedded in the lives of many young people. Let's hope that Becta will take note as they develop the Home Access Programme.

 

Hi Dave

Congratulation due to you and your team once more!

I'm sorry that you're disappointed with the outcome of the HHL Awards but I'm sure that the other 25 finalists who didn't take away a crystal star also felt a little twinge of disappointment too. In contrast to the Becta ICT Excellence Awards, the HHL Awards are intended to celebrate international innovators and innovations who are specifically working in the field of learning using mobile or ubiquitous technologies.

As you know a number of your team and practitioners from the Learning2Go initiative were nominated and rather than pitch one against another or choose between individual nominations the judges decided that it would be fair to combine these nominations into a single nomination for Learning2Go which then went onto be a finalist in the Primary Category along with Wilsden Primary's e-Learning initiative and Radstock Primary's PIC project.

Once the finalists were announced winners were chosen by public vote, i.e. teachers, parents, learners using SMS and Wilsden won. And why not? The SMS system was externally moderated and multiple votes from the same number were discounted. Only international finalists were at a disadvantage but we still had a winner from Australia.

Really everybody who made it to the finals were winners and in fact the objective of the HHL Awards was to simply demonstrate that mobile learning is not simply a small pond with a few big fish but is a huge pond, highly populated with fish of all sizes!

The only award that was not voted on by the public was the Special Achievement Award. As announced on the evening, a shortlist of nominees was drawn up by the judges and then a lengthy afternoon was spent agreeing who would win and the decision was unanimous. This award is not a "Lifetime Achievement Award" but intended to spotlight an individual who had, in the opinion of the judges, most impact or made the most innovative progress during the past year.

Dave, I feel your comments offer somewhat of a disservice to the hundreds of nominations, the finalists, nearly 10,000 public voters, the judges and ultimately the winners. The HHL Awards was a celebration of everyone with some special recognition for a handful but it didn't make anybody else less important or valuable. Let's celebrate each others achievements, after all if the tide rises so do all the boats.

Yourself and the Learning2Go project was highly visible throughout this years conference with appearances in at least 4 sessions and featured in the main conference session themed "Three of the Best" that preceded Lord Puttnum.

Google "David Whyley" and anybody can see the support and recognition that you and your team have received from this vibrant community. And you know I have personally been a supporter from the very early days of L2G as you have of HHL.

As always, more power to your elbow but also more power to everybody else too!

Cheers

Graham
 

<a href="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Grahambm-DrDavidWhyleyWolverhamptonLA643.flv" target="_blank">http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Grahambm-DrDavidWhyleyWolverhamptonLA643.flv</a>

Hi Andy

Welcome to the forum.

It might be a good idea to let interested parties know how to contact you, e.g. website or email address. If you post your email address here then I recommend that you do it in the following format to avoid internet " address scrapers" 

name [at] yourcompany.com

Good luck and please let us know how it goes.

G

Here's the final delegate newsletter from Handheld Learning 2008 with links to all the goodies 

http://www.handheldlearning2008.com/newsletter/final-news-hhl2008.html

There's a variety of independent video's captured from the conference here

I also found a terrific set of video interviews conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, New York (www.cooneycenter.org) on YouTube:

danah boyd part 1

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/C4BAamhMDj8&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/C4BAamhMDj8&rel=0</a>

danah boyd part 2

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0KP2ykxr5U4&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0KP2ykxr5U4&rel=0</a>

Keri Facer, Futurelab

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/WzW3CL57PBk&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/WzW3CL57PBk&rel=0</a>

Marc Prensky

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/hmoVs4GYXUY&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/hmoVs4GYXUY&rel=0</a>

Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation (www.shuttleworthfoundation.org)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/7YRN5tBBnvM&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/7YRN5tBBnvM&rel=0</a>

Here's one from James Clay who presented in the MoLeNET Showcase and kindly recorded it and uploaded to YouTube. Nice one James! 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/FtmnLrmR8Ng&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/FtmnLrmR8Ng&rel=0</a>

About 1,000 new photographs have been uploaded to our gallery including new photographs from the Learners Y Factor, Awards Party, prize giving and pretty much everything really!

Enjoy and feel free to tag or add humorous comments, etc

Day 1 - Monday 13th Oct
http://www.flickr.com/photos/handheldlearning/sets/72157608459573797/

Day 2 - Tuesday 14th Oct
http://www.flickr.com/photos/handheldlearning/sets/72157608460072981/

Day 3 - Wednesday 15th Oct
http://www.flickr.com/photos/handheldlearning/sets/72157608461400709/



Happy Days!

 

Apologies for any duplication but didn't want to leave people out. Please feel very welcome to add to this list so that we can maintain a good record. The original conference site is now being converted into the digital proceedings of the event and has a link to this thread as part of the "Reflections" section.

Merlin John Online
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.390#track
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.389#track
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.387#track
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.386#track
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.385#track
http://213.232.94.135/merlinjohnonline/comment.php?comment.news.384#track


Alex Pearce's SharePoint Blog
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ajp/archive/2008/10/16/handheld-learning-awards-and-suguk.aspx

Studywiz Press
http://www.europe.studywiz.com/?p=154

Ubiquitous Thoughts
http://ubiquitousthoughts.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/handheld-learning-day-2-opening/

Handheld Learning 2008, Day 2, danah boyd
http://ubiquitousthoughts.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/handheld-learning-2008-day-2-danah-boyd/

danah boyd at HHL08
http://atss.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/danah-boyd-at-hhl08/

Handheld Learning, Day 3, Research Strand
http://ubiquitousthoughts.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/handheld-learning-day-3-research-strand/

Handheld Learning, Day 2, Laurie O?Donnell
http://ubiquitousthoughts.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/handheld-learning-day-2-laurie-odonnell/

Handheld Learning Conference 2008: Review
http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2008/10/handheld-learning-conference-2008-review.html

Handheld Learning Awards
http://lisavalentine.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/handheld-learning-awards/

Bloggs on Hl08
http://wordpress.com/tag/hhl08/

Bloggs on Handheld Learning
http://wordpress.com/tag/handheld-learning/

Handheld Learning 2008
http://wordpress.com/tag/handheldlearning2008/

Handheld Learning 2008 Spotlight Scotland
http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2008/10/handheld-learning-2008-5-of-5-spotlight-scotland.html

Handheld Learning day 1-3
http://mportfolios.blogspot.com/2008/10/handheld-2008-day-2-morning-sessions.html

RSJ - Handheld Learning 2008
http://blogs.rsc-wales.ac.uk/learningtech/2008/10/15/handheld-learning-2008/

Handheld Learning 2008
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/topics/handheldlearning2008

HandHeld Learning Conference 08 Day 1
http://ddraig-goch.blogspot.com/2008/10/handheld-learning-conference-08-day-1.html

Teaching with Technology
http://mrkp.edublogs.org/2008/10/14/handheld-learning-conference-2008/

Red Bridges views on the conference
http://redbridgeprimaryit.blogspot.com/2008/10/hand-held-learning-conference-day-2.html

Reflections on Handheld Learning 2008
http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/reflections-on-handheld-learning-2008

hhl08
http://technorati.com/tag/hhl2008?page=2

Hair dressing training for mobiles
http://roughcuts.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2130679%3ABlogPost%3A781

Nintendo DS lite, Handheld Learning 2008
http://www.xlearn.co.uk/blogger.html