Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Thanks for that, Graham. Not long to go now...!

Can I ask when you're planning to make a (provisional) delegate list available this year?

Wolf.

Sorry Graham, a long and bad day at the office had clearly impacted on my judgement and opinion. I was away from a computer yesterday but already regretted the tone of my post and some of the things I wrote. So it was with some trepidation that I logged on tonight... 

My main gripe was with epokh's post, but I overreacted on that too (sorry).

To be fair though, you did say that you didn't know where Al was getting his conclusions from, and implied that it was because he hadn't attended the event. That kicked off my all-inclusive rant.

However, in return (and probably with good reason) I feel you slightly jumped down my throat now too. I can't see where in my post I've criticised the principle of corporate sponsorship or implied any huge editorial impact at all. I do know what sponsorship is for, so that would be daft. Badly worded as it may be, there was nothing in my post to complain about the very reasonable price of HHL08 or question the integrity of the speakers/workshops and so on.

I don't think I have anything to take back in that respect. 

I did sit through that session you mentioned though, and indeed felt like booing some speakers off the stage. Maybe that tainted my overall opinion of the conference, as well as the exhibitors' stalls, which I do think felt rather like a trade show (without selling things). That part definitely had a bigger impact on the overall event than in the couple of years before. Sorry, but as I say, this sentiment was shared by other delegates at the time. Corporate sponsorship is a necessity to achieve affordability for the people you want to include, and that's really fantastic, but let's be honest, it would be naive to say that it has no effect whatsoever on the conference or its delegates. Why would sponsors do it if that was the case?

I think the only point we really seem to disagree (and hey, that's cool!) is that HHL leans towards the technology end of handheld learning. I think it does - just reading the majority of posts on this forum. No problem, I'm a technologist, and I'm not saying it covers technology for its own sake too often, but you certainly wouldn't confuse it with a pencil-based learning initiative.

Do introduce me to those people throwing money at educational innovation startups. I'm not actually chasing that dollar, but I can think of some people who do. Otherwise we'll just have to 'make do' with more capital expenditure funding 

Sorry, but what are you guys on about? I have no vested interest in defending Al or his article, apart from knowing that he's a thoroughly decent chap, but I don't see why what he's asking is in any way arrogant. He put his own money where his mouth is and started up a business in the fledgling mobile learning domain, which is why he's perfectly entitled to comment on it. From the premise of the article, he is one of the 'experts', because he's running a startup himself. TechCrunch is a business publication, so yes, people talk about profits and business models a lot, and that's what he was asking.

Graham, Al has attended HHL, which is where I first met him a couple of years ago, so he does have an informed opinion of the conference. I agree with you that it's not schools-oriented, but I think his comparison of mlearn and HHL is pretty spot on. One event is for academic experimentation, research and analysis, quite removed from commercial constraints and business cases.

The other (at least last year) struck many people as turning into a technology show, with big brands having a platform to present their products and views on how to use them. I know I'm being a bit controversial here, but that's how I (and quite a few others I spoke to) felt about it. Judging by this year's programme I think you've addressed that criticism - I for one wrote it on my feedback form last year. ;-)

Anyway, back to Al's article: I think it's brilliant that someone talks about the business of educational SME's and innovation in the field for once, not just about ivory tower pilot projects and about which of the latest mobile technologies will change the world of learning. The whole social innovation area is getting a lot of attention (and money) as mentioned by Martin Owen in one of the comments, so it's about time those 30 investors at HHL get their wallets out for educational innovation too.

A script kiddie defacing TechCrunch? Come again?

Wolf.

Donald Clark provocative? You don't say.

Graham, I've also heard that rumour about Orange and since I am an Orange customer I got excited too. But I have since read a couple of posts, one of them here, about that being very unlikely because O2 did sign a "multi-year" exclusivity contract apparently, so the earliest Apple would be able to break out of that would be some time in 2009.

The only way Apple could ditch O2 is if they can prove that they didn't do the job properly, ie didn't sell enough devices etc. Which based on your experience may be a valid point...!

Re: original post by Chris Deering:

Very interesting indeed. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. If I may, I'd like to add my (less experienced) views to this, and ask a few questions.

I think I pretty much fundamentally agree with points 1-5. It's obvious that the digital distribution channels of the future will transcend PC, TV, set-top box and phones as we know them. A timescale of 2-3 years sounds a bit short to me, considering that we've been hearing about 'device convergence' from the technology visionaries for at least 10 years now. And there are still plenty of TVs in people's homes.

Where I struggle is the progression of your argument to the 'humble' iPhone. It's a stunning device and has already played a big role in kicking the whole industry up the collective backside with its interface, screen, usability and the usual fantastic industrial design by Apple. The latest developments also raise the bar for distribution channels, with the iTunes AppStore. The sales of the 3G version this week speak for themselves!

But I don't quite believe it's an indication of advantage to Apple in the coming battles for mobile supremacy.

Its OS and great applications are tied to one physical product. This is Apple, and apart from a short period they have always kept hardware and software in their own hands. The only cross-platform software they released was iTunes, and they had to do that to sell as many iPods as they have. The Mac OS has always been superior in many ways but its market share is small. Sure, the 'iPod-effect' is considerable, and will earn them more 'cool' users, but since Apple are not allowing anybody to build similarly good products using their OS, their reach will always be limited.

The scenario of Apple being the MS of the 21st century would hence mean that we will all have Apple iPhones. No choice of device for the customer. Seeing at how many hundreds of different makes/shapes/sizes people on the streets carry, I assume they like to have a choice.

Here are some (genuine) questions:

- How does the fact that the iPhone will replace BlackBerries contribute to this new digital revolution? BlackBerries may have contributed hugely to business people using email on the move, but their devices are not mass-market either. And the BlackBerry is the "optimum browser solution"? With all respect, I don't agree.

- You say that "each of these solutions (Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian) is struggling because they are "closed" architecture and, to some extent, walled garden minded". I don't understand that. One of the attractions of Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian (and LiMO etc) for handset manufacturers is that those OSs are free now. Windows Mobile isn't, but neither is the iPhone OS - in fact, they can't have that one at all. Again, for the iPhone OS "to leapfrog Android" Apple also have to leapfrog plenty of hardware manufacturers, because you can only have the iPhone OS on an Apple iPhone. Am I missing the point?

- The iPhone SDK is a step in the right direction but it's again pretty proprietary (like PlayStation, I agree). There are already a plethora of applications, games etc for Symbian, WM, JavaME and others. What is the advantage of the iPhone there? Distribution channel I guess - the huge amount of downloads from the Apple AppStore in the first few days is quite staggering.

- I'm intrigued by your prediction that these applications "will cross over onto traditional screens on desks and walls" from the iPhone. I think this is sort of happening in mobile gaming/applications/services already, again: in your opinion, how will the iPhone make this transition quicker or better?

Sorry to go on, but your comments struck me as a bit 'Apple-centric', as opposed to 'Mobile-centric' (which is probably more where I come from).

Wolf

PS: Yes, of course I'm going to get one!

Ouch!!

Best Regards,

Wilf
Will
Paul (!)
Ralph
Wolfgang
Wolfe
Woolf
Mr Wolf (insert obligatory 'what's the time?' joke here)

 

Nielsen! The man's called Nielsen! Probably the most mis-spelled name on the internet. I don't usually agree with him much, but I can sympathize with the spelling thing...

 

Isn't that all going to change now that we have the Open Source Schools project?

*ducks*

W

Sorry Jont, don't agree. Touchiness about those sort of things is still necessary, it's the only way to counter the popular "political correctness gone mad!" criers.

It's not that bad, but this reminded me of a spectacularly sexist ad a couple of years back, for NEFF ovens: Split page, one side a fancy oven, captioned "The Hero", the other side a woman in an apron, captioned "The Heroine". Genius... but sadly from a different century.

Wolf.

Just had a look at that report and I have to say, although the data is useful for comparison, I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. It's rather past its sell-by-date...

I don't understand how they can call it "Mobile 2008", when the latest data they present is from July 2007. They refer to "the end of 2007" as a future projection, and the data in the 'Mobile Infrastructure' section is from 2006.

 

Don't get the comparison either. YouTube didn't set out to do anything illegal. It was meant to be a place for people to upload and share their own media, and since at the time DRM was still a bit of a woolly world, I'm sure their backers saw the potential in that idea. The legal problems were actually created by what users did with the service - sharing copyrighted content.

If these PathIntelligence guys used the above technique to track users, nobody would back them because that is already completely illegal.

W

So we're talking about properly 'tapping' a mobile phone, as in IMSI-catching. You say 'nobody will raise a hand for privacy', but this is something only the police/intelligence agencies etc are allowed to do in a criminal investigation.

I cannot believe that this company has based its business model (and received Silicon Valley VC money) on an illegal activity. They surely must do it in some other way. Terrifying business concept too: They want to track you as you walk around the shops and build up a record of exactly where you went and when, all completely unknown to you, in the name of market research.

What is the world coming to...?

Graham, that Soneso app is intriguing. To get the cell tower locations they would have to go through the operator/GSM provider first, so there is no way they could do the triangulation 'by stealth'. And that cell ID data costs money. Either they're very clever or doing something fishy.

As Paolo points out there are public cell ID databases (OpenCellID and Cellspotting), but they're not as big as for example the one Google has. They're built up in the same way though, by collecting users' cell location information and just sticking them into a large look-up table.

If you do it on the fly (like your 'Locate me' functionality, which is probably provided by O2 - ie you pay for it through your bill), the operators charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege. There was a really successful pervasive mobile game (I think in Sweden) once which used cell triangulation to find your 'opponents', ie other players. They had to stop it when they realised how much money it cost the players. The network operator wouldn't give them a discount although it would have been great marketing for them!

Which is why now everybody has started slowly building their own lists. It's another one of the many attempts to get reliable, exact and accurate location information on your device. GPS, GSM cells, CellID lookups, WiFi triangulation, etc...

Let me get that straight, they monitor GSM signals in their shop? I'm not a telecoms lawyer but that's illegal I think. They could listen to your conversations that way. Same thing for getting IMEI or subscriber phone numbers: nobody is allowed to 'sniff' those, that's ID theft!

...unless of course they have asked the customers for their numbers and have been given them voluntarily. Then I suppose they could use cell triangulation to roughly tell where a person is. Not that accurate in a small area like a shop though.

For that sort of thing RFID/NFC will be ideal. You could walk through a doorway and get an instant message on your phone. We would need more than the 2 devices currently on the market to start with (wait, Nokia have just released another)...

W