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General Area / News & Events / Re: Handheld Learning Forum 2.0 - upgrade
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on: June 20, 2008, 02:29:47 PM
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If you're reading this then the new version of the site is up and running  Let us know in this thread if you find anything that isn't doing what you think it should. Before reporting anything please make sure that you have fully refreshed your browsers Thanks! |
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General Area / News & Events / Handheld Learning Forum 2.0 - upgrade
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on: June 17, 2008, 01:14:21 PM
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We will be performing the switch over and cutting the tape on the new version of the Handheld Learning Forum this coming Friday 20th June at noon (GMT). This will take a little while to complete and as a consequence the site will be off-line for a few hours but all being well will be alive and kicking for your delectation later in the afternoon. In addition to an improved visual and user interface we have added a heap of new features that we hope you'll enjoy using including the ability to share articles and posts into various networks, e.g. Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Technorati, etc., you'll be able to add comments via Twitter, there will be a tag cloud to give you a snap shot of what's heating up at any particular time and lots of other web 2.0 goodness Hope you like it! |
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General Area / General Discussion / Re: Apologies for the Spam Bot / Troll
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on: August 07, 2006, 01:36:52 AM
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We have since made contact with other discussion board communities and have confirmed that the perpetrator of this spammer is currently doing the rounds of many boards.
Due to the nature of the material posted, we have decided to temporarily place restrictions on new membership and also on internal private messaging that allows members to message each other.
We expect to have things running back to normal very soon.
In the meantime, please do let your thoughts be known on how you think we should tackle this problem.
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General Area / General Discussion / Re: Apologies for the Spam Bot / Troll
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on: August 07, 2006, 12:35:47 AM
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It also appears that some members received a personal message via this Forum from the above spammer.
Please note that this does not mean that the Forum has been compromised or that the spammer now has your e-mail address. They used the internal Forum mail system to send you a mail which if your profile is set up to receive acknowledgements of personal messages would have been delivered to your e-mail address as if it came from the Handheld Learning Forum.
In the nearly 2 years that we have been running the Forum nothing like this has ever happened however we can take some steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. We can:
1) Approve new memberships at admin level.
This would mean that new members wouldn't get immediate access and we would need to have an e-mail exchange to make sure that new members are genuine, which isn't too friendly!
2) Disable the personal messaging system
Which means members won't be able to talk to each other directly unless already knowing each others e-mail address. Again not an ideal scenario when the system was intended to be a community for members to communicate.
What do people think?
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General Area / General Discussion / Apologies for the Spam Bot / Troll
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on: August 06, 2006, 11:25:10 PM
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It appears that we have had a case of a forum board spammer / troll on the site today who has been posting obscene material.
This user has been, of course, banned and their I.P. details reported to their ISP. We take this kind of activity very seriously and where possible will seek prosecution of the perpetrator.
In the meantime many thanks for those who brought this to our attention and especially Gill who did her best to avert visitors from the offending and juvenile postings.
We will keep a close eye on things to see if there is a recurrence and if this starts becoming a regular problem we will need to start manually approving applications for membership.
Once again sincere apologies for any distress caused.
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General Area / General Discussion / Problems logging in?
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on: May 05, 2006, 04:09:10 PM
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Hello We've recently discovered that some registered members of the Forum have been having difficulty logging in and are receiving a message telling them that their account has been blocked and to contact admin. We are currently try to resolve this problem. To help us, if you are being affected by this problem, please e-mail us on: support@handheldlearning.co.uk (with Forum Login Problem in the subject heading). Also, we've discovered numerous incorrect or out of date e-mail addresses for registered members. This means that those members will not be receiving our ad-hoc newsletter nor will they be getting acknowledgements to any postings that they have made so basically missing out on all the interaction which is pretty much what joining the Forum is all about! So if you've recently changed job or e-mail addresses please would you kindly check your Forum profile and update your details. That's assuming that you're not already suffering from the above glitch!  Many thanks |
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General Area / General Discussion / Collaborative learning conversation between Kathy Eeps and Dirk Frohberg
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on: August 09, 2005, 06:16:30 PM
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Kathy Eeps and Dirk Frohberg started an email conversation after Dirk had made a posting on the "Introduce yourself" thread. After the conversation had progressed they thought that it should be included on the forum itself so that other members could contribute to the discussion and so have sent me a copy for posting here! Many thanks to them both Please excuse the formatting which is due to the way my email client seems to have mashed them up!
Hello. I have just read your "introduce yourself" post on the
Handheld Learning Forum.
I think we might have some interests in common: I am the IT teacher
at the International School of Geneva's new campus - Campus des
Nations - in Grand Saconnex GE. This building will open in a few
weeks, and we are requiring all the secondary students (classes 7 -
11, c. 240 students) to buy Palm Tungsten E2s (not wireless) to use.
It is the first time our school has used handhelds. The E2s
communicate with Bluetooth and Infrared.
Though this is not "mobile learning" as it would be with laptops and
wireless, it is certainly "informal" and "collaborative". And as it
will be new to almost everyone using it, it will also be "learning"!
I hope to encourage the Palm's use for its agenda, timetable, reminder
functions (for which it was built, and does very well, then as a
graphing calculator, as a reference book(s), and after that we will
see what the kids discover!
Let me know if any of this is of interest to you for your studies.
I'd be happy to help in any way.
Kathy Epps
International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations
Dear Kathy
First of all thank you very much for your courage and effort to contact
me.
It seems to me, my understanding of "mobile learning" does not fit your
activities and maybe the difference is in the terms "mobile learning"
versus "handheld learning". Until now I was not aware of a different meaning
here but there is one and thanks to you I learned it.
I will try to explain, why it might not fit. Maybe it will turn out that
I have misunderstood major things. Please do not see it as any criticism in
your work.
"Mobile learning" means to me that technology enriches and supports the
learning (whatever you may understand under "learning"). In your case it
sounds as if the technology itself is the matter of learning. To see your
activities as "mobile learning" I am missing a didactic concept behind
the introduction of the devices.
The usage of the Palms is obviously designed to be a single user tool to
organize ones activities (calendar, reminder, timetable, notes etc.).
From your explanation I do not see yet in what way it is collaborative usage.
Could you tell me what collaborative activities you are having in mind?
Remark: Sending a document from one device to the other is not
necessarily collaborative. Lacking any possibility to access the internet (via wLAN)
reduces the possibilities for mobile learning tremendously.
The term "informal" in my introduction was related to "learning" as well.
Informal learning is of course a fuzzy word, but to my understanding
informal learning includes some clear intention to learn something
specific without being guided by any teacher or curriculum. It might be
unintentional, but there needs to be a reflection then. "Informal
learning" is to my understanding not "doing a calendar entry" or "checking the
timetable".
I told you now with many words, why I think, your activities are not
"mobile learning" as I do understand it. I did not explain what you would need to
do to make it mobile learning. Just three quick ideas from other projects
which should be possible to do with your technology:
a) Interactivity in classroom: Students use their device to ask questions
if they do not want to raise their hand, the teacher can send small quizzes
to check if all students have understood the major concepts, the class can
to an electronic brainstorming session. This idea comes from an university
with hundreds of students in a lecture hall. I am not sure how relevant it might be
for classes of maybe 20-30 pupils.
b) Data collection in field trips: A class goes out into nature (e.g.
biology) evt. with sensors attached to their devices. They collect data
(e.g. temperature of different objects or ph-level in water or number of
birches within a certain area) and can work with the data directly at
place and come to conclusions comparing and discussing the data. Check
http://www.concord.org/publications/newsletter/2002winter/probeware.html
c) Participatory simulations: E.g. virus spread. Many pupils run around with their palms. One is secretly "infected" with a virus and can infect others.
Children learn by own experience how a virus spreads. Check
http://education.mit.edu/pda/games.htm for it and other
examples.
I am curious, what you think. Where do you agree, where disagree. What do
you think about the projects, I showed to you? Were they a help or could
they inspire you?
Greetings
Dirk Frohberg
Ah ha! We have to cut immediately to a definition of learning! This
is refreshing!
Yes, of course, we will all spend a great deal of time learning how to
use all our equipment.
There a number of other institutions who have already such an
introduction of infrastructure. As you are aware there are many of
non-trivial things that need to be decided and you could learn from them,
how they did it avoiding same mistakes. But I assume, you have done that?
But working out how to do what, when (and in some cases, why) are small
exercises in logic and systems. I hope we move more or less quickly
beyond that stage to questioning when the use of a particular tool might
be helpful in a given setting - Can I do/share/understand this
easier/quicker/ better/differently with a computer/palm/camera/microphone ?
The answer might include experimentation, research, or simply a decision
based on previous experience.
My conception of mobile learning is very broad indeed. Google just
produced this for me: "Mobile learning is learning that is mediated
via mobile technologies such as mobile phones, personal data
assistants, handhelds, wearable devices or laptops.
www.bbk.ac.uk/ccs/elearn/glossary.htm" but others would
insist on the wifi component. I don't think so. If one has an audio book in a Palm
or an iPod, there is no wireless connection involved in the actual
hearing of the book, but it is mobile learning.
There are even broader definitions like "Any sort of learning that
happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or
learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning
opportunities offered by mobile technologies." By this definition "reading a book in a bus" would be
considered as mobile learning. I agree with you. Mobile learning does not
necessarily need wifi. I would rather not define mobile learning with focus
on the technology. You can do many things with mobile devices and I would
not consider it as mobile learning. I try to see it not from a question
"what can you do with mobile stuff", but rather "why are you doing it". Many
projects try to send learning content (texts, animations, videos etc.) to a
mobile device and argue "now you can learn any time and any where". My
question always is the value of it. In some specific cases it might have
value, but often I cannot see any. I have problems reading more than one
page of text on a large screen. How much less do I want to read it on a tiny
screen? The video quality might be good enough for some short funny
animations or fun films, but what is the value? Maybe using unused time, but
often such time is not as dead as it looks like. Sitting in a bus and not
doing anything can be great. And if I want to learn content ... I take a
printout with me.
Mobile learning is very much driven from technology. I realized it in
Germany in the projects "computers in schools" and then "schools to the
internet". After many months I read an article with the title "Ok, we have
computers and we are in the internet ... now, what? The same happened with
the extremly large project "notebook university". We made an analysis of
this project. In most universities it was up to students, what they would do
with the infrastructure. The teaching had not changed at all. Almost none of
the universities had any concept what to do with the infrastructure.
While I think about how to answer your questions, have a look at the
wiki I have begun for the staff and students at
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/ict_at_nations
I also write http://ictnations.blogspot.com/ but that is more reflective.
I found your blog through the HHL forum discussion, and have tried to
read it with the help of AltaVista BabelFish....my German is
rudimentary...and so is Bablefish's, but it helps.
Kathy Epps
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General Area / General Discussion / [DISCUSSION] The role of the teacher
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on: January 31, 2005, 01:19:54 PM
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This weeks topic for discussion has been posed anonymously but is sure to arouse some strong opinions:
If learning becomes mobile, connected and personal and students are empowered to become immersed in investigation, the traditional teacher is superfluous. What then, is the role of the teacher?
Please post your thoughts and comments here
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General Area / General Discussion / [DISCUSSION] Large scale contributions to learning?
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on: January 24, 2005, 11:20:50 AM
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The topic for discussion starting this week (commencing 24/01/05) has been proposed by John Traxler from the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.
"What's preventing small-scale, short-term mobile learning projects using PDAs or smartphones in schools, colleges and universities becoming large-scale, long term mainstream contributions to teaching and learning?"
Please share your thoughts on this subject here
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General Area / General Discussion / [DISCUSSION] Educational Toolset for Handheld Computers
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on: January 17, 2005, 12:50:41 PM
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As things have been a little quiet on the Forum, an idea that came from Jon Trinder (JonT) was to have a regular discussion about a subject that can be posed to the Forum. This would hopefully get people talking and sharing ideas while building the community spirit. This, of course, doesn't mean that you can't post discussion topics whenever you feel the need (actually please do!!!!), it's just that sometimes it may be good to have a topic that all members are cordially invited for their input. Also by having the admin (that's me folks!) post and circulate it a subject can be posed for discussion without being attributed to a particular member (if requested). So if you'd like to pose a topic discussion then please just email me with it directly and I'll circulate it to the members and if you'd like to remain anonymous then that's how it will be. So let's try this idea and see if we can get some really good discussions going! The first topic has been suggested by the people at NESTA Futurelab ( http://www.nestafuturelab.org/) who are involved in educational technology research and have held some thought provoking workshops on handheld computers. The question is: What is the educational toolset needed to make handheld computers a truly useful resource for learning? |
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