Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Can anyone point me at a site that sells multiple copies of e-books for children? School want to get a few e-books onto PDA's for next years intake and we're struggling to find a site that makes multiple purchases / licences easy.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Jonathon.

I've discussed a similar idea with a couple of people on here. The one I'm planning is for a historical site but the basics aare pretty much the same as what you're planning.

The add on that was suggested to me that appears to be feasible and really useful would be to then add in links to a mobile blog or poll so that the students could then go away and add varied comments / reflections on different aspects of (in your case) the campus. That way theres a good audio visual site that students have (hiopefully) enjoyed creating but also something that is useful in the longer term for gathering student opinions etc.

I'm still playing around with ideas about how best to put it all together - I've got some classes that have PDA's and others that will be using mobile phones for it. Some of the downloads in the resources section look pretty andy for that side of things, and some of the mobile applications run by people who visit here would do the job very well.

Would be good to see the finished product. I'll pass on details of mine when I get it finished and online.

I'm assuming that you're both right on it being bluetooth based.

His description was quite short - literally a case of walking through a shopping centre and receiving a message from shops as he walked past. I'll take a look at Bluecasting and the RFID suggestions, see if there's anything he can use.

NB: Michael - lots of interest in the .mobi from the HA project participants - e-mail will be winging its way to you later on.

Thanks

A colleague yesterday mentioned automated text messages that he received when walked past several shops in Newcastle. He was quite interested in investigating ways of applying that kind of technoogy in his school, to send things like the thought for the day, urgent items of news, or departmental messages as pupils entered his faculty. As I've never had the joyof receiving a text in that way, I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any ideas about how to set that sort of thing up. A quick google has returned nothing of use...

Thanks in advance

Hi Sue

Several of our project participants are based close to you. I'm sure that this will be of interest to them and it certainly is something that I think ould work really well. I'll be in touch soon.

That sounds brilliant. I've had discussions with i-learning about doing something similar for a site in Yorkshire - so I may well want to pick your brain at some point! Have you got a plan b in place for pupils who don't have EDA's? On our project we've deliberately gone for teachers who cover the 'tech spectrum' and whilst my pupils would be able to use this sort of technology, I know that many would be limited to making use of the camera, video and voicerecorder functions on their mobile phones. Other than combining a worksheet / map with instrctions to use the mobile phone, is there a good / feasible technology based solution for these pupils?

GIS ideas and guidance would be much appreciated! I'm meeting with someone from Aegis about developing this sort of technology for Histoty teaches' usage on Friday, so any ideas and experiences in advance would be much appreciated!

Hello all.

I'm involved in leading a Historical Association / Becta research project into the best use of mobile technologies in (initially) Key Stage 3 History education. We've got a team of very IT literate teachers, including one of this years Bett winners but I'm conscious of the fact that many of the participants are fairly new to making use of PDA's / Mobile phones in lessons. We're only just beginning our project formally and to date have simply gathered a range of ideas from interested participants and have looked through some of the existing research to identify areas that we believe will work most effectively in History education.

I've worked my way through almost all of the articles on this site now and have picked up some very good ideas as a result (thankyou!). If there are any Historians, or people interested in our project on this forum, I'd love to hear from you. Further details of what our aims / objectives are along with a rough overview of some of the participants initial ideas for using mobile technologies can be found on the HA message board at http://www.hamessageboards.org.uk/noticeboard/index.php?showtopic=50 A project overview is attached to this post. If anyone has any constructive comments about the types of things we're considering, or knows of something really obvious that we've missed out, please let me know.

Thanks.

Dan Moorhouse
Secondary Committee, The historical Association