Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Using Keynote on the Mac and Quicktime Pro/Toast it is very very simple for practitioners to create content for a mobile phone or an iPod.

I did a presentation on this for the JISC Innovating E-Learning conference.

I am not a lecturer now (I was), so much of my work has been in preparing support for lecturers who will.

The presentation I did for the JISC was available in mobile formats and those users who did download it onto their phones did find it useful.

As for whether students want to use their phones, some do and some don't. The reason I started designing mobile content was as a result of feedback from students who were interested in the concept, alas times change and this work is been wound up.

I have also seen studies which show some students don't want to use their phones (or devices) for learning.

As for "control" I always saw the mobile content as one part of a wider learning scenario, ie watch this piece of content on your phone and SMS me three key points, or discuss in next week's lesson, or answer the question I have set on the VLE. The lack of interactivity was never a real issue as the content was never to be used in isolation.

In my own presentation, there was no interactivity in the presentation itself, but there was a large amount of discussion/interactivity at the conference itself on the presentation.

Here in the UK that is generally more down to tax rules on taxing perks and benefits.

If I use my phone for personal calls and the organisation pays for them then this is a benefit in kind and therefore can be taxed.

That is why a lot of educational institutions will be quite clear about the non-use and use of institutional devices for personal use.

There was even talk of the Inland Revenue taxing employees who had a laptop as this "could" be used for personal use and therefore was a taxable benefit, not sure how the tax rules would apply to PDAs.
I know people who have two phones, one for work and one for personal use, it's the same with devices.

James Clay

I don't think you need to apologize for being commercial... it is very interesting to see what is out there. I missed the presentation unfortunately. But from the website you point too the product seems orientated to PDA's - I may be wrong but I don't see much reference to mobile phones. I am guessing you would need some sort off Smartphone to use this on a mobile phone? Not sure how many students will have access to smartphones by choice, although I would accept an argument that "smartphones" are becoming something of a meaningless term.

Perhaps I am hitting on a difference between HE and schools here but one of my aims is to try to be device agnostic and try to make learning objects as open as possible. The problem from a HE perspective is we are fairly unlikely to know what a student will have and being to prescriptive will be off putting.

Do you tend you use Wifi for the delivery of learning to the handheld?  because avoiding mobile costs is one barrier I have been trying to over come. If you do I guess that limits the devices that can be used.

Well, I think the whole "smartphones' thing will probably disappear over the next few years as the cost of the computing power comes down significantly (again!). That said it does exist here and now. I suppose for a school a pda without phone capability might be more attractive??? since it doesn't have the percieved potential for disruption and subversion associated with mobile phones.

It's intersting you've seen an increase in the interest for 3G and HSDPA, since UK service providers use data transfer costs as a significant revenue booster. Are the schools doing special deals with specific service providers?

Well, (I guess I fit someway into the techie field), testing on mobiles is an issue and you pick up on some of the key problems. That said with the rise of browsers like Opera then I think standards will make some headway. Also, mobile phone providers need to expand their market appeal. At the moment lots of people don't use various features on their phones because of cost, so there might come a point where they stop buying them or at least paying the extra cost for unused features. So I think wider and cheaper availability of content will be important. That should hopefully drive a greater (if reluctant) acceptance of standards and make testing easier. Also, I think Ajax might help with the interactivity side of things. However, the input issue will remain of course.