Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Hi Paolo,

What you're asking for (accurate, current and detailed user and hardware stats) is a bit like the holy grail of the mobile world. Very hard to come by, although you will find plenty of places claiming certain numbers as fact, when they are either hopelessly out of date or plain wrong.

If it's subscriber numbers you need, GSM World is good, but AFAIK those numbers don't take into account multi-SIM users or phone-sharing (very common in the developing world) for example. Obviously you don't get any help on phone type, OS etc either.

Screen resolution and general hardware stats are more difficult, because it's even harder to track how many phones people have and if they use them. So sales numbers are not that useful if you want to build a mobile service of any kind. If you look at, say, Nokia's sales releases, they just shout "we've sold x million devices" but that doesn't tell you what people do with them, or who these people are demographically.

Some good technical device stats are released now and then by m:metrics (who sell them)

admob release a monthly list generated by their ad tracking on mobile web sites. That gives you the 20 or so most popular handsets among mobile web users - you then need to find out the technical details of those if you want the JVM/Screen resolution etc. But those details are easily found on the manufacturers' sites. Admob are also planning to release a free analytics service soon, which should be handy.

It's interesting to see how these lists change according to the target audience. When you looked at the games and application aggregator Bango's monthly device download chart (sadly not maintained since Nov 2007) you used to get very different handsets to the more business-oriented stats providers. But other demographic data you could only get by looking at download stats of relevant sites or  by getting detailed subscribers data from the mobile networks - which they won't give you. 

There are probably many more places to look, but as always it's tricky to get 'good' statistics...

Wolf.

Shh, don't tell them that the radiation from a cell phone transmitter/receiver is much more potent than from a Wi-Fi router. If people are concerned about frying small children's brains in schools, we shouldn't advocate that sort of technique really.

*duck*

 

That is a great announcement, but the words 'free' and 'unlimited' are as always used quite liberally. The data usage is capped at 500MB - not bad, but not as good as the 1GB already offered by 3 (£5 on top of normal plans) and T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk product (£7.50). If you add those to their cheapest contracts, they're better value than the lowest of the new Voda 'unlimited data' tariffs. 

So you need a mid-price tariff (£25 at least), and you have a data cap. Better than nothing, and the important thing is that Voda customers from now on won't have to think about any add-ons or complicated tariffs. But I think financially T-Mobile and 3 still have the better data deals, although they don't call them 'free'. Oh, and of course none of the networks allow you to use VoIP services like Skype.

Sigh. Still some way to go for the operators to give the mobile web a real boost.

Wolf.

Nokia is apparently launching a pilot in South Africa, using pretty bog-standard mobiles (Nokia 6300) to teach Maths to grade 10 girls. They're partnering with a not-for-profit organisation called Mindset Network and the South African Government’s Department of Education.

“This project demonstrates the potential of mobile phones to enable social development and improve education especially in underprivileged areas, ” says Micheline Ntiru, Head of Nokia’s Community Involvement Programs in the Middle East and Africa. “Young people are increasingly using their phones to gain knowledge via the internet, social networking and interaction with their peers, so it makes sense to introduce learning through these devices. By combining Nokia handsets with innovative content, and the enthusiasm of the teachers and pupils this scheme creates an opportunity to really help create new skills and opportunities.”

I'd love to see some of that 'innovative' content on the handsets, considering that the 6300 is a hugely popular mid-range S40 handset (which supports Java and FlashLite 2.0, incidentally). Let's hope they make the pilot research findings available.

Wolf.

Graham, I've been thinking about your post quite a lot recently. Looking at parents'/educators' "detachment from modern entertainment culture" would be a really good and important discussion to have.

After working in (not so) New (any more) Media for a long time, including plenty of game-type work, I still haven't really made up my mind about this. Game culture and Digital culture seem so incredibly ubiquitous to most of us here, but is it really? When I talk to 'digital people' about twittering, muxtapes, tumblr, iphones, chumbys, and whatever the next gadget-of-choice may be, it seems that this is what everybody is doing. I'm actually not a big gamer these days, but since my Amiga days I can relate to a lot of the gaming references and culture in general. And you're right, it's not a new culture at all.

But then I also meet plenty or more people who are really not interested in any of this. I mention that they can look at my photos on flickr, they look blankly and ask for paper prints. Referring to a Facebook acquaintance I find myself trying to explain what social networking is. Looking at their mobile phone I recognize an at least 5-6 year old Nokia S40 handset, which actually works a charm with its tiny 1-bit screen. And the funny thing is, I don't get the feeling that they're missing out on anything. It's me who feels slightly silly, spending so much time staring at a screen, trying to build meaningful relationships with people I have never spoken to in person, keeping up with latest technology to perform tasks that are just as easily done without it.

Sure, they may have played 'Pong' when they were kids, but let's face it, they didn't take it as seriously as you or I do. They took it as a game, had fun with it for a bit and moved on to other things. It's just not that important to the majority of people.

There is actually some evidence on really hard-core geek channels like slashdot etc that extremely 'digital' people yearn for some real, tactile things in their lives. Discussions there regularly centre around 'real-life' topics, and things like woodwork seem rather appealing to many super-nerds these days. They want less rather than more technology in their lives. And as many people here said about Prensky's assumptions on the use of technology among young people: This generation may well be growing up with it, but it is not and shouldn't be necessarily their main focus in life.

I haven't read through the whole Byron review, but I felt that it wasn't making the internet and games out to be inherently evil, and it acknowledges a lot of the benefits of both - that's a nice change from the usual scare-mongering! I think it mainly says 'don't shove kids in front of a hugely powerful (in good and bad ways) medium and expect them to sort it all out themselves'. And that's a valid point.

What do you people think?

Wolf.

Lovely idea pointed out by Russell Buckley's Mobilehappy blog. My dutch isn't up to getting the whole picture, but it seems that this is a project to get kids to teach oldies (which means over 35, looking at the chap in the picture) how to use their mobile tech products.

Now if we could get pupils/students to do a regular spot of that for teaching staff in school, learning technology would come on in leaps and bounds!

Wolf.

The Independent is reporting rather alarming new research findings of a highly-decorated Australian brain surgeon. He claims that there is recent evidence pointing to higher risk of brain tumours in long-term mobile users.

Of course the Independent are ever so responsible journalists by using the headline "Mobile phones more dangerous than smoking", considering that his research data hasn't even been published anywhere yet, but my worries about phone radiation (we're not talking WiFi, I hasten to add) are not going away in a hurry... 

Wolf.

Endless Ocean, what a triumph. I play it with my 3 and a half year old - she hasn't got any robots or handheld devices though, Mr Prensky, sorry - and she absolutely loves it. She likes to hear the fish names and when we went to an aquarium, she even remembered some of them. A great extension to books and other creative toys.

It's so well-designed and produced as well, which you notice in particular when you look at similar games. I bought 'Arctic Tale' which is endorsed by National Geographic and it's appalling in comparison. Badly programmed (crashed the Wii three times so far), poorly rendered environments and creatures, odd narrative (if there is one) and rather restricted gameplay. There is so much more room for free exploration in Endless Ocean.

Not sure about the length of the lady's shorts though...

Wolf.

That's a really strange announcement.

Adobe are talking about writing a standalone Flash Player using the iPhone SDK. That's all very well, and even exciting for standalone applications, probably meaning some sort of AIR runtime on top of the SDK.

But that still doesn't constitute a plugin for Safari on the iPhone. So what everybody has been crying out for (and what I thought would be the only reason for Apple to introduce Flash), is the ability to view/use websites that have embedded Flash in the default browser. Richard Leggett points out that one could write a browser extension using the WebKit browser, but according to the iPhone SDK rules, writing a plugin might not be allowed anyway.

 

update: More clarification on the matter from Bill Perry, Mr Mobile at Adobe.

That should be "mobile software developers that supply the educational sector", I think. 

Don't forget that if you supply your software via other channels (Handango, Network Portals, iTunes app store, etc), they take a fair whack of the revenue too. As Graham says, volume is what makes it work. Or, the (over-used) 'Long Tail', where you make a business publishing very niche and specific applications at low volume and higher price. But for mobile that doesn't seem to be working yet.

You're right, once you build a web-based product, distribute it over the air and charge a subscription, some of the problems are solved. But in your case, making 3500 images available as a GPRS/3G download is going to hurt on data charges...!

I've never liked the idea of software support, so I've only ever been involved in 'time and materials' bespoke work, which others distribute and support. It's just too painful to be on the other end of a phone line when things go wrong.

Wolf.

Hi Neil,

I take your point about the cost of the images, and the cost of physical packaging, distribution etc. And of course I'm not questioning your business model and your calculations - I appreciate that I'm purely looking at it from the perspective of 'who would pay that sort of money'?

£40 is a price people are prepared to pay for a PC/console game, or maybe a piece of PC software they really need. But looking at Lifestyle PDA application prices on Handango or similar sources, £40 sounds very expensive - $30 was the top figure I saw there. Maybe the PDA software could be bundled with the CD-ROM for a lower 'upgrade' price or something? I just worry that this good idea could fail because of the cost. I'd love you to prove me wrong, but consumers' price expectations are definitely not the same for mobile and desktop.

Best,

Wolf.

That's a really nice idea - I'd seen it before on your site. You would have thought that the demographic for this sort of product is not going to be into mobiles, but surprisingly, the BBC had some success with WAP site trials at the Chelsea Flower Show for instance.

But sorry, £40 for a casual use PDA application?  That's madness, based on my experience.

Wolf.

I reckon that's what it's going to be. You will only be able to sideload iPod/iPhone applications through iTunes.

And on a related note, don't expect Flash on iPhone or iPod anytime soon. Real shame, and I don't really buy the reasons for it either. There are light-weight versions of the Flash player (ask Opera Mobile about it) so the 'technical architecture' problems are a bit of a cop-out.

Wolf.

That FAQ only refers to the end user I think. It's the same for Flash, Adobe don't charge you to install the Flash Player on your PC/Mac, but they charge an OEM like Nokia for bundling FlashLite with their devices. So I suspect Nokia are not getting the runtime for free either - but who knows?

It's still bad news for Adobe though.

Sorry but here's my pedantic bit: Macromind renamed themselves to Macromedia in 1991 and Marc Canter left. They bought FutureWave, the inventors of the original Flash format (FutureSplash), in 1996. He did come up with big things, but Flash wasn't his baby I'm afraid. I do remember being a junior web designer in 1996 and Nick Austin from Macromedia coming to our offices to demo FutureSplash/Flash 1.0. Never seen so many dropping jaws...

Wolf.

Yes, that's another big announcement of today. Where did you see that the runtime is given to Nokia for 'free' (if I get you right)? Adobe has a similar deal with Nokia for FlashLite, but they pay a licence fee. If MS don't charge that, it will mean a huge difference and a massive leg-up for Silverlight on S60/mobile.

There is still plenty of doubt that Silverlight will be able to take on Flash as a desktop player, because of limitations of the format and the enormous head start and market penetration that Flash has. But if MS are doing better than Adobe in the mobile space (and that isn't difficult considering how Adobe has pretty much wasted the opportunity with FlashLite) it may be significant very soon. Hurrah, more fragmentation!!

I thought the BBC article did get a bit muddled up with mobile and desktop half way through. AIR is not mobile yet for example, so that's a different market they're entering.

Wolf.