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 A new 414-page book has been released or free download. The book entitled "Innovative Mobile Learning: Techniques and Technologies" is a collection of chapters from across the world, edited by Hokyoung Ryu and David Parsons from Massey University, New Zealan.
"The aim of Innovative Mobile Learning: Techniques and Technologies is to introduce the reader to the current directions of mobile learning (a.k.a., m-learning). More precisely, it is about providing a comprehensive survey of mobile learning research and projects that both academics and educational practitioners may utilize in their work." I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but wanted to let you know about it. You can download your copy here .
Recently the New Media Consortium (NMC) sent out a survey to their membership looking for examples of member's mobile technology projects. They have now posted over 40 responses along with their descriptions and URLs. I am still going through it and finding some interesting projects. Additionally they have posted a survey of favorite iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Thanks for sharing, NMC!
 Where did the summer go? It definitely was a busy one starting with one granddaughter’s wedding and finishing with a new granddaughter born to our youngest and her husband. I definitely will try now to be more regular in updates to the mLearnopedia blog.
The Fall “Conference Season” has already begun with a Mobile Learning in Higher Education webinar for Academic Impressions. This month I will be attending two conferences in Italy and back in time for Elliot Masie’s Learning 2008 in Orlando where I am involved in four sessions. Check out the conference schedule and mobile sessions at http://masie.mobi .
Next month is DevLearn for the eLearning Guild in San Jose where I am involved in an all day pre-session workshop and an overview session. This year they are doing an exciting experiment with QR codes .
Looking forward, after the Holidays, I will be doing hands on sessions for ASTD TechKnowledge in Las Vegas in January and coordinating a mobile learning tools Shoot-Out at Training 2009 in Atlanta in February.
If you are attending any of these conferences and want to connect, just let me know.
Speaking of QR codes, Samsung recently announced that they are preloading the ScanLife mobile 2D barcode application on their camera phones. There are also several barcode readers for the iPhone that are easy to install.
For more on the future with tagging, check out the tonshidot demo .
The biggest mobile learning news so far this Fall has been that of the schools that are deploying iPhones to their students. Abilene Christian University has an interesting video available .
 This year both the live broadcast and the delayed video from the Apple WWDC (WorldWide Developers Conference) were much improved and now readily available. Nearly every blog and publication has covered the news on the iPhone 3G. Most of the rumors we had heard were true and indeed there are some impressive improvements, plus a reduction in price.
With the enterprise improvements and the fact that many leading colleges and universities and 35% of the fortune 500 participated in testing, it will be surprising if the rate iPhones appear in education, corporate and government organizations doesn't increase. Apple has definitely raised the bar, which is good for the industry. But what about education and training? Location-based services, language support, additional document support and even a scientific calculator could be useful, but it was a medical learning example that showed how excellent paper-based materials can be improved. Modality demonstrated their medical anatomy materials which are "more portable and more powerful than paper." Study materials and quizzes are available to medical students on their iPhones. A student of Dr. S. Mark Williams claimed to have learned five new brain terms while waiting for his latte.
 This week I had the opportunity to talk with Sun Microsystem's CTO of Sun Learning Services. He posted a video on You Tube this week of their Mobile Learning initiative using the iPhone and iPod Touch. (See below for video)
Training videos are available "just in time, just the right size and exactly what they are looking for." For those without WiFi connectivity content can be preloaded using RSS feeds through iTunes. Corporate security is enforced in the background, only allowing access to those authorized.
Thanks to a heads up from Leonard Low, I tried Wirenode for an easy mobile blog. It took less than a minute to set this up. Check the mobile version of this blog out at mlearnopedia.wirenode.mobi. There are a number of additional tools available to quickly create a mobile site including Mob5.com, Winksite.com and Mobisite Galore. Wirenode provides the standard text, image, header, list or separator capabilities, but also enables you to easily add widgets. These include widgets for an RSS blog, twitter status, image gallery, message of the day, clock or a message widget for visitors to leave messages. There are also nice promotional widgets that you can use to place on your current clog or website to direct visitors to your mobile site. You can see my current experiment at judyb.wirenode.mobi.
 After almost a year from announcement (see 3 June 07 post ) I received my Pulse Smartpen this week. Livescribe (http://livescribe.com ) has added a recorder to its Anoto technology Pulse Smartpen, as well as additional applications, with a retail price of $149 to $199 (depending upon 1 GB or 2 GB of storage.)
It is fairly easy to see the potential value to students, journalists and administrators or others who need to regularly capture and share or locate notes from meetings or events. But what I didn't readily see until starting to use a Pulse smartpen is the exciting potential for very easy and effective creation of online learning materials.
 For some time now, we have seen leading applications on mobile devices in the health care field. Today's technology column in BusinessWeek profiles several mobile phone applications in health care. Be sure to click on the View Slide Show to see several more examples.
 I missed it when it was first published on April 3rd, but was pleased to see the excellent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary on cell phones posted on the web (thanks, Tami). Having lived in Canada for 10 years and seeing the quality of the CBC documentaries, I was excited to see this full documentary. It is nearly 42 minutes, but covers the history, today and tomorrow, mostly life style changes.
At about 27 minutes there is an interesting segment from India were students are learning English on the mobile phone. This in an area where they do not have electricity and very little drinking water.
I loved seeing (around the 21 minute point) the story of Philippe Kahn inventing the camera phone. I had read and heard about it before, but had not seen him talking about it and showing how he did it
In the future section, the coming biometrics capabilities were from Philippe's new company FullPower. See Mobile Devices in Research Lab.
Elliott Masie started a free social network for learning professionals a week ago and already has 2740 members. There are 27 separate groups in which members may participate. The second most popular (after Instructional Design) is Mobile Learning with 139 members. Yea! There have been some great comments, questions and discussions.
As an example, Mete Tuneri posted a link to their m-learning demo for AstraZeneca. They put together textual content plus more visual assets, sounds and interactivity. You can see the demo here .
Please join us at learningtown.com.
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