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!

• Read More »

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.

• Read More »

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.

• Read More »

 

 

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.

• Read More »

Although there are a number of examples of mobile learning and performace support here on this site, the most common question in sessions and from trainers unfamiliar with mobile learning is about examples. For example, "Show me what you can really accomplish (or learn) with one of those small screens."

Unfortunately many of the best examples are proprietary and the owners consider them to be their competitive advantage.

So, while continuing to seek out and post examples, I decided to put together a demo for input and to track the time required to create it. Not a finished project, but a good draft completed in about 3 hours is now available at http://crisisresponse.mobi . Check it out and give us your feedback. We'd love to hear your suggestions for improvement.

• Read More »

Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, has produced an interesting video of their campus with all students using the iPhone. The 17-minute "Connected: The Movie" video is available on iTunes U or from the ACU site .

"What might a university look like with a fully deployed program of converged devices like the iPhone? Connected is one possible vision. This fictional day-in-the-life account highlights some of the potential benefits in a higher education setting when every student, faculty, and staff member is "connected." Though the applications and functions portrayed in the film are purely speculative, they're based on needs and ideas uncovered by our research - and we've already been making strides to transform this vision of mobile learning (mLearning) into reality."

On their site they also have outlined their case for mLearning, case studies and an initial list of applications. This is definitely a group that "gets it" and one which we will be following. Great job, ACU!

• Read More »

I received the following in my email today as a Google alert:

A Consultant in Your Pocket -- AthenaOnline Delivers Free Mobile ...

PR Web (press release), WA - 9 hours ago AthenaOnline announced today that they have released their entire library of short leadership advice videos SmartBytes for use on 3GP cellular phones. ...

When I click on it, I get automatically sent to http://www.myquickcoach.com with no mention of their mobile library being available for free, however the full press release is also available here in PDF. It states "With almost 1,000 videos it is the largest body of management training content currently available for mobile learning. What’s more, Athena announced that the mobile SmartBytes will be made available absolutely free through a special cell phone site that they have set up."

Although it says that the iPhone version is coming, I was able to access some of the videos on my iPhone, but not on my Windows Mobile device.

Note that this appears to be very good content from some known experts which is normally available at $325 per person, per year.

If you have a 3G phone, please go to www.SmartBytes.mobi and advise your experience.

I have to assume that they are giving these away free for now to build mobile learning credibility, but that will change once the demand builds. What do you think?

We started publishing a weekly summary this month, however there are several sites already available doing just this. One we specifically recommend is Carnival of the Mobilists. We plan to cover more topics in our blog, rather than in weekly summaries, and invite you to comment.

For those who might have seen something of interest in the initial weekly entries, you can find the information below:

• Read More »

I haven't had time to read it all yet, but wanted to pass along the posting of The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,Vol 8, No 2 on the topic of Mobile Learning . (Thanks to George Siemens for posting it and to Sam Adkins for passing it along.)

In the Edirotial, Mohamed Ally from Arhabasca University states:

The papers in this special theme issue examining mobile learning will help educators and trainers to be better prepared for the use of mobile technology in education and training. The papers in this special issue also help to clarify what is meant by mobile learning, discuss what has been achieved so far in the use of mobile technology in learning, and describe the use of different mobile technologies in education and mobile learning applications around the world.

The articles are available in HTML, PDF or MP3. Right now my printer is hard at work printing out some of them for my plane trip tomorrow. Hopefully I will not spend 7 hours in the airport as I did earlier this month. However if that happens, at least I will have some good reading.

This is a new experiment in both new software and in collaborative blogging. We are relaunching mlearnopedia.com and are looking for ways in which we all can attempt to keep up with all the news and activities in the mobile learning space.

We hope that you will add us to your RSS feeds, let us know what you are doing in the area of mobile learning, and make suggestions for what we should have on this site and how it should better be organized.