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Monthly Archives: May 2010
Mobl21 wins the “Most Innovative Education Product or Service” award
The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) showcased some of the leading growth companies in the education technology market and named Mobl21 as the “Most Innovative Education Product or Service”, as part of the Innovation Incubator Program at its annual Ed Tech Industry Summit, held May 24, 2010, in San Francisco.
The Innovation Incubator Program connects the developers of promising, new technologies with industry leaders, potential investors and established organizations seeking partnerships or prospects for acquisition.
Applicants were assessed based on key selection criteria, including alignment to the conference’s theme, “Going Mobile and Global,” and SIIA’s Vision K-20 Benchmarks.
About Mobl21
A simple mobile learning application, Mobl21 enables educators to create content that learners can access from their mobile phones, allowing them to study at their own pace and therefore, perform better.
For more information visit: www.mobl21.com
About SIIA
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection for 500 leading software and information companies.
For more information visit: www.siia.net
Challenges in Mobile Learning – Part 1
Let’s look at some of the main concerns faced by educationists and m-learning advocates and methods by which these issues may be overcome.
What if my teachers and staff are not tech savvy?
One of the key criteria for any new technological to be successful is that it needs to be easy to learn, with immediate benefits. Mobile phones are not new technology. Smartphones are designed to be intuitive and do not require special training to use.
What may require some hand holding is the use of software that will enable your teachers to deliver customized content to student mobile devices. While these are designed to be easy to use, as with any new software there will be a small learning period during which teachers will become more familiar with the software features. Internet browsing and basic formatting skills are important, but they are not critical to be able to offer mobile learning to students.
If your teachers are already browsing the net, emailing and creating documents and presentations with ease, they will have no trouble adapting to mobile learning applications like Mobl21.
Will students use it to cheat?
Let’s face it. Some students will always try and cheat. Be it crib notes, or old-fashioned copying, cheating does occur. Mobile learning enables students to utilize their studying time effectively by providing bite-sized chunks of material in a way that can be easily reviewed. It does not facilitate cheating.
While there is evidence that mobiles are being increasingly used by students to cheat, implementing m-learning pedagogies will not necessarily raise the number of cheaters.
To overcome cheating issues, many schools and educational institutions prohibit students from bringing mobile phones into the exam hall, or at the very least have them switched off. Warnings and penalties can deter cheaters, but vigilance during examinations for all types of cheating including mobile phone usage will just have to continue.
Will learning material need to be reformatted?
Most mobile phones are compatible with standard text, music and video formats available today. If reformatting is required it would usually be to standardize your formats and can probably be done on your own computer.
Based on your existing material, how you package your content for mobile phone delivery is up to you. Sometimes it could be as easy as recording a lecture or copy-pasting a laboratory process. The advantage of mobile learning is that the small screen let’s you look only to the important points that need to be reviewed. For multiple choice exam preparation like the SATs, you can use m-learning software like Mobl21, which enable you to create quizzes and vocabulary flashcards easily, and supports popular file formats add media like audio and video.
Click here to read Part II of Challenges in Mobile Learning.
Image Credit: Theogeo
What makes mobile learning ubiquitous?
ubiq•ui•tous
Pronunciation: \yü-’bi-kwə-təs\
Function: adjective, Date: 1830
: existing or being everywhere at the same time : constantly encountered : widespread <a ubiquitous fashion>
Merriam Webster
The term ubiquitous often appears in conjunction with scholarly articles on mobile and communication devices and more specifically, mobile learning. This post will help us understand more about this term and why it has become so relevant in the field of mobile learning.
Wikipedia states that ubiquitous learning (or u-learning) is equivalent to a form of simple mobile learning, e.g. learning environments that can be accessed in various contexts and situations.
With mobile learning expanding globally, more and more people have begun to experience ubiquitous learning (learning that can happen whenever you need it, however you want it) using their mobile devices.
Features of Ubiquitous Learning
The main characteristics of ubiquitous learning are (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis et al., 2002):
Permanency: Learners can never lose their work unless it is purposefully deleted. In addition, all the learning processes are recorded continuously in everyday.
Accessibility: Learners have access to their documents, data, or videos from anywhere. That information is provided based on their requests. Therefore, the learning involved is self-directed.
Immediacy: Wherever learners are, they can get any information immediately. Therefore learners can solve problems quickly. Otherwise, the learner may record the questions and look for the answer later.
Interactivity: Learners can interact with experts, teachers, or peers in the form of synchronies or asynchronous communication. Hence, the experts are more reachable and the knowledge is more available.
Situating of instructional activities: The learning could be embedded in our daily life. The problems encountered as well as the knowledge required are all presented in the nature and authentic forms. It helps learners notice the features of problem situations that make particular actions relevant.
Adaptability: Learners can get the right information at the right place with the right way.
By looking at the features of ubiquitous learning, it’s easier to understand why many consider mobile education to be a form ubiquitous learning.
With the development of mobile learning, the concept of ubiquitous education has become more tangible. While u-learning itself extends beyond known technologies like portable computers and mobile devices, this decade has ushered in the advent of mobile education, considered by many as a vital step towards a truly ubiquitous learning system.
Image credit: apdk
Mobile Learning – From your hands to theirs
It’s the evening before History finals. And you’re nervous.
All those dates, places, events, people… these days there’s so much information, and who can easily remember the important footnotes of last year, let alone last decade?
You chew your nails and wonder how you’re gonna get any sleep. Then you wonder if you’re being silly. After all it’s just another exam.
The problem is, you’re the teacher.
Mobile Learning – From your hands to theirs
Of course you want your students to give their best. You just need a new way to get them to review the vital points they need, in bite-sized proportions that they can absorb… anytime, anywhere.
MOBL21 can help you do just that. MOBL21 is a simple application that allows educators and learners to quickly create learning material that can then be “pushed” on mobile devices.
How it works:
1. Register on MOBL21.com
2. Have students download the free MOBL21 application on their iPhones/iPods*
3. Create a stack of flash cards, for each historical event
4. Name a group for your class, and add students as users
5. Push your study material to them
For more information on how MOBL21 can help your maximise your student’s learning ability visit www.mobl21.com
You can also see how one school is using Mobile Learning
3-R’s of mobile learning, Review-Refresh-Reinforce
With mobile technology now entering classrooms, today’s students are experiencing a more dynamic, “unstructured” way of absorbing information. Minutes between classes, time alone waiting for friends, or commuting to and from school are all opportunities for enhanced learning.
Mobile learning is ushering in a new age of learning pedagogies, making us examine and question how knowledge is organized and interrelated.
Let’s take a look at some ways in which mobile learning can be used to reinforce existing teaching methods:
Review
By highlighting the key points of your lecture, or making a list of important, places and events, mobile learning can enable students to quickly run through a topic just before a test or exam. The review method works well on a mobile device as students can have quick and constant access to important points, helping them recollect and reiterate later.
Refresh
Flashcards, new definitions, vocabulary and equations, all critical content that need to stay top of mind. By accessing this information time and again, students can refresh their knowledge and keep the important bits, top of mind.
Reinforce
Did you learn your multiplications tables though repetition? So will this generation, but the tables will always be close at hand. Reinforcement is an age-old method of teaching and learning, and this holds true for today’s mobile learners too.
Mobile learning can be effective if used in a supportive manner, ie, by providing bite-sized learning assets to add greater recall value to current teaching methodologies.
Supporting quality learning anywhere, anytime.
Mobile learning and how it relates (or differentiates) from e-learning
While most of us have heard or come across the term e-learning in the past decade, the term mobile learning or m-learning is not as widely adapted into common usage. While both are intuitive in their meanings, how they vary and differentiate from each other is not that apparent.
What is mobile learning?
In an earlier post, we’ve defined mobile learning is the ability to obtain or provide educational content on personal pocket devices such as PDAs, smartphones and mobile phones. As we have established in our timeline, mobile learning using handheld computers is in its infancy in terms of both technologies and pedagogies. As a result there is still some dispute amongst industry advocates in how mobile learning should be defined: in terms of devices and technologies; in terms of the mobility of learners and the mobility of learning, and in terms of the learners’ experience of learning with mobile devices. (Traxler, 2007)
Clark Quinn, professor, author, and expert in computer-based education, defined mobile learning as the intersection of mobile computing (the application of small, portable, and wireless computing and communication devices) and e-learning (learning facilitated and supported through the use of information and communications technology).
What is e-learning?
E-learning has come to define any dissemination of educational knowledge over the Internet. This makes e-learning a subset of technology-based training. It also incorporates a number of learning activities conducted on the Internet, of which mobile learning is one part.
Differentiating e-learning from mobile learning
E-learning can be real-time or self-paced, also known as “synchronous” or “asynchronous” learning. Additionally, e-learning is considered to be “tethered” (connected to something) and presented in a formal and structured manner.
In contrast, mobile learning is often self-paced, un-tethered and informal in its presentation.
Because mobile devices have the power to make learning even more widely available and accessible, mobile devices are considered by many to be a natural extension of e-learning (Ellis, 2003).
References
1. C. Quinn (2000), “mLearning: Mobile, Wireless, In-Your-Pocket Learning”
2. Traxler, John (2007), Defining, Discussing and Evaluating Mobile Learning: the moving finger writes and having writ . . .
3. Ellis, K. (2003). Moving into M-Learning. Training
Posted in General
Tagged M-learning, mlearning, mobile education, Mobile Learning, Mobile Technology
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6 ways to use mobile learning in your class today
1. Record your lecture and upload it as a podcast. Share the link with your students to use while studying or for reference.
2. Share your number with your students and ask them to message any questions that they have while reviewing the lesson. You can answer the salient questions in the next class or direct them as to where they can find the answers. Additionally two or more questions on the same point will give you valuable feedback on which areas of your lecture were harder to follow.
3. Ask a new question related to your subject and let your students use their phones to see how quickly they can find the answer. (students without browsing capacity can share phones with those who have them) This will enable you to see how well they understood the context of the question, along with recognition of important keywords of your lecture.
4. Create short lists of salient points, like history dates, exam hints, short summaries, etc., which can be shared with students through messaging.
5. Allow students to take 5 minutes to study continental geography using Google maps before asking them to put away their phones and quizzing them.
6. Build vocabulary by sending them flashcards with a new word and its definition, everyday.
Short quizzes, important equations, and definitions can be easily emphasised by creating simple content and pushing this material to student phones using mobile learning applications like MOBL21.
For more ideas on how to incorporate mobile learning in your classroom click here.
Image Credit: JeanbaptisteM
Posted in General
Tagged Mobile Eduation, Mobile Learning, mobile learning applications, Podcasts
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MOBL21 puts some ‘wow’ into boring study tasks
Ninth grade English teacher Ashley Wilbur made history at the Howard School of Academics and Technology by becoming the first teacher in the State of Tennessee to employ mobile learning for her English class. Ms. Wilbur first began looking for learning alternatives when she realized her students had the same English texts they had used the previous year.
“I told them to close the books,” said Ms. Wilbur, “and began to look for ways to engage the students with the iPods. It was difficult to find content and know just how to get it to students in the beginning, however.”
Working in partnership with Emantras and Hamilton County Virtual School, Ms. Wilbur now uses an application called MOBL21, which enables teachers to deliver study guides, quizzes, flash cards, video and audio content to students via Apple mobile devices or any computer via the web.
“Today’s students carry the web in their pocket,” observed HCVS Coordinator Debi Crabtree, “and it is crazy not to utilize such an opportunity to push out short quizzes that can be used for formative assessments, flash cards to reinforce the major concepts of a unit of study, or guides that can be accessed anywhere, anytime to help students prepare for a test or project.”
MOBL21 provides a framework within which content can be easily created by students or teachers, extending the learning opportunity beyond traditional barriers. As a result, teachers are able to use mobile technology to complement formal courses, and make learning assets easily available to users and groups through desktop, social platforms, and iPhone / iPod Touch.
“I have created study guides for students to use to prepare for the English 9, End of Course state exam,” said Ms. Wilbur, “putting some ‘wow’ into what might otherwise be a difficult and boring task for the students.”
Read the original publication here
Posted in Mobl21
Tagged Howard School, learning alternatives, Mlearning Pilot, Mobile Learning, Mobile Pilot
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Mobile Learning – A Timeline
To understand why we’re in an exciting period in mobile learning education, it is important to take a look at the technologies and developments that have gone into making learning accessible to people on the move.
Let’s start with defining mobile learning. Mobile learning is the ability to obtain or provide educational content on personal pocket devices such as PDAs, smart phones and mobile phones. Educational content here refers to digital learning assets which includes any form of content or media made available on a personal device.
Simple enough to explain. However if you look deeper into the multiple technologies involved in m-Learning, tracking the developmental history becomes a little tricky.
Here’s how it looks to us:
From the above timeline, it is clear that the technology overlap that has happened in this last decade has given the needed impetus to escalating the potential of mobile learning. This convergence of mobile information and enabling technologies has significantly impacted the way users interact with information on a daily and immediate basis.
So if you’ve just downloaded a conversational French application on your iPhone, take a few seconds to appreciate the hardware upgrades, software development, wireless network and communication advances that have occurred over the last five decades, to get you to say your first “Bonjour” to the world.
With information and communications technology becoming portable and individual-oriented, we are today experiencing the first level of effective mobile learning as it was envisioned decades ago.
What we do with it is now in our hands.
Welcome to the Mobl21 Blog
“It will soon be possible, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear instantly in type in London or elsewhere. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument… which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles… One may listen or transmit speech or song to the uttermost parts of the world. In the same way any kind of picture, drawing or print can be transferred from one place to another…
…The song of a great singer, the speech of a political leader, the sermon of a great divine, the lecture of a man of science may thus be delivered to an audience scattered all over the world.” Nikola Tesla, New York Times | October, 1909
If Nikola Tesla were to awaken and join today’s mobile community, perhaps his first tweet to the world would be, “i tld u so”.
While most of us have witnessed, experienced and benefited from this tremendous communication growth, what has yet to be foreseen is the extensive learning potential mobile technology is bringing to the field of education.
M-learning, mobile learning, mobile elearning. Regardless of how you refer to it, the future of education is undergoing a dramatic change. Largely focussed on imparting educational information using mobile devices, mobile learning offers today’s educators a powerful tool to facilitate an interactive learning experience.
In the urban educational context, each year sees younger and younger generations of students, absorbing and integrating technology into the various facets their life with ease. Do they still need slide shows, with each student holding a phone screen? Or to share a computer, with a pretty powerful computing device in every pocket? With the application of mobile learning, institutions and schools will soon be able to provide study aids and real-time support to a competitive, and techno-savvy student body.
Making learning a 24/7 process.
The potential is enormous. Perhaps even beyond what a man of Nikola Tesla’s precognitive abilities could comprehend.
If you’re interested in mobile learning you’ve come to the right place. In this blog we’ll cover the latest happenings in the mobile elearning world, and discuss potential initiatives, key challenges, & possible pitfalls. We’ll also take a look at some interesting examples of mobile technology in education, and figure out which institutions have successfully implemented mobile education and how.
Posted in General
Tagged General, M-learning, mobile elearning, mobile technology in education, Nikola Tesla
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