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Category Archives: Mobile Technology
9 Ways Mobile is Moving into Academia
Staff writers at Best Colleges Online have put together a great article on the nine ways mobile devices are expanding in the academic world.
Below is an edited version of the article:
Mobile phones are ubiquitous among students, both in college and K-12. And while some schools shun the use of cell phones, others are embracing them as a powerful tool. Marketing, learning, and mobile access are just some of the ways academia is taking advantage of what mobile has to offer.
EXPANDING UNIVERSITY APPS AND MOBILE WEB: Universities around the world have learned the value of mobile devices, publishing iPhone and Android apps, mobile-optimized sites, and more, that have allowed students and visitors to find campus news, maps, and other helpful resources right in their phones.
NOMADIC LEARNING: The beauty of learning everywhere is that students can learn outside of the classroom, not having to worry about the world going on without them while they’re locked up inside. Podcasted classes, real-time scavenger hunts, and mobile games are all great examples of learning on-the-go that can be created by traditional educators, and employed by otherwise traditional students.
AUGMENTED REALITY LEARNING SCENARIOS: Mobile phones make it possible to learn anywhere, but with augmented reality learning scenarios, students can really learn anywhere and even any time. Going beyond convenience, through augmented reality mobile technology on GPS-enabled handheld devices, students can find information from different locations outdoors, like on a playground or school field.
MOBILE APPS FOR EDUCATION: Although overall mobile apps have a long way to go in classroom education, they are making great progress. Apps that allow students to explore constellations, for example, offer a great way to interact in the classroom.
TWITTER FEEDBACK IN CLASS: Through Twitter, lecture halls full of hundreds of students can all participate at the same time, tweeting comments, questions, and more using their laptops and cell phones. TAs and professors can respond to the real-time feed, and the entire classroom can watch as it goes by. Students enjoy being able to overcome the shyness barrier, and the entire classroom benefits from increased participation.
MOBILE LIBRARY ACCESS: For years, the only way to access academic libraries was to physically make your way down there and get familiar with the stacks. With the Internet, that’s changed, allowing students and researchers to log in from any computer and enjoy many of the resources that libraries have to offer. But with mobile devices, the game is further changed, allowing for the use of eBooks in academic reading, mobile library database access, and simple library notifications.
MOBILE PHONE PAYMENTS: Anyone who’s tried to get lunch during the afternoon rush on a college campus can tell you that things get a little crazy, especially when it comes to paying for food. With mobile devices, schools have the opportunity to streamline the process, using phones to buy food and beverages through secure transactions.
MOBILE MARKETING: To be a good marketer, you’ve got to go where your target market is, and for colleges, their target market is on cell phones. Research from Ball State University indicates that 97% of all U.S. college students own a cell phone. The University of Louisville and other colleges have capitalized on this opportunity, using QR codes, SMS marketing, and the aforementioned mobile apps to connect with prospective students.
MOBILE POP QUIZZES: Student response systems, which allow teachers to get digital answers from students in their class, usually cost about $1,200 for each classroom. But by using existing student cell phones, that price tag is quickly slashed to just $50 a year. In addition to quizzes, teachers are able to use cell phones for testing, homework assignments, and more, encouraging students to educationally engage with their phones instead of using them as a distraction.
Technology Learning Curve of M-Learning
One of the main concerns facing newcomers to mobile learning revolve around the technology that needs to be absorbed and used. For those new to mobile phone technologies and web browsing itself, it could present some learning time, but otherwise mobile learning is easy to understand and fast to implement.
Internet browsing and basic formatting skills are important, but they are not critical to be able to offer mobile learning to students. If you are already browsing the net, emailing and creating documents and presentations with ease, you will have no trouble adapting to mobile learning applications.
Using Mobile Devices
Mobile phones are not new technology. Most of us have switched phones and service providers and have experienced a few days of steady paced usage before our fingers started to fly. Of course the pleasure of owning a new phone made the learning fun instead of tedious. Picking up usage on your new mobile learning tool will be something like that. Most mobile learning programs today incorporate smartphones, which are designed to be intuitive and usually touch based, and do not require special training to use.
Exploring Mobile Apps
Smartphone apps are almost everywhere now, and if you’ve used a smartphone device you’ve probably already downloaded and used new mobile apps. Like software programs, devices apps are programs designed to work on mobile devices and are usually very intuitive and easy to learn.
Software for Content Creation
What may require some getting used to, is the 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 which educators will need to become more familiar with the software features.
Mobl21 is an m-learning service that offers three ways (DIY, purchase, or purchase & modify) to get your content mobile ready. The Mobl21 is an easy-to-use platform which is designed to create content in just a few steps. You can even add video, audio, images and animations to lessons and create entire courses without any hassle.
Bandwidth & Connectivity
Multiple devices trying to access the internet from your school at the same time can lead to some bandwidth issues. Especially if your mobile learning plan requires multimedia applications, the transmission of voice and video over your school’s wifi could cause a bottleneck if your bandwidth is not geared to meet it. However thanks to the recent FCC’s E-Rate Order schools and libraries can now have access higher broadband speeds for lower prices by increasing their options for broadband providers and streamlining the application process. The FCC’s upgrades to E-Rate include ultra-fast fiber, school spots, learning on-the-go, and the 21st Century E-Rate Program.
Mobile Learning: Why waiting will get you left behind
It’s being widely acknowledged that mobile devices are poised to replace many traditional computing activities. All indications are that access to the Internet through mobile and wireless devices will soon outpace access through desktop devices by 2014 (Morgan Stanley).
Yet we are still seeing a lot of “watching and waiting” from educational institutions and enterprises when it comes to implementing mobile technologies for learning.
While there is an understandable reason in ensuring success of established technologies before adopting, it’s also true that complications arise when the audience begins to use this same technology to work, play, and learn without waiting for a top-down influence.
Mobile technology is a perfect example of this happening; the technology is growing in a rapid manner and we are seeing two main camps:
• Those looking for validity and the “perfect” opportunity
• The “adopters” who are diving in
Last year, there were several well-publicized examples of institutions implementing mobile learning, especially with the arrival of tablets. Along with these developments, the mobile learning marketplace has seen several commercial options which facilitate m-learning implementation with minimal risk of capital.
However when it comes to the majority, the attitude to devices in school and on campus is still largely one of waiting for acceptance.
Learners already on-the-go
On the flip side, students are already doing a lot to create their own personal learning experience either by sharing notes using online tools, collaborating through social media with like-minded learners or most recently, downloading educational apps.
App stores have become a fabulous conduit for non-traditional educational tools to reach learners, and lately, many traditional publishers have also started to participate.
While a lot of these applications and tools are of relevance, (e.g. learning material for test prep), one of the key missing pieces in mobile learning is the absence of validated educational resources that are a part of school or college curriculum. This is happening largely due to the hesitation on the part of institutions to disperse their educational content via mobile devices, forcing students to look to other sources. Besides illegal digitization, this could also result in unmonitored circulation of material which could be incorrect or outdated.
An exception to this rule is the availability of publisher notes for a specific book. Already student usage of these applications when available has been very pervasive and popular.
While many of these tools are being used in an ad hoc manner, the fact that students are driving their learning initiatives provides us with ample evidence of the tremendous opportunity to deliver validated and educator-driven content on to these platforms.
There is no right or wrong in choosing between immediate adoption of mobile learning or waiting for validation. But it is essential to be cognizant that even with the ground beneath our feet still shifting, users are incorporating mobile learning with success.
The call to action should therefore be to start implementing, using the slew of opportunities that have presented themselves over the past 12-18 months. In a future that is obviously more and more mobile device-driven, waiting for things to settle, may be akin to missing the train completely.
eLearning Predictions for 2011 and Beyond
Informative post by John Aleckson an eLearning Teacher & Entrepreneur, summarizing the different opportunities and challenges predicted to arise in the next ten years.
Excerpt: Many of these predictions are relative to one’s perspective, be it teacher, student, or management, but they all share one common idea: eLearning is going to play a major part in providing degree education and professional development in the future, especially with the advancements in mobile technology, the increasing ubiquitous nature of bandwidth, and the emerging acceptance of “anywhere, anytime” learning.
Technologies like the iPad, Android tablets and, of course smart phones, are creating what looks to be a bright future for eLearning, in general. Not only do these technologies allow for stronger opportunities for peer to peer learning (social learning) and better access to content, it also allows instructors to nudge learning along with calendar and assignment alerts. This increase in social networking will become a spearhead for increased collaboration and sharing, and also provide a way to bring together different sources of content and educational experiences in one single point of contact.
Teachers’ Views on Technology in the Classroom
Check out how teachers across the country are using technology to teach. The Times asked teachers to submit videos on how the use of technology has changed the way they teach.
Posted in Mobile Learning, Mobile Technology
Tagged technology in classrooms, technology to teach
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Mobl21 named finalist in the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition
On July 12, San Francisco will become a mobile battleground as the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition takes off. The prize: Two of VentureBeat’s coveted Tesla Awards.
Twenty contenders have emerged as finalists from a field of more than 200 nominees. And Emantras’ Mobl21 is one of them!
Posted in Mobile Technology
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Trends & Statistics in mobile technology and communications
According to the 2009 Parent-Teen Cell Phone Survey, American children now spend 7.5 hours a day absorbing and creating media — as much time as they spend in school. Even more remarkably, they multitask across screens to cram 11 hours of content into those 7.5 hours. More and more of these activities are happening on smartphones equipped with audio, video, SMS, and hundreds of thousands of apps.
Growth of the worldwide converged mobile device market more than doubled that of the overall mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2010, a sign the segment is in high-growth mode again.
Parent-Teen Cell Phone Survey: Fully 72% of all teens, or 88% of teen cell phone users, are text-messagers. That is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006. More than half of teens (54%) are daily texters.
Half of Japan’s top fiction was written via text messages.
According to McGraw-Hill Education, 95% of their textbooks are also offered as ebooks.
With subscriptions expected to reach 5 billion some time this year, as reported by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), cellular phones are arguably the most widely used gadget and the most popular communication tool today. That is about 75 percent of the world’s population
Of Twitter’s active users, 37% use their phone to tweet.
It took mobile phones 14 years to reach 50% of U.S. households — compared with 56 years for the telephone, 20 years for the personal computer, ten years for the Internet, nine years for radio and just five years for television. (U.S. Department of Commerce)
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.
42% of teens say they can text blindfolded.
Third-generation (3G) phones will form the majority of phones, comprising more than 80% of the installed base by 2014.
According to Gartner, mobile usage is set to explode in 2010 with over 1.2 billion getting hands on with web capable handsets.
Sources:
- 2009 Parent-Teen Cell Phone Survey, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International
- http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22333410
- http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/11-interesting-cell-phone-facts
- http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcgraw-hill-education-meets-californias-requirement-for-postsecondary-digital-textbooks-ten-years-ahead-of-schedule-88391517.html
- http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/live-twitter-ceo-ev-williamss-chirp-keynote/
- http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
- http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/cell-phones-key-to-teens-social-lives-47-can-text-with-eyes-closed-6126/
- Forrster: US Mobile Forecast, 2009 To 2014
- http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1210613
