One of the more common uses of Twitter for me is to monitor “back-channels” at events (often events I can attend, but more often these days events I am unable to attend).
Unfortunately Twitter’s search capabilities cease to be useful after a little while and so it is very handy to be able to create an archive for the events ‘hashtag’. There used to be a number of tools in the early days, but mainly because of Twitter’s changes to policies and very unfortunate morphing into a closed ‘media-publishing’ platform, the developers of such tools were forced to discontinue their services.
Having seen more and more articles on the use of micro-blogging tools in educational and corporates settings, I am constantly surprised that one of the most useful options from my point-of-view seems to be constantly overlooked. Micro-blogging is like Twitter, but private to your organisation. It is a great way to capture those more informal internal discussions. It can help distribute useful information (such as links) throughout your organisation or help kick-start conversations.
With the Internet of Things slowly becoming mainstream the potential uses of this technology can also be seen in the Education sector. This blogpost is the first installment of a series of posts that highlights practical examples that can be used in teaching and training.
Part 1 – Environmental Noise Monitoring
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeander/3544687577/)
[](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/) by [ leeander](http://www.flickr.com/people/leeander/)[ ](http://www.imagecodr.org/)
Noise pollution has been a serious problem in many large cities all over the world and with the help of common mobile devices (smartphones) this can be easily measured, monitored and compared with a large quantity of samples from other cities/regions.
Like it or not (personally I am in the second category) Blackboard Collaborate or Elluminate (as it is still more commonly referred to) is something you have a hard time avoiding if you work in online education.
I discovered that I have audio issues on some Ubuntu Linux machines and found the following to fix the issues.
1) Install alsa-aoss
apt-get install alsa-oss
2) Save the Elluminate Java Webstard (.JNLP) file to a local folder – DO NOT OPEN IN BROWSER
3) Launch Elluminate using this command (in the folder you saved the JNLP)
After recently researching the available software for e-book creation for some of our clients (in the education sector) I came across quite a number of options. However after some further look into the option and trying some I was able narrowed the field down to 2 options that seem to be reasonably user-friendly and matured. The two are using a very different approach and will suit different types of users. One is a native e-book writer which will give better low-level control for the more technical types. The other is a plugin to the popular OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) Office Suites.
Taking part in MobiMOOC has given me the opportunity to take stock of my own MobilePLE – the top 5 tools I find most useful as part of my ongoing learning.
Catch Notes (previously 3Bananas) – mobile note taking the most critical component. Whenever I get a new device – this is what has to be installed as one of the first actions. For those not familiar with this software – it’s like Evernote without the bloat.
TwiDroyd – mobile Twitter / Status.Net client. This could be replaced by similar Twitter clients
I am using the opportunity of me taking part in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on mobile learning as an excuse to add some more content to this neglected blog.
On of the issues I am facing with my participation in the MOOC is the massive amount of e-mails generated and my already overflowing inbox would not cope (let alone me managing it). That is not taking into account other sources such as Twitter & Flickr
Due to the hype generated by the recent launch and my reservations on using the Apple Inc. iTunes I was doing some research into alternatives to the proprietary and completely locked iPad device (and the associated lock-down to Apple’s iTunes Store). Hopefully this list can be of use for other people as well.
I can see the form factor and the tablet style with a cut down (mainly web-browser based) Operating System as useful in a number of settings not least in educational institutions and libraries.
The media hype generated by the launch of the Apple Inc. iPad has been seriously irritating me over the last weeks. Apart from the fact that I can not see anything revolutionary about either the hardware nor the software, I can see a number of highly problematic developments with the way Apple is trying to create a total vendor lock-in.
### The evil is in the Store
However – the single biggest issue is not actually the device (iPad) itself, it is actually it’s lock to Apple’s iTunes Store. There will be no (at least for the ‘normal’ end-user) way to install software or load content onto the device other than going through iTunes. The device seems to have been deliberately crippled (not even a USB connection) of any way to get content on or off it other than Apple’s mandated iTunes. The resulting vendor lock-in from both the hardware (Apple only devices), Software (all Software that will install on the device will have to go through iTunes) as well as increasingly Content (purchased via iTunes Store) is a very worrying trend from my point of view.
### Return of the dinosaurs ?
One possible reason for the hype generated for the iPad seems a vested interest on behalf of the media industry in the ability to lock down content and create a paid digital market for their content. It’s about creating a walled garden where previously was a free and open Internet. It seems that the old media conglomerates are looking towards iTunes as a possible extension (saviour) of their failing business models.
### Television 2.0 – the new rise of new media consumerism ?
From initial reviews it seems that the iPad is primarily a media ‘consumption’ device rather than a focus of the creation (or at least co-creation) of content. It seems geared to create a new generation of ‘viewer’ beyond television. A good further explanation on why I consider this a step backwards can be found at this entry on the [SpeEdChange Blog ](http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/04/welcome-ipad-and-web-15.html "SpecEdBlog")
### No iTunes – no education ?
One of the most problematic areas for me is the use of the iPad as the primary computing device used in Education. There seem to be a number of educational institutions planning to replace printed lecture materials with iPads even before the release of the device. While I don’t see any issues with the replacement of printed material, the replacement with one single proprietary & closed system seems an extremely bad choice on a number of fronts.
1. Requires an AppleID for each student (a very problematic privacy issue)
2. Content only accessible to Apple Devices
3. Proprietary (non-standard) formats
There are plenty of approaches already in the public domain (from the use of Open eBook standards to complete Open Education Resources in a variety of formats) that can be accessed from an iPad as well as any other (tablet or other) device with a decent web-browser or similar retrieval mechanism (RSS, …).
As stated on the beginning of this blog entry I don’t have an issue with the iPad as a hardware device (and I haven’t actually used one yet – due to the fact they will not be available in Australia for a while). But from all the technical details available the combination of a locked device with a locked store and locked content seems a bad idea all around from my perspective.
Since a fair bit of my time is spent working and researching in the field of Mobile Learning and there is not a lot of recent listings of Software useful in practical m-Learning implementations I have compiled the following list from my bookmarks and Software I commonly use for these purposes. This list tries to represent currently usable applications not applications in the development stage.
Rather than writing this in the form of a blog entry I decided to keep this as a live document within Google Apps that people can contribute to.
I just recently stumbled across this link to the ‘Heartland Institute‘ via a reference in an American Newspaper site citing their sources for an article about the US Economic Stimulus package. I initially was hoping this might be a satiric site such as CNNN, but after taking a closer look and checking out some references it appears these people are actually serious (and worse still seem to have a lot of funds at their disposal to spread their dubious view). Reading this rubbish got me thinking about how many kids would actually think this could be an authoritative source for information.
This one nearly escaped my attention yesterday. Google has just announced the ability to edit Google Docs on your mobile device via their Google Mobile Blog.
Just point your mobile browser to m.google.com/docs and start editing.
Along with the use of 2D barcodes this will open a few interesting m-learning possiblities for educators that would previously have required custom coding to achieve. I can see this being very useful in situations where you have students being in the field and allowing them to enter data gathered using a standard mobile phone. The barcodes could point students to the location of the spreadsheet (avoiding the need to type the information)
With the help of SL resident Moggs Oceanlane I was able to get our first Sloodle implementation off the ground. Being a bit new on the SL concepts (Moodle as such is my daily life) I found the technical process quite easy, but was struggling with SL terminology a little.
Looking forward to getting some hands-on experience of the use of SL in an educational setting. I can see the practical applications – looking for some pilot projects to put them into ‘reality’ once we have got all the technical side tested thoroughly.
Came accross this project recently. Seems like an excellent tool for web meetings. Certainly something that we will give some more attention to as it seems to have some good integration with various products we are using such as Moodle and SugarCRM.
One of the few new (for myself in my working life at least) bits of information I have picked up on here at ICL is Open Educational Resources (OER). That’s probably because it is outside of my usual area of expertise (which is more the technical implementation of e-Learning), but I found the concept never the less interesting and very similar to the Open Source Software concept which I have been working with for quite a while.
Since my working world is centered a little more on educational topics at the moment (while attending ICL) I came across this Youtube Video which I think is a very good visual example of what’s commonly referred to as Education 2.0.
Personally I hope that I actually comprehend this and a good part of my working life is spend improving this situation. The fact that I am sitting in a ‘lecture’ myself and watching a Youtube video should hopefully illustrate that I am can (despite my actual age) understand the students perspective quite well. ;-
