More on the march of the iPhone and iPod Touch into gaming
iPod Touch 2G
The mainstream press is now analysing the attack Apple is making into markets that have been dominated by Nintendo and Sony previously as discussed here and here previously.
A Wall Street Journal article states that large / established game publishers such as Sega are turning to the i Platform in addition to smaller startup and niche publishers like ourselves. The article puts part of the attractiveness of the platform down to the low costs of entry and simple distribution mechanism.
In the article Sega talk about how attractive the platform is to them and inferes that the difference to them in terrms of profits on a $10 iPhone game compared to a $40 ds lite game is not much.
Steve Jobs is quoted as saying that this Christmas will really shake things up and that the holiday sales of the device could shift the iPod Touch into being considered a gaming device by both consumers and publishers.With the 2000 titles already available for the platform about 25% of those downloaded have been games.
The article also highlights how a lot of games are either free or advertising supported - which is another interesting trend to watch.
The Wall Street Journal mentions an iPhone user who has sold his PSP and will sell his DS lite as he plays far more on his iPhone and loves the single device and ability to listen to his music whilst playing.
An opinion piece in Business week talks about how suprisingly good the iTouch and iPhone platform is for games. It also provides estimates for the sales of iPod Touch and iPhones globally at 40 million by the end of the year. Which would put it ahead of the DS lite which has sold 42 million devices - but in 18 rather than 12 months.
All very impressive and mean that Apple is continuing to highlight to the mobile operators how wrong they have got both supporting devlopers and providing simple distribution systems for users and developers.
For education I think this means that the i platform is extremely attractive to students as the overlap into their own interests and needs means purchasing and using a device is not a barrier.
If only there was a keyboard on it - I think Apple could rule the education marketplace too.
14.Nov.08 
devices, education, handy education, mobile phones, tools 
Comments (0)
mLearn next week - looking for people to trial uHavePassed for Institutions
I will be at mLearn in Wolverhampton next week - finding people to set-up trials for our new system: uHavePassed for Institutions.
If anyone would like a demo I will on Stand 5 with Sums Online - demoing uHavePassed and looking out for people to trial uHavePassed at their own institution.
Whilst there you can contact me on my mobile +44 7973 623337.
More details on uHavePassed for Institutions will be available after mLearn.
Tags: mLearn, uHavePassed for Institutions
03.Oct.08 handy education, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, mobile phones, tools, uHavePassed Comment (1)
Why is the iPod Touch important for education?
I was asked last week why it is that I am fixated on the iPod Touch and its use as an educatonal tool. Once I had answered this adequately it was pointed out to me that I have not explained the point well enough on this blog. So here it is…
iPod Touch 2G
iPod Touch as a mobile computing platform
The introduction of the second version of the iPod Touch OS brought with it the ability to run third party applications. The opening of the OS in this way meant that the iPod had graduated from being a media player into a mobile computer platform.
The route that the iPod has taken to become a mobile computer platform is as important as the technology that has been used. The brand of Apple was not well known outside of computer users 10 years ago - but with the the iPod it is now a household name. That the iPod is now well known is great - that it dominates the MP3 player market with 75% market share is part and parcel of this. To become a mobile computing platform with this heritage and the buzz of the Apple marketing machine means that the iPod Touch is a much more acceptable and ‘cool’ device for learning than a Windows based PDA.
The ‘cool’ competition
There are other brands that can also move into this space with more teenage credibility than Microsoft - Sony with it’s playstation brand and Nintendo with the DS. It seems that the heritage of both these companies as gaming companies does not allow them to open up their platforms to a plethora of 3rd party developers as Apple has done with the iPod Touch and Microsoft to a much greater extent with Windows Mobile. The gaming device companies have had a business model for years that involves selling devices at a loss and then making money back with licensing fees from the developers. Apple has always made a profit on every device it sells and therefore opening their platform provides an opportunity for extra income and does not risk existing income.
Sony and Nintendo have also created very targeted gaming devices with inputs and controls that are only found on gaming devices. Nintendo embraced touch and audio input prior to Apple - but the touch area is quite small. The issues for Sony and Nintendo to overcome with the physical aspects of their devices can be resolved in future models and they both still offer the best competition to Apple in terms of ‘cool’ devices.
A final characteristic of both gaming devices is that they rely on physical media to primarily distribute content. This again reflects the heritage of selling games via retail channels. Apple has been extremely lucky with the dominance of the iPod because this has also allowed Apple to become one of the largest digital content retailers with the iTunes Store.
So the iPod Touch is cool and as a mobile computing platform and it faces little ‘cool’ competition as such. Apple is getting aggressive and has inspirations for the iPod Touch to move into gaming and compete with the gaming devices rather than waiting for them to move into the mobile computing market.
The death of the PDA
There are two other types of devices that can be used for mobile computing in education - Windows based PDA devices and smartphones. The PDAs have a long heritage in mobile computing and provide a very open platform with digital delivery (however lacking a single easy retail channel to compete with the iTunes Store). The problem for PDA devices is that their market is shrinking thanks to competition from smartphones and gaming devices. For business and personal use a PDA makes little sense when a user can get a smartphone that can provide them with the same functionality and the functions of a phone.
This shrinking market means that one of the markets where non-phone devices make sense is when schools or other education institutions sponsor the use of a particular device. Non-phone devices are preferable in schools because they create no problems related to the payment of phone bills and connectivity can be more easily controlled through school WiFi connections. It is not clear if this market is big enough for it to be viable for device manufacturers to continue creating PDA devices.
The device already in the pocket
The final type of devices that offer competition to the iPod Touch as a mobile computing platform for education are the smartphones. Statistics only show the smartphone market to be increasing every year and this had led to a very competitive marketplace that is driving down costs. Smartphones are very fragmented though with many different platforms:
*Windows Mobile
*Blackberry
*Symbian (Nokia, SonyEricsson and Motorola)
*Linux
*Android (from Google autumn 2008)
All of these platforms are open (more open than the iPod Touch) and on many of the platforms are Java compatible. However there are lots of different screen sizes and input mechanisms that vary across the devices. The variations in device specifications mean that there are phones for every type of user but make it much harder to write software and some phones are just not powerful or large enough for educational content to work.
Phones are ‘cool’/desirable and already in the pockets of students - but the lack of standard configurations means that there is very little software for these devices. The lack of an ‘education standard’ makes it hard for consumers to choose devices, schools to put their weight behind particular configurations and developers to focus their support.
I am writing this article on a plane with my Nokia N810 so I feel I should also quickly mention the ‘Internet Tablet’ devices. These devices are the successors to the PDAs and are very powerful - with great off-line capabilities, a keyboard and great application distribution features. They lack however any media player credibility (they do it - but not as effortlessly as an iPod). The power & flexibility of these devices is also a flaw when compared with the simplicity & usability of the iPod for “non-geek” users.
Other ‘netbook’ computers like the Asus EEE are not pocket devices and not up for consideration.
Conclusions:The iPod Touch has the least flaws and the most advantages at the moment
The iPod Touch / iPhone platform is a single configuration of screen size and input mechanism which helps in the creation of content. The brand is also well known and understood by consumers as desirable and ‘cool’. It is easier for school to encourage the use of iPods with students and parents.
The heritage of the iPod as a media player provides compelling reasons for students to use one with or without educational content. The addition of gaming to the iPod Touch only makes the devices more compelling to students.
The iPhone is a great device for consumers who want the functionality of a smartphone but can run all the same software as an iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is great for schools who do not want to be involved in billing issues. (The media player market is more secure than that for PDA devices and a better investment for schools.)
The digital delivery platform greatly reduces the barriers for developers of niche software (such as education) to compete globally and find viable markets. This distribution method also means that operating system upgrades are applied more easily and more widely than any other mobile platform.
The iPod platform has flaws:
*Lack of keyboard input
*little competition to drive down price
*no compatibility with existing software
*A psuedo-open platform that is tightly controlled by Apple
In my opinion at the moment the advantages mean these flaws are acceptable and in some ways these flaws are a consequence of the advantages.
It has become clear to me in writing this article that to seriously compete with the iPod Touch platform would take a combination of something like Nokia, Nintendo and Amazon.
I hope this has laid out in a bit more detail why I see the iPod Touch and iPhone as being highly important as a mobile platform for education. I welcome comments and opinion to help sharpen my understanding and thoughts on the issues facing students, educators and parents in choosing and using mobile devices in education.
Tags: devices, handy education, iphone, iPod Touch
16.Sep.08 devices, education, handy education, m-learning, mobile development, mobile phones, tools, uHavePassed Comments (4)
iTouch to iPhone ratios
Just a quick note to say that I have found out from an iPhone web application game developer that up until the iPhone 3G was released that for every 3 iPhones that visited their site 1 iPod Touch visited.
Clearly this figure is in no way accurate - and only an indication - but I can’t see any reason why statistically this should not be a good sample.
This shows that either the iPod Touch players are not using the internet, are not game players or that the iPod Touch is nowhere near competing with the iPhone for market share.
I am still curious to find out the figures from outside the US - especially in teritories where the iPhone is not available.
Tags: devices, iphone, mobile phones
28.Aug.08 devices, handy education, mobile phones, tools Comment (1)
iPhones in education? A US university is taking the initiative
I came across an initiative last week from from Freed-Hardeman University which is planning to give their students a uniform collection of technology including a macbook and either an iPod Touch or iPhone.
I think this is an interesting approach, because most other approaches focus on either a laptop or a PDA when looking to give equipement to students. When the focus is on just handheld computers then a lot of work must go into helping students create content using handhelds with creative tools. The small screen may be OK for creating small pieces of work - but is not suitable for essay writing or creating presentations (I know it is possible and is used for this - but my argument is that it is not really suitable).
As mentioned before we think the Mobile Phone or Handlheld is suitable for delivery of some content, revision, planning and a group of things we call Handy Education.
So to provide students with both devices seems to me to make a lot of sense - I am keen to find out the results of this initiative. One thing that concerns me is the lack of useful tools for the iPhone - iPod Touch platform - especially that synchronise data with a laptop (be it PC or mac).
Tags: handy education, iphone, mLearning, mobile-learning
20.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones, off-topic, tools Comment (1)
More on the iPhone and iPod Touch in Education
If Apple hit their sale goals (and there is every indication they will) there will be another 10 million iPhones in circulation by the end of 2008. This will bring the total number worldwide to close to 14 million iPhones.
I can’t find detailed figures on the iPod Touch - but I have found references saying that the touch is now outselling the iPod Classic, and others saying that Apple is downgrading sales figures for the iPod Touch this year. (If someone can contact me with better figures I’d be grateful!). For the sake of this article let’s assume there are already 6 million iPod Touch devices and that these numbers will continue to increase at a pace similar to the iPhone.
This means that by the end of this year there will be at least 20 million iPhone/iPod Touch devices in the hand of real people.
The really important question is who are these people? I would like to get an idea of the demographics of iPhone and iPod Touch users. It would seem to me that the iPod Touch is more likely to be a school or university student from 15-21 and the iPhone is more likely to be a professional 25-35 - but that is purely gut feeling. At this high level it is clear to see that educational software would be different for those two audiences and gives an indication about what types of sftware would be useful to them.
Can anyone help me get better figures for the iPod Touch sales? I know that it has none of the country constraints of the iPhone and is available world-wide. Also how can we get to better understand the demographic - has anyone seen any research in this area?
The lack of a good input mechanism make both of these devices of less use in education for classroom work, but the multi-media capabilities are great. The Touch could do with a microphone and camera though so that in can capture in addition to play multi-media (lets hope both of these get announced with GPS for the iPod Touch in September).
Tags: education, handy education, iphone, mLearning, mobile-learning
18.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones, off-topic, tools, uHavePassed Comments (2)
Revision, Planning and Data capture
As we have become more experienced in what works and doesn’t work on mobile phone we have begun to focus our efforts in three specific areas when writing tools to support students - Revision, Planning and Data capture.
Why are we so focused only on these three areas? We believe that these are the areas where Handy Education (using convenient tools) is most useful and effective.
Revision / Practice
When revising the content of a course - most of your time is spent in one place with your text books (and other materials) around you - reviewing your notes and writing more concise notes. Of course not everyone revises in this way - but lets call this the most common approach. Is there a place for a mobile phone during these sessions? Maybe (I am sure the imaginative could crowbar in a way to include a phone in these sessions), but I think the phone comes into it’s own when away from these sessions.
We try to support students here by providing ways to do “micro-revision” to support these sessions - with Flashcards and quizzes to help practice recall of the ideas and concepts.
With process and technique based concepts like those of Mathematics the most effective way of learning the technique or process can be to repeat and practice it. There must be feedback to help the student understand where there are problems in the process, so the student learns to correct these problems.
We have been using mobile programs to help people work through mathematical problems, whilst providing immediate feedback with step by step instructions on how to correctly calculate the answers. These programs are less sophisticated than PC based equivalents - but the convenience of use means that they can be used many times to help build a students confidence in these problem areas.
Planning
Having convenient access to a list of outstanding work and upcoming deadlines is of great use to students (especially university students and adult learners who have to balance their studies with other parts of their life).
This data should be available to students in any way that they need to access it - via computer or phone or other device.
We are making sure this data is available in all these ways.
Data Capture
Capturing data about your workplace or work situations is very useful in a number of vocational courses these learning diaries are used as new skills are aquired and practised at work. Being able to capture - audio notes, videos, pictures, text and structured data that can be used later by a student to review their progress and used in write-ups - is very convenient when using a mobile phone.
As we continue to develop our platform for students we are making sure all of these areas are covered.
Tags: data capture, education, memory, mobile, mobile phone, planning, practice, revision
06.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, luzia research, mobile development, mobile phones, tools, uHavePassed Comments (0)
Handy education - not mobile learning
When I first got involved with mobile phones and education - my first impressions of the usefulness of having support on your mobile phone were completely wrong.
The first tool I wrote was a tool to help me learn German vocabulary - I had a list of 1000 words that I wanted to be able to remember and I already had made a pile of flashcards for the first 100 words that I carried in my pocket. I wanted to stop having to remember to take carry the flashcards with me - so putting them on my mobile phone made a lot of sense. I purchased a Windows mobile and in a couple of days wrote a program to help me track and manage these virtual flashcards.
My vision was that I would use these flashcards in the same places I was using the real flashcards - whilst waiting for people, on a train etc. The idea for me was simple - the phone program would make life easier by tracking which vocabulary I knew already and which I didn’t and if I my memory for it was getting progressively better. The program would also mean I would not have to remember to take the flashcards with me.
What really happened though was that I started flicking through the cards in many places, taking 2 minutes here whilst waiting for the kettle to boil at work - another 2 minutes whilst on hold on a phone call etc. I would flick though the cards whilst sitting in front of the telly, lying in bed and in many other unexpected situations.
What became clear to me was that having the program on the mobile phone - did not only help me study outside of the house and office - where it was more difficult before, but it removed barriers to studying in those normal places also. Before I had to go and get the flashcards - organise them in piles, and then work through them - once finished I would have to make sure they were put away carefully and then return them to their place of origin. Now I had ot reach into my pocket and press 2 buttons - state was restored from my previous session and off I went, when finished - press one button - lock the phone and back in my pocket.
The realisation that my mobile program had reduced a barrier to me building my vocabulary, rather than just allow me a more convenient way to package a learning resource was key for me.
Indeed with uHavePassed we receive information back from our users about when they use the software (each time they synchronise with the server) - we can see what time they take tests and it turns out that very late in the evening is a very popular time. It is our assumption that our users are in bed at this time and taking practice tests. The motivation and effectiveness of studying before sleeping should be the subject of a separate debate, but I found this to be further evidence that programs on mobile phones do as much to encourage and support students in the house, school or place of work as they do outside of these places.
Whenever I talk to others about the tools we write for mobile phones - the picture they first create is of people on a bus or train etc. It takes some time to realise that mobile learning tools can be used anywhere (even infront of a computer) because they are designed for short interaction periods, focused only on specific tasks and give good continuity through start / resume functions.
For us the phrase mobile learning is a great way to first introduce the tools we create, but is highly inaccurate in detail - our tools can be used anywhere, but location is not key.
In German the word for mobile phone is Handy (just to prove that first program worked) and reflecting on the English meaning of this word, convenient, says to me it would be better if we thought of what we did as Handy Education - not mobile learning.
Tags: education, handy education, learning, mobile phone, mobile-learning, mobilelearning
04.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, languages, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, memory, mobile development, mobile phones, tools Comments (5)
Impressive mobile solutions from the Polytechnical University in Valencia
Today I was visiting the Polytechic University of Valencia (La Universidad Politécnica de Valencia) and got to see some of the interesting work they are doing there with mobile phones and learning.
Within the DISCA department they teach two courses on programming mobile phones which are project based courses. I met Juan-Carlos Ruiz-Garcia who leads both of these courses and got to see some of the work they have done and are in the process of doing.
One tool allows a PDA or Windows Mobile Phone to take over a PC and has a simple custom controller for Powerpoint. The software can also be used to take control of another PDA or allow the screen from a PDA to be shown on a projector. The software works on bluetooth or over WiFi (I think the bluetooth is too slow to be useful) and can be installed on any windows device (PDA, phone, tablet PC etc). This was impressive software and will be used in anger in a trial of Tablet PCs that they will start using next year.
The second project I saw was a mobile learning platform for languages with really impressive facilities for loading up multi-media clips (both audio and video). I was shown an example of how it worked with “We are the champions” from Queen - the audio was loaded with two text files with the English and Spanish lyrics. The lyrics were automatically matched up so that each line in English was associated with the line in Spanish - but this could be edited allowing for translations that only work for double lines etc. The audio was then played using a neat flash control and the use just has to press the spacebar each time a new line of lyrics started in English. In the end an xml file was generated that could be used with their authoring tool to make up learning objects.
Using the authoring tool - a small course module was built using music, video and text which contained many exercises focused on the needs of the student. This was then shown to be in a web browser.
Where is the mobile stuff? OK the cherry on all of this was the Windows mobile client that allows a user to take the work offline on their phone and complete the assesment. The content was synchronised with the device and then a student can continue to revise offline. At the moment they have a few problems with synchronisation time (20 minutes), but these will be ironed out and I think it will make a nice piece of project work.
The approach is very similar to the uHavePassed system we have built, although their system can take much richer audio and video clips, this is only possible on a Windows device with Wifi - uHavePassed can support any Java based phone on any internet connection and with any QTI formatted data so any authoring platform can be used.
We plan to do some more work with the university and I will be interested to see how these projects move forward.
Tags: mLearning, mobile phones, mobile-learning, uHavePassed, upv
23.Jul.08 education, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, mobile phones, tools, uHavePassed Comments (0)
Evernote - an educational “cloud tool”
I came across Evernote from a Tablet PC blog recently and looked into it as a replacement for OneNote.
Wow what a replacement it has been!
Evernote as a company have some background with the Tablet PC with the input replacement RitePen which I have previously used and although impressed with it on XP found it to be not as great as the native Vista input methods.
Evernote is now in version 3 and this has completely embraced cloud computing and allows you to provide input from many sources and send it up to their servers and then view from many devices.
They now have Windows (not just Tablet PC) and Mac clients and mobile clients for Windows Mobile devices and hot off the press is their new iPhone client. There is a J2ME client in development at the moment - but other mobile devices can email in content and view via their mobile website anything that is on the server.
So what can you input? Text, images and tablet PC ink documents. If you send an image then they will try and process that image - take a picture of a business card and they will OCR the image once it hits the server and make the content searchable. This is true of any document that is sent as an image - from either a photo or a scan.
Students can use Evernote as a central repository of their notes, and other items sending in notes from email or with a phone a nice and easy learning diary straight away. As the sharing and collaboration possibilities come on line it will become even stronger as an educational tool.
Content that is sent up into the cloud becomes accessible anywhere and that is what makes it really useful - if only someone could link the Evernote storage with a VLE that would be really interesting!
The great news - it is free to use, you get 40Mb of uploads a month for free and $5 for uploading anything more.
Please go and give it a try!
UPDATE: Title changed to remove the phrase “Cloud Education” so as not to confuse what I am saying with Judy Breck’s excellent concept of Cloud Education.
Tags: education, mobile-learning, tools, web2.0
17.Jul.08 education, mLearning, tools Comment (1)