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)
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)
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)
What we’ve been up to?
This could be of those blog posts that explains why there has been a long absence of blog posts, then goes on to explain explain why there will be more in the future and is shortly followed by a lack of blog posts again.
I’ll try to make sure it is not!
So what have we been up to?
We have been increasing the number of users of uHavePassed and currently have just over 3,000 people who have used it to pass their UK driving theory test. We have worked a lot on compatibility of uHavePassed with various handsets and also the communications that are used from the handset to our synchronisation server. We are really pleased how this is helping people and each bit of feedback has been great to receive - both positive and negative, as the product has developed.
The memory training and flashcard concepts in getawayphrases are in the process of being incorporated into uHavePassed allowing users to train their memory in addition to doing formative assessment.
We are looking for content partners and institutions to be able to increase the scope of content on uHavePassed.com beyond the UK driving theory test - so please get in contact if you are interested. We are already working with Leeds University and the Open University on this. More news soon…
With uHavePassed we are also in the process of launching a service so that organisations can use it to provide any assessment content to their users via web and mobile phone. More news soon….
We have also continued to work with the Open University on a couple of ad-hoc projects. These projects have been done at a very low cost and the aim is to push forward ideas and techniques in reasearch of the applications of mobile phones in higer education. Again more to follow….
I (Al) am now going to commit more time also to this blog and try to start up more of a conversation about how mobile phones can (and are) being used in education.
So on with the conversation…
Tags: Driving theory test, education, getawayphrases, languages, luzia research, m-learning, memory, mLearning, mobile development, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, uHavePassed
14.Jul.08 Driving theory test, education, getawayphrases, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, uHavePassed Comments (0)
Why mobile phone revision can be more effective than alternatives
We’ve just put up a page on uHavePassed.com that looks at some of the reasons that students find engaging with mobile phones more effect than other resources.
uhavepassed.com » Why mobile phone practice is more effective than alternatives
From the Article :
“To start revising on a computer or other resource generally involves moving to where the computer is located, once moved to the correct location it takes time to start up and begin revision. This change of location creates a barrier that stops students from revising.”
We believe there are 5 key reasons, of course this only works with suitable content and audiences and the type of revision activities must work on a phone.
Tags: Driving theory test, luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
03.Oct.07 Driving theory test, education, m-learning, mLearning, uHavePassed Comments (0)
uHavePassed.com - Driving Theory Test Revision
We are proud to announce the launch of our new service - uHavePassed.com - a unique way to practice your driving theory test both on-line and on your mobile phone.
We have been developing this service over the last few months and just completed our beta testing which has given us great feedback.
Although we have many more plans for the service - we are proud to finally open up access to the service to the general public.
We believe we have created a new and engaging way to get students to interact with the core content of the driving theory test - and we are keen to help as many students as we can to pass the new Theory test that has been introduced this September.
Please visit the website for more information about practice the driving theory test
Tags: luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
18.Sep.07 Driving theory test, education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, uHavePassed Comments (0)
UK Driving theory test - both on-line and on your phone
Well after a lot of hard work we have just started beta testing uHavePassed - which is our new driving theory test practice for mobile phones service.
It has taken a long time to develop as we have been developing a platform that will allow us to synchronise data between the website and the mobile phone. This may sound simple but can become quite complex quite quickly.
With our service you can practice mock driving theory tests both on-line at your computer and “offline” on your phone. We have spent a long time researching how people prepare for the UK drving theory test and this has shown us several things.
- Practice for this test really does make perfect. The official question bank is published by the Driving Standards Agency and if you practice all of those questions you can then guarantee that you will be seeing a question you know on the day. The question bank contains 1000+ questions though.
- Students take a range of different approaches to revising for the test - from the extreme of no preparation to the other end of the spectrum - reading the highway code and another book and practising all questions.
- Going through 1000+ questions can become quite tedious and boring. In the “real” test you get 50 minutes but most students will only take half of that time.
- If you only practice the tests it is quite hard to understand how you can improve your performance - and it is hard to track your progress and find your weak areas.
As a result of this we designed a service that allows you to take long tests in front of a computer to practice mock tests when that suits you - and to do shorter 2-10 minute tests on your phone. The complex part of designing this service has been making sure that the results of the on-line computer tests and the “off-line” phone based tests are combined.
We wanted to ensure that as students had reason to take both on-line and “off-line” tests - that they wouldn’t face duplicate questions on each platform. Also analysis of the results seemed to be key to providing a good service for students and we realised this analysis must cover all of the results.
There was also some technical reasons for developing our synchronisation platform, because phones are limited on their resources - we could not install all of the questions on the phone - 1000+ questions and 400+ images would exceed the storage on the phone.
As a final way of engaging the students we are creatign simple games to re-inforce various concepts that are important for the driving theory test.
We think that we have developed not only an interesting and engaging way for students to practice and prepare for the driving theory test, but also a great platform to build other mobile based assesents.
We are looking for students to sign up for our beta test - so if you are aware of anyone taking the driving theory test in the near future who would appreciate free access to the entire question bank in return for testing our software - please send them to http://uHavePassed.com/beta.
Tags: Driving theory test, luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
30.Jul.07 Driving theory test, education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, uHavePassed Comment (1)