iPod Touch to be marketed as a gaming device

iPod Touch 2G

iPod Touch 2G

It seems that the latest adverts from Apple will market the iPod Touch as a gaming device - which in turn could get it into more pockets.

The latest iPod Touch advert from Apple was launched yesterday during Steve Jobs Keynote at the Let’s Rock event.

The Tag line for the iPod Touch now is “The Funnest iPod Ever” (not the funniest as I first read it!). The guided tour headlines games with music and movies as the reasons why you want an iPod Touch.

From a comercial point of view this is a problem mostly for Sony with the PSP (Howard Stringer Sony CEO was in the front row of the Key note apparently) - a more bulky gaming device that can play movies without the storage or touch. Nintendo will still compete on price and have all the great titles at the moment - but they must also be worried about the new iPod.

Why is this great for education? Well this increases the market place for iPod Touch (and to a lesser extent the iPhone) to gamers - they are a very picky bunch but if the iPod Touch titles become cool games then it could become a must have device - increasing it’s credibility. Anything that increases the street credibility of the iPod Touch helps create more software for it and also makes it more acceptable.

If Apple could only solve the problem of input - a clip-on keyboard that was also a screen protector as an accessory would be fantastic - or a bluetooth keyboard - or a full screen landscape keyboard for note taking.

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10.Sep.08 devices, education, handy education, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones Comment (1)

Review: Ubiquity - a grand project from firefox (for educators and students too)

I started seeing the buzz about Ubiquity last week after the anouncement my slice of the twitterverse seemed to be making comments about it - so I finally got around to installing it. It is an amazingly ambitious idea, but here is a quick review of the potential of Ubiquity for desktop and mobile learners - and a projection for the future.

The Idea

The idea behind Ubiquity is that natural language can be used to get the browser to do some tasks in a browser that are beyond a few normal keystrokes. For example you can select an address with your mouse and then press Ctrl-Space and then type map this and a map will be displayed - click on the map and you can then send this map as an email.

Ubiquity is a platform that allows people to write and share new commands (scripts or macros we would have previously thought of them).

The final idea is that all of these commands can be linked together - so that a user can input some quite complex instructions. An example given on the documentation site is “book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary and add it to my calendar.”.

Lets be clear this is very ambitious stuff.

The Potential for Education

How does this relate to education? Well the open nature of the commands means that commands for anything can be written.

When proficiently used it is possible to quickly pull data together from multiple sources which can be quickly combined. In some ways this can be thought of as cut and paste for the web.

It can also make data come to mean much more - highlight a word then Ctrl-Space define this and the definition is there on the page. Highlight a piece of text and then Ctrl-Space email this to xxx and an email will be drafted which can then be added to with other sources.

One very powerful feature is that you can edit a page with a couple of commands - for example select some text and say delete it is no longer in the page, select some text and say bold it can become bold. You can also say edit-page and the page becomes editable and you can type where you want, delete what you want and insert as you want. This means that students can edit any page on the web (BBC NEWS, Downing Street etc) although the edits only exist in the browser these can be printed off - so a custom BBC News page can easily be created and screen grabbed or printed.

There are already commands to grab something and quickly twitter it - there is no reason why text on a page could not be grabbed and sent to a mobile device for later reading.

The Problems to overcome

In all the analysis it should be remembered that this is just version 0.1 and clearly shows the power of the idea with some very simple commands.

However looking at people who are trying to write new scripts and combine them together it seems that there are still a lot of fundamentals to get working. For example - the email command supports Google Mail only and then only the vanilla version. Customising support to include Google Apps has proved to be quite hard and this has highlighted that something like email relies on the application knowing quite a lot about the user.

Then there is the problem of the natural language - as a programmer I am comfortable that I have to use exactly the required command - but to appeal to a wider audience there is going to have to be some flexibility.

The “Elephant in the Room” here is security - this is a very powerful scripting capability that is installed in firefox - an untrusted script will have the ability to do all sorts of nasty things to your data (files, bank account etc). To go back to the original vision of a sentance that should be supported :

“book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary and add it to my calendar.”

This is going to need at least access to my payment details and my address book - it will take a great amount of convincing me to give Ubiqutity this information.

For the moment I’ll be sticking with Dopplr and Skyscanner.net to solve this problem.

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05.Sep.08 education, off-topic Comments (0)

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).

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18.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile phones, off-topic, tools, uHavePassed Comments (0)

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.

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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.

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04.Aug.08 devices, education, handy education, languages, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, memory, mobile development, mobile phones, tools Comments (5)

Nokia N810 review

I’ve been using a Nokia N810 for the past week and was interested to see how a pocket sized mobile device (but not a phone) might be useful in education.

If you are unware of the N810 it is the latest in a range of devices that Nokia call internet tablets. It has a size similar to that of an iPhone, but it is not a phone at all- it can only use WiFi or bluetooth to access the internet. It also has a touch screen and GPS like the iPhone, but I think that is really where the similarity ends.

Unlike the iPhone the N810 is an open operating system and any software can be installed on it. This openess does a lot to highlight why the iPhone closed system is more suitable for consumers than it will to encourage take up of similar devices.

The device is perfect for me but I can see that it would not be suitable for all. The OS is called maemo and is a linux derivative. The interface is very friendly and it can upgrade over the air which is missing on nearly all mobile devices. The problems come with the software, which is typical of a lot of linux software in my experience in that it just about does what you want. In the week I have been using it I don’t think I have used a piece of software that has not crashed at some point.

Even the apps that come as part of the OS have crashed, and this annoying for core apps like email and the browser (a firefox derivative). Those open source apps that I have installed have worked just about but I can’t see any of them making it in a world where Apple is setting expectations.

I think at this point i should mention that I love the device and feel it is perfect for me. There are times when i want to take a phone out and times when I want the capabilities of the N810 but I am glad that I don’t always have to carry around one device with all my eggs in one basket. It can utilise the 3G connection on my phone to access the internet when there is no WiFi.

It is interesting that Google’s new mobile OS Android can already run on the N810 but in a restricted way (slow). I am not sure of the technicalities but it would be great to see Android replace maemo completly because Android seems to have a much better memory management system and philosophy.

Anyway enough of the technical stuff - how is this device useful in education? Well in short it isn’t - sure it could be shoe horned to have a place competimg against a windows PDA but in all truth without a good range of software it has little use as a school or institutions sponsored device. For an individual who finds it fits their needs then it is perfect!

If Nokia want to make it suceed they need an OS that will give developers more of a platform than one niche device and for that Android makes perfect sense.

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31.Jul.08 devices, education, m-learning, mLearning Comments (2)

Great talk on Cloud Euducation from Judy Breck

Talking about en educational “cloud tool” (as I just was)  here is a video that I found thanks to MAMK from one of his posts on Smart Mobs.

Judy Breck talks about Cloud Education at the recent Microlearning Conference.


Judy Breck - Cloud Education (Microlearning Conference 2008) from Teemu Arina on Vimeo.

UPDATE: After spending more time thinking on this I am still struggling with how to apply these ideas - SEO, and link strength etc - all seem to relate to work on the semantic web - but I can see there is more to it than that.

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17.Jul.08 education, mLearning, mobile phones 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.

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17.Jul.08 education, mLearning, tools Comment (1)

The iPhone iPod Touch Platform and education

Now that the App Store has been launched for the iPhone and iPod Touch these devices must go down as the easiest devices ever made for purchasing and installing software on.

The App Store makes it so easy to install software on these devices in a couple of clicks, and if you need to pay for it - well you just use the same payment method you use for buying music amazing.

No other company / device has the infrastructure and user trust in place to emulate this (and for competition reasons I wish they did).

So what does this have to do with education? Well once you get over the ease of installation - the apps are great - the feel and way they work is so simple they look like they have been designed for a 4 year old - but lets be honest that is what we all want - simple and elegant. I hope that Apple have style guidelines and that they are insisting on developers keeping to them before then can have a place in the App Store.

Yes OK, but what does this have to do with education? Well easy to use and easy to get hold of applications that are engaging and accessible and on devices that students can fit in their pocket have never been available before. Technically all this has been possible, but not on a  real device that is being purchased by real students, and working in such an easy elegant way.

So let’s start getting content on to these devices - and find out what works and what doesn’t  - this method of easy installation and easy to use apps is the future on this device or others - we can only learn from here on in.

We (Luzia) missed the boat with these devices and I wish we were on the App Store today - but we plan to start work in August rectifying that!

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16.Jul.08 education, mobile development Comments (2)

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…

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14.Jul.08 Driving theory test, education, getawayphrases, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, uHavePassed Comments (0)