Random Stuff on Mobile Learning
I have been a little delinquent on my blogging the last couple of weeks. School has started and aside from having three classes to teach, I have also been working on a special project related to Strategic Planning at my College. But,,,, I have been thinking mobile.
Mobile for my Fall Classes
A couple of observations… They say Twitter is used more by (older) adults and I would agree but I would also say it is not used by college students. SMS messaging is one thing but micro-blogging is something parents do. Maybe students are not as narcissistic as older users of technology (baby boomers versus millennials). As a result, I still post class messages to Twitter but I have less than 5 percent of my students following me. At least for community college students, Twitter might not be a technology of significance. Thoughts / Comments?
My MLEX program has done me well this semester. I quickly created mobile syllabi and course calendars for my Fall classes.
And the big news …..maybe MLEX going open source this fall. A University in Canada (I am not sure I should publish the name without asking them) is interested in taking my MLEX (currently written in VB.NET) and migrating it to Java with the hopes of making it more powerful. The plan is for it to be open source so others can add to the program also. I am excited about this and as soon as some plans have been formalized, I will have more to share. I am psyched!
Leave it to Google
We have from time to time discussed how mobile device browsers do not do well with JavaScript and therefore it has not been easy to create mobile assessments (quizzes, tests, etc.). I created a solution using ASP.NET but this is somewhat constrained since you must use a IIS Server to host your pages. I have been experimenting with Google Forms for some surveys I have been creating and it appears to render fine on my cell phone. You can create text, M/C and option type questions from a Google Docs spreadsheet (select forms once in there) and it uses the spreadsheet to collect the responses and automatically summarizes the results. There are even themes to choose regarding form format. I think this would work fine for both quizzes and tests and the beauty is Google hosts it. You can also set up the document to “shared” where others can modify and read form captured results. Results are private by default unless sharing is specified. Many schools… such as mine… are taking advantage of Google email, calendar and Docs for students. Go Cloud Computing!
Google Forms does have promise…..
How uses iPhone
Get a group of techies in a room and everyone has an Apple iPhone. Get a group of community college students in a room and you see a lot of non-iPhones but cool looking hardware. Is hardware a bigger driver in cell phone selection then features? Is SMS the only feature really used and desired by the typical student? If so, we need to be spending a whole lot of more time on SMS gateway servers…. Food for thought… I think we are reaching a point where the mobile landscape has some definition with the following rules (my antidotal evidence):
- Wi-fi for mobile devices – not so important
- Applications for mobile devices – not so important
- GPS support – not so important
- SMS – critical
- Internet Browsing – too early to know for sure but Internet Apps and cloud computing might be the direction
- PDA’s – probably dead
Thoughts/Comments?
In: Free and Good Mobile Stuff, Issues on Mobile Learning, Techie Stuff, Using Mobile Tech
