OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

H810 Activity 31.4 Benefits of mobile learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 14 Dec 2012, 05:49

Is learning support by text messaging mobile learning?

Must it be a smart-phone. I would have called taking an Apple Classic into the garden on an extension cable and using it in a cardboard box to shield it from the sun as mobility of some kind - indeed development of the use of laptops in the last 15 years has been mobile and in 1997 I shot a training video for the RAC on a roadside device called ‘hardbody’ that was a navigational tool to locate the breakdown, a database of parts, a diagnostic for fault finding and fixing and a way for customers to pay.

The prospects for and possibilities of mobile computing have been known for a long time.

Getting them into the hands of students has taken longer as prices have fallen and broadband made readily available.

Was a cassette on a Sony Walkman mobile learning, or more recently is something from iTunes U on an MP3 player mobile e-learning? Yes, surely if its function is educational or it is resource tailored for a specific module.

  1. Convenience and flexibility - the university in your pocket. Ditch the folders, files and print outs.
  2. Relevance - situated
  3. Learner control - mine (personalised Apps, choice of phone and case ...)
  4. Good use of 'dead time' - on the bus, train, passenger in car ... in bed, in front of TV, on the loo or in the bath.
  5. Fits many different learning styles - short burst or lengthier intense periods
  6. Improves social learning (i.e. Communicating with peers and experts)
  7. Encourages reflection - easy to take notes (audio as dictaphone or text)
  8. Easy evidence collection - photos and audio (screen grabs from online research), tag finds.
  9. Supported decision making
  10. Speedier remediation - instant
  11. Improved learner confidence
  12. Easily digestible learning - where 'chunked' though this should be a choice where content has been suitably prepared for web usability.
  13. Heightened engagement - feeds alerts that can be responded to in a timely fashion. Makes synchronous and quasi-synchronous forum feedback possible.
  14. Better planning for face-to-face - organiser, contactable 24/7 (almost)
  15. Great for induction - keeping in touch, easy to ask questions, familiar, universal and everyday.
  16. Elimination of technological barriers - basic, intuitive, commonplace.
  17. Designed once then delivered across multiple platforms - responsive design (using HTML 5)
  18. Easily trackable via wifi - and GPS
  19. Cost-effective build
  20. A means to recoup money
  21. Technology advances with Apps
  22. Technology advances with interface, voice command and other tools.
  23. Everything in one place, including TV, radio, podcasts, photogallery ...
  24. Assistive technology - add a micro-projector, wifi-keyboard, sync to other devices such as tablet, laptop and desktop, augmented learning ...
  25. Replacement technology - starting to replace money, already replacing cameras, MP3 players, address book, organiser, games console, remote control, torch, dictaphone ... pen and paper, art pad ...

(In part from Dr Chris Davies, Head of the e-learning research group, Oxford Prof. John Traxler, Prof. Of Mobile Learning (2011 )

http://www.epicbrasil.com/assets/files/Mobile_learning_NHS_Research_Report.pdf

(last accessed 10 Dec 2012)

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

The value of Social Learning, lest you forget.

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 June 2012, 00:50

Forgetting%2520Curve%25202.JPG

 

Ebbinghaus came up with the 'Forgetting Curve' to indicate how what we learn is soon forgotten unless we continue to engage with it, social learning is a painless way to repeat this engagement process. It also defies the latent loneliness of studying alone with your books and eBooks, LMS and PLE.


The historian EHCarr said 'study a subject until you hear its people speak', in a social learning context you hear these voices. A commentator on Radio 4 (search in my OU Student blog for the reference) said some months ago 'research a subject until the narrative reveals itself' which as my subject of interest is e-learning is achieved by doing this, over a 1000 e-learning posts in my blog and over two years on the Open University's MA in Open & Distance Learning.

I picked up the name Ebbinghaus in a paper written by James Cory- Wright on the Brightwave website, responded to a prompt for disucssion in an Epic Linkedin Group and am posting all of this in my Open University Student Blog to  share with fellow travellers on the MAODE: H807, H808, H 800, H810, H809 and/or any ellectives a person  may choose to do as an alterantive.

Epic and Brightave, along with Kineo and others are part of the e-learning cluster in Brighton.

Find out more at Wired Sussex.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

GoMo e-learning and m-learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Call it me-learning? Cut and pasting a short module from a PDF to GoMo which enables content across all mobile platforms. Adding images and video, multichoice questions and 'hot spots'. If the MAODE is Sandhurst, then this is machine-gun training in the front line.
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Amazing designs

Visible to anyone in the world

IMG_1278.JPG

I have never before photographed a urinal (though the ease of doing this with a smartphone makes the practice possible). I thought these were something special.

They are off the River Room, Millbank. I was at a presentation given by the commercial learning company Epic.

There is, despite their beauty, a design problem. The globule dropping from the bottom of the urinal means they have to be placed higher up the wall. I'm 6ft and found the reach ideal, anyone much shorter would struggle. And might not that globule get smashed off by a careless janitor pushing an industrial cleaner into the gents?

IMG_1277.JPG

Like a little boy I found my feet raised from the ground.

Great looking, but impractical? Design over form?

They don't have to be toilets, indeed, better that they are not perhaps. But if you've come across a piece of 'urban design' that caught your attention please do share.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Use of video in elearning (part 4)

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 25 Mar 2012, 07:03

Corporate%2520Video%2520CONTEXT%2520SNIP%25202.JPG

Anytime, anywhere? Really?

Really. Learning can be delivered anywhere, and not just text on a card, but rich activities and video. It is straightforward to put video on an elearning platform that will run on any mobile device, smartphone or tablet.

Epic have created GoMo that lets you do this.

I saw it demonstrated last Wednesday. In less than 15 minutes a basic elearning piece was created, as easily as writing this blog, including images, text, a survey and video clips.

 

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Covent Garden & Soho

Visible to anyone in the world
Familiar territory and old friends. All this B822 talk on creativity and innovation has me craving to be back in a 'creative' industry where the nodus operandi is having ideas. Speakeasy today, ealier this week 'The Edge', 'Channel Flip' and The School of Communication Arts. I have a morning spent with corporate eLearning specialist Epic to write up. They presented easy to use mobile learning content creation tool GoMo. Never before gave I felt the urge to photograph a urinal but those off The River Room, Millbank impressed.
Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

20 Benefits of Mobile Learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 10 Dec 2012, 22:27

20 benefits of mobile learning

  1. Convenience and flexibility
  2. Relevance
  3. Learner control
  4. Good use of 'dead time'
  5. Fits many different learning styles
  6. Improves social learning (i.e. Communicating with peers and experts)
  7. Encourages reflection
  8. Easy evidence collection
  9. Supported decision making
  10. Speedier remediation
  11. Improved learner confidence
  12. Easily digestible learning
  13. Heightened engagement
  14. Better planning for face-to-face
  15. Great for induction
  16. Elimination of technological barriers
  17. Designed once; delivered across multiple platforms
  18. Easily trackable via wifi
  19. Cost-effective build
  20. A means to recoup money

EPIC

Dr Chris Davies, Head of the e-learning research group, Oxford Prof. John Traxler, Prof. Of Mobile Learning

2011

Epic.co.UK/assets/files/20_benefits_of_mobile.PDF

(accessed 8 September 2011)
Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

HOLIDAY ILLNESS

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 10 Mar 2013, 00:23

Down with something hideous and find myself on antibiotics. Want to be studying but haven't the head for it, not academic papers.

This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.

As an asthmatic I wonder if the kind of videos I used to produce as interactive Apps might be of value?

Watch several movies, the wonderful 'Barefoot in the Park' with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, the TV movie on the rise of Hitler with Robert Carlyle and 'The Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain' with Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald.

'The Rise of Evil' is historically accurate though somewhat eager, understandably, to ensure that Hitler has no redeeming points. I'd recommend it as viewing alongside the two volume biography by Ian Kershaw.

'Barefoot in the Park' which I must have seen on TV in the 1970s drew me into the wonders of a stage play making it onto the big screen. I also admire the way five days of sex is handled by showing newspapers being put outside their hotel bedroom door every morning. I thought Paul put his shoes out to be polished, another film?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Mobile Learning Challenge

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Nov 2012, 16:27

Mobile Learning Challenge

If you are interested in mobile learning here's a challenge from IET colleague Prof Agnes Kukulska-Hulme - co-author of some of the material in mobile learning (Week 19 of H800 of the Masters in Open and Distance Education).

Search 'mobile', 'm-learning' or 'agnes' here for my notes from the last 18 months if you are interested in having a go?

Perhaps some of us could work together and give the winnings to an educational charity or towards producing an idea? 

The International Association for Mobile Learning (IAMLearn, www.iamlearn.org), in collaboration with Epic (www.epic.co.uk), is proud to announce the Mobile Learning Challenge. 

The Mobile Learning Challenge is searching for innovative and visionary solutions for learning using mobile technologies. 

Practitioners, students, and young researchers are particularly encouraged to contribute their inspiring and visionary concepts. Specific technical skills are not required for participating!

Full details here: http://www.iamlearn.org/competition.php   

The first prize

The winner of the Challenge will receive £1000 (one thousand GBP). The winning solution will be presented to the mLearn 2011 conference audience either by the winner (if present at the conference) or by the President of IAmLearn. 

This prize is co-sponsored by IAmLearn and Epic. 

The second prize

The runner-up will receive a prize of 5 years’ free membership of IAmLearn.

Deadline for Submissions is Wednesday, 14 September 2011 24:00 GMT. 

Please circulate this news through your networks and forward to anyone you think might be interested. We hope there will be many exciting submissions.

Best wishes. Agnes 

Agnes Kukulska-Hulme,  President, International Association for Mobile Learning.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 26 Aug 2011, 22:11)
Share post
Design Museum

Innovating in e-learning is worth it

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 27 May 2011, 21:12

E-learning projects/initiatives of 2000/2001 that cost £120,000 + and went nowhere. Dot.com start-ups that went bust.

Not quite first-hand experience as it wasn't my money or job on the line, but I was involved'sharing an office with the creators of 'Doki' an idea for an immersive language learning experience.

Pioneers of innovation are just that - brave people who go out in the cold with no clothes on.

It is this that I admire so much form the Open University ... 42 years of distance learning (pioneers at the time) and as Professor Jonathan Silvertown says in a video clip on the OU website 'It's as if the Open University was waiting for the Internet to happen - distance no longer matters'.

In terms of initiatives I'm familiar with away from the OU I like what corporate e-learning company Epic have done with the BBC Guidelines.

From my TV days I got a copy of these hefty manual every time a new edition came out - think of a Filofax so densely packed with printed pages that it is has the density (and about as much appeal) as a breeze-block. It was indigestible, however much you had to chew on it. Epic used narrative to create what I can only describe as an engaging tale that for its own sake draws you into the content.

The job is profiled on their website with a quote from someone in BBC Training saying that something that was costing X per head to train in was now a fraction of this for the 16,000 people expected to follow the guidelines.

Can it be costed if it is free?

Open Learn is free.

Or is it? 

As a tool to attract learners, as a duty or desire to support and share with the community (which is glogal now). To use Open Learn you still need a computer, broadband access ... and electricity.

It must work.

It must be worth it. (cash cost, time spent, time given up) It is pointless if a no or low cost none e-learning solution is better. i.e. can you teach someone to ride a bike online?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H800:6 The E-learning UK for forum thread obsessives

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 1 Feb 2011, 13:48

Go here, do this.

DSC00707.JPG

As if you don't get enough insights on e-learning from fellow MAODE students, I've found this group in Linked In virbant, engaging and essential.

DSC00708.JPG Go see.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

LT2:4 Learning Technologies. Telling Storis.

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 8 Mar 2012, 05:38

Once upon a time ...

Did you here about ...

Three men went into a bar ...

Stories and humour work.

In the 1980s for a training film that told a story you went to Melrose for humour you went to Video Arts.

Video Arts were at Learning Technologies. I went to their presentation twice. Everything they are doing I applaud. They are reinventing themselves.

Melrose fell 15 years ago (or so). The market couldn't sustain the expense and somehow we always find ways to tell a new story. Whereas comedy never changes. All Video Arts need to do is to re-shoot with fresh actors on a fresh set.

Meanwhile I do Epic No.2 too.

DSC00626.JPG

I don't need convincing that stories work.

Get up to make a presentation and you will hold your audience if you say, 'a funny thing happened to me on the way here ...'

You are about to tell a story (or a bad joke), but hopefully something true, or convincing.

With a child 'once upon a time ... ' can lead to anything you like. As a parent you make up bedtime stories and you find a way to keep them awake.

(Which is why my wife long ago banned me from bedtime stories. Too exciting, too long ... kept them awake).

So to the value of Storytelling.

I love the way Epic handled the BBC Guidelines challenge.

I have a copy.

How would I describe this fat, pack A5 arch-lever file manual of don't and don'ts and more don'ts?

(I'll dig it out and take a picture)

It's about as engaging as a brick wrapped in last week's Sunday Newspapers.

Trainspotting for creatives?

Coming from advertising you see that a story can be told in 30 seconds.

I was on Kit-Kat. 'Have a break. Have a Kit-kat.' This was the era of epics in microcosm, classic adds such as 'Middle of the road.'

Ask. Do ask.

'Like all good learning we're going to be interacting.' Said Naomi Norman.

And we did, to a degree.

DSC00630%20%281%29.JPG

I love the science. I cannot get enough on how the mind retains and uses information.

DSC00625.JPG

is not rocket science, it is obvious. Human kind have spent far longer sitting around fires telling tales than watching TV.

Academics in education recommend the use of narrative.

‘Stories are the method by which people impose order and reason upon the world.’ Fisher. (1987)

‘By framing events in a story it permits individuals to interpret their environment, and importantly it provides a framework for making decisions about actions and their likely outcomes.’ Weller. (2009:45)

‘Narrative … is a useful means of imposing order and causality on an otherwise unstructured and unconnected set of events, but it also means that some detail is omitted in order to fit into the narrative, and other factors are only considered in the limited sense in which they can be accommodated with the narrative.’ Weller (2009:48)

* spontaneous inclination to engage in a dialogue with material

* to improve some form of organisation upon it

* to make comparison with it

Bruner (1996.97)

DSC00624.JPG

 

But what I look forward to is the story.

 

DSC00623.JPG

As I boy I was sent to boarding prep school.

The 'dormitory captain' an older boy who supervised Ihe younger ones (i was eight) would tell a ghost story.

I could still tell 'the Monkey's Paw,' or 'The Mist,' or the 'Broken Stair.'

 

DSC00367.JPG

 

I've been telling stories every since.

 

REFERENCE

Bruner, J.S. (1996) ‘Frames of thinking: ways of making meaning.’ In Olson, D and Torrance, N (eds) Modes of thought. Explorations in culture and cognition, pp. 93-105.

Fisher, W.R. (1987) Human communication as Narration: toward philosophy of reason, value and action.

Weller, M. (2007) Virtual Learning Environment. using, choosing and developing your VLE.

P.S.

More on Epic in due course. I've found a second page of notes. In the meant time yo can contact them yourselves:

DSC00623.JPG

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

H808 First Impressions. Week 1.

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 13:16

H808 First Impressions

Someone’s been busy over the summer recess. smile

There are several noticeable differences:

In addition to the tutor there is a technical expert (Hi Helen) ‘embedded’ in the course to take a proactive role ensuring that none of us get the hebegebes with the technology. Even the basic functioning of the OU platform and its myriad of tools, attributes, quirks and foibles, can be daunting or at least irksome for the IT proficient. I doubt I am alone when I find at times I ‘just don’t get it’ when all it needs is someone to look over my shoulder and say, ‘try pressing that,’ or you’ve missed out a letter, or ‘there’s a really easy way to do that.’ I am at that stage where I am tripped up by a single letter of HTML code ... only to find that I don't need to be reading or trying to read code, if I understood how to use the e-tools being offered. Curiously this role may do more to bring students from the different tutor groups together than the mere offering of forums for this purpose ... a cafe where there is no coffee. mixed

The tutor is around a lot. (Hi Trevor).

(I have not lurked around other tutor groups to see what is going on, so perhaps we can have a pow-wow on this or what I read in an article on e-learning, a 'tribal meeting; which I suppose is a meeting of department heads, or vice-chancellors i.e. the chiefs?).

This may just be a start of course thing, but I sense a wind change that is going beyond the basic set-up to support collaboration elucidated by Salmon regarding e-moderating. My prediction is that the call-centre like support, online and on the phone, that is offered corporate e-learners and e-trainers may become something that H.E. institutions need to provide, populated by undergraduates (2nd years as it were), as well as graduates, not just the traditional PhD student as part time tutor and lecturer ... as well as Senior Tutors.

I’d like the occasional host guest or a heavy hitter too, the participation of those who wrote the module, designed the course or whose work is most often cited.

The title 'H808 Environment Map' is an unnecessarily disingenuous term for a fantastic, indispensable guide. This isn't a map, it is 'The Lonely Planets' map, plan and guide pocket book for H808. It should be on the inside cover of what is the H808 Course Book. It should be wall-paper on the homepage i.e. you go nowhere and try nothing until you have consumed it. I'm going to print it off, laminate it and put it on my desktop, the tabletop wooden one i.e. extract it from its binary code and give it form on paper.

Something’s been refreshed in the OU Library.

My first impression would be to say from a design point of viewit has been ‘Google-ised,’ i.e, its appearance has been cleared up and simplified. Is it that designers and programmers in time can prioritise their choice of tools and offer in a more clinical way the tools they know users will need as they progress through their search rather than offering a High Street DIY store cornucopia of e-tic-tacs and e-tools that may or may not be required and probably do little more than scare and confuse in equal measure.

The resources and supplementary reading have all been accessed within the last couple of months and the links work.

In H807 it was a bugbear, not overly regular, but frequent enough, to find that links did not work so documents were not found speedily. The sifting out of redundant papers and reports (their points of view have been superseded by the technology and actual practice rather than the conjecture and hyperbole of some academics and commentators) as well as the checking and fixing of links is important. It is a considerable frustration, though understandable, that published version of books.

Not overly burdensom or keen to read two study-related books over the summer (July/August) Weller’s Virtual Learning Environments(2007) and Conole and Oliver's (eds) Contemporary perspectives in e-learning Research (2007), that very few of the links to URLS given to follow up references work (very few, may be none!) and then seeking them through the OU library doesn’t always prove successful either, no fault of the library, but links into this amorphous universe that is Cyberspace leaves some e-references wanting. And being who I am I want these references as qualifying and verifying is part of the ‘bonding process’ that this student requires to feel thoroughly engaged with the material.

Might I suggest that putting an URL for an article or blog comment into a print-published book is about as lasting as putting a sparkler in a birthday cake - by the time you want to eat the cake the sparkler has burnt out.

I like the new 'tick box' alongside the study planner to help mark off your progress.

Happy Days, Exciting Days in OU Land

P.S. Did you know you have access to the Oxford English Dictionaryonline as an OU Student. This is like being invited to Versailles during the reign of the Sun King. Brilliant. Except it can't help me with 'hebe-gebe.' A term used by my family, or a Geordie term for feeling a bit nervous, gets the goose-bumps up, a tad scary in a Ghost Train ride kind of way?

P.P.S. Just learnt a few tricks to search for a word in the OED and found 'heebie-jeebie.'  A feeling of discomfort, apprehension, or depression; the ‘jitters’; delirium tremens; also, formerly, a type of dance. (OED) Far from being my native Geordie, it is 1920s New York American.

6.00am and I've learnt something new already! approve

9/9/10 is going to be a fun day.

8/9/10 was magic.

I wonder why? thoughtful

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Wired Sussex Jobs & Skills Fair

Visible to anyone in the world

Just back from the Wired Sussex Jobs & Skills Fair in Brighton.

Able to get some insights into the job market for those with knowledge of e.learning. It would appear that learning designers are in need. Otherwise transportable skills such as copywriting & project management may be useful.

As I know, to play the game, you've got to get on the board.

What's the in?

Spoke to representatives from:

Epic

Kineo

Edvantage

WPM Learning

&

Brightmove

As well as:

Brighton University

Went along with a friend who is doing the e.learning course with University of Sussex, so we compared notes and may work on a project together in order to put something on the C.V.

 

Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 13080692