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 I recently attended an event entitled Mobile Technologies - The Challenge of Learner Devices Delivering Computer Science held at Birmingham City University last week, organised by the Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) Higher Education Academy (HEA) subject centre.

This blog post aims to present a summary of proceedings as well as my own reflections on the day. If any of the delegates or presenters read this (and have any comments), then please feel free to post a reply to add to or correct anything that I've written. I hope these notes might be useful to someone.

Keynote

The day was kicked off by John Traxler from the University of Wolverhampton. Just as any good keynote should, John asked a number of searching questions. The ones that jumped out at me were whether information technology (or computers) had accelerated the industrialisation of education, and whether mobile technologies may contribute to this.

John wondered about the changing nature of technology ownership. On one hand universities maintain rooms filled with computers that students can use, but on the other hand students increasingly have their own devices, such as laptops or mobile phones. 

John also pointed us towards an article in the Guardian, published in July 2010 about teenagers and technology which has a rather challenging subtitle. Mobility and connectedness, it is argued, has now become a part of our identity.

One thing John said jumped out at me: 'requiring students to use a VLE is like asking them to wear a school uniform'. This analogy points towards a lot of issues that can be unpacked. Certainly, a VLE has the potential to present institutional branding, and a uniform suggests that things might done in a particular way. But a VLE also has the potential be be an invaluable source of information to ensure that we know what we need to know to navigate around an institution.

For those of us who had to wear school uniforms, very many of us customised them as much as we possibly could without getting told off for breaking the rules. Within their constraints, it would be possible to express individuality whilst conforming (to get an education). The notion of customisation and services also has a connection with the idea of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) (wikipedia), which, in reality, might exist somewhere in between the world of the mobile, a personal laptop and the services that an institution provides.

Session I

The first session was opened by Kathy Maitland from Birmingham City University. Kathy talked about how she used cloud computing to enable students using different hardware to access different different software services. She spoke about the challenge of using different hardware (and operating system) platforms to access services and the technical challenges of ensuring correct configuration.

John Busch from Queen's university, Belfast made a presentation about how to record lectures using a mobile phone. It was great to see a (relatively) low tech approach being used to make educational materials available for students. All John needed to share his lectures with a wider audience was a mid range mobile phone, a tiny tripod, a desk to perch the mobile phone on, and (presumably) a lot of hard won experience.

John gave the audience a lot of tips about how to make the best use of technology, along with a result from a survey where he asked students how they made use of the recordings he made of his computer gaming lectures. 

A part of his talk was necessarily technical, where he spoke about different data encoding standards and which standard was supported by which mobile (or desktop) platform. One of the members of the audience pointed us to Encoding.com, a website that enables transcoding of digital media. The presentation gave way to interesting discussions about privacy. One of the things that I really liked about John's presentation was that is addressed 'mobile' from different perspectives at the same time: using mobile technology to produce content that may, in turn, be consumed by other mobile devices.

Laura Crane, from Lancaster University then gave an interesting presentation about using location, context and preference in VLE information delivery. Laura's main research question appeared to be, 'which is (potentially) more useful - it is information that is presented at a particular location, or information that is presented in a particular time?'

This reminded me of some research that I had heard of a couple of years ago called context modelling. Laura mentioned a subject or area that was new to me, namely, Situation Theory.  Laura's talk was very well received and it inspired a lot of debate. Topics discussed include the nature of mobility research, the importance of personal or learner attributes on learning (such as learning styles). Discussions edged towards the very active area of recommender research (recommender system, Wikipedia), and out to wider questions of combining location, recommender and affective interfaces (interfaces or systems that could give recommendations or make suggestions depending on emotion). A great talk!

Darren Mundy and Keith Dykes gave a presentation about the WILD Project funded by JISC. WILD is an abbreviation for Wireless Interactive Lecture Demonstrator. The idea behind the project is one that is simple and compelling: how to make use of personal technology to enable students to make a contribution to lectures. By contribution, I mean allowing students to add comments and text to a shared PowerPoint presentation.

A lecturer prepares a PowerPoint presentation and providing there is appropriate internet connectivity, there is a link to a WILD webpage, which the students can send messages to. This might be used to facilitate debate about a particular subject, but also enable those learners who are less reluctant to contribute to 'speak up' by 'texting out'. We were also directed towards the project source code.

During the talk, I was introduced to a word that I had never heard of before: prosumerism (but apparently Wikipedia had!). At the end of the talk, during the Q&A session, one delegate pointed us towards the SAP Twitter PowerPoint plug in, which might be able to achieve similar things.

This last presentation of the morning really got me thinking about my own educational practice, and perhaps this is one of the really powerful aspects of using and working learning technology: it can have the potential to encourage reflection about what is and what is not possible, both inside and outside the classroom. I tutor on an undergraduate interaction design course with the Open University, where I facilitate a number of face to face sessions.

Due to various reasons my tutorials are not well as attended as they could be. Students may have difficulty travelling to a tutorial session, they may have family responsibilities, or even have jobs at the weekend. This is a shame, since I sense that some students would really benefit from these face to face sessions. The WILD presentation make me wonder whether those students who attend a face to face tutorial might be able to collectively author a summary PowerPoint that could then be shared with the group of students who were unable to attend. Interactivity, of course, has the potential to foster inclusivity and ownership. Simply put, the more a student does within a lecture (or puts into it) the more they may get out of it.

Session II

After lunch, the second session proved to be slightly more technical. The first half was merely a warm up!

The second session kicked off with demonstration by Doug Belshaw. Doug works for JISCInfoNet. This part of JISC aims to provide information and products known as InfoKits which can be used by senior management to understand and appreciate a range of different education and technology issues. We were directed towards examples, such as effective practice in a digital age, and effective assessment in a digital age. A new kit, entitled JISC mobile and wireless technologies review is currently under presentation.

Doug asked the audience to share information about any case studies. A number of projects were mentioned, along with a set of links. During the discussion part of the demo we were directed towards m.sunderland.ac.uk , and this makes me wonder whether the 'm.' is a convention that I'm not aware of (and perhaps ought to be!) Something called iWebKit was also mentioned. Other projects included MyMobileBristol.com, in collaboration with Bristol University and Bristol City Council. For more information visit the m.bristol.ac.uk site.

There was also a mention of a service provided by Oxford University, m.ox.ac.uk (the project also has an accompanying press release) This service appears to have been developed in association with something called the Molly Project, which seems to be a mobile application development framework. There was a lot to take in!

Gordon Eccleston from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen gave a fabulous presentation about his work teaching programming the iPhone. Having remained steadfastly in the desktop world, and admitting to being a laggard on the mobile technology front, Gordon answered many questions that I have always had about how one might potentially begin to write an iPhone application. Gordon introduce us to the iPhone software development kit, which I understand was free to universities. The software used to create Apps is called Xcode.  Having predominantly worked within a PC software development environment for too many years than I would care to admit, a quick poke around the Apple Tools website looked rather exciting; a whole new world of languages, terms and technologies.

Gordon had a number of views about the future of App development. He thought that XHTML 5, CSS 3 and accompanying technologies would have an increasingly important role to play. On a related note, the cross mobile platform PhoneGap was mentioned during the following presentation which makes use of some of these same technologies. (Digging further into the web, there's a Wikipedia page called Multiple phone web based application framework, which might prove to be interesting.  There was also some debate about which platform mobile might dominate (and whether mobile dominance may depend on whether how many Apple stores there may be within a particular city or country!)

Gordon also briefly talked about some of the student project he has been involved with. A notable example was an iPhone app for medical students to learn ophthalmology terms and concepts. There were some really good ideas here; how to create applications that have direct benefit to learners by the application of mobile technology through learning how they can be developed.

Karsten Lundqvist from the University of Reading offered technology balance to the day by presenting his work teaching the development of Android applications. Karsten began his presentation by considering the different platforms: iPhone, RIM, and Android, but the choice of platform was ultimately decided by the availability of existing hardware, namely, PC's running Windows or Linux. In place of using Xcode, Java with Eclipse was used. I seem to remember that students may have had some experience using C/C++ before attending the classes, but I can't quite remember.

The question and answer session was really interesting. One delegate asked Karsten whether he had heard of something called the Google Android App Inventor, another mobile software development platform. It was also interesting to hear about the different demo apps. Karsten showed us a picture of a phone in a mini-segway cradle, demonstrating the concept of real-time control, there was also a reference to an app that may help people with language difficulties, and Karsten pointed us to his own website where he has been developing a game template by means of a blog tutorial.

Towards the end of Karsten's session, I recall an echo from the earlier HEA employability event which explored computing forensics. One of the ideas coming from this event was that perhaps it might be a good idea for institutions to share forensic data sets. An idea posed within this event was that perhaps institutions might be able to share application ideas or templates, perhaps for different platforms. Some ideas might include fitness utilities, 'finding your way around' apps (very useful: I still remember my days being a confused fresher during my undergrad days!), simple game templates, and flash card apps to help students to learn a number of different concepts.

Plenary

The plenary discussion was quite wide ranging, and is quite difficult to down to a couple of paragraphs. My own attempt at making sense of the day was to understand the key topics in terms of 'paired terms', which might be either subject dimensions or tensions (depending on how you look at it).

VLEs and apps: different software with different purposes, which connect to the idea of information and content. Information might be where to go to find a lecture theatre, or the location of a bank, and content is a representation of the course materials itself.

Ownership and provision: invariably students will have their own technology, but to what extent should an organisation provide technology to facilitate learning? Provision has been historically thought of in terms of rooms filled with computers, and necessarily conservative institutional IT provision (to make sure that everything keeps working). Entwined with these issues is the notion of legacy information and the need for institutions (and learners) to keep up with technology.

Development and usage: where does the information or content come from? To what extent might consumers of mobile information potentially participate in the development of their own content? Might this also create potential dangers for institutions and individuals. This is related to another tension of control, namely, institutional versus individual control, of either information, content or technology.

Guidance and figuring things out: when it comes to learning, there is always a balance to be reached between providing just enough guidance that enables learners to gain enough information so that they find the information that they need. On one hand, there may be certain apps that facilitate learning in their own right, apps that provide information, and apps that may present content held within a VLE. One idea might be that we may need a taxonomy of uses for both an institution and an individual.

Industry and academia: a two way relationship. We must provide education (about mobile) that industry needs, and also make use of innovations coming from industry, but also we have a role to innovate ourselves and potentially feedback into industry. (I seem to recall quite a few delegates mentioning something called mCampus, but I haven't been able to uncover any information about it!)

Other discussion points that were raised included the observation that location-based information provision is new, and the need to interact with people is one of the things that is driving the development of technology. A broader question, posed by John Traxler was, 'does mobile have the potential to transform teaching and learning?' Learners, of course, differ very widely in terms of their experience and attitude to interactive products.

Points such as accessibility, whether it being availability of technology or ability to perceive information through assistive technologies are also substantial issues. The wider organisational and political environment is also a significant factor when it comes to the development of mobile applications, and their subsequent consumption.

Footnote

All in all, a very enjoyable day! As I travelled into Birmingham from London on the train on the morning of the event my eye caught what used to be the site of an old industrial centre. I had no idea what it used to be. I could see the foundations of what might have been a big factory or a depot. I was quite surprised to discover that Millenium Point building also overlooked the same area.

Walking to the train station for my return journey to London, I thought, 'wouldn't it be great if there was an app that could use your location to get articles and pictures about what used to be here before; perhaps there could be a timeline control which users could change to go back in time to see what was there perhaps twenty, thirty or even one hundred years before'. I imagined a personal time machine in the palm of your hand. I then recalled a mash-up between Google Maps and Wikipedia, and had soon uncovered something called Wikimapia.

Like so many of these passing ideas, there's no such thing as an original thought. What really matters is how such technology thoughts are realised, and the ultimate benefit they may have to the different sets of end user.

Would I be considered to be weird if I said that I quite like exams? I admit, I do quite like the challenge, but more specifically, I also like the feeling of opening a paper and knowing (roughly) how to answer the questions I find, and making a choice about which questions I'm going to answer, and which ones I'm going to ignore (if I have a choice, of course). I also like receiving the result and relaxing when a course finishes!

A big question to ask in relation to taking exams is, 'how do you successfully transfer all the knowledge and understanding from your course into your head in such a form that you can answer potentially challenging (and interesting!) questions?' We all have our own unique set of strategies. I'll share some of mine.

Repurposing material

When I'm taking a course, one of the things that I do is make voluminous notes. I am a sucker for writing things down. I buy a couple of dividers and split a A4 (or a lever arch) file into sections corresponding to the blocks. I usually have a couple of extra dividers free for 'other stuff'.

I admit that I sometimes go a bit far, especially when I insist on choosing a single brand of pen for the whole set of notes that I make during a course. I make headings in a consistent style and sometimes experiment with underlining colours!

Although this might seem to be a bit unusual (in terms of my studying rituals), the activity of taking notes is central to my studying strategy. Once I have my notes and the exam date is looming, I sometimes re-write my notes. I take my sides of A4 and 'summarise them down' to a single side of A4, trusting that the stuff that is not on the page is faithfully held within my head.

In the e-learning world, the term 'repurposing' crops up from time to time. It means to take existing materials that have been designed for one purpose and to change them in some way so they can be used for something else. One of the difficulties of e-learning content repositories is that it is difficult to repurpose or reuse existing learning materials, perhaps because of the granularity of the material, or perhaps because that some material is too closely connected to a particular learning situation (or context). But I digress…

When working towards an exam, I actively 'repurpose' the contents of the course that I am studying. I take the course and transfer themes and ideas from the text books or the course materials and transfer them into my A4 file.

Learning pathways

The A4 file represents my own unique adventure or path through a set of learning resources, replete with questions to self, underlining, quotations and green underlining. My repurposing activity, as an active learner, is a construction activity. In essence, I have designed my own learning resources, or have designed my own learning.

When I was a student on The Challenge of the Social Sciences, I have to confess I was not looking forward to the exam. What helped me, was not only the excellent resources that the course team provided, but also the mind maps, sets of notes and other forms of crib sheets that my fellow students had posted selflessly to our on-line discussion forum. They were a great help, not only in seeing that others were revising as hard as I was, but they were also pointing out and bringing different parts of the course together in ways that I had previously missed. Guys, I owe you one!

Dead time

I often travel on a train. When studying, I try to read when I am travelling, which I find difficult. One of the reasons, other than that I cannot easily take notes because the train is bumping around (!), is that I'm often sitting next to someone who is insisting on talking loudly on their mobile phone the moment I wish to try to settle down to learn something about the history of empiricism. Not to mention the lack of 'elbow room' needed to work through ones course notes.

I much prefer listening to podcasts. Listening is another one of my learning preferences. If only I could easily convert my notes into audio form, I might be able to make better use of the 'dead time' I spend on a train.

One thing I could try to do (but I shall never dare!) is to make a podcast of my own notes. This does sound a bit extreme since I am lead to believe that making a podcast takes up lots of time, not to mention equipment.

You need to learn how to use your sound recording software, you might even start with a script, then there is a period of editing (podediting?) to edit out the false starts, door bell ringing, the dog or telephone…

This makes me wonder: is there a way to repurpose textual notes, interesting quotations, chapter headings and thematic points in such a way that you can create an interactive audio file that contains pathways that you could navigate through whilst your travel?

iLearningNotes

Not so long ago I learnt about the Daisy talking book project and was struck by the quality of the speech synthesisers that could be used (some of the same synthesisers are also used by the current generation of screen readers).

Imagine a tool, not unlike Compendium, where you could build audio mind maps. Underneath headings you could add notes and quotations. You could establish conceptual links between different titles, chapters and ideas. The graphical structures that you create could then be converted into speech using a high quality speech synthesiser.

Another possibility could be that you might be able to use excerpts from other podcastsVideo player: Media:Titanium.ogg

(Wikipedia example). Of course, there may be nothing stopping you making your own recordings, perhaps combining your material with words from other sources (providing you adhere to licence conditions, of course).

When you have finished editing you could transfer your edited interactive 'audio map' (which may even have corresponding iconic pictures!) to a magic mobile device not unlike an iPod. You could use the magic wheel control to move through the chapters, sections and notes that you have 'built'. You may also be able to control the rate of playback, allowing you to skip over sections of which you become more familiar.

When you have created your audio notes, in true Web 2.0 fashion you could share your own personal course specific pathways with others. You might be even able to repurpose or modify pathways created by other people so they closely match your own individual learning needs. Furthermore, these resulting navigable audio equivalents may have the potential to be useful for people with disabilities.

Back to learning design

There are some resonances between these ideas and the area of learning design tools and systems.

I first came across the concept of learning design when looking through the IMS specifications. I soon learnt that IMS LD was an XML language that could be used to construct descriptions of learning activities that could be executed using a player. I later came across a system called LAMS, and most recently was told about something called the e-lesson mark-up language, ELML.

Learning design, as an idea, can take many forms. The different systems vary in terms of dynamic adaptability, ease of authoring and who the language or system is intended for. Another is presented by CloudWorks, from what I understand.

My designs

When I study, I design my own learning with help from the materials that I am provided. This may occur when I travel on a train, carry out internet searches on the internet, or read some notes whilst drinking a cup of tea at home.

My own personal pathway through a set of resources may be very different to the pathway that other learners may choose. Learning about the differences, potentially through mobile devices, may help me (and fellow learners) to see new sets of connections that were not immediately understandable.

In doing so, we have the potential to create devices and tools that make better use of our 'dead time'.

Image modified from wikipedia