Mobile Tech Meeting 15th June 2010

Location: The University of Bolton Date: Tuesday 15th June 2010 Time: 10.00am - 4.30pm

With the modern student looking to be able to learn wherever and whenever they want, the rapidly evolving area of mobile technology now sees such improvements in devices, network capabilities and affordability to make these opportunities a reality.

This event looked at what is being done with mobile devices to support teaching and learning and discuss the further potential. From student activity in the field, to the opportunity of widening access to institutional services and on to a future technological landscape populated by tablets and augmented reality.

Tagging

 * The event was discussed throughout the day on Twitter using the hashtag #cetismob. There is a Twapper Keeper Archive of all the posts at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/cetismob

Mobile: The State of Play (featuring Molenet)
James Clay



Mobilising Remote Student Engagement: Lessons Learned from the Field
Richard Hall & Tim Linsey

The MoRSE project (http://www.morse.ac.uk) is a two-year, JISC-funded curriculum delivery project, which is focused upon the use of social media and mobile technologies to support student working at a distance from their home institution. In this presentation, Tim and Richard highlight the lessons learned from the formal integration of a range of technologies into the field trip activities of level five and six students. Technologies deployed included: text-tools; Geo-referenced photograph sharing using Flickr (http://flickr.com); Twitter-linked photo applications; live video-streaming; micro-blogging; live tracking, including Google Latitude and My Tracks; synchronous voice; and voice recording. The lessons learned from the domestic and international fieldtrips were highlighted during the session, and particular emphasis placed upon: the integration by students of the various streams within their personal learning environment as they saw appropriate; the balance to be achieved between dedicated personal technologies, specialist field devices and integrated mobile phones; the design of transitional or preparatory activities; and the role of more experienced students as mentors.



Mobile Technology in Practice
Andy Pellow & Robert Campbell

Andy and Robert will discuss the ALPS (http://www.alps-cetl.ac.uk/Corework/MobileTechnologies.html) experiences of leading, developing and implementing a mobile learning and assessment programme for work-based learning. They will explain what ALPS aimed to achieve and how this developed in practice. They will consider the challenges of developing and implementing a mobile technology programme involving 1000 students across 5 HEIs spanning 16 different professions.



Embedding Mobile Learning
Peter Bird

A perspective of what issues prevent embedding and what organizational structures and methods may help to overcome the barriers.



Apps & Widgets
Scott Wilson

A storm is brewing in the world of mobile applications, with the current model of OS-specific application platforms challenged by a new generation of webapps and widgets using HTML 5 and Device APIs that can work across a far wider range of devices (and not just phones either).

This makes deploying mobile apps in education far simpler and cheaper than the current model of building one-app-per-device in different programming languages; it also makes it possible to develop applications simultaneously for web applications, mobile and desktop. Rather than make a mobile app for your VLE, you can make your VLE out of mobile apps!

Scott explains how the standards work, who is adopting them, what you need to do to get started.



campusM
David Stephenson

oMbiel's (http://www.ombiel.com/campusm.html) presentation looks at the trends in SmartPhone adoption within the UK student population and the relative merits of developing specific applications versus browser based solutions. The presentation will describe the campusM delivery architecture, its support for multiple types of phone, its adherence to standards and the benefit of an SOA/Web Services approach to being able to deliver both generic and personalised information. oMbiel will discuss campusM's adoption and Roadmap.



A look at Mobile Augmented Reality
Mark Power

What AR is, how it works on mobile devices, a look at some of the popular apps and AR browsers on the market...what they can do, what they can't.

And how - potentially - they could be tapped into using open data and suchlike to apply AR to learning activities.

