New generation of laptops is literally child’s play

Here’s an enthusiastic look at the ASUS Eee PC – a miniature affordable laptop that (I think) has huge potential in education

New generation of laptops is literally child’s play: “Grateful”

(Via New Zealand Herald – Technology & Science.)

Interactive Concept Map

I’ve added an ‘Interactive Concept Map’ to give a visual representation of the workflow and interaction of the smartphone and mobile web2 services that we are aiming at in the mobile projects. Let me know if this helps with conceptualizing what we are doing!

http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/mobileweb2concept2.htm

Mobile Web2 Concept Map

I’ve put together a visual ‘concept map’ of the mobile web2 trials and a table briefly outlining the web2 tools and their pedagogical alignment with a constructivist learning environment.

Any feedback welcome!

Right-click image and ’save as’ to download higher resolution version (Low res embedded in blog post for space saving).

Pedagogical Design

The core activity of the project is the
creation and maintenance of a reflective Blog as part of a course group
project. Additionally a variety of mobile friendly web 2 tools are used in
conjunction with the smartphone. The trials investigate how the smartphone can
be used to enhance almost any aspect of the course. The project uses the
smartphone and Personal Computers for the following activities (see the
following table illustrating the alignment of these activities with the
projects underlying social constructivist pedagogy):

Activity	Overview	Pedagogical outcomes
A reflective Blog	A blog post (including media) can be uploaded directly to VOX using the Vox client on Nokia smartphones, or Shozu (http://www.shozu.com), or emailed to VOX xxxxxx@moblog.vox.com	Developing critical and reflective thinking
An eportfolio	VOX (http://www.vox.com ) includes media sharing (video, audio, documents, images, links…) and linking (YouTube, Flickr etc…) as well as social networking.	Collaborative sharing of media and peer critique, also forms the basis for a career portfolio.
Email	GMail (http://gmail.com ) provides a free email account that can be used on almost any Internet capable device. A GMail account also opens free access to all other Google web services. The Google Java application optimises GMail for phones.	Communication and collaboration
RSS	RSS enables subscribing and tracking/sharing of online activity. It provides a link between all your web 2 media sites. Google reader (http://reader.google.com )  is a great web based RSS reader, while Newsgator (http://www.newsgator.com ) also provides RSS clients for synchronisation via PC, Mac or mobile.	Collaboration
Shared Calendars	Google Calendars (http://calendar.google.com ) can be shared between groups of people via invitation. Google Calendars use an open format that provides interoperability between many calendar systems – e.g. iCal on Mac OSX	Time scheduling and collaboration of activities
Image Blogging	Dedicated image sharing repositories such as Flickr and picasaweb offer more interactive features than Vox’s image repository, and are linkable to Vox and other Blogging systems. Direct mobile upload to Flickr can be achieved via either the Vox client, or email. Picasaweb mobile is supported via Shozu destination uploads.	Event, data and resource capturing and collaboration. Creativity.
Video Blogging	YouTube (http://www.youtube.com ) is currently the most popular video sharing site. The mobile version supports viewing of videos online in the mobiles web browser, or via a downloadable Java client for specific phones. Uploading mobile videos to YouTube is achieved via email attachments.	Event, data and resource capturing and collaboration. Creativity.
Shozu	Shozu is a service for linking all your online mobile Blog and Media sites together via either the Shozu client application, or an email sent to go@m.shozu.com	Shozu provides links between all the pedagogies described.
Podcasting	Uploading an audio file to Vox creates a podcast episode that others can subscribe to via an automatically created RSS feed.	Interviews, critiques, reflections, shared collaboration.
Instant Messaging and Skype	Fring (http://www.fring.com) is a free Instant Messaging and Skype client for most mobile phones. It allows messaging between the most popular IM systems. It works best over a WiFi connection, or good 3G connection.	Communication and collaboration
Shared Bookmarks	Delicious (http://del.icio.us ) is a social bookmarking site – allowing the creation and sharing of Internet bookmark libraries and searching via tags (descriptive keywords). Mobilicious (http://mobilicio.us ) a mobile optimised version.	Collaboration
LMS	Moodle is a mobile friendly Learning Management System, hosted on a production level Unitec server. Course notes, discussion forums, and various activities can be hosted on Moodle.	Scaffolding and support
Mobile Google	A gateway into the Google Mobile services (http://mobile.google.com ) via the phones web browser. iGoogle (http://www.google.com/ig/i ) is a customisable mobile Google Homepage.	Links to tools that support all of the mentioned pedagogies.
Mobile Codes	Mobile Codes (Datamatrix codes in this case) provide sharing of URLs, text and messages via scanning using the smartphones built-in camera. Codes can be created and downloaded from http://mobilecodes.nokia.com and scanned using either a compatible scanning application on the mobile phone.	Scaffolding, support, collaboration.
Web Browsing	The Built-in Web Browser is very good, but in some cases Opera Mini may work better, and Opera Mini has several tools built-in (RSS feeds, synchronisation with Opera on a PC etc…)	Research skills
Document Reading & Editing	Google Docs (http://docs.google.com ) is Microsoft Word, Excell and Powerpoint compatible. Documents can be uploaded and shared and edited by a group. They are viewable online in a web browser without MS Office. Docs can be created on mobile devices by emailing the document to a private Google Docs address. To edit uploaded documents you need a full PC web browser, or a full version of ‘QuickOffice’ on your smartphone – a mobile version of MS Office (~ $60).	Documentation, reflection, critique, description, and collaborative document publishing etc…

Table 1.
Table of trial activities aligned to social constructivist pedagogical
outcomes.

DipLandscape Design Mobile trial 2008

Today saw the start of the third mobile trial with Diploma Landscape Design students

• 2006 – Palm TX WiFi PDAs, SplashBlog
• 2007 – Nokia N80 smartphones, WordPress & Vox
• 2008 – Sonyericsson P1i smartphones plus Bluetooth keyboards, Vox

In this initial session we covered:

• Introduction of the project
• Created GMail accounts
• Created Moodle accounts and Profiles (including photos)
• Created Vox eportfolio accounts
• Handed out the smartphones

As you can see, they are a ‘more mature’ bunch of students than previous years! The Web2 ‘Net Generation’ is an attitude – not an age differentiator