New Mobile Augmented Reality browser

I stumbled upon an interesting article about the Dutch company SPRXmobile. Together with layar.eu, they have created the “Worlds first” AR-Browser for smartphones. I don’t know whether their claim about being first is really appropriate (see my earlier post http://mlearningblog.com/?p=289), but nevertheless it looks really interesting. The way it works is simple enough: open the browser and look at your surroundings with the camera lens and the smart phone display. In addition to the “real” environment, the user also sees additional information such as apartments available for sale, the location of friends or events via a social network and other locations of interest. Needless to say that this is extremely interesting for mobile learning. Check out the short video on it. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately only a demo for its use with real estate ads.

As of now, the Layar browser needs a camera, GPS and a compass. iPhone 3G s anyone? Yes, according to a recent press release the browser will become available for the new iPhone. As of now it is available for the very few Google Android phones.

Links:

http://www.sprxmobile.com/

http://layar.eu/

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

Palm Pre and mobile learning (Part II)

Wow. Only a few days left until the Palm Pre is finally released in the US. Finally!  It’s time again for an executive summary of some information, which will be relevant for mobile learning enthusiasts.

According to several sources, the Palm Pre will be fully synchronizable with iTunes. This would mean that -at least for a short time span- Palm Pre users can at least download podcasts and vodcasts to their Palms. I wrote “for a short time span”, because Apple is likely to update the iTunes software to disable synching for its possibly strongest competitor to date.

Other sources write that the Palm Pre will already be fully supported by existing IT infrastructures and can therefore be used for corporate mobile learning within a short time period. In case any of the mobile learning material is very sensitive and a Palm Pre is stolen, it can also be wiped clean via remote access. This is not a new function on the market, but it certainly will help to ease the mind of paranoid chief learning officers.

The Palm Pre will also support Google, meaning that Google Docs, Gmail and the Google Reader can be used. Furthermore Google contacts can of course be synched with the device.

Other contact synching is also possible with Facebook and Exchange. According to PalmPreCentral, the Palm Pre will even be able to handle multiple Google and Exchange accounts at once. Quite impressive.

These are of course only a few of the facts which could become relevant for mobile learning on the Palm Pre. For further information, check some of the following links:

http://www.precentral.net/pre-browser-does-google-docs-reader

http://www.precentral.net/gmail-and-facebook-users-time-resign-yourself-extra-contacts

http://now.sprint.com/nownetwork/productPage.html

Sky Map Mobile Planetarium for Android

Back from my blogging hiatus/vacation I found this interesting article on the Sky Map app for Android. Sky Map is a free app, which lets users virtually browse the sky by pointing their Google phone towards the sky. The app uses the GPS functionality, the accelerometer and the compass of the GPhone to “know” in which direction you are pointing. If some of you, like me, have forgotten what exactly the “big dipper” is or simply want to show your students a more interesting way to learn about astronomy, this is certainly an interesting app.

Google Mobile Blog: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/05/sky-map-for-android-mobile-planetarium.html

Young kids connect school with home via Futurelab’s Dream Catcher project

I just watched a short video by Futurelab about the Dream Catcher program. Dream Catcher is a mobile learning project which lets young kids capture what they have learned with mobile devices and then encourages them to share their experiences with their teachers, their parents and their friends. The idea is not only to connect what they are learning at school with what they are learning at home. Furthermore, only very few young children can explain what they have learned in school all the time. If they actually show their parents on their mobile device, it will also improve the parent-child communication.

Source: http://www.futurelab.org.uk

What I really like about the idea is its simplicity. Any school could set this up with a few second-hand digital cameras on a very low budget. Dream Catcher shows that many great ideas can be very basic. I believe that there is a lot of potential there, especially considering how easy many cameras, netbooks and mobiles are to use these days. Those 4-year old kids handle these digital devices, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

I really hope to read more about similar projects in the future.

Check out the video here:

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/multimedia/video/Video1245

Mobimanage vs. Mobisitegalore: 2 web-based mobile site cms compared

A few days ago I stumbled over “mobimanage.com”, which reminded me a lot of mobisitegalore.com. So let’s do a quick comparison between the two. The whole purpose of both of these sites is to turn regular websites into mobile websites and manage them on a web-based CMS.  Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, there is a catch. With both systems you have to build your mobile website from scratch. I could find no possibility for an XML export (or any other export) on your regular website to the mobile site, which would be by far the most convenient way to build your mobile site.
As far as I could see from the information on the site, mobimanage offers 3 payment plans from 10$ to 25$ to 50$ monthly, which I personally find a little steep, considering mobisitegalore.com offers almost the identical service for free. Mobimanage offers 3 basic services: Tourism, real estate and political websites. However, during my test it seemed that you could create any type of site you wanted, so I guess this is just mobimanage’s way to attract customers from those types of businesses. Mobisitegalore makes no such “limitations”. All in all, both sites offer a decent service for anyone who wants to create a mobile website. Both sites can be used for educators to deliver content to their students, trainees etc.  Still, the fact that mobisitegalore is free will certainly motivate some people to choose it over mobimanage. Personally, I’d recommend mobisitegalore. Still, at a maximum of 50$ a month mobimanage is very affordable for larger projects, so you might give both a try and decide for yourself.

Mobimanage

Mobisitegalore

Mobimanage LLC is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mobisitegalore is a project by Akmin Technologies, which is based in Chennai, India.

Links:

http://www.mobimanage.com

http://www.mobisitegalore.com

Correction May 5, 2009: In response to Seth Spillman’s comment I would like to point out that mobimanage indeed does have an XML-export feature, which in my opinion greatly enhances their service.

A quick look at Easy Meet

Not really brandnew, but interesting for people who haven’t seen it yet. I watched an interesting short presentation (or should I call it an ad?) on Nokia Easy Meet. The service enables participants from Laptops, PCs and of course mobile phones to exchange multmedia files and meeting minutes. Slide sharing, conference chats and remote content access is also possible. The system works with S60 browsers, Opera, Firefox and Safari but not with IE6.

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

What we can learn from “mobile cheaters”

The last few weeks I kept reading news messages about Chinese students who were cheating on exams in school. They would use all sorts of mobile technology to get the information they needed. Sometimes small Bluetooth ear pieces, sometimes sophisticated mobile phones with internet access and sometimes simply regular mobile phones and text messages. Of course, it is wrong to cheat in this way (and any other way), but I kept asking myself isn’t this also a good sign? Doesn’t this show all of us, who try to use mobile phones for education, that the technology is good enough now? After all, it has happened so many times, therefore it must be quite effective. Sooner or later, it will probably become almost impossible to stop such cheaters unless each and every student, who is taking an exam, is checked for electronic devices. Why don’t we integrate it more? It’s just a matter of time. I do not condone cheating, but I do approve of making use of available technology for learning.

So what happened to the Chinese students? Many of them were fined or even imprisoned. Probably not the best way to encourage everyone to make use of mobile learning..

Link news article 1: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-04/08/content_7657951.htm

Link news article 2: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5324NK20090403

Austrian University studies Augmented Reality on mobile devices

This Monday I attended an extremely interesting presentation by Daniel Wagner of the Graz University of Technology. Daniel holds a Master in computer science and has been working on mobile augmented reality projects. He showed a few stunning demonstrations on what a combination between reality and a digital camera can create. One example was a tour through a campus in which users of a mobile phone could look through their mobile’s camera and actually see the buildings or rooms with certain tags on them.

Another application was a museum tour in which a virtual cartoon guide would explain them certain items whenever they looked through their mobile. (See image)

Interactive gaming with this kind of augmented reality was also shown in a short movie where a PDA camera was used as an interface together with a real life map. On the camera display the games virtual characters were shown as they moved and behaved in certain ways with the real map as the playing board. The player could also shoot the “bad guys” on his PDA and interact with this mixed reality environment .

There are several very promising ways in which these projects could help mobile learning professionals to create an entire new level of mobile learning. If you have the time and haven’t visited it yet, I really recommend to check out the demo page of the Graz University of Technology.

Link demo page of Graz University of Technology: http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/media_press.php

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

A quick look at Koollage.com

After reading a post on Koolage.com I signed up a few days ago. Koolage offers a platform to create your own Packages-on-Demand, better known as Pods. They can include any type of digital media one can think of. You can also “mobilize” the pods and then access them on an iPhone. Sounds great so far, doesn’t it? However, I tried to sign up. Twice. I am still waiting on an e-mail as I write these words.

It was also a little tricky to find out about who is behind Koolage, since the “contact” information only includes a contact form without an address and the whois entry doesn’t contain anything helpful. There is a page with the development team, but just first names, no e-mails and phone numbers.

To summarize: The service is free and the idea is fantastic. I did run into some problems however. The site is filled with great Web 2.0 capabilities, but when you try to actually use them, they failed to work. At least for me. If anyone had a better experience please let me and the readers of this blog know.

Links: http://www.koollage.com/index.html

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

The 3rd London Mobile Learning Symposium

This Friday, March 27 2009, the third WLE mobile Learning Symposium will take place in London, UK. Several very interesting subjects will be covered, ranging from the recently started Mo-LeaP, a mobile learning projects database to “The Inevitability of Microcontent”.
I briefly reviewed the Mo-LeaP project, which is also a project of the London Mobile Group. The mission of this database is “to provide opportunities for the systematic gathering of practice” and to create a large resource of mobile learning projects. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, corporate mobile learning doesn’t seem to be included in the focus. Unfortunately, the database includes less than 5 projects at this moment, so I am not commenting on the quality of submissions. I will check back in a couple of months again, though.

About the London Mobile Learning Group: The people behind the London Mobile Learning Group are from several universities across Europe including Germany, Italy and of course Great Britain. Oddly enough some of the presentation titles on the website are in German… In any case: If interesting material concerning the Mobile Learning Symposium will be released (in English), I will post links to it on the mlearningblog.

Links:

Mo-LeaP Project: http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/moleap
Programme of the Symposium: http://symposium.londonmobilelearning.net/?page=Programme