I was at a conference in Pakistan last week and during the panel discussion one of the members made the interesting point that many women in Pakistan would not have access to a computer or a private email address (which would always be shared with a husband, if available at all). I was wondering how mobile technology might circumvent this problem to an extent. I saw many women (all, it seemed) with cellphones. This may be one more reason to explore delivery of learning materials in this way. Just something to think about when considering the use of technology for making learning resources available.
Posts Tagged ‘mobile’
Women and cellphones in education
Monday, April 27th, 2009Mobile object recognition for language learning?
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009I was just reading about advances in technology that allow machines to recognise facial expressions – to the extent where a computer is able to tell if (for example) an employee is smirking, grinning or smiling at a customer (scary stuff). What caught my eye was that computers are now apparently able to connect images with the internet. The Accenture Mobile Object-Recognition Platform will let people send pictures from their cellphones to look things up on the internet. I was just thinking how neat it would be for learners to point and shoot at everyday objects and get information about them. This could be either through regular Google searches but it could just as easily connect to a translation site. So, you walk around town and see an object you don’t know the word for. Simply take a picture and get the word both in your own and in the target language! (See the Economist from March 7 for information about the technology and an interesting Technology Quarterly supplement).
Using your cellphone for note-taking
Thursday, December 4th, 2008I use my cellphone for just about everything. I don’t keep warranties, bills or other documents anymore (unless legally required to do so) – I just take a picture and save the pictures. I can print these later if I have to. I’m encouraging my students to do the same in lectures by letting them take pictures of the whiteboard. Some students take this one step further and photograph each other’s notes for easy sharing. They can upload them to the Moodle course website if they want.
A particulary interesting little piece of software facilitates this process. Qipit (www.qipit.com) lets people take pictures that are automatically turned into pdf files and uploads them so they can be shared with others. It also cleverly enhances pictures of handwritten notes. A great little tool and one I think could be very useful for (academic) writing classes where you could explicitly focus on note-taking strategies and peer-work.
Google Android and the classroom
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008You may have heard of Google’s mobile platform, called Android. The first phone using this mobile operating system is now available (built by Taiwanese company HTC). What is exciting and potentially very promising about this platform is the fact that it is open source. This means that anyone can create applications that run on the system, including, potentially, applications for learning and teaching. I was at Korea University last week and was shown some very interesting preliminary work by Professor Gyutae Kim and his colleagues at the Centre for Teaching and Learning who proposed the use of Android equipped cellphones to allow students to collect record (written and audio) lecture notes and upload those to their own online repositories or share them with other students. Students could also submit questions to the lecturer during class or respond to polls.
The integration of mobile devices with institutional (language or study skills) support system is particularly promising as it allows educators to bridge the gap between public and private learning and for students to access materials and support when and where they need it. Expect more educational implementations in the coming months (hopefully from myself as well!).
More information about Google Android here.
Geode – a location-aware extension for your browser
Thursday, October 9th, 2008A new extension for Firefox called Geode adds location-awareness to the browser. By using wifi-positioning tools (you have to be accessing the internet on a wifi network), it pinpoints your current location. By coupling this with available information that is relevant to your environment, Geode can tell you things like where the nearest restaurant is, how to get to the nearest hospital, or where to find your friends. Through mobile internet access, this opens up vast opportunities for (language) teachers to offer location-based support. For example, when you walk into a bank your phone can give you relevant language and expressions to enquire about opening an account. Creative teachers will be able to develop exercises based on the students’ location and create collaborative scavenger hunts or other out-of-class activities. I’ve written before about similar activities using interactive exercises on the iphone, but this is taking things one level further. Not many websites are location-enabled yet, but it is safe to expect many more to be so in the near future. Exciting stuff.
More information here.
Mobile phones and social development
Thursday, July 24th, 2008Many of you will know that I am interested in exploring mobile technologies – and not just for language education. I just came across the website of the Mobile Web for Social Development group, which is part of the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/), and thought this might be of interest to some of you
You can find the group here:
http://www.w3.org/2008/MW4D/
The MW4D Interest Group explores how to use the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Mobile phones as a solution to bridge the Digital Divide and provide minimal services (health, education, governance, business,…) to rural communities and under-privileged populations of Developing Countries.
Why don’t you listen for a change…?
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Several articles are now available from this website as audio files. You can play them online or download them to your MP3 player to listen to while at home or on the road. You can find the articles on the ‘publications’ page and scattered around in various places on this site. Here is an example of an article on the use of podquests.
I use Textaloud software and an AT&T developed computer voice to have the articles automatically read aloud and saved as .mp3 files. Considering this is an automated recording using a computer voice, I don’t think the quality is too bad at all. After a minute or so I get used to it. It’s a far cry from a human reader, but perfectly acceptable IMHO.
I use this to listen to my emails while in the car or or my bike and to ‘read up’ on journal articles. In the morning I copy and paste the text files into Textaloud, then have it read the files out loud and save them to an .mp3 file. I put this on my Ipod and off I go. It saves a lot of time and is especially helpful on long flights.
