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This article was written 5 years ago. Now, we have the benefit of ubiqutious mobile chat platforms e.g. Whatsapp, which can create small focus groups to talk about a particular topic. Not only so, besides the usual text, Whatsapp also allows participants to share mobile videos taken on the spot, share their geolocations with one another, share audio recordings and of course, images. A personal example of how I use Whatsapp for personal learning: I use Whatsapp regularly to practice reading and writing my Japanese with a few other friends, and when I make mistakes, they can quickly give me feedback in real-time. We also exchange photos of Japanese culture, food items and even on-the-spot videos from those who are in Japan. Some of us go for Japanese classes, some don't. But those who go for the classes share what they have learnt with those who haven't.  I'm not sure if this can be classified as a type of "flipped learning", but I realized that mobile chat makes an excellent real-time, yet highly personalized tool for e-learning in small group discussions. Perhaps this is one area we can consider next time as a way to do mobile learning that harnesses the social nature of us learners.

When I think about "infrastructure", I normally think about roads, wires, sewerage and so on. But how about educational technology and instructional design? From reading Don Norman's musings about infrastructure, I realized that if we want our technological implementations to be successfully adopted, very often it's essential to also consider the infrastructure needed to support our tech designs and implementations. Personally, I think infrastructure for education and instructional design need not always be physical things. They could be intangibles such as having to update a database, notify the relevant people in charge, call this person or that to come unlock the computer lab, etc. My mum's been a teacher for 40+ years. She's great. But she really hates the computer. Not because of the learning needed to use Microsoft Word. She's quite fine with it. But it's all the non-Microsoft Word things that she has to do - reboot, turn the computer on, manage the files, etc... - that makes her scream.  "It is time to work on infrastructure. It threatens to dominate our lives with ugliness, frustration, and work. We need to spend more time on the designs for infrastructure. We need to make it more attractive, more accessible, and easier to maintain. Infrastructure is intended to be hidden, to provide the foundation for everyday life. If we do not respond, it will dominate our lives, preventing us attending to our priory concerns and interests and instead, just keeping ahead of the maintenance demands." - Don Norman Food for thought: What are some underlying "infrastructure" (tangible and intangible) that I may encounter in an educational technology project? Are there existing infrastructure that I can take advantage of to minimize time and $? How can we minimize the amount of infrastructure maintenance needed?

Found some ways on how we can establish an SOP on attributing content on social media. 

Our education minister Dr Eng Hen uses pens his thoughts in BLOGS to engage the public in a more personal way, sharing his thoughts and oberservations about educations matters. or related topics of the day.

The Ontario College of Teachers report accompanied by a 6-min YouTube video on the approach to social media in the classroom.

Twitter Music will be coming very soon in April

This could be useful for helping overworked teachers automate a tedious aspect of formative and summative assessment: tests. Yes, it's about exams, but it may not be as bad as it looks, because it can be used to enhance personalized workflows.

According to this article, the most significant factor is not the scaling of online instruction (which isn't a new thing already) _but_ the ability for educators to study how people learn in various environments. Timely and accurate feedback is an essential component, not only for students, but also for educators, in improving the quality and relevancy of education for smaller groups. Personally, I think that the rise of massively open online courses (MOOCs) will ironically lead to a huge increase in the number of customized and localized courses tailored for niche sub-groups. Instead of seeing a huge dissemination of one-size-fits-all education, we will see an increasing diversity of different educational strategies, similiar to how the diversity of an ecosystem increases when its geographic size increases. It's a very exciting time for educators out there indeed...

NIE is mentioned in this article talking about mobile technology in schools. And the platform chosen was Windows.... The National Institute of Education of Singapore is assisting teachers with the development of customized curriculum in English, Science and Chinese that leverages the benefits of mobile, Internet-connected, learning devices and provides students with new learning opportunities that are not possible with paper and pencil. We co-design technology enabled lessons with the teachers and provide professional development to teachers that enable them to enact lessons using smartphones. It is critical to empower teachers to orchestrate the transformed classroom to support students' personalized learning," says Professor Looi Chee Kit of the National Institute of Education. All smartphones are equipped with MyDesk, a next-generation mobile learning platform tailored to leverage the capabilities of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. MyDesk enables each student to access his or her assignments, relevant websites that contain podcasts, textual material and video clips and educational applications, such as concept mapping, drawing and animating, to practice both self-directed and collaborative learning.

For video team to take note. Other teams may also find the tools relevant for personal or staff use.

Stephen Downes very alternative thinking on alternative assessment: Helping others, being cooperative, and contributing to public good.

Heres a list of apps that we can consider for buying with the amount issued to the team. Personally i think the ColorExpert app can be useful for print job on the move. it allows you to quickly point and shoot at the objects and get the CMYK color asap which is good for confirming prints job spec. Get the font app seems to be nice to be quickly recongise font type while on the go. Designers can take a look at the other apps

As cool as Chirp is for fun, personal sharing, it's even better for mass communications. For example, TV shows constantly tell viewers to follow them on Twitter or go to some web site. What they're doing is giving the audience a homework assignment, making them type a code in order to receive some information. However, with Chirp, TV shows could just play the chirps. Viewers watching at home would passively receive all the content chirped by the show. TV shows could allow photo "uploads" by phone, too. You can imagine TV shows providing a number that has an answering machine. Users could snap a picture, then leave the chirp of the picture as a message on the machine. It works just as well on radio, on podcasts, in videos and any situation where sound is involved.

Establishing your PLN (Personal Learning Network).

In 2007, videotaped lectures from 10 courses were added to the Stanford iTunes site. The content on the site consisted solely of audio and video files until January 2012, when Apple launched the iTunes U app. This app allowed professors to upload additional materials such as homework assignments and class handouts, giving remote students more of a comprehensive course experience. While remote students can now participate in a course by completing homework assignments and even taking exams, they are still not able to ask questions in class, receive feedback on homework and exams or collaborate with classmates. Several iTunes U courses have attempted to bridge this gap through Piazza, an online forum that allows students from around the world to ask and answer questions and discuss the course. Remote students are able to register on Piazza to discuss the lectures and assignments with other students, although Hegarty says that iTunes U students often reach out to him for help instead. https://piazza.com/ The (Free) Efficient Way to Manage Class Q&A How is this better than email, newsgroups, and discussion forums? Students actually use Piazza, they love it. This difference stems from how we built Piazza. We've personally met with and spoken to thousands of students and instructors. The result is a beautifully intuitive and simple product that students love and use.

Hi Ashley, would this article reference suffice as 'research reference' per our meeting with Director? Thanks for your input on the Emailer. I'm working on it now.