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Barbara Lindsey

Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations - ReadWriteWeb - 0 views

  • social media technology conference PICNIC2008
  • conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent.
  • Africa is unique in that it seems to have bypassed the same era of community infrastructure building that has occurred in developed nations around the world.
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  • most of the technologies that currently permeate Africa aren't terrestrial. There are very few telephone lines, but mobile penetration is higher than any other region in the world.
  • Instead, internet connectivity is distributed nearly entirely by satellite.
  • The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."
  • Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.
  • At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4% Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country. Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers. In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
  • Micro-payments and Mobile Banking
  • Mobile News Reporting
Barbara Lindsey

Upwardly Mobile » Blog Archive » Mobile Phones in the Classroom - Educatio... - 0 views

  • David Warlick asks on his blog; “what will we ask on our tests when students come in with Google in their pockets? Will they be better questions than we ask today?” Web-capable mobile phones allow users to both access and create the information which is shared on the Internet. My research explored the reality of making use of the mobile phone as a tool for accessing the Internet and the reaction of both teachers and their students to having ‘information on-demand’ or ‘Google in their pocket’.
  • Are students learning to cope with information overload and to become critical and discerning in their use of information? Hedley Beare (2002) has written extensively on the future of schooling. He states that it is ironic “that teachers currently give the information out to students that they have already deemed to be correct. There is not authentic context requiring students to critique information”. It is the ability to critique and use information that is such a crucial skill.
  • My research found that often students were being set internet based ‘research’ activities for homework with very little guidance as to how to go about finding the desired information, or more importantly what to do with it.
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    David Warlick asks on his blog; "what will we ask on our tests when students come in with Google in their pockets? Will they be better questions than we ask today?" Web-capable mobile phones allow users to both access and create the information which is shared on the Internet. My research explored the reality of making use of the mobile phone as a tool for accessing the Internet and the reaction of both teachers and their students to having 'information on-demand' or 'Google in their pocket'.
Barbara Lindsey

GrandCentral To (Finally) Launch As Google Voice. It's Very, Very Good. - 0 views

  • GrandCentral, a phone management service that first launched in 2006 and was acquired by Google for $50+ million in 2007,
  • The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” Grand Central gives you one phone number that can access all your numbers, whether they be cell, home, mobile, and work numbers; the GrandCentral numbers stay the same
  • The service was free and is still going to be free. Users can purchase credit (much like Skype) to make international calls at rates far below what they normally pay. GrandCentral will also remain solely a U.S. service.
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  • Google wants people to use their Google Voice phone number exclusively (and in fact it’s the only way to use it properly)
  • A problem with the original service – it didn’t allow text messaging, so you had to tell people your mobile number as well if you wanted to send and receive text messages with them. Now, Google Voice will accept text messages and forward them on to your mobile phone.
  • All voicemails are transcribed easily saved into the system and searchable. Users can add notes or tags to voicemails and each transcription details how confident Google is about the success of voice transcription; Google Voice highlights word in lighter color that they are not confident were subscribed properly. And transcription takes about 30 seconds to be seen in the system from the end of a voicemail.
  • Google has added new settings that allow users to route calls from specific people straight to voicemail, or your mobile phone, etc, instead of having to state their name and then be forwarded accordingly.
  • Conference and International Calls: Google Voice also added a conference calling feature allowing conference calls of up to six participants and recording abilities. International calls can also be made through the system at very reasonable rates. For example, voice calls to France are $0.02 per minute, to France mobile phones $0.15 per minute, and to China $0.02 per minute. These rates are about the same as Skype’s international phone rates.
Barbara Lindsey

AdelaideNow... School uses mobile phones as learning tool - 0 views

  • St Johns Grammar is encouraging mobiles as part of an Australian-first trial to promote the benefits of mobile technology in increasing fluency in foreign languages.
  • The Year 10 students, studying Indonesian, are given a mobile each which they use to call up an automated service that guides them through a menu. They choose from conversations about booking a hotel to a menu and are prompted to go through the details in Indonesian. Their answers are uploaded on to a website and get marked on their use of the language.
  • unique trial by the the Government's Le@rning Federation's Mobile Applications for Language Learning project.
Barbara Lindsey

Please switch on your mobiles | Education | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Texting to and from students' mobile phones is the other major application for mobile technology. A lecture theatre packed with several hundred students is an intimidating environment to ask questions, so Mount interrupts his lecture to invite students to text questions from their mobiles.
  • Two-way communication makes students feel more engaged as well as giving college administrators feedback on students in danger of dropping out
Barbara Lindsey

Mobile Devices in Education - 1 views

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    Proposed and actual examples of mobile devices for education from Duke U
Barbara Lindsey

About » OpenLanguage Blog - 0 views

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    OpenLanguage is a mobile learning network designed to help language teachers augment their classes with best of modern web & mobile technologies while helping students study while on-the-go. Need to recognize connection with publishers and product developers.
Barbara Lindsey

Voice in Google Mobile App: A Tipping Point for the Web? - O'Reilly Radar - 0 views

  • Sensor-based interfaces
  • it's time we realized that the local compute power is a fraction of what's available in the cloud
  • applications that use those sensors both to feed and interact with cloud services
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  • for too long interactions with phones have been based upon our past understanding of human computer interaction. It's analogous to how television was first used to radio plays, where we could watch the people standing around the microphones.
  • actually think the tipping point will come when we have perpetually connected mobile devices,
  • he "Evernet"
  • We are using both the proximity and accelerometer as signals.
  • Sensors (and especially combinations of sensors) are changing not only mobile phones, but also environments and more traditional appliances and consumer electronics as well. And hey, this is what my new O'Reilly Book Designing Gestural Interfaces is all about. http://www.designinggesturalinterfaces.com For an interesting take on a device changing based on how it's held, check out the Bar of Soap project at MIT:
Barbara Lindsey

Morgan Stanley: Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size of Desktop Internet - 0 views

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    The report starts out by saying that Apple's iPhone/iTouch/iTunes ecosystem "may prove to be the fastest ramping and most disruptive technology product / service launch the world has ever seen." It goes on to state that "a handful of incumbents (like Apple, Google, Amazon.com and Skype) appear especially well positioned for mobile changes."
Barbara Lindsey

Survey finds smart phones transforming mobile lifestyles of college students - 0 views

  • Text messaging has overtaken e-mail and IM as the main form of communication as 94 percent of students send and receive text messages. About 62 percent of students admitted to texting while in class. Students use cell phones to keep in touch with family and friends with 59 percent texting, 17 percent using voice, 9 percent sending IMs and 7 percent using e-mail. Cell phone camera usage has surged, with 72 percent of respondents reporting that they take and send photographs via their cell phone, up from 30 percent in 2005. About 39 percent take and send video using their cell phone, up from 4 percent in 2005.
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    Hanley's latest study is part of his continued research into the mobile communication habits of young adults. He has conducted surveys of 4,907 college students twice annually since 2005, finding that: Text messaging has overtaken e-mail and IM as the main form of communication as 94 percent of students send and receive text messages. About 62 percent of students admitted to texting while in class. Students use cell phones to keep in touch with family and friends with 59 percent texting, 17 percent using voice, 9 percent sending IMs and 7 percent using e-mail. Cell phone camera usage has surged, with 72 percent of respondents reporting that they take and send photographs via their cell phone, up from 30 percent in 2005. About 39 percent take and send video using their cell phone, up from 4 percent in 2005.
Barbara Lindsey

Mobile Phones in Edu - 0 views

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    List of links from Shambles Guru
Barbara Lindsey

ASCD Express 5.18 - Cell Phones Allow Anytime Learning - 0 views

  • She is currently writing a book tentatively titled Cases for Using Students' Cell Phones in Education: A Practical Guide to Using Cell Phones in K–12 Schools, which looks at 11 U.S. and 5 international case studies of teachers integrating students' own cell phones into instruction.
  • One of Larry Cuban's (Teachers and Machines, Oversold and Underused) theories about why ed technology often fails in schools is that we use this top-down approach where administrators or tech coordinators introduce the technologies to the teachers, and they in turn try to introduce and teach it to the students. It's a very foreign concept for the students, as well as the teachers. And often what happens is maybe a handful of teachers end up using this very expensive technology, and students don't have any access to it outside of school. Cuban recommends a much more bottom-up approach to ed technology. Rather than making specialized software and hardware just for school learning, students and society introduce the technologies that schools should be integrating into learning.
  • People who know the history of ed technology know that it hasn't been that successful, long-term, with sustaining learning because it's often attached to a tool that students don't have access to outside of school.
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  • For many schools, the hardest part is making it acceptable to turn to technologies that aren't traditionally used in schools. It's a culture that has to be cultivated at the school itself. In the book I'm working on now, many of the teachers in the case studies I discuss approached their administrators with something they'd been using with success outside of school, and their administrators were open to trying it out within school. Kipp Rogers at Passages Middle School in Newport News, Va., has done a phenomenal job modeling that approach and valuing not only his teachers, but also his students, who are involved in planning, as well.
  • Q: From what you've seen in the field, what's the most interesting instructional use of mobile devices happening now? Keren-Kolb: Definitely what's going on in Australia. Teachers are using QR (two-dimensional bar codes) for activities and learning. In the United States, about 60 percent of the phones can do this, but in most other countries, it's almost universal. So, in some Australian schools, this means [that] students come in on the first day of class and their entire syllabus is on a bar code they scan directly into their phone—same thing with some books and homework assignments. They'll scan a code for their homework, and it'll link to video tutorials and activities. So, moving away from textbooks and moving toward paperless learning that's much more interactive. I think that's exciting—how much information you can attach to that little bar code, and use it to extend learning.
  • When students can use whatever tools are around them, obviously, testing changes. It's not just about a right or wrong answer—it's about inquiry, collaboration, and the higher-order thinking skills we want students to do.
Barbara Lindsey

Teens and Their Mobile Phones / Flowtown (@flowtown) - 0 views

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    Don't like that source is not prominently displayed and not hyperlinked to direct source.
Barbara Lindsey

Please Turn on Your Cell Phone: Change Observer: Design Observer - 0 views

  • U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, came out in support of cell phone use saying, “Finding ways to use cell phones to deliver lesson plans to students would improve education and meet federal guidelines.”
  • In the U.S., 76 percent of students ages 12 to 18 have their own cell phone. Forward-thinking educators recognize in these statistics a low-tech, low-cost solution to the ongoing technology problem in underserved schools, where hardware is dysfunctional, wireless infrastructure is weak and inadequate staffing fails to meet the demands of upkeep.
  • The bottom line is cell phones are the most affordable, accessible way to provide access to technology and narrow the digital divide.
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  • But advocating for cell phone use in education is about more than cost, sustainability or parity; it’s about accessing points of entry. When it comes to technology integration, you need to meet students (and teachers) where they are. When you begin with a tool they already know and love, you’re less likely to be met with the kind of resistance you might otherwise get to institutional hardware or software. For teachers, eliminate the fear factor and you’ve empowered a previously disenfranchised group of self-professed Luddites. For students, who treat the cell phone like an appendage, you’re capitalizing on an existing passion for the technology.
  • In the model of the Asia Society International Studies School Network, we prepare college-ready, globally competent students by requiring them to participate in learning engagements both within and beyond the classroom. Internships, service learning, foreign and domestic travel and learning expeditions of all kinds develop students’ methods of inquiry. What’s especially exciting about integrating cell phone use into the curriculum is the opportunity to extend and better support the rich learning that’s already happening outside of our classrooms (while also allowing us to work around the ban).
  • We design inquiry-based curricula that send students out into the world to investigate, collect, report, reflect and engage. In doing so, students gain a sense of themselves as producers of knowledge. They become part of a continuous learning loop of inputs and outputs mediated by teacher and student alike. With basic mobile functions like voice, text and camera coupled with web 2.0 technologies, students’ knowledge can be shared locally and globally, all the while developing critical communication and collaboration skills. Audiocasting, photoblogging, polling, surveying and language acquisition are just a few of the activities that utilize mobile devices for learning. These are context-specific opportunities for students to share with authentic and limitless audiences. And for teenagers, to share is to be — which lies at the heart of their love for the cell phone to begin with.
  • we need to leverage this love to help students transform their communication networks into learning networks.
  • I ask teachers all the time, "how do you use technology (read: the Web, your phone, etc") to learn?" and it's difficult for many to answer. Like many students, they've never had models for effective learning with technology (as opposed to information retrieval, which admittedly, hasn't been great either.)
  • I am suggesting that if we want to take advantage of the undeniable potential for learning with technology, we have to help educators be learners in those contexts first.
  • Cell phones are not useful in school when pedagogy does not use them to support the kind of learning wanted. While the kids in a class are 'distracted' by their phones, they are learning an enormous amount, just not what the teacher intends. The easy answer is to ban the technology, the more difficult but far richer answer is to develop pedagogy that exploits it.
  • Kids fluency and engagement with mobile devices should be viewed as a wonderful resource and indication of their engagement in things they want to learn, not as a distraction that has to be silenced to make lessons easier.
  • Your post and these comments make it evident that educators, families, politicians et. al. must first become participants in using these tools prior to understanding or advocating for their use.
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