Nice little BBC news item on the growing market for applications for smartphones.
Sales in the world’s mobile phone industry are expected to fall this year but downloads of phone applications is one area which is thriving.
Applications create new things to do on a phone and almost a billion of them have been downloaded to Apple’s iPhone.
Rory Cellan-Jones examines the emerging new trend.
The Tate galleries have made hundreds of video and audio downloads available for free on iTunes.
More than 400 files are now on iTunes U – a section of the online store which features educational content.
From BBC News
This is a vision of FE in 2020.
Stuart Edards of DIUS has said
Sion Simon, Minister for FE, has stated his ambition to see further education recognised nationally and internationally for its commitment to technology. We have now put together some simple statements on where things could be heading towards 2020 and how that compares with evidence of where the sector is overall at the moment. These build on discussions that we and our partners have had with experts within and outside the sector, with employers and with learners. They cover five main areas:
So what is your vision for FE in 2020?
A short explanation from the brilliant people at Commoncraft on what makes the World Wide Web work: browsers, packets, servers addresses and links.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZoMbBzqxyc
BBC reports on a survey about the possible identity theft issues from mobile phones.
A survey of London commuters suggests that 4.2m Britons store data on their mobiles that could be used in identity theft in the event they are stolen.
Only six in 10 use a password to limit entry into the phones, according to the survey by security firm Credant.
The survey found that 99% of people use their phones for business in some way, despite 26% of them being told not to.
Of course from an educational perspective, if an institution is giving mobile devices to students, they do need to be informed about what data the students put on that device and what to do if the device is stolen?
Dr Jane Secker, talks about her book Copyright and E-learning: A Guide for Practitioners
Sounds interesting.
A quarter of the world use the internet and half the world now has a mobile phone.
The Guardian has an interesting article on an UN report.
The speed and scale of the world’s love affair with mobile phones was revealed yesterday in a UN report that showed more than half the global population now pay to use one.
The survey, by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an agency of the UN, also found that nearly a quarter of the world’s 6.7 billion people use the internet.
I assume that if you are reading this that you more than likely have access to the internet (unless some kind soul prints out my blog articles for you to read) and if you do have access to the internet then more than equally likely you have a mobile phone.
The world is changing and the world is changing fast.
We can’t as a sector afford to stand still, nor is it merely a matter of moving from one state to another. Society and our learners are changing and we need to ensure that not only we keep up with the technological changes, but that we also support our learners to keep up too.
The problem with ILT and e-Learning is that it will never be a place we can get to, it is much more a moving target and we need to keep moving to keep up.
For example new services come and go.
I use to demonstrate Gabcast which was a fantastic free podcasting tool, now it is no longer free. Should you stop using it, well no, it might cost money, but it might be money well spent. College systems may need to change in order to make it simpler for them to pay for services such as Gabcast, but the issue is less money (colleges spend money on lots of things) and more about processes and procedures.
This doesn’t mean that you should never use Web 2.0 and other free services.At the end of the day, things change, things close down.
My view is that institutions and individuals need to be more flexible, responsive and robust in how they use services and resources so that when things do change, break, close, or whatever, it has a minimal impact on the end user, the learner.
Engadget, the gadget blog really doesn’t like Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.
Still, some of us at Engadget (well, one of us, at least), feel like the folks in Redmond missed the mark by a longshot. Instead of demonstrating its technical prowess and vast resources, Microsoft limped out a half-hearted rehash of an OS we’ve seen all too much of, and managed to blind most onlookers with a storm of big time partnerships and bloated PR.
They go on to give ten reasons why Windows Mobile 6.5 misses the mark!
Read the article in full.
I will say that I am not a great fan of Windows Mobile, for many years I used an iPaq as a PDA, but recently (an Acer c530 for GPS and Satnav aside) I have been using either my Nokia phone or an iPod touch as my personal organiser.
Today I am in London for the Becta Next Generation Learning Conference 2009.
Is this the Ferl Conference, well no.
Is this the Post-16 Practitioners Conference, well no.
Are all the usual suspects there, well yes!
The theme of this conference is much more strategic and aimed at senior management than previous conferences I have been too, which reflects the new strategic slant that Becta have had over the last few years.
It’s a typical ILT conference, even with voting units, it’s a very passive transmission of information experience, with keynotes (and even though they haven’t started) workshops which will consist more of presentation and five minutes for questions.
There is wireless, but this wasn’t announced to the audience, so it was down to rebels like me to find out what the code for it was.
So far we have had Siôn Simons, Stephen Crowne and currently listening to Jane Williams.
Should be a good day as conferences go, but I suspect I will get more from the people than the presentations.
BBC reports on the battle for 4G.
A number of companies at the Mobile World Congress are demonstrating hardware they think will make up so-called fourth generation or 4G solutions to succeed the current 3G technology.
The explosion of interest in mobile broadband – and consumers’ insatiable craving for faster connections – means that this more forward-looking part of the industry is filled with contenders.
In the UK, the highest mobile broadband speed available is 7.2 megabits per second (Mbps), and Vodafone has successfully trialled a 3G network in Spain providing 20Mbps.
It makes for interesting reading, and also makes you realise how far we have come in the last five years and how far we will probably go in the next five years.
When I first used 3G back in 2004, it was a £100 a month and I got 0.3Mbps (as in 384Kbps). Today I pay £10 per month and get (rarely) 7.2Mbps, though on average it is about 3Mbps. Ten times the speed for one tenth of the price.
If we go back to 2001, I was then using GPRS and getting about 40Kbps.
Personally for me, having a 3G connection makes my life and my job so much easier. I can do things and stuff at events and conferences, on visits to other institutions, in coffee shops and on the train. It allows me to get information, entertainment and to communicate whilst I am mobile. If our learners have 3G this makes it even easier to allow their learning not just to take place anywhere, but with 3G they can communicate and collaborate with other learners without the constraints of geography and time.
So though LTE quotes 100Mbps, I do expect in five years to see 30Mbps mobile internet connections. The question you do have to ask though is will it cost only a £1 per month?
