Category Archives: stuff

Transforming the World

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.

Transforming the World

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 does not like Windows Mobile 6.5

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.

Becta Next Generation Learning Conference 2009

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.

Becta Next Generation Learning Conference 2009

Should be a good day as conferences go, but I suspect I will get more from the people than the presentations.

4G

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?

4G

Photo source.

Bling it on…

I will be the first to admit that I am not a great fan of educational software, not sure why, probably because when I was teaching it was so difficult to book a computer room that when we were in there, the focus was on using office applications to write assignments and prepare presentations or use the web for research. So use scarce computer time for educational games for all my learners was not really an option (for me). The use of learning technologies was more often a way of enhancing and enriching my practice than allowing learners to use the technology.

Today things are different. In my own college we have many more computers, laptop trolleys and we are also purchasing more micro-laptops (UMPCs) for use across the college.

This makes it much easier for practitioners to use educational software and games to enhance and enrich a session.

One game I recently was advised to look at (by Shirley Crawford of Cornwall College) was Bling it on…

Bling it on...

Bling it on is a literacy, language and numeracy game.

The game was designed to hook reluctant offender learners and their families into a ‘first step to learning’ and should appeal to adult learners and their children alike. The subject matter of driving cars was chosen to appeal to male learners/carers in particular. It’s been piloted in prisons initially using the ROWA Learning bus with offender learners and their families.

Find out more and download the game.

HP UK pulls Linux from all new netbooks

The Register reports on HP’s pulling of Linux from all new netbooks.

HP has decided UK consumers don’t want Linux-based netbooks. Actually, it appears to believe business buyers don’t want the open-source OS either.

It emerged today that the company will not now be bringing its Mini 1000 netbook to the UK – at least not with Linux on board.

I liked the HP 2133 model and have ordered one to show MoLeNET projects (and my college) the potential of such netbooks in enhancing and enriching learning.

Our experience with the Asus EeePC showed that the fast boot time and reliability of Linux on underpowered netbooks was a real advantage over Windows.

Are the new HP netbooks really fast then?

Royalty Free Film Music

Film and media students often like to create their own films or edit other people’s films. When making their own films, they would often use a piece of popular music or a film soundtrack and add it to their films.

Royalty Free Film Music

In the olden days before everyone has access to the internet and online video sites such as YouTube and Blip.tv it wouldn’t matter that media and film students would infringe copyright as it was very unlikely that anyone apart from the student and their lecturer would view the video.

Edit: Just to note that it mattered then as it matters now that students infringed copyright. When I said wouldn’t matter what I was thinking was that staff and students then wouldn’t worry about infringing copyright as they perceived the risk of being caught very low and as a result wouldn’t worry about infringing copyright. But it was as wrong then as it is now, just now the risk of being caught is higher.

However these days students are not only making films, they also want to show them off. They are uploading them to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and loads of other places on the internet.

As a result it is much easier for rights owners to find that the students have infringed their copyright. Regardless of your views on this, it can make life easier for the student, the lecturer and the college to have a source of music for these student films that does not infringe someone’s copyright.

They can of course seek permission from the copyright owner and this may be given or asked to pay a royalty.

The following is not copyright free, but you don’t need to pay royalties, just need to credit.

Lots of wonderful film type music.

From the FAQ

Can I use this music in a Student Film? Commercial Film? Stage Production? Flash Animation? Instructional DVD? Relaxation CD? Slideshow?

Yes. Anything and everything – as long as I get a credit.

Used it myself in a little film I made about the ALT Conference Dinner.

Great source of music for film projects.

A new kind of barcode….

So what’s this then?

A new kind of barcode....

Any ideas?

If you’re thinking it’s just a abstract graph of some kind, well you’re not quite correct.

Nor is it my new logo!

Neither is it an abstract representation of the readers of this blog.

Well if you’re thinking it must be some kind of mobile phone barcode then you’re going down the right path.

I mentioned QR codes on this blog ages ago… back in September 2007 as it happens and this is not a QR code, but it works in a similar fashion.

It’s a Microsoft Tag.

Yes Microsoft have developed their own version of mobile phone barcodes, which require their reader and require you to register in order to create them.

It’s all very typical Microsoft.

mstagsplash1

You can download a reader for your phone from gettag.mobi and when I did from my Nokia N73 it recogised my phone and I downloaded a .sis file which installed the application onto my phone.

In order to create a barcode (or should I say tag) you need to register and have a Microsoft Live ID.

You can then create a barcode for an URL or text. Though I did see that if you include an URL in your text, when you read the barcode, the reader takes you straight to the URL and you never see the text. So no chance of including your blog address in some biographical text for example. You can have a thousand characters in your text barcode, but I found I needed less for it to work (about 980).

There are only three options for the barcodes in terms of format, pdf, wmf and xps. You can specify the size of the code in terms of inches (no metric measurements here).

There are no web versions available, and on a superficial level you can understand that, why would you need an online version of a mobile phone barcode, just use the computer to access the site.

It did appear to work faster than my Kaywa reader and goes direct to the website rather than through the advertising supported Kaywa site that happens to me when I use a QR Code.

Overall I am not sure about this, not sure if it will catch on or whether we should stick with QR Codes.

Nah, stick with QR Codes.