In 2009, the cell phone is a pretty common device in our student’s lives. Take a minute to search “What’s In My Bag” on Flickr and you’ll quickly realize just how many kids are packing cell phones, smart phones, iPods and a number of other handheld devices.

I couldn’t help but get a little excited as I read Adobe Advances Mobile Efforts from the most recent Smart Classroom newsletter. The article describes Adobe’s latest efforts to try and push the boundaries of mobile computing with their Flash 10 platform. Adobe has just released a beta version of the Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player so developers can take advantage of creating rich, interactive web content using the popular swf format on both Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 phones. This move by Adobe could mean that the mobile industry is a step closer to adopting a common runtime. A runtime that would in fact be common across desktop, Web, and mobile environments.

According to the 2007 eLearning Guild 360 Report on Mobile Learning, 50% of their members felt that lack of a common mobile standard was a large barrier to mLearning adoption. If the Flash platform can emerge as the dominant runtime across the large spectrum of mobile devices, we could reap the benefits in education. Developers would be able to build Flash-based applications that could be deployed on all of the devices our students already have in their possession. Once those devices that students are using NOW to have synchronous conversations, browse the web, email, text message, IM, watch movies and listen to audio open up for teachers to push content to, mLearning could become a force in the P-20 education arena.

A standard mobile runtime would open up the vast array of cell phone and smart phones to the learning environment. It would essentially take an item which today’s students already possess and turn it into a personal learning tool. From a teaching perspective, we are then presented with a brand new instructional tool that has transformative potential...not to mention one that doesn’t cost the teacher, school or district a dime! Sell that one to your taxpayers!

What is mLearning?
The eLearning Guild defines Mobile Learning (m-Learning) as:
Any activity that allows individuals to be more productive when consuming, interacting with, or creating information, mediated through a compact digital portable device that the individual carries on a regular basis, has reliable connectivity, and fits in a pocket or purse.
Wikepedia M-learning entry:
One definition of mobile learning is: Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies. In other words, mobile learning decreases limitation of learning location with the mobility of general portable devices.What does this mean for education?
Educators need to come to come to terms with the fact that disruptive technologies can have a positive impact on teaching and learning and then work towards an understanding of how that should affect our pedagogy and practice. Teachers need to be aware of how many students have their own devices, the applications students are using, think about how they could harness this enthusiasm for mobile devices and focus it in an educational direction.

Districts have got to stop banning cell phones in school. I implore schools and districts need to take a close look at their current policy on student cell phones. When was the current policy adopted? How was cell phone usage different then than it is now? What are stakeholders concerns about student cell phone usage? What are the potential benefits to allowing kids to use phones in school? Is it possible that students could take advantage of cell phones as data collection devices, ubiquitous connections to the Internet and tools for socially constructing knowledge? If they answer to any of these questions is yes, then it might be time to adjust your policy for 2009 and beyond.

We need more discussions about mLearning to occur between educators and programmers. Teachers and developers need an opportunity to discuss how mobile applications are being used in schools currently and how they could be used in the future. Although we think that these two unique groups of individuals are very different, in fact they are very much the same. Both teachers and developers are looking to help people. Whether it’s through teaching a 3rd grader multiplication or a building a new app that does things bigger, better and faster, the bottom line is that both teachers and developers are catering to the needs of end users. Discussions between the two groups need to begin sooner rather than later. If we let business and industry drive mobile application development, then all we are going to get are apps like this.

It’s time to get serious about mLearning in the P-20 educational arena.

Photo Credit: Blackberry Storm by T-Fiz on Flickr

I’ve been supporting classroom teachers in their integration of technology into their curriculum for about the past 8 years. In those 8 years, I’ve met a wide variety of teachers, some who are comfortable with technology; some who aren’t so comfortable. One thing that I can say with certainty about almost all the teachers I’ve had the opportunity to meet and support, it’s that they all love free resources.

Seems like these days, with all the talk of an economic downturn, shrinking school budgets and high expectations, there just aren’t too many things in this world that can brighten a teachers day like a free resource. It was the opportunity to brighten a teacher’s day and my love of the free resource that drove me to give Jing, a free screenshot and screencast sharing application, a test run the other day.

For those of you unfamiliar with screencasting, a quick peek at the official Wikipedia entry reveals, “a screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.”

Here’s how my experience with Jing shook out:

My wife, Kimberly, had made several comments over the past month or so about this free screencast tool that one of the other Technology Specialists in her district, Scott Aten, had been using. Not one to ignore, or tune out my wife, each time I “heard her” talking about Jing, I would respond with something like, “neat” or “that sounds cool,” but I never really got excited enough to take a look at the application in my spare time. That is until this past Thursday.

A while back, I had worked to produce a couple different video simulations of the eLearning courses we had developed for e-Read Ohio at the University of Akron. The results of my efforts were two Adobe Captivate authored .swf files that gave end-users a virtual “walk-through” of an e-Read course. We created them to put on our website so that potential participants could get a feel for the type of online environment e-Read offers. Once I got them loaded onto the site, one of my colleagues noticed that some of the verbiage was out-of-date and asked me if I could update those. “No problem,” I told her, “should be a quick fix.” Famous last words that I would have to eat…

As I sat down to begin editing the source Captivate files, I ran into my first snag. See, Captivate is a PC only program, and I was working on my iMac. No problem, fire up Parallels and I should be in business…or so I thought. I realized that the only computer that I ever had Captivate on was a Macbook Pro from my office, a laptop which was no longer in my possession. Bummer. That’s when it came to me...JING!

I scrounged around in my files and was able to come up with the original storyboards and scripts for the simulations. From there, it was on to the Jing website to grab the free download for Mac OS X (Windows version available too). A simple install and I was up and running, ready to Jing this thing out…or not.

I ran into another snag as I was trying to record my screencast. For this project, I needed to take people on a guide tour of our courses. To accomplish this, I had a very succinct and effectively crafted script to accompany my screen movements. As I tinkered with Jing, I found it to be extremely difficult to try and coordinate my navigation of the course and produce an Oscar worthy performance in the voice-over category. It was just too much to try and click in the right spots while reading from a script. I tried a number of times and just couldn’t get a satisfactory take. That’s when I turned to some of Jing’s other features.

During my fiddling, I noticed that one of the options a Jing user has is to export the screencast as a .swf. I decided a better approach would be to record the screencast without audio, export the .swf from Jing, import the .swf into a new Adobe Flash document and then edit the audio piece together in the Flash timeline. To record the audio, I fell back on my old and trusted friend, GarageBand, which allowed me to export the audio files in a format that was Flash friendly (.mp3). By piecing the screencast and audio together in Flash, I was able to add frames and delete frames from the Jing where I needed to match my audio. The end result was actually a lot more time intensive than I thought it would be, but I was able to put Jing to good use and come up with a fairly decent video. You can view it here.

Overall, I think Jing is a great tool. Upon further investigation, I have come to find that the developers of Jing never intended it to be a fully functional screencasting software application along the lines of Adobe Captivate or Camtasia. In fact, the website explains, “Jing's minimal feature set keeps the focus on instant sharing.” For quick and dirty how-to type tutorials, Jing is an excellent FREE solution.

I would recommend Jing to teachers for creating quick demos of frequent tasks that students or parents might need to review from time to time. For instance, teacher might create a Jing that:

• Shows how to access your class delicious bookmarks
• Demonstrates how to log-in to your class wiki/blog
• Explains how to fill out a Google Docs form you have created

Here are some other pros/cons I’ve compiled from my experience with Jing.
Pros:

• **Free**
• Mac/PC
• Simple controls
• Select any window or part of a window for capture
• Tracks mouse movements
• Exports as a .swf

Cons:

• Screencasts limited to five minutes
• Narration has to be done on the fly
• .swf export does not include audio
• You must use Screencast.com to host your Jings

Photo Credit: Jing Mao Tower: vista interna do prédio by designative on Flickr.

It's February in Ohio, and in the ed tech world, that means one thing...time for another eTech Ohio state technology conference. For those who have never experienced eTech, here's a brief description from the official conference website:

• Meet with thousands of Ohio educators at the state’s premiere educational technology professional development conference. Don’t miss this opportunity to see emerging technologies and the convergence of existing ones. Learn from your peers and national experts as they share their experiences with technology in the classroom, school building and community.

eTech has been an excellent place for me to hone my presentation skills as I've come up through the ranks. I've had the benefit of being accepted as a presenter for the last 6 years or so, and this year was the first time I have been ask to give my presentation on 2 days. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, it seems like the conference planners really saw the relevence in my proposal, hence the 2 time slots. On the other hand, maybe it signals the lack of interest in the event and the conference planners are just trying to put together enough sessions to fill out the rooms/time slots.

I have to admit that for the past 2-3 years, eTech has somewhat lost its luster. I can't exactly put my finger on what about the conference isn't doing it for me, but I think that it is really the fact that the conversation there has never moved past the "we know we should be integrating technology in the classroom" phase. I mean, after 6 years, shouldn't we be talking about and planning on how we will revolutionize education in Ohio through technology? This just isn't happening. If it is happening at eTech and you're reading this blog, please let me know where this conversation is occurring so I can run right over and join in.

I had a similar gripe with NECC 2008 which I blogged about here. Generally, I'm just not seeing people at conferences who are talking about transformative technology and revolutionizing education. Instead, I see people talking about gadgets (this year iPod Touch seems to be the hot gadget at eTech) and providing links to great resources for teachers. This is all good, but what I continue to miss in all the sessions like these that I attend is a thorough analysis of how gadgets and websites can inform teaching practice and change pedagogy in a way that engages, enthralls and ignites our students to become better thinkers and learners.

Wesley Fryer touched on these ideas during his keynote address this morning. If you missed his presentation, you can read catch the highlights here and check out his presentation resources here. There were a large number of people in attendance who seemed to be listening to him. I wonder how many people at eTech Ohio 2009 actually heard him?

Photo Credit: The Beginning of the End by StrangrThanCandy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/strangrthancandy/3014838976/