19/08/2008 by nicola.

Do you use nothing but the phone and SMS? They’re my top 2 uses, maybe camera and clock+ringtone for my preferred alarm noise of choice too. Confession anyway - I hastily flung together a list of my top 10 mobile apps for learning, which upon thinking about, some are just related to personal organisation whilst I’m working in learning technology and would probably be using if I wasn’t, as well. So below is my list with proper explanations and some other ideas too.

See Ignatia’s great learning list and also Clark Quinn’s Top 10 mobile from earlier this year. If you have never visited Jane’s amazing site of top tools for learning technology, its worth a look - it has saved me - I don’t know how many hours - but a lot !

So, this is the challenge, if you work or interested and blogging about mobile technology and haven’t already done this - out your apps, if you don’t want to blog them, you can contribute them anonymously via C4LPT tools..

My top 10
Utterz - voice blogging on the go with publishing options on the spot.

Screenshot - taking still screenshots from a s60 phone, using one of the phone cameras - I use it to show shots for experimenting and for showing how to do things. There are others available for windows mobile devices and others

Find.mobi - brilliant mobile search. Provides web and mobile web-friendly page searches (Mobile web friendly pages = less time to download and display properly on your mobile device). To find flight status, select Travel from the tag cloud below the search box, then select Flight Status - you will then see various options - if you are a frequent traveller or organising conferences / events, this is such a useful mobile tool.

Other mobile search tools incl Yahoo Go, Google mobile, Kooaba also have a brilliant visual search/image recognition tool

Mobile flickr - upload photos quickly

Nokia Maps used this in Switzerland last week, it told me I was in Germany and France before I knew I was and scarily quickly finding you via GPS. I use it all the time. I think some phones are now coming bundled with Europe maps or similar / Google Mobile maps is good too (I like both equally at the moment). UPDATE - just saw a post today that can now purchase and use Lonely Planet guides from Guides-Extras menu directly within Nokia maps app.

Fring - Skype,AIM,GoogleTalk,MSN,SIP - see contacts all in one place and who is online, with options to chat/call/send files. Skype now appearing on more phones, you can Skype chat out okish from Fring, haven’t tried Skype calling (for VOIP anything charges, check operator package). I used this quite a bit when Surrey email crashed and I was more mobile for a few days, it was great. However, Twitter / Jaiku would still also be as useful and as quick !

Nokia mobile Web Server & extensions - starting to play with but finding useful, can blog, upload, IM, chat and manage a mobile site from the phone (have to pay data fees for transfer, according to your operator package).

Adobe mobile pdf reader - mostly using for work files and articles I’ve bookmarked on del.icio.us which can be read on the go.

Mobiseer - mobile bookmarking, tagging, sharing pages. Don’t find it easy to bookmark pages whilst on mobile though. Currently using this whilst mobile delicious - which found out last week, is being developed . I can currently use delicious via my webkit browser when using an N82, can edit, share, delete bookmarks but can’t bookmark pages. Can’t wait for mobile delicious - oh and a mashup with find.mobi so you could get delicious for mobile friendly pages would be awesome.

OperaMini browser - free download and works on loads of phones/devices - I also use it as a backup for any browsers I have on an older phone which for whatever reason may format pages strangely (hasn’t happened with webkit but earlier browsers on older phones). I think Opera are likely to be the first to bring out a voice-friendly browser too - they appear to be leading the way with voice at the moment. Another cool browser in beta at the moment is Skyfire.

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08/07/2008 by nicola.

Karyn Romeis posted back in May asking about social media journeys, as part of research for her dissertation - I’m finally getting round to responding which may be too late.

How did you get started with social media? What was your introduction, how did the journey unfold and what difference has it made in your professional practice?
The good:
I got started way before I had ever heard of the term social media. My first social web experience in a professional way was an online tutor course for UFI / LearnDirect in 2000/1, with discussion forums - that was one of the first times we really collaborated in a meaningful way. At this point I think I was really passionate about opportunities for communication online - having been both participant, mentor, creator, moderator of discussions - I was part of an international group and the speed of collaboration - we were using a blend of asynchronous discussion and synchronous chat - was brilliant !

Can’t remember when I first started following blogs, somewhere between then and 2005, had started some informal wiki experimentation with a couple of people in IT when I was in a temporary role at United Business Media in 2005. Was also still using discussion forums as part of my web work - writing pleas for help with css at 3am and discovering others in similar positions also at that time of day :-).

2006/7 was year of the wiki for me at PwC, I was involved with an R&D project looking at wikis, so working with people around the world to discuss whether wikis were the right ‘tool’, helping to get them going, trying out experiments with various social and other plugins on the wiki - but mainly lots of conversations and two colleagues had set up a related community of interest. We widened the scope from just blogs and wikis to other areas under the social media and web 2.0 umbrella so were starting to look at visualisations of connections and relationships as well.

The mostly irritating:
I think I joined Facebook in 2006 but not for long - threw a few sheep and chickens at some friends, connected with my brother in a different way which was nice but I didn’t find I wanted to spend time on there (some of my friends mostly still don’t spend any time online at all). I couldn’t be bothered to try and play the role of social community evangelist with them, I preferred connecting with them offline. I donated some money to a cause on FB and found my name attached to the donation which really annoyed me so I de-activated my account. I temporarily came back onto Facebook for Future of Education last year but that was only because I had to in order to attend, threw a few more sheep, chickens and a hissy fit then de-activated my account again. I’ve posted previously about some of the unpleasant aspects of online collaboration so will not repeat.

Social or antisocial and in conclusion:
I have joined some other social networks and related communities around 2006, but tend to use more for specific queries - enjoy some of the browsing, enjoy the conversations more.Up until this year, used to share links but not via delicious, which I used as a convenient one-stop source of bookmarking between various computers, laptops (and now phone), however mostly thanks to lots of advice from Eduardo Peirano - have been figuring out some of the aspects of the social side of it - some mistakes, some more to figure out about what can, can’t do.

Started my blog around Spring 07 - not really as an excuse to be social - more around - releasing some storage space in my brain, but am really grateful for conversations with people as a result of posting various thoughts. Writing in public has sometimes made me more conscious about what I’m saying, I still tend to publish first then edit, instead of doing it the right way round ! Twitter - which I started using more, following a valuable f2f conversation with Karyn in May last year, was much more social - greatly expanded horizons (thanks Karyn !), enjoyed most of the insanity, kind of regretting giving it up but still unsure about whether to go back. Having been social and antisocial via the web - am I less enthused now than when I was really excited in 2001 ? I have moments when it can be less enjoyable and less ‘new and shiny’ but working with wonderful people, sharing conversations and ideas - is what keeps me alive and inspired !

In terms of professional practice, I think at times it has made me think more carefully about how I communicate and how much can be left unsaid. Have seen so many social media articles which say its all about the conversations - but that’s only half the story - there’s a lot of reading between the lines and how you can be social and antisocial online without saying anything at all, regardless of which social ‘tool’ you are using.

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24/06/2008 by nicola.

3 blog posts in 24 hours, must be twitter withdrawal, I wonder if there’s patches…

No more emotional ranting here I think. What a difference a few days, a few contacts with a few people can make !

Also I joined this community yesterday - if ever needed an example of how technology can enable conversation around very ‘difficult issues’… I have a lot to understand about these issues and its nice to find somewhere away from BBC or Al-Jazeera too.

Visit mepeace.org

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20/06/2008 by nicola.

Two situations have happened in the past couple of years where over enthusiasm has resulted in recklessly agreeing to do things which later leave me feeling embarassed and frustrated.
1. Last year - started having early discussions with a person about designing a website for a charity - via a social network, not through the UN online volunteering which is my usual ‘channel’. It all sounded ok at first, was approaching fairly cautiously but at some point I seemed to think it was ok. Hadn’t reached a point where actually agreed to start anything. Just one thing, can’t remember exactly what it was now, but it rang a faint alarm bell, so I decided to google the person and found some references to this particular person on some scam sites.
2. Yesterday met with 2 very nice people who are doing some research into collaboration / collaborative tools and we did have a really great chat. However later found out when got home that the company that they are doing the work for, a large company have previously had a commercial operation which involved staging events - legitimately - but during those events, the nature of those businesses / commercial activity being carried out is something that I personally don’t approve of - at all.

Would like to think that have enough on and offline life experience to stop making bad judgements, but apparently not.

Has 1) made me want to stop volunteering online ? NO WAY. Could 1) ever occur again ? hope not.
What about 2) ?

We have been doing some very experimental stuff with second life at work and one of the students has been researching ethics in second life. We have been discussing how easy it would be have discussions / do stuff with no-one being able to really trace back what was either discussed or done. I am definitely one of the web / online collaboration fans and actively promote this but the reality is that more online collaboration can make it easier for people with crappy motives to carry out their crappy ideas.

I decided to delete my twitter account last night - I will miss the interaction with a mostly amazing bunch of people but there are also a whole bunch of people in my network that I have got no clue about and the idea that even one of them could do something awful makes me feel sick. I don’t know whether I would restart with twitter or not. At one point last night, I was questioning my entire ‘web / online’ use and networks I am in - whether to stay in them or not, whether to shut down the website, this blog etc

I don’t think that would be a sensible approach. There is no doubt that widening access to information and people is of greater benefit - providing networks where people can find, talk, share with others is a great thing and there is the bad side, but hopefully sharing these kinds of things online can lessen the impact of bad stuff being carried out too.

Had a nice ending to this day at least - doing some web2 stuff at work and just asked around our regular VLE user mailing list (we don’t have a formal learning technologies network group ‘online’ formally yet at Surrey, but on its way) if anyone using blogs for either personal or in their teaching / learning and have been flooded with enthusiastic emails from people who have thought about, really want to find out more or have made a start - this was totally unexpected and very cool

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16/05/2008 by nicola.

Probably worth reiterating that the views on this post and elsewhere on this site are entirely my own (’cept any unintentional plagiarism) and do not reflect those of my employer. Have also spent limited time putting this post together.

Background - have been following some of the Blackboard commercial practices - from the sidelines over the last year - mostly via Stephen Downes OL Daily.Was asked if wanted to attend Manchester Blackboard conference this week, due to having joined a uni which has a VLE from a company that was acquired by Blackboard, was thought that it would be educational event for me re finding out other unis practices with these etc. I did and it was useful. See also Niall Sclater’s post about this conference.

Still wrestling with concept of Blackboard operating as a commercial entity in the public sector. When asked by BB employees about reaction to the keynotes - attempted to explain this (albeit these were 1-2 min conversations en route to sessions). Response to this was generally along lines of corporate sector operating differently in terms of level of compliance and regulation. In some senses can’t believe that am recommending more regulation but I think its essential.

Why? Blackboard are in a unique position in education. They are operating in over 70 countries and ‘large’ (?) amounts of institutions using them at HE or FE. They were presenting research at the conference (useful research actually, due to being in this highly unique position) having spent time talking to governments and international education bodies. So, it would appear that they can obtain new businesses in new countries because they have a model from a variety of places which can be adopted and especially where countries have an entangled education system, this is very attractive.

Don’t have a problem with the model in principle. Information on their website indicates that they are healthily financially with increased revenue. Are corporate entities in education a bad thing - not necessarily but should have enhanced, independent scrutiny.
If a public sector institution is investing in a corporate solution there are a number of stakeholders who are affected financially - government public spending and linked to this, the tax paying public; students as fee payers etc

Blackboard’s vision on their website is

“Our role is to improve the educational experience with Internet-enabled technology that connects students, faculty, researchers and the community in a growing network of education environments dedicated to better communication, commerce, collaboration and content.

Blackboard’s large and diverse community of practice supports, enhances and extends our offerings every day, all over the world. The Internet offers great potential for education and the educational experience. While our role as the platform is important, communities of practice make the best solutions. The value of the network is connectedness. Each Blackboard client makes every other Blackboard client’s solution more valuable as a result of that connection.”

So to the black hole:

I think they are underselling their influence as a ‘platform’ provider in an institution. A VLE is a strategic technology partner which can directly impact on student achievement and satisfaction. Blackboard are not a blackboard - there was not a huge learning curve for either staff or students to pick up a piece of chalk and scrawl across or read a blackboard and a range of financial and technical backgrounds will not affect learning in the same way.

One might argue that companies such as Microsoft who are also a major corporation in education have similar influence ? i.e. recent cases in Europe regarding anti-competitive, antitrust practices. I disagree that Microsoft have the same direct impact - i.e. as a member of staff or student it is now possible to incorporate technologies into your learning without using a Microsoft product. I would also suggest that direct competition in terms of VLE provision is smaller (at the moment).

I believe that there is a certain amount of ‘chaos’ in education which is why scrutiny / technology governance is fragmented, inconsistent so who becomes accountable ? Does a technology contract and SLA cover this ? I don’t think it goes far enough. To outline further:

When an institution selects a VLE, eLearning / learning technology / Information technology teams spend a large amount of time on training and support (e.g. I’m delivering a day’s training today) and adoption of the VLE may spread across the institution. Staff are roughly in 3 categories

• those with technology proficiency and enthusiasm/interest in new technologies
• those who feel that technology has a role to play but they might have less technology proficiency and experience themselves so approach with extreme caution
• those who have no interest and/or do not see a value of using technology in learning

Students also use a VLE with mixed levels of technology experience/proficiency, devices and usability, accessibility issues too.

Some common themes - some of this from spending time talking to colleagues in other institutions at the conference (some of this is similar to corporate use of LMSs too)

• A large amount of time devoted to preparing, delivering training, technical, learning & teaching support and consultancy with staff
• Staff time involved in designing and monitoring courses on VLE even when training and support available
• Staff trying learning ‘experiments’ with VLE with mixed reactions from students and other colleagues, mixed levels of access and use
• Even when examples of good practices shared, common frustrations also prevalent - could be design, system downtime or other issues
• Use of VLE to complete assessments - highly complex in terms of issues to be discussed, evaluated, especially for summative assessment
• Wider use of other technologies - blogs, wikis, podcasts but often used in conjunction with a VLE
• A view (don’t know how widely held) that HE is not responsible for students technology proficiency, this should have been addressed before entering HE

So who is held responsible for managing these issues and if students don’t achieve what they hoped and/or levels of student satisfaction with use of technology. Staff and students. A platform provider ? Not really. Are VLE’s evil ? Not really. What about other quality assurance bodies ?

This situation in education is unprecedented, dealing with accountability is not.If a business has issues in terms of operation which are affecting its success, accountability can be scrutinised, suggestions made, reported and monitored. When businesses get into trouble, soulsearching - looking at the heart of the issues - rather than glib, general reporting will hopefully result in common sense discussions and actions to improve the situation. Which I guess is why there are four very successful multinational corporations providing these professional services.

Can education scrutinise and report on the actual impact of VLE use - difficult to find evidence of this at the moment - who, how and in what countries ? In the UK there are bodies such as QAA responsible for ‘enforcing’ quality assurance in higher education. For example the Code of Practice - no use of technologies categories - looked at the programme design document and did not find any specific references. There is evidence of international discussion e.g. the recent OECD forumsAlso the report where themes of governance, regulation, impact of technology on performance etc

Looked at four big audit companies websites for further information - there is some about technology governance and public sector governance, but needs further digging to get education specific stuff. There is a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is about bigger issues than this, however I think there are parallels in terms of how business and education can work together be regulated in order to achieve successful, public-private partner relationships.

This may seem over the top but as everyone that cares, knows, we don’t have time and money to waste in education, it is too important, too special for individuals and the future workforce in every single nation.

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02/05/2008 by nicola.

This post is about links to some great stuff I’ve been looking at and now not got time to write about in more detail:

1. George Siemens has provided a fantastic overview of not just open education resources, open source and open content but also questioning motivation for promoting use of open content. He mentions about the need to be able to develop (and publish) their own content, then how to make this available - taking into account the ‘localness’ (apologies if that’s not a word) of their content. Curriki? but again, publishing to a wiki when you don’t have much access to a pc is challenging, there are a couple of mobile wiki projects around, one in SA looking at searchable audio wikis in a school, using phones - but phones are not the only part of an overall solution to improve access to education using technology (I think - we’ve tried downsizing laptops, how about upsizing phones which are already out there - to some degree).

2. More brilliance from Jan Chipchase about how people are using mobile phones to improve their circumstances in developing countries - Open Studios where people who would not normally have an opportunity, can pitch / show their design ideas, explaining the context and reasons for the design. Local context being so important, ok so it doesn’t do Nokia any harm either but its SO helpful in understanding how people want to innovate locally.

Also a great presentation of research in Uganda about shared phone practices

3. A report, found via Mobile Active on Wireless Trends for Social Change - a great read.

We are so lucky to be able to access all of this information and that these brilliant thinkers (George, Stephen, Jan, Katrin and many others) are willing to share their ideas and presentations with the world !

4. Also on open content, from Kairosnews, a guide to research writing available as open content.

5. Stop Wildlife poisoning campaign in Kenya, the photos and videos spell out clearly the appalling effect on wildlife. Baraza blog has been documenting the build up and outcome of a multi-agency meeting held in Kenya last week , they have now launched a separate blog on this issue about trying to ban a poison called Carbofuran. Its great that they can bring all parties involved (including manufacturers and government agencies) together to discuss and agree actions for moving forward in a positive way.

6. More on how to stop faffing and get on with stuff, from Afrigadget too - an interview with Simon Mwacharo who is talking about his renewable energy business creating affordable, sustainable energy solutions - talking with his customers about what they need locally and providing solutions - this is up there with any great lesson in business.

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29/04/2008 by nicola.

Anol Bhattacharya who writes the brilliant SoulSoup blog has shared a link to this Social Networking Wars video

On a related note, am unplugged at home from this Friday for at least a month (or so) going to rediscover the offline world - so have a fantastic month (or so) !

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22/04/2008 by nicola.

Billed as the ultimate night guide, there are a variety of N82 users in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam who are using their phones to blog / tell stories of their nocturnal activities whether visiting places of interest, shopping, cafes/bars/clubs, playing sports etc, just choose a country then take a ‘tour’ through their photos and videos.

I haven’t visited any of these countries yet, is fascinating to see it all.

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20/04/2008 by nicola.

Some interesting points on a TED talk by Yochai Benkler - Open Source Economics

Information produced traditionally - market based or government owned. Enter 2002, lots of publicity surrounding commercial supercomputing e.g. IBM - but lesser known, 4.5 million users contributing to sharing resources to power a supercomputer for NASA to analyse data coming from radio telescopes. Information not less capital intensive or even less expensive but difference in way capital is distributed. With a computer information production, knowledge and exchange is in the hands of up to a billion users, (how about phones with 3 billion ?)

Free or opensource software (e.g. LAMP - Linux (operating system), Apache (webserver), MySQL (Database), PHP (server-side script), visible because its measurable - many examples now across the web. How is relevance as well as content produced - e.g. Open Directory project has 60,000 volunteers - no one owns, free to use, output of sociological & psychological motivations to do something good, Wikipedia another example.

Wireless - traditionally owned by one person, had to be licensed or based on property, now people can own wifi devices with sharing protocol to allow people to build their own network, when they are not using, resources can be used across the network.

So no longer just market based or centralised or decentralised production, emergence of social sharing and exchange but now is having major economic impact - no centralised authority, open to everyone to innovate, now takes less time because tasks are spread amongst larger user/contributor base. Acting as a new form of competition - making inroads into or taking traditional market shares, new opportunities for people to create tools and software, building platforms as a model.

BUT - it is threatened by current commercial infrastructure with IP issues etc. I am interested in this, because I was about to launch a personal project creating an open source mobile application - a week ago, now I’m still no further on in answering questions from a previous post about mobile phones, application development as a way out of poverty. So I guess, the only answer for now is to go ahead - try and create the app and see what distribution issues I run into along the way.

Based on everything I understand about open source models - via some great info from Harold Jarche’s blog and Ajit’s models from Open Gardens, which have referred to in a previous post. Is it producing an economic shift or revolution and if so, what are current market competitors doing about it ? Another question to add to the ever growing pile - if anyone has an answers, would love to hear from you?

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20/04/2008 by nicola.

From Pocketnet - an article explaining Samsung’s mobile phone that is powered by a fuel cell that uses water. Interesting alternative to solar power, but no indication on pricing as yet. Great idea though.

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