Critical Mass of Mobile Web for learning?

Two recent reports from Cisco and Nielsen Mobile give strong evidence that the mobile web is starting to reach the momentum to make it a highly attractive medium for doing business on. I've been looking at the impact for business on the 3 sheep site (Critical Mass for Mobile Web and Mobiles Fourth Channel Revenue) but what about education? Does it really matter for learners, researchers and educators that the mobile web is becoming the place to "do business".

Absolutely, the Nielsen report in particular considers why the growth is possible and some interesting trends are picked out. There is a growth in unlimited data packages, which is removing the high cost image of surfing the mobile web. Also, the power of the mobile phone is growing. 3G connectivity is becoming a standard feature on consumer as well as business phones. This means a faster web experience. Mobiles like the iPhone, Motorola RAZR range and the Nokia N range series are all being used by consumers to access the mobile web. Whilst these remain expensive devices for now it will only be a short time for the technology features to filter across to less expensive devices.

For the learner this means increasingly the power of the web is in their pocket. They are not reliant on a schools, colleges or universities connectivity, nor on their home broadband. It doesn't get much more personal than this. A device in your pocket with access to your social networks, professional opportunities, leisure and business activities. And learning?

The mobile web is still struggling for acceptance. At the turn of the centuary it underwent a false start with WAP, which was over-promised and under-delivered. There are also some danger signs today, many adverts promise the whole web on your phone and whilst technically true the reality is that sites and services that are not designed for the mobile experience are often disappointing, difficult to use and slow to load. Even the Apple iPhone development site offers reams advice to developers as to how to optimise the mobile experience. Most the biggest players on the web today offer specific mobile interfaces to their services. These include the likes of Amazon, Ebay, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, the BBC and so on. Designing and developing for mobile services requires attention to specific details one of my previous posts links to a lecture I gave on the subject.

However the investment in design and development results in services that are fast loading, easy to use and perhaps most important of all focused on the mobile medium. Those web service providers that look for the short cuts to do the work for them are selling their users short because so much will be transmitted that is not needed. Mobile and Desktop Web services should compliment but not entirely replicate each other.

This was the philosophy behind my research and design of Hairdressing Training for mobiles, which was the first service of its kind for NVQ students. I made sure I focused on developing a service which partnered the desktop service but did not rival it, they are different tools for different jobs.

Since then I've been a consultant on two Molenet projects (Stockport and Trafford Colleges), which have been using a variety of mobile phones to connect hairdressing students to the learning materials. Although a short project the results have been encouraging. All students have access to the learning materials without having to wait for a salon computer (if one is available). The learning is with them at all times. One student even told me how the materials were helping to bridge a gap between her workplace salon and the college, since the salon manager had never seen the materials she was being taught with. This she felt had opened lines of communication and improved her learning.

Hairdressing Training materials on mobiles and the Molenet work is just one example of how the rapidly increasing access to the mobile web can help learning. As costs fall, availability and the power of the devices increases then so too will the opportunities. The education system needs to make sure it is adapting now. The students it will be servicing in a short time will be able to manage many aspects of their lives on their mobile phones, will their learning be one of them?

SOLSTICE - eLearning Conference

SOLSTICE is learning program at Edge Hill University. From the program has grown an annual conference looking primarily at eLearning practice across the UK. This year's conference concluded yesterday and had the tagline elearning and learning environments for the future'.

The conference extends over one and half days but for the majority of attendees (including myself) it is a one day event. There is quite a packed program. As well as two keynote speakers and closing summary. There are two sessions looking at systems in more detail and a collection of summary presentations (3) with discussions. Several sessions run concurrently and you chose according to preference. It means that in one day you will have covered about 8 areas, which is a lot. I think some of the presentations suffered because they were reduced to 15 minute slots, which is too short.

I attend breakout sessions on

• How can we make our online content interesting? by Lindsey Martin - Edge Hill University & Mark Roche -Manchester Metropolitan University


• Connecting Students, which had 3 presentations:
  
  
  • Dark Ages or Brave New World? Learning Environments for Future Learners by Nicole Cargill-Kipar - Heriot-Watt University.
  
  
  • Harnessing the Power of Distributed Learning: the Potential Benefits for Higher Education in the United Kingdom by Sue Folley & Dr Cath Ellis - University of Huddersfield.
  
  
  • mLearning a disruptive technology for UK Higher Education by Peter Bird - Manchester Metropolitan University.
  
  
• How many virtual learning spaces do students need? by Neil Currant & Professor Peter Hartley - University of Bradford


• The Wireless Interactive Lecture Demonstrator (WILD) by Dr Darren Mundy & James Proctor - University of Hull

The Keynote by Eric Hamilton - Associate Dean and Professor of Education at Pepperdine University, USA was inspiring. He looked at encouraging the use of connectivity to facilitate better connected learners calling it the "interactive bandwidth" to facilitate better "group flow". Clearly a US sports fan (he is American) he used examples from basketball and baseball to illustrate his arguments. Given a predominately English audience perhaps not the best choice of analogies but entertaining and thought provoking all the same.

The biggest surprise for me was just how new the use of digital systems e.g the Web and mobile phones etc.. remains in UK experience. Little technology demonstrated or referred too was 'new ' in Web terms but Web 2.0 and all that implies remains very much uncharted territory in education. A good example is the area of the Virtual Learning Environments. Prof. Mark Stiles in his article for UKSG "Death of the VLE" puts forward the argument that the large monolithic systems that increasingly dominate elearing at the Higher Education Level really are not the best tools for the Web 2.0 we are rapidly moving into. However for many attendees these large monolithic systems were exactly what dominated their eteaching experiences and the world of widgets and rapid development and deployment was still a long way off.

IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2008

I was able to present at the IADIS Mobile Learning 2008 conference this year which gave me the chance to also attend a variety of presentations related to the subject. The conference had a Higher Education Academic focus. The was a strong empahsis at M-Learning on engaging the user and their interaction through small digital devices. It was interesting to note that so far there is no still no set methodology for the use of this equipment. Speakers and attendees came from all over the world and it was also interesting to hear that despite the geographic and economic and polictical differences M-Learning was important part of the educational agenda in most countries. Low cost laptops such as the 'One laptop Per Child' featured heavily and it was clear that was changing IT access in some countries very dramatically.

M-Learning left me with the confirmed feeling that there is still a lot to discover from using small digital devices in learning and no one had yet found the 'magic formula' (if there is one to be found) but as the cost of devices continues to fall and their availability increases then they will help change how we perceive the learning process from being classroom and timebound to one that can be more wholly owned by the learner to suit their circumstances.