3 Sheep is launched!

Well it's been a while in the making but 3 Sheep Ltd., is now my sole full-time professional concern. I've taken the plunge and moved my company into the The University of Manchester Business School's Incubator and taken on a full-time role as director.

It's why this blog has been very quiet recently as setting things up takes a lot of time. I am not too sure if this blog will continue as 3 Sheep will be the place for my comments and musing on educational technology. Whatever I decide, this blog will remain in place for the time being and I will give plenty of notice if I decide to remove it.

In the meantime please do come visit 3 Sheep and in particular have a look at the training section. I am running some training in July in Manchester, which will be very useful for any educationalists wanting to create mobile websites. It will be looking at the techniques I used to develop the mobile web system that won an international innovation award at Handheld Learning 2008.

Credit Crunch VAT Tool

I've created a small mobile web tool to allow VAT checking. It's available for mobiles via the mobile web, point your browser at 3sheep,mobi and select the VAT checking link. So anyone working with students can use it to do some real price checking!

You can try it out here as well.

New Mobile Development Article by Stuart Smith

I've new article which looks at some of lessons learned from the development of the award winning Hairdressing Training for Mobile services published in the latest issue of ALISS Quarterly and how they could apply to Social Sciences and Libraries. It looks at how the technical infrastructure of a mobile service can give a library some real advantages in allowing students and researchers to access library services from their own mobile devices. Leading to cost and space savings. It would be interesting to hear from any library based readers about how they think these service could help (or not!) them.

Hairdressing Training Finalist at HHL 08 Awards

I am really pleased to discover that Hairdressing Training for Mobiles is a nominated finalist at this years Handheld Learning Awards. The service is nominated in the Tertiary, FE, HE & Adult Category under the Innovation section. It's quite an exciting moment because the mobile aspect of the service is the result of research and development over two years. This has been presented on at the Handheld Learning conferences over recent years as well other international conferences.

The winners of this years awards will be decided by text message votes. So if any readers wish to vote for Hairdressing Training for Mobiles. They can do so by texting Hairdressing to : +447786203140 (standard rates apply).

My motivations for designing the service was to try to bring the learning materials to a wider audience in a more convenient format. When my research began learning materials in colleges were generally only available via desktop computers. For Hairdressing students this meant difficult access since college salons would often only have one PC at best, often not at all. With the development of the service via mobile access, which many students have access to then materials could be accessed anywhere or anytime.

The service has been supplying learning materials to the £6 million Government funded MoleNet project and is available to subscribing colleges free of charge. Readers can try out a demo version of the service by pointing their mobile browsers at htmob.mobi and selecting demo.

Anywhere Learning - Anywhere

For sometime now I've been aware that this blog struggles for access on mobile devices. So I've set up a quick way for readers to access the latest articles on the go. The mobile version is available at http://www.3sheep.co.uk/pen/anywherelearning/. It's accessed via my 3 Sheep consultancy site. It's a new service but please feel to leave any feedback here or via the usual channels!

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?

Delivering Mobile Learning Video

I presented the University of Edinburgh's Future's conference in December last year on delivering mobile learning and the event was videoed. The recording is now available on Google Videos.

The presentation is here.



Visit here for all the presentations.

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.

UKSG Conference 2008

I attended and presented at the UKSG (United Kingdom Serials Group) 2008 Conference this year. Much of the conference was written up at http://liveserials.blogspot.com/. Here are some general thoughts an reflections on the proceedings.

It really struck me how complex the world of Digital publishing is becoming and that the publishers themselves are struggling with this. Although many of the publishers are increasingly using 'Web 2.0' style technology for delivery, very few (if any) are actively engaging the user in the process. So User Generated Content was not a phrase I heard very often. However, libraries seemed to be slowly acknowledging the challenges and opportunities. I attended an interesting breakout session on 'Library 2.0' where the presenters had identified that one of the biggest Web 2.0 barriers was staff knowledge and essentially they engaged on program of upskilling staff, so they could better understand and use these technologies.

I was left with the impression that the commercial side of the publishing process is struggling with the new tools and methods that are available en masse and cheaply. However. the conference also emphasised the importance (perhaps unsurprisingly) that one the key values a publishing house brings to the process is credibility and this will be difficult to erode with technology but if publishers want the credibility to remain valued they will have to think of ways of making sure that their markets acknowledge it and price themselves accordingly.

UKSG 2008 Day 1

This year's United Kingdom Serials Group conference is taking place in Torquay. As a conference speaker I have been put up in The Grand, which is a short walk from the International Riviera Centre, where the conference is taking place. The Grand is a pleasant enough hotel with a slightly faded 1930's charm, which is a appropriate as Agatha Christie had connections here.

It's the second time I have spoken here, the first time was in Edinburgh on Accessibility. This time it is about 'Delivering Mobile Services'. The conference is made up publishers, Content buyers e.g. JISC and service providers like Mimas.

It occurred to me as I listened to talks by James Gray, Ingram Digital Group, Muir Gray, NHS National Knowledge Service and Kevin M Guthrie, Ithaka that the delivery of digital services is increasingly complex and that publishers are struggling to define themselves in a Web 2.0 world, a world in which education services in general also struggle with.

Users are increasingly offered and have devices that promise access to anything, anywhere. However, in reality web sites and services, which in the main are still designed with desktop or laptop computer access in mind offer a second rate user experience when used on devices such as mobile phones.

Bearing in mind that most services are trying to keep or attract users it seems an ill placed view to rely on 3rd party software such as Opera Mini (as useful as it is) to take care formatting web pages for use on devices such as mobile phones.

As modes of access and user digital interactions become evermore complex then it becomes the response by services and providers must reflect and that an understanding of the complex issues involved must be grasped.

Widsets - Quick Win?

Widsets is a Nokia sponsored service that allows mobile content (usually via an RSS Feed) to be viewed on a compatible mobile phone. It is particularly useful for those wishing to keep up with news updates on the move.

An application has to be downloaded on to a mobile phone and when launched the various Widsets you are currently subscribed to are displayed. These can be added too or deleted. Not all the Widsets are RSS feeds some are applications or games.

Is it a quick win for mobilising a Web service? Not really, the Widesets are far more useful for promoting your mobile service, especially if it will not adapt well to a mobile phone but you still want an effective Mobile Web presence. Creating a Widset is straightforward and the application is bundled with many Nokia phones. So it's there ready and waiting!

I've created a couple for people to try out relating to my work with Mimas, at The University of Manchester.

One is for Hairdressing Training, which was recently launched as a full mobile service but those interested only in new updates can try this Widset widget out - .

The other is for the JISC Information Governance Gateway. This lists the latest news feeds on the site, on the most popular elements of the service -

Hairdressing Trainng for Mobiles Offical Launch

So that's it, it's been over two years of experimenting, researching, planning and persuasion but Hairdressing Training for Mobiles is offically launched :)

The event took place at the JISC Collections main offices in London and it was a packed house of tutors and e-learning support from a variety of colleges across the UK. Attendees were patient enough to listen my presentation on the new service and to hear my ideas about future Web 2.0 developments. We also had a great presentation from Jayne Salt, a Trafford College tutor and a student, they looked at how the mobile service will improve the learning experience. Jayne is a colleague in my Molenet work with Stockport and Trafford Colleges. Later after a good lunch networking we had a presentation from Glen Burr and Simon Sanders, one of the content publishers and web developer for Hairdressing Training respectively.

There was an incredible amount of interest in the mobile service from those present and most people had a go on their phones.

What particularly strikes me was the high level of interest from tutors. Hairdressing Training is traditionally under represented in ICT but today everyone saw the potential for mobile learning for students in the workplace and on the move. There is no other free service like this and Hairdressers are leading the way!

Of course now the service is launched it doesn't mean the work will end. I am already planning various enhancements to the service and am looking at how to use mobiles to deliver support information for the service. The lessons learned can be applied to a variety of subjects, so I am also looking for the next application!

Challenging Mobile Perceptions

A girl has recently been told that she may face a prison sentence for her part in using a mobile phone to video a horrific murder in the UK. The press has related this to incidents of 'happy slapping', where essentially common assaults are filmed with mobile phone, usually by teenagers and then shared with others.

For some this will no doubt add fuel to fire for the argument about how socially destructive mobile phones can be. However, for me this demonstrates the desperate need we have to continue to move towards accepting mobile devices in our classrooms and lecture theatres as part of our daily lives, because we need to create future generations who learn to use these tools in a socially acceptable fashion. 'Happy slapping' is the extreme demonstrative point of a group people who have no solid understanding of how the technology they use to enhance their daily life can be so socially destructive.

I have blogged before on how and why I disagree with Marc Prensky's 'Digital Native and Immigrant' definitions. I believe firmly that we are all journey men and women and we adopt technology at different points in our lives for different reasons but most usually because we believe it to be useful. My usual example is the digital programming of washing machines. Many parents will not struggle with this because the technology is useful and probably even considered essential. Yet the same parents may struggle with simple tasks on a mobile phone because it is not seen as essential. Conversely their children will have no problems with mobile phones because it is essential to maintaining their social life but will struggle with a washing machine because it is not something they need to deal with. Yet both require digital skills to use successfully. This generalisation (and I fully accept there will be exceptions on both sides :) illustrates why for me the Digital Natives concept does not work because life is more complicated that it allows for.

However, 'Digital Natives' is a potent image and is widely used and one result I feel is that mobile devices are sometimes seen as almost otherworldly by older generations. This is not true it's just that their useful has not been accepted. The result is these tools remain locked away and outside of classes. The result is not only is their power being kept out of the educational experience but the younger learners are not getting the experience of how to use these devices in socially acceptable way.

Hairdressing Training goes Mobile

I am very please to have taken a lead role in the development of Hairdressing Training for Mobiles. This is the first service of it's kind in the UK and is now freely available to the UK Further Education(FE) sector. This has been through my work with Mimas at The University of Manchester and is funded by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) through JISC Collections.

It always struck me that Information Communication Technology (ICT) was a difficult area to engage Hairdressing students in but mobile device usage (e.g. phones especially) was very high amongst students and over the past few years I have been investigating methods of bring the Hairdressing Training service to mobile phones, so that students could have ready access to learning materials wherever they were including: home, the workplace and on the go. My early attempts are recorded in an Alt-N article and presented at Handheld Learning 2006 and I considered the use of mobile video, web pages and XML based ebooks on mobile phones.

That work focused on single learning objects, from there I went on to consider how we might effectively bring the learning content on to mobile devices with an interface that was fast loading and fit for purpose. I experimented with an separate mobile interface which used the same core content as the desktop service but left out additional features, in fashion similar to Flickr and mobile Flickr. This was presented at Handheld Learning 2007.

From there I went onto to bring the service into production and worked with the service developer to produce the service now available at htmob.mobi.

The service is optimised to work on any current mobile device with a Web browser from phones to PlayStation Portables and is being used to provide learning materials to students at Stockport and Trafford College as part of their Molenet Project - Learning on the Go.

Students of subscribing colleges should now be able to access these learning materials anywhere and at anytime. There is huge potential for work based learners and for informal learning and it would be great to hear from anyone about how they are using the service.

An official press release is available JISC Collections.

Digital Divide - Mobile Conqueror?

It is well known that mobile phone usage is pretty much ubiquitious across large swathes of the world. However devices ever increasing in power and functionality can they help address the 'Digtial Divide'? A report, featured in BBC News, from the United Nations (UN) suggests so.

Mobile Phones have several distinct advantages as means of connectivity in parts of the world where fixed wire infrastructures might be hard to maintain because of issues such as: conflicts, environmental issues and poverty.

For education this might suggest several opportunities to make use of these in learning. Learners in remote communities might be able to make use of mobile connectivity to improve their learning by accessing tutors in larger cities or universities for example. Projects like the 'One Laptop Per Child' initiative already recognise this but mobile phones with improved computing power might also offer another alternative for consideration.

Nokia pushing N-Gage Games Platform

Readers may remember the Nokia N-Gage, which combined phone and portable games console, which was never a massive success. From a BBC report, Nokia have now refocused the brand as gaming platform aimed at wider number of Nokia devices, in particular the 'N' range.

Among the N series of phones are some of Nokia's more powerful devices and this will probably affect the quality games available (for the better). It also opens up the way for more education titles to become available. However, the N-Gage is still still platform specific (i.e. Nokia) so educators wishing to use the devices for learning will need to be aware that titles may not be available on other platforms

I'll Shozu

Shozu is a curious little mobile application that promises big things. Basically once installed on a mobile phone and an account and settings have been established it promises to allow the fast uploading of photo's and video's and text into applications like Flickr , You Tube, various blogs and etc..

I've been trying it out on a Nokia N95 8Gb, mainly with Flickr and it pretty much does what it says on the tin, which is allowing fairly quick uploads to multiple destinations. For older phones (and the application is available on a lot of models) there is an MultiMedia Service (MMS) alternative. So instead of a direct upload the upload occurs via an MMS from your phone to Shozu.

So any interesting opportunities for using in this education? Loads, if the institution firewalls allow. It is quite feasible for someone to post to, for example, Facebook etc and also to an FTP account on a Virtual Learning Environment. Or for a more informal approach to upload to shared class Blog space for example. So it could be quite quick for a group of field based students to post to shared blog and for other students around the world to comment whilst they are still in situ.

However, there is a catch Shozu tries to be all things to all men - kind of one upload application to rule them all. There in lies the rub it becomes complicated, to post to lots of spaces, lots of accounts and settings are needed, it's time consuming and dull . Conversely if you only use one or two accounts e.g. Flickr then there are quite few upload applications already in existance for mobile phones, so why bother?

Shozu is for those that want to push boundaries at the moment, it's well worth educational technologists looking at it becuase in a few years we may well see a version which doesn't rely on multiple logins to be managed on it and the FTP facility is interesting. However for large scale educational it problem still requires to much tinkering! Be interested to hear what others think.

Mobile Applications round-up

I've been looking at a lot of different mobile applications as part of my work at Mimas and as part of the mobile consultancy I've been involved as part of Stockport and Traffords Molenet project. It is a really exciting time for looking at how mobile devices might be used in learning. Until recently most UK projects centred around the the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs, sometimes called EDAs in education, where the 'E' is unsurprisingly standing for Educational). However the mobile device world is changing and increasingly we see convergence and the emergence of devices such as 'smartphones' such as the HTC range or the business orientated Blackberry range. These devices combine the functions of PDAs with the mobile connectivity of a mobile phones. They will usually include cameras (still and video), voice recorders and some form of multi-media players with of course Internet access to the Web and Email etc.. Although smartphones are generally the domain of business users (mainly because of price and marketing), these features are increasingly available on consumer phones (the phones, which are most likely to be in student and lecturers pockets).

At the higher end of the price range are devices such as the Nokia 95i and Apple Iphone, with generous local storage, Wireless Access (good for saving on mobile bills) and big screens but even at the lower end of the cost range we are seeing mobile devices with at least 1 GigaByte of storage as standard and with 3.5G connectivity and associated costs falling the power of the device we all carry in our pockets is increasing and the applications available are increasing.

Over the next few weeks I'll be looking at some of them, such as: Mobile Flickr (photo sharing), Google Mobile, Yahoo Go, Widsets and Shozu. No doubt I' ll be adding more to the list and it will be very interesting to hear from others invovled in similar research.

Review - Innovative e-Learning with Mobile and Wireless Technologies

This event took me from Manchester over to Cardiff. The event was organised by the JISC funded RSC Wales and led by David Sugden, John Traxler and John Whalley, all respected characters on the m-learning circuit.

A large part of the day was taken with reflections on the lessons learned from the JISC publication "In Their Own Words - Exploring the learner's perspective on e-learning" with focus on the mobile aspects of that report. The report was published this year and so remains current. It essentially concludes that 'personal technologies' like mobile phones and Ipods and systems like online social networks offer the opportunity to engage students in new ways and gives learners advantages, such as making better use of dead time such as sitting on buses etc.. It does also suggest that institutions will still remain the focus for learning.

The themes of this publication formed the bedrock of the day as well as exploring these themes in their own presentations and issues such as accessibility the presenters were joined by Fatma Elsayed Meawad, who looked at a J2ME interface she had designed to work with Moodle and John Alcock who discussed a voting systems with students. Both these presentations were very interesting. The principles discussed by Meawad are very similar to those I apply to the development of Hairdressing Training for mobile devices. So it was personally interesting to see similar conclusions about approaches to mobilisation of learning materials are being reached independently. The voting system used by Alcock is becoming increasingly common and essentially allows anonymous electronic polling of groups using infra-red devices. The real challenge with this system is not the technology but the development of well constructed poll questions, since respondants must always choose from a list.

The workshop was supplemented by one group sessions, where divided up, the attendees took different scenarios and looked at how mobile solutions might help in learning outcomes. This provoked some interesting discussions.

Overall the day was very interesting and useful (if a long trek from home!) I think my biggest concern is that m-learning might become compartmentalised by these events whereas I think it should only be seen as on tool in a kit of learning approaches.