Thursday, October 16, 2008

Handheld 2008 day 3 - emerging technologies 2

Stayed with the ‘emerging technologies’ session this morning although there were several other potentially interesting sessions.

Session started with Lt. Alex Smith from HMS Collingwood on using PSP in the armed forces to help ratings learning weapon engineering principles training unit. Makes use of rapid authoring using Lecturnity to allow for quick production of emedia & etests. These are then loaded onto PSPs for sailors to use when they are on deployment overseas & on ships / submarines etc. The Promethean Activ xpression keypads were used as a demonstration of one way to use this product. The keypads are an upgrade of clicker technology & have a phone keypad so that text messages can be posted along with the usual multiple choice type responses.

Michael Kasloff from Wireless Generation on mCLASS: Reading 3DT which provides teachers with a device that guides them through their work with primary students in the US of A. This allows real time diagnostic and decision making to be made by teachers on the progress students are making with regards to learning how to read.

John Trinder from the University of Glasgow on using mobiles in & out of the real world. This is a project to look at linking the virtual (eg Secondlife) with the real world via mobile tools (PDAs). Existing bridges between the two worlds include twitter, email, streaming video & RSS feeds. Interlife is a project to bring students studying ICT together on Secondlife & this project works on providing the ability to use mobiles to link with & interact on Secondlife.

Dr. Alan Beecham from Education Bradford on the 4 years experience of using handhelds in secondary school classrooms. 10 devices used over the course of the projects moving from PDAs eventually to Asus eee netbooks. This tracks a change from constructivism to connectivism, pedagogy to heutology. Instead of spending lots of time on constructing & then reflecting, we should spend less time to construct & reflect more on what has been put together.

Jan Lepeltak & George Plakke from the NHL University in the Netherlands on VEENQUEST which is the use of handhelds in a Frisian nature park. This was adventure game developed for year 8 – 10 students to explore the environment (including taste, touch & the use of pH papers) & the environmental issues related to a national park.

Gareth Frith, University of Leeds on mobile learning & assessment for university work based practice which was completed with 5 universities across 16 health care sectors. Mainly PDA based at the moment where by the tutor creates an assessment, the student reviews material & completes the assessment & results can be linked to students’ eportfolios.

Steve Bunce, Epict (European Pedagogical ICT licence UK) on empowering educators to become competent with ICT in education. Compulsory modules include being able to locate & incorporate online resources, use & create interactive learning materials, concepts of electronic communication & collaboration plus ICT & strategic innovation plus 12 electives to choose from. Steve took us through the learning journey he took while doing the gaming module. Interesting suggestions & hints on how to make use of games in education. Also mention of using R4 cards to put other types of media on to the Nintendo DS.

A busy morning! Use of PDAs seem to have migrated to netbooks, a very viable method of setting up a group of networked computers within a classroom without the limitations of a fixed computer suite environment. The sessions took place using the Promethean Activ Board, which provided some really interesting teacher friendly tools (like ruler, protractor) the use of only ONE pen & ability to for student work to also be easily displayed as compared to the Smartboards we have at present. A couple of things I will need to follow up with out IT people at CPIT.

No comments: