How to build a mobile website — from SmashingMagazine.com

Conclusion:
As the worldwide shift to mobile continues, handheld device support will become increasingly important. Hopefully this article has left you with both the desire and toolset necessary to make mobile support a reality in your websites.

Although mobile occupies a significant chunk of global web browsing, the technology is still very much in its infancy. Just as standards emerged for desktop browsing, new standards are emerging to unify mobile browsers. This means that the techniques described in this article are only temporary, and it is your responsibility to stay on top of this ever-changing technology.

In fact, the only thing in web development that remains constant is the perpetual need to continue learning!

Piloting mobile learning

Piloting Mobile Learning

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Free webinar on “New Possibilities for Mobile Learning”, Nov. 2, 2010 — from The Mobile Learning Edge by Gary Woodill

On Tuesday, November 2, I will be presenting a free webinar through Brandon Hall Research on “New Possibilities with Mobile Learning” at 1:00pm Eastern time. The webinar will be based on my new book, The Mobile Learning Edge (McGraw-Hill, 2010).  I have identified over 50 uses of mobile learning in corporate training, listed under 16 categories. The categories are:

1. Activity based learning – user controlled learning apps

2. Micro-blogging and text messaging – “social media”

3. Research tool – data collection

4. Trend tracking and analysis

5. Just-in-time Information Retrieval

6. Augmented Reality

7. Mobile Gaming and Virtual Worlds

8. Contextual learning – personalization and location

9. User Controlled Media Production/Playback

10. Performance support and coaching

11. Social networking and communities

12. Collaboration

13. Environmental Controls

14. Haptic Feedback

15. First person Documentation

16. Self-organized collective behavior

The Webinar is sponsored by Cornerstone OnDemand and Outstart. To register, click here. (GW)

Carnegie Mellon researchers test mobile phone games to teach children — from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser

Researchers in the United States and China are exploring how games on mobile phones can be used to teach children the Chinese language. The research is coming out of Carnegie Mellon University’s Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) Project. The results may help promote the idea of mobile phones as learning devices, especially in rural areas of China.

Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed two mobile learning games inspired by traditional Chinese games that emphasize cooperative playing, songs, and handmade objects. The Chinese language is more complex than most because it uses 6,000 characters, each corresponding to a syllable or word. One game, Multimedia Word, has the player recognize and write a Chinese character correctly based on hints such as a sketch or photo. A second game, Drumming Stroke, has a group of players practice writing Chinese characters in turns; participants must write one stroke of the character in the correct order, and then pass the mobile phone to the next player within the beat of a drum.

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Concept, graphics, idea from Daniel S. Christian:
But free for your taking and implementing!

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What:

  • Choir Practice: A mobile-based method of practicing one’s part

Features

  • The ability for the choir member to go directly to measure ____
  • The ability for the choir member to highlight measures ____ through ____ (like highlighting text in Microsoft Word), then click on the play button to loop through those measures
  • One could speed up a song up or slow it down (without affecting pitch)
  • The application would allow for all of the vocal parts to begin playing upon downloading a pre-packaged song or the application could always start playing with a certain part (i.e. 1st or 2nd soprano, alto, tenor, or bass)
  • The musical notes could be the same color or one could choose to display the notes in different colors
  • Bonus features might include a video of a director directing this song

Why:

  • This type of thing would be a great cross-disciplinary assignment for your institution’s curriculum — Music and Computer Science come to mind for this application
  • Your institution could sell this application on Apple’s App Store to develop a new revenue stream
  • Your choirs could produce the packaged songs / tracks
  • Plus, such an app would help choir members learn their parts — 24x7x365 — in the car, on the road, in the gym, etc.
  • Enhances one’s ability to listen to other parts as well
  • Aids your marketing departments as you point to this as a solid deliverable from your programs
  • Creates “study aids” for your own school’s choirs/students as well as for choirs at smaller churches and institutions (worldwide)
  • Helps those choir members who don’t have access to a piano or don’t know how to play a piano

Have fun whomever takes this idea and runs with it! The choirs of the world will appreciate you — and so will their audiences!   🙂

Along these lines…another win-win here includes:

That students in the future (I hope) will be able to choose from a multitude of potential roles when presented with multi-disciplinary projects/assignments/courses:
  • Vocalists, pianists, and other type of musicians
  • Composers
  • Programmers
  • Graphic artists
  • Videographers / video editors
  • Audio specialists
  • Writers
  • Project Managers
  • Actresses/Actors
  • etc.
As such, students could:
  • Learn to appreciate other disciplines
  • Participate in/contribute to projects that could be published on the web
  • Exercise their creativity
  • Practice being innovative

 

Daniel Christian

Adobe Project Rome brings multimedia authoring to education — from The Journal by David Nagel

Adobe has launched a new multimedia authoring tool for education. Dubbed Project Rome, the hosted service (also available as a desktop AIR app) went into public preview Sunday morning. Adobe said it’s looking for schools to participate in pilot programs using the software, especially those schools that have adopted Google’s Apps for Education or the open source learning management system Moodle.

Project Rome for Education is designed to allow students and educators to create multimedia presentations that include text, video, audio, images, animation, and interactivity. Its layout engine, which resembles the one found in Adobe’s professional page layout tool, InDesign, provides a full range of typeface and formatting controls, as well as paragraph controls, text flow from one text box to another, and text wrap for automatically wrapping copy around images and other page elements.

It also offers drawing tools and a Flash-like timeline for animating elements based on various parameters, such as opacity, position, rotation, and other transformations.

Also see:

Project Rome for Educators

Project ROME for Education Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project ROME for Education?
Available as a pilot program for school districts, Project ROME for Education lets students and educators express, collaborate and communicate ideas using graphics, photos, text, video, audio and animation in a simple, unified content creation and publishing environment to enhance the learning experience. Project ROME for Education is designed specifically for students in classroom settings. For more information, visit http://rome.adobe.com/education.

Emerging Interactive Ed. Tech: Classmate Assist and Wayang Outpost – Sensors, AI, and Context Awareness for Learning -and Teaching — by Lynn Marentette (emphasis below from DSC)

I’ve been following developments in intelligent tutoring systems for a while, and find it interesting to see how researchers are combining artificial intelligence, learning theory, affective computing, and sensor networks to create applications that might prove to be useful and effective.

The advantage of using intelligent tutoring applications in some cases is that it provides students with additional support and feedback the moment it is needed, something that is difficult for teachers to provide to students in large classrooms. With the increase in use of smartphones and other mobile devices such as the iPad, there is a good chance that this sort of technology will be used to support learning anywhere, anytime.

Although most intelligent tutoring systems are geared for 1-1 computing, I think there are some components that could be tweaked and then transfered to create intelligent “tutoring” systems for collaborative learning. Students like game-based learning, and what could be more fun than playing AND learning with a partner or group of peers? (I plan to revisit the research in this area in an upcoming post.)

Below I’ve highlighted two “intelligent” tutoring systems that incorporate the use of sensors in one form or another to generate information about student learning in a way that simulates what good teachers do every day. The ClassroomAssist application was developed by researchers at Intel, in collaboration with several universities. The Wayang Outpost application was developed by researchers at UMASS, and is aligned with the principles of Universal Design for Learning.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010: Final list, presentation and more — from Jane Knight

Yesterday I finalised the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 list.  Many thanks to the 545 people who shared their Top 10 Tools for Learning and contributed to the building of the list.   Although this list is available online, I also created this presentation which provides the information as a slideset – embedded below.

My Photo

Jane Hart, a Social Business Consultant, and founder
of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.

Job Vacancy – Mobile Programmer (Closing 26 October 2010) — from HITLab New Zealand News

Research Associate – Mobile Programmer
HIT Lab NZ is looking for a Mobile Programmer (Fixed-term until April 2011)

An exciting opportunity has now opened up in the HIT Lab NZ for a Research Associate to work on improving and extending our current software platform. The successful candidate will work in collaboration with the current HIT Lab Team and receive access to different advanced technology currently developed at the HIT Lab NZ.

To be successful in this role you will need to be able to take responsibility for:

  • Enhancing the 3D graphics engine with new functionalities
  • Integrating other commercial and open source 3D graphics engines into the mobile AR framework
  • Developing specific features for the architecture/urban planning area,
  • Developing specific features for the cultural heritage/tourism area,
  • Integrating new multimedia functionalities to the platform (audio, 3D audio, video, etc).

Ideally, our successful candidate will have:

  • Strong knowledge of Computer Graphics, Visualization, Mobile architecture & programming
  • Robust software engineering and software architecture understanding
  • Strong maths (3D Algebra), problem solving and analytical skills
  • Excellent Java programming skills
  • Proficiency in Computer Graphics Programming (OpenGL)
  • Experience with Android and Mobile Programming
  • Familiarity of OpenGL ES will be a plus
  • Familiarity with 3D graphics engines
  • Ability to work in a small team environment
  • Excellent communication skills
© 2024 | Daniel Christian