Serious Games? Join the free #mLearning course #MobiMOOC

With the start of MobiMOOC getting closer, all the course pages become populated. (The free, open, online course MobiMOOC starts on 8 September 2012. Not registered yet? Simply become a member of MobiMOOC google group to become a participant in MobiMOOC).

In the third week of the course (23 - 29 September 2012) David Parsons from the Massey University in New Zealand will take us on a one week journey into serious games. He will ask all of us participants to exchange experiences, challenges and ideas on games for education and showcase a game he has been developing.

To get an overview of the essential factors of why games stimulate us for learning and which implications this have I gladly link to a wonderfully inspiring presentation by Sebastian Deterding (seriously, it is mind blowing beautiful and intelligent!). Make sure you look at the presentation in full screen, as the comments Sebastian provides in his presentation are what makes it an inspiring slide set.

Don't Play Games With Me! Promises and Pitfalls of Gameful Design from Sebastian Deterding

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Call for attending #UNESCO #Mobile Learning Week in Paris

UNESCO will hold the Second UNESCO Mobile Learning Week (MLW) from 18 to 22 February 2013 at its Headquarters in Paris, France. I know it is still early, but you can already register via this online link.

The event aims to explore mobile learning as a unique and significant contribution to achieving the Education for All (EFA) goals of increasing education access, quality and equality. 

MLW 2013 will focus on three particular EFA goals as they relate to mobile learning:

• Improving levels of adult and youth literacy: how mobile technologies can support literacy development and increase reading opportunities
• Improving the quality of education: how mobile technologies can support teachers and their professional development
• Achieving gender parity and equality in education: how mobile technologies can support equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality for all, in particular for women and girls

MLW 2013 will consist of the following events:

• Symposium on Mobile Learning (open) - 18 and 19 February
• MLW Webinar (open) - 21 and 22 February

Officials from Ministries of Education, international experts and practitioners in mobile learning, as well as representatives from major partners in the field will share innovative ways of learning with, and through, mobile technologies, and how they can be used to achieve the Education for All goals and improve the quality of education.

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Join #MobiMOOC for an #ethical debate on #mLearning #philosophy

As the free and open online course on mobile learning (MobiMOOC) is approaching its starting date (if you have not signed up for the free course, simply become a member here), the specialized topics are getting populated with wonderful content. For all of you interested in discussing technologies and its impact, get involved in the John Traxler's week on the impact of mobile devices on the world.

John Traxler has paved the way for many mobile learners and he is philosopher at heart looking at the benefits and potential pitfalls of learning with mobile devices in the current world.

What is your opinion on these random questions?

• When the North is providing technology for the South, is this empowering for the South, or only opening up a profit for the North? 
• Up until now education has not been able to reach all children and provide primary education for all (United Nations Millennium Goals), so is it reasonable to think that mobile learning will achieve this, or is this yet another technological utopia?
• When will we see the first African cell-phone companies challenging the global market?
• Is it possible to build a durable mobile learning strategy for all, if poor people (any region) can only afford low budget phones?
• Is the use of mobile devices in the classroom another addition to the digital divide, creating an ever growing gap between the have's and the have not's in all regions?

John has been adding content to the course wiki, creating an interesting set of resources (movies, papers...) so feel free to have a look already.

If you feel a growing interest, or if you have strong ideas on the subject, get to the MobiMOOC google group, become a member for free and get engaged in the MobiMOOC course! There is a growing number of wonderful people gathering there, from 6 (SIX!) continents. Only Antarctica is missing ... what do these scientists do there? Don't they use mobile devices?

Here is a movie where John Traxler gives his view on mobile devices and their impact:

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Why and how to use #Mendeley to create a #research library

Four days ago I came across this wonderful post from Patrick Dunleavy on why he choose Mendeley to become his personal research library organizer. He gives a good account on how he uses it, but what I was missing in the post was a comprehensible quick userguide, introducing the Mendeley features.

Luckily my esteemed and warm-hearted colleague Prashanth Srinavas just finalized a presentation right on the subject. So I gladly share his presentation that takes a look at

• what Mendeley is
• How to add papers 
• the web importer
• document details
• managing your documents and references
• full text search
• citing and sharing references
• creating your professional research profile...

It is a great way to get up to speed with Mendeley in a minimum of time.The thing I like about Mendeley is that they finally got onto Android as well last year. This made all the difference for me.

Here is his Prashanth's presentation.

Mendeley overview-presentation june1 from NS Prashanth

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Blogphilosophy: learning is a way out of life's options given at birth

Life is a long strand of actions, choices, forced decisions, or results that can be causes themselves and causes leading to results... my learning path cannot be called normal nor without its challenges, nevertheless, I made it. Meaning: I got out of a precarious place, I left chaos behind me. I now have a job, a house, a partner that loves and loved me even when the chips were down. I survived and all of a sudden I realized when looking what happens in the world today ... life was easy.

If you have ever been poor, or challenged, or have fallen victim to one of the many temptations that lead to a life of misery and complexity, you know why at a certain point you pull yourself together and start learning. For if you had to fight for a long period of time, simply to keep on living, there is only one way out. Granted, a way out that has many faces, but the same at its core: learning.

We learn to get out of the mess we are in, or - less dramatic and urgent - to improve our lives. In the first case, we cannot but learn the hard way.

Yesterday I got word that one of the children from the day care center my son is at, will be banned. Her parents no longer have the money. They are in debt. Having been poor, I picked up certain familiar traits indicating financial challenges creeping up on them. Nothing big, the last thing any of us want is that poverty becomes apparent at first glance, but nevertheless those of us who have been there, see it.
That little girl of not even two years of age will now stay at home. Her family situation is tough and with no quick fixes.As soon as finances become a heavy burden, family life gets harder. Everything becomes a discussion. Tensions arise. Everything becomes a priority, and sadly every choice deletes another priority. So here she is, that little girl, amidst dire straights, no longer at a nanny for 7 hours a week. She was at ease at the nanny. There she got organic fresh food, a good and safe shelter, and positive stimulation's. During every day at the nursery that little girl would learn from her peers, have no or less worries for a big part of her waking day. Now, she will be out. And once a child is out of daycare in my region, it is almost impossible to get back in. Because she will now be home, the chances of her parents being able to earn extra money diminish as well... she risks being caught in a downward spiral simply because of her position since birth.

In the same week I heard that the 21 year old Somalian athlete Samya Yusuf Omar, who carried the Olympic flag for her country during the Beijing games perished. Dead because she was on a path to improve her living conditions, her chances. She wanted to compete during the London Olympics and had the potential, but ... on her way to find a coach (she did not get funds in her own country), she died during a shipwreck, while escaping her living conditions in an attempt to increase her chances, attain her full potential. Living conditions she tackled were undoubtedly plenty: sports, endurance, perseverance, creating chances ... unfortunately her birth chances put her in a difficult starting position and because of that, at a certain point she embarked on a fatal trip in a raggedy ship, heading North to Fort Europe.  

The thing is, learning is not simply getting a degree, having some paper indicating you went through hours of books, assignments... For the most of us learning is the only way out of personal challenges, and its a hard road without guarantees. And what is worse, hardly any of us get to learn what it takes to learn. Learning takes a lot of unwritten skills. That is why learning in any form is so dear to my heart. I need to believe that when we all pitch in, we can make a change. Create more chances... not to become the president or prime minister of any country, but to attain peace of mind, or peace all together.

In the meantime my son has two mothers watching over him, both of them now working in education. We know the benefits of education and of the simple act of learning. We know how the system works, what the pitfalls are and why simply learning to learn will improve his chances for a healthy, happy life. For us, he does not need to become anything else but a happy human being, able to find his way. Not sure if it will work, but ... at least there are increased chances. Would not it be lovely to create these chances for all of us?

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Reformatting #multimedia recordings to publish them in #mobile formats

In preparation of my courses I am reformatting some multimedia sessions to fit mobile delivery. Here you see an example of a session given by David Metcalf on mLearning. The source of this recording was an online webinar which was than made available for mobile access through the simple process listed below:

How to publish a virtual classroom recording into a mobile accessible format?

What I usely do to reformat synchronous virtual classroom sessions into mobile accessible files is record the screen + audio of the sessions via Camtasia (there is a 30 day free trail version: http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/ )

With Camtasia you can record the screen and audio of the virtual classroom session. You can then edit the recording (maybe shorten some points, or skip immediately to where the session starts without the intro). After the editing you can produce the movie into a format of your preference (mp4, mp3 are most common and cross-device mobile standards).

You do have to take into account getting used to Camtasia, but it is an intermediately easy software (btw I am only an eLearning developer, not a Camtasia person :-D

There is a useful tutorial here on how to use Camtasia (14 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwAxdMZOnM

After I have produced my virtual classroom session into mobile formats (e.g. mp4 or mp3 for audio podcast), I cut them up into videos no larger than 15 minutes and load them up to youtube (youtube does not allow videos larger than 15 minutes at first, only after they check which type of videos you put up, they can open the channel for longer movies). This allows people with a variety of devices to look at the reformatted virtual classroom movies, as YouTube will now offer those recordings in the mobile YouTube format.

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WiZIQ offers free #iPad enabled online #classrooms for teachers

Virtual classrooms are a technology in high demand as they allow any trainer or teacher to reach an international audience at any given moment. For the free, online course on mobile learning - MobiMOOC, we will also be using WiZIQ and the nice thing is, since last week any teacher linked to an academic institution can now register for a free teacher account. So that opens up possibilities for every teacher located in low resource environments. For those interested in trying out or applying for a free academic, teacher account, have a look here: http://www.wiziq.com/academic/ .

WiZIQ has been on the market for a long time and in the past I explored the WiZIQ options. Due to organizational options, WiZIQ was not a central teacher option, but ... as time went by WiZIQ started to come into the picture again. As such the educational department of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, who has students and partners around the world is taking a second look into the WiZIQ functionalities. In the meantime I am going ahead with it in MobiMOOC.

The reason for considering WiZIQ for MobiMOOC was based on four needs:

• it should be accessible by a wide audience (differences in bandwidth, infrastructure and digital skills), 
• it had to be learner and teacher friendly
• it had to have at least some mobile options (WiZIQ now has an iPad app functionality) 
• it had to offer recording options. 

WiZIQ has a nice set of options: white board, breakout rooms, polls, screen-sharing, content uploads, public and private classrooms... and 15 GB storage for recordings. Once MobiMOOC has ended I will gladly share an update on its functionalities and how it went throughout the course.

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