#m4D webinar with #mobile #health projects from Malawi provided by Limbanazo Kapindula

In this short (15 min + 5 Q/A) and very illuminating webinar given by Limbanazo Kapindula who spoke straight from Malawi, Africa, we all get an idea of the impact of simple sms solutions on the health of the whole family: parents and children.
In the webinar he shows how African community health workers work around some connectivity challenges, how they solve stock problems in their rural clinics... Another interesting addition is Limbanazo's analysis of the sms's exchanged and for what purposes: health related, technical, emergencies... The simple fact that sms is used for such a variety of purposes gives an indication of its impact.
Limbanazo also looked at the impact on costs and time saved thanks to setting up the frontline sms based solution. If you want to join hands for your own project, feel free to email him at lkapindula

(at) gmail.com

A look at 5 #mLearning theories and examples with Geoff Stead

During this week of MobiMOOC (the free, open online course on mobile learing), Geoff Stead from the Tribal lab in Cambridge, UK managed to link 5 mobile learning theories with practical mLearning examples in a 60 minute webinar.

The webinar can be viewed here. For me it gave new ideas, new inspirations to gather my own personal thoughts on pasting mLearning factors together and connecting existing projects to one or several of the frameworks mentioned.

Amit Garg lists the factors for engaging in corporate #mLearning

This week Amit Garg from Upside Learning gave a couple of webinars on corporate mLearning. In the webinar here, he gives an overview of the factors to take into account when developing corporate mLearning: security, just-in-time, ...
This webinar is part of MobiMOOC, which is now running in its third and final week and has participants from all around the world engaging in discussions and debates on the subject of mLearning.

And here is the powerpoint that accompanied the webinar. Enjoy!

No Escaping Mobile Learning from Upside Learning

Webinar recording on #train-the-trainer from Jacqueline Batchelor #mobimooc

During the third week of MobiMOOC, Jacqueline Batchelor focused on the challenges and benefits of creating a train-the-trainer set up for teachers/tutors/trainers to use a mobile phone at the center of their training and teaching.

The powerpoint of the presentation can be found here, and the youtube or audio presentation is also embedded more below.

Train the trainer from Jacqueline Batchelor

It is a great seminar, combining theory with practical implementations from her South-African context.

Recapturing #aufgs2012 Athabasca University's Graduate student conference

Last weekend I had a wonderful and enlightening time in Edmonton, Canada. It was the first time I met several of my online friends and ... during the conference I got to meet people that really made me feel part of a community, the Athabasca University community.The wonderful thing about this gathering was the high quality research that was shared, and at the same time the feeling of being embraced in the community. The conference was small enough to allow real contact to happen. A great combination.

Who did I meet, and why did they make a difference?
During my master I had many, many really inspiring professors and teachers, one of which was Terry Anderson. Terry connects with people, he is on a mission to make technology part of the human social life and his Athabasca landing is a wonderful platform. He also always keeps me focused and on my tows, which is a good thing in academic life.  
Stella Lee is a wonderful person. We met in 2007 during a mobile conference in Fredericton, Canada. She was passionate and brought her presentation with a lot of humor. Afterwards we decided to go and sit on a bench on the sidewalk of a busy street and give people compliments just to make their day... it was fun! In the last few years we have lived and got some changes in our lives, so it was a blast to catch up again. Too short though.
It was Stella who introduced me to Vive(k) Kumar and Ireti Fakinlede. Vive(k), or V, is an intriguing person. He has an air of complete energy over him and I gave him one extra grey hair by asking him to go outside of his wonderfully build online/offline presentation set-up. He did it, so I was very grateful.
And I had the most wonderful discussion with Ireti on social agents, languages and a vibrant Swahili dictum.
I also met Caroline Park, who I have mailed frequently on mobile topics in the past and all of a sudden here she was in full glory, organizing part of the conference. Tony Ratcliffe allowed me one dance, which was really nice. And last but not least, I had the chance to meet with Leslie Lindballe who single handedly got everyone engaged in making music. She also opened up my mind when she talked about her thougths when getting research grant: either work and study or go and live somewhere cheaper and study, while having time to make music due to the cheaper rent. I loved that remark! Fabulous. Leslie combines ratio with heart and ... that seeps into her learning and teaching as well. Just look at her wonderful on learning video.

John Traxler with questions on the global impact of #mobile devices #mobimooc

Yesterday was again an enlightening day at MobiMOOC. 
The webinar on the global impact of mobile devices was given by John Traxler, focusing on some of the ethical and philosopical issues surrounding the global impact of using mobile devices that are manufactured in the North and bring the Northern pedagogy to all regions of the world.

This webinar is part of the MobiMOOC 2012 free, open, online course on mobile learning (http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com)
You can see the recording of the webinar, with questions and answers from participants here
http://youtu.be/6GP56KF2pX0
For those on mobile
http://m.youtube.com/6GP56KF2pX0

Some of you have requested some additional information.
John has listed the main ideas in the course wikipage:
https://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/Global+impact+of+mobile+devices

And here are two blogposts with some comments:
http://mobileesl.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/john-traxler-mobile-learning-and.html
http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.be/2012/08/join-mobimooc-for-ethical-debate-on.html

Illuminating webinar by Adele Botha on #mobile learning with examples, pointers and theory #mobimooc

This webinar shows a live presentation that was given by Adele Botha. In this live webinar recording, Adele shares multiple mobile projects from South Africa. She also gives us a potential framework to view mobile projects with, varying from low mobility in a low context, to a high mobility in a high context. In addition she also talks about a wonderful informal way of giving accredition: the earn-as-you-learn principle. And to finalize the webinar she offers an overview of the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework, to which she launches an appeal for people to join into the discussion.

Join the discussion in the free discussion group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/mobimooc-curriculum
Or look at the content of the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework here:
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/Mobile+Learning+Curriculum+Framework 

This recorded webinar is part of the MobiMOOC 2012 course. A free, open, online course on mobile learning. We are now in the second week of MobiMOOC and you are free to join any specialized topic that you might be interested in. How? Simply choose the topic and become member of that specific group. An overview of the topics and their consecutive discussion groups can be found here.

#aufgs2012 Viviane Vladimirshi Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of #inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges

Viviane Vladimirschi has finished a thesis on the subject of Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges April 2012 and you can find the full thesis here:
 http://hdl.handle.net/10791/15

During the Athabasca University conference she gave a talk on her research and used methodology (also part grounded theory).

The purpose of this study was to explore how instructors of online courses accommodate and make provisions for culturally diverse learners in an online community of inquiry. Ten instructors from two Alberta higher education institutions participated in two phases of research. To explore this phenomenon in the CoI model, intercultural competency indicators were created to test how they could develop and expand teaching and social presence in a cross-cultural environment. In the first phase, analysis of the open-ended survey questionnaire (AMEQ) revealed that in the absence of any cross-cultural design, instructors use facilitation and open communication strategies to foster learning and prevent conflict. The second phase, informed by the first phase, involved augmenting the original 34-item CoI survey instrument. Additional roles that relate to instructor cross-cultural efficacy were incorporated into both teaching presence and social presence elements in the CoI survey instrument. The revised 37-item CoI survey instrument was then administered to the same respondents for face validity. Findings revealed that the incorporated cultural indicators correlated highly with the teaching and social indicators, indicating their usefulness to measure multicultural efficacy in the CoI model.

The cultural indicators Viviane used were very interesting. So a good read if you are interested in the content.

#aufgs2012 Terry Anderson on living, learning, and research in a #networked age

Terry Anderson speaks on the subject of Living, Learning, and Researching in a Networked Era.

His focus is on openness as a scholar and the evolution of different learning approaches over the last few decades related to this openness. It was an interesting presentation, also of interest from a MOOC perspective.

presentation of his keynote:

Learning, Living and researching in a Networked World from terrya

Some quick live blogging notes (so short and at times chaotic) here:


Picking up from 2004: connectivist learning principles
Learning is a process of connecting information
Learning may rely in non-human appliances
Making connections to objects as well as humans
In the centre of connectivism is sharing, producing content.


Connectivist learning is emergent
In the classic model where a trainer has a very well defined path of transformative learning, there is very little space for emergence, this is the surplus of more open learning.

Each types of learning has its own benefit, so one should be open in any debate with people with different preferences.

Terry gives an overview of MOOCs, giving a quick definition and placing it in recent history.
Questions are still out there: are they useful? Does it have a business model?
Tunes in on coursera, with their courses.

Terry tunes in on the two genre's of MOOCs: cMOOC and xMOOC
original siemens, downes, cornier
coonnectivist learning theory
how can you add recognition to such courses?
aggregates distributed posts, no centre
large enrollment, many 'lurkers' no formal assessment
heavy involvement and communication with 'teacher/facilitator'

xMOOC
scale up into the hundreds of thousands
Based on first behaviour
structured learning activites, instructivist cognitive behaviorist pedagogy
heavey content interaction, little to no teacher-student infrastructure
centralized admin
watch a video

Athabasca MOOC
CDE courses MDDE622 openness in education
AU removing mooc barrier by offerning credit or undergrad courses
connectivist model
Join for free

The modes of interaction by Anderson and Garrison (1998)
Ther is no one solution, it depends on the goal of the course.
The interaction equivalency Theorem by Anderson (2003): one can have meaningful learning if one form is available: student-teacher, student-student, student-content )
For some kind of people and uses is the behaviorist option (student-content) has the most benefit, despite contemporary new pedagogical ideas.

Promising signs of change
ubiqtuity and multi-functionality of web2.0

Living in a networked area
one can be connected overall .... and Mr. google can resolve debates on many occasion :-)
concluding: there is no one solution, one must found out what works out for your own person, your own preferences.

Burt "people who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas" (2005, p. 90)

Terry also focuses on Open Scholar working and publishing.
Stresses the fact that open access press has benefits and still gives you royalties.

Factors for setting up a #mobile learning project

The free, open, online course MobiMOOC is well on the way (but feel free to join, we are only in the first introduction week, so simply come in and choose your prefered topic).

This week two presentations were shared and a multitude of discussions on various mLearning topics were started. I gladly share the two presentations below: one giving an introduction to mLearning, the other zooming in on the factors to take into account when wanting to draw up an mLearning project.

For those interested in starting their own mLearning project, feel free to have a look at this presentation. There is also a YouTube movie with audio on the slides that can be found at this url:
http://youtu.be/OobbQOcRpME 

Planning mlearning project from Inge Ignatia de Waard

For those interested in an overview of mobile learning or mLearning, the following presentation might be of interest. The presentation below is also available as a YouTube movie, with audio going through the slides, which might make more sense at times (not taking into account my Flemish accent). The youtube movie can be seen at this URL: http://youtu.be/9TbM-jHRJu0

Durable and scalable mlearning drilldown and intro to mLearning from Inge Ignatia de Waard

What I expect from #MobiMOOC as organizer and guide on the side

A couple of MobiMOOC participants have started blogging on their expectations of MobiMOOC (see a list of the blogposts below this post). And reading all of their thoughts, plans and views, I thought it would be nice to share my hopes for MobiMOOC, as the one initiating the course and partly facilitating it.

What are my expectations of MobiMOOC:

• To learn in a comfortable setting, with peers that have mutual interests (mLearning)
• To get a better understanding of all the factors making up 21st century, open learning
• To have fun within a learner community
• To create an efficient, informal yet fun learning environment that adapts to the learner demands (within my own capacities and technological options)
• Getting in touch with wonderful friends and colleagues talking about a common topic
• Becoming more understanding as I meet diverse people
• And … chaos, lots of chaos especially me trying to keep up with all the discussions, all the good ideas, keeping all locations up and running...

Blogposts of MobiMOOC participants pondering on the first days of MobiMOOC:

By Бугайчук Константин (Buga)  (@bugaychuk)

http://bugaychuk.blogspot.be/2012/09/mobimooc-first-step.html

By Michael Sean Gallagher (@mseangallagher)

http://michaelseangallagher.org/2012/09/06/mobimooc-2012-my-learning-expectations/

By Rebecca Hogue (@rjhogue )

http://wp.me/p2qtuW-eS

From David Lewis (@DrPlumEU)

https://maturinuk.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/what-does-mobimooc-2012-offer-me/

From Apostolos Koutropoulos (@koutropoulos)

http://idstuff.blogspot.be/2012/09/mobimooc-2012-my-participation-roadmap.html

Jim Vanides (@jgvanides )

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Teaching-Learning-amp-Technology/My-First-MOOC/ba-p/121003

The techie Professor Jeremy

http://thetechieprofessor.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/day-one/

Two days before free, open, online #mLearning course #MobiMOOC launches

Okay, I admit, as organizer of MobiMOOC I am at this point feeling both very anxious ("I will never get everything done in time!), blissfully excited ("Oh my, so many wonderful people have joined!") and definitely nervous ("I sure hope everything will work... crossing fingers"). So yes, this feels like that moment where you slowly get pulled up a roller-coaster and you are nearing that first dive into the wild unknown....aaaaaahhhhh!

For those not registered for the free, open, online course on mobile learning, the so called MobiMOOC, join us by becoming a member in the MobiMOOC google group here! We are with 526 registered participants already, from all around the world (only Antarctica is not represented as a continent). There are 12 mLearning topics, all facilitated by wonderful mLearning pioneers.   
Apart from the three topics mentioned below there will also be: corporate mLearning, mHealth, augmented reality, mobile gaming, mobile activism in education, train-the-trainer, mLearning pedagogy and theory, mLearning for development, mobile tools. Yes, three weeks of intense mobile knowledge exchange.

Now, with just two days before the free, open, online course MobiMOOC starts, a quick look at the content for the first two weeks:

Content and resources introducing mLearning and mobile planning (first week), facilitated by Inge de Waard can be found here:
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/Introduction+to+mLearning

John Traxler will guides us on the subject of the impact of mobile devices on global learning. Ideas, discussions and philosophical strands can be found here (second week):
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/Global+impact+of+mobile+devices

Adele Botha provides insights on embedding or rolling out a mobile learning curriculum for which she and her collaborators worked on the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework. More information on this subject can be found here (second week):
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/Mobile+Learning+Curriculum+Framework

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Call for peer review on #mLearning Curriculum Framework

Adele Botha took the lead to construct a Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework. And she graciously asked some domain experts to co-construct it in a first phase. So we (Jacqueline Batchelor, John Traxler, Marlien Herselman, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Tom Brown, Mike Sharples, Johannes Cronje, Dolf Steyn, Leon Kunneke, Gloria Adedoja and myself Inge de Waard (so people from South Africa, Nigeria, United Kingdom and Belgium) got together and got a draft going.

But now the floor is open to all of us to strengthen the framework. Reviewing and optimizing the framework is one of the topics of the free, open, online course on mobile learning (MobiMOOC). MobiMOOC will be starting Saturday 8 September 2012 with an introduction to mLearning, and from 15 - 22 September the topic of Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework will be open. Look at the course wikipage here for more information. The week will be facilitated by Adele Botha, an expert in both mobile learning and educational course architecture.  If you want to enroll in MobiMOOC, feel free to become a member in the MobiMOOC google group (that is our meeting point).

If all of us pitch in, the framework can be released as on open educational resource that will enable any interested person to pick up certain modules and add it to their own learning/training structure. For the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework will enable everyone to roll out or embed a strong educational curriculum structure that has strong mobile device strategies that can be used in a variety of training/educational fields.

If you are interested in sharing your thoughts, or if you are looking to embed mobile learning in your curriculum, see how the framework works for you and add your comments, ideas, remarks, suggestions... anything that can strengthen it for this will help us all.

You can find more information in a paper here:this link opens a paper on the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework that was presented during the IST Africa Conference in 2012.

And a live webinar on the Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework is planned for Monday 17 September 2012 at 5.00 PM, Brussels, Central European time (look here for a list of YOUR local times organized per country/city)
This webinar can be followed at this URL (make sure you have a headset for optimal listening/speaking quality)
http://mobimooc.wiziq.com/online-class/935334-mobile-learning-curriculum-framework-by-adele-botha

During the live session Adele Botha will shed light on the concept of a mobile learning curriculum and ask for all of our feedback on the mobile learning curriculum framework that can be used to set up, embed or roll out a mobile learning curriculum.

The worldwide nearly ubiquitous access to mobile technology provides the education domain with new challenges and many exciting opportunities. Utilization is, however, often hampered by the knowledgeable implementation of the technology in ways that are relevant and meaningful to the education. To assist in preparing in-service and pre-service educators, NGO’s, practitioners, researchers and instructors to utilise mobile technology a Mobile Learning Curriculum is deemed be a significant advantage in furthering the goals of education for all.