free #mLearning journal iJIM new issue published

This is a nice mLeanring journal to send your papers to (short and full papers). Great new issue with topics on mobile gaming, mobile collaborative learning design, mobile learning performance support, language learning and other. At the end you can also find two calls for papers, one is for a special issue of iJIM on the topic of VANETS (combination social computing and cars/vehicles).

International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) has just published its latest issue at http://www.i-jim.org. We invite you to have a look at the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

*International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM)* Volume 5, Issue 4 (2011)

*Table of Contents*

-------------------

*Papers*

***Mobile Tourist Guide – An Intelligent Wireless System to Improve Tourism, using Semantic Web (Hosam El-Sofany, Samir Abou El-Seoud)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1695

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1695

***How to Improve the Accessibility and Reduce the  Total Cost of Ownership with Ecolig Protocol and Android in Mobile Learning (Samira Muhammad Ismail, Paulo Victor De Oliveira Miguel, Gilmar Barreto)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1648

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1648

***The Effectiveness of Mobile Learning in the Form of Performance Support System in Higher Education (Nevena Mileva)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1692

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1692

***Leaner Open Modeling in Adaptive Mobile Learning System for Supporting Student to Learn English (Viet Anh Nguyen, Van Cong Pham)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1789

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1789

***Using Mobile Devices and Gaming as a Means of Building Vocabulary (Jennifer Betsy Redd, Denise Schmidt)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1683

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1683

*Short Papers*

***GPS Navigation and Tracking Device

(Yahya Salameh Khraisat, Mohammad Al-Khateeb, Yahya Abu-Alreesh, Anas Ayyash, Osama Lahlouh)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1781

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1781

***Developing Mobile Collaborative Learning Applications for Mobile Users (Kwang B Lee)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1823

--> http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1823

*Calls*

***International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace - ICELW2012 (Call For Papers)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1826

***Special Issue iJIM "VANETS"

(Call For Papers)

--> http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/1827

Blogphilosophy: Do I/we act upon Steve @Jobs’ words or am I only nodding but not acting for #change?

There is something that happens when people get their death certificate. When Steve Jobs addressed the Stanford students (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc) he got a lot of one-liners out: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” and “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. Stay hungry. Stay foolish”. A lot of us nodded when we heard those words and we think “yes man!” but do we act upon this call for action? Do I act upon it, or do I simply keep seated in my chair, behind the same desk I have seen for 5 consecutive years? Do I take what I have learned in these past few years and move towards a new, personal knowledge action goal? Will I live my life? Will you?

Randy Pausch had the same urgency to get some meaningful thoughts out there, when he knew he was on the verge of dying (see his last lecture here http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/ ). His main idea was, never accept a NO for an answer and to live your dreams. He dreamed and through his actions he created, just like Steve Jobs did. Do I live my dream? Was my dream to listen to others simply because this keeps me in a safe place? Or do I act upon the nod I gave when I heard Randy Pausche’s speech?

The thing is, I am a nice person. I want to be nice, friendliness does not come natural to me, it is a choice. The only thing is, I am beginning to wonder whether this choice was/is not merely an excuse not to step on anyone’s toes… maybe I deluded myself that nice would keep me safe from harm and it would get me somewhere. Being nice, simply keeps me in a non-threatening space, but then… non-threatening spaces never got my mind into a mental high. Am I really happy to live without a higher goal? To simply earn enough money to make my life comfortable? Thinking about this makes me feel so … grey, so part of a grey, robotic like commuting group… I cannot help myself to remember the movie Brazil, in which bureaucracy is so well depicted. Shifting papers in the illusion to be part of something bigger… but when the boss no longer looks, shift to bread and games for comfort.

So who am I? I am in the mainstream, working for a company whose major focus is not on education, but on health research which is a wonderful thing, but ... unless you are a doctor, I will not move beyond a certain echelon. I travel to conferences at occasions, giving speeches which I like… but I have the feeling I never move beyond this mainstream flow of consciousness, however, my heart and head want to, they are hungry for it. At times – in the past - I got myself out there on a limb and … that felt good. But the last few years I seem to have lost the courage (not the urge!) to position myself out there on the edge. I feel that if I stay at this mainstream space that I build for myself, I will never accomplish anything which will satisfy my heart and soul… dying soulless is not something to look forward to.

The only thing is: what would be meaningful in learning? What do I belief that needs to be changed? Or is this question yet again a simple excuse, whispered in my ear by the demon that wants to keep me in the same place, for years, so change would never happen? How are your demons doing after thinking about death, after listening to Steve Jobs?

5 Calls for #papers or #proposals on #elearning and #mLearning mix of corporate and #academic

When calls for papers enter my mailbox, I organize them and ... I decided to share them on a regular basis (lets say once a month), hoping to meet up with this wonderful eLearning network that roams the globe.

Learning Solutions conference and expo (big conference)

When:  March 21-23, 2012
Where: Orlando, Florida

Deadline for submissions: 14 October 2011

Read the submission instructions and submit your proposal today.

Call for Research proposals on ICT4D from SIRCA II

When and where: A Grant for 18 months, you need to live in the country for which you put in a proposal.

Deadline for interest registration: October 14, 2011
Deadline for proposal submission: November 1, 2011

More information: www.sirca.org.sg

Proposals for research projects on Information Societies and Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) carried out in the Global South will be accepted.

Pre-application Registration
Applicants must register by October 14, 2011 via email at sirca2@ntu.ed.sg prior to submitting a proposal application.
The email subject header should read “SIRCA II Registration”, and the body should include the following details:
• Full Name of Principal Investigator
• (Tentative) Research Title (this can be changed at the time of fi lling in online application form)
• Country of Research

The 3rd International Conference on Education, Training and Informatics: ICETI 2012
More information(www.2012iiisconferences.org/iceti)

Where: Orlando, Florida, USA

When: 25 - 28 March 2012

Deadline for submissions: 26th October 2011.

 Submissions for *Face-to-Face* or for *Virtual* Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings.

IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE MOBILE LEARNING 2012

Where: Berlin, Germany, 

When: 11 to 13 March 2012

Deadline for submissions: 28 October 2011

Focus: mLearning, more info: (http://www.mlearning-conf.org/) 

eLearning Africa 2012

Where: Benin at Le Palais des Congrès de Cotonou
When: May 23rd to 25th 2012
Deadline for submissions: 9 December 2011
The focus of eLA 2012 will be on education, development and sustainability. For more information on the specific themes, please click here. Details about the Call for Papers 2012, such as information on submission requirements and deadlines, session formats, as well as the proposal forms can be accessed here.

#Apple's Siri as part of our #education and #future

Apple's personal iPhone assistant Siri got me thinking about the future again and how the concept of 'future' becomes more and more speedy in getting here to our contemporary times. With ongoing amazement I have been following time changing technologies like the 3D printers (replicating materials), the food replicators, nano-technology and so on. The upcoming societal changes are so phenomenal! As I see my son growing up, at times I am jealous of what he will see, how he will be able to live in a society we cannot even begin to imagine in its full potential.

Coming back to Siri: this is an amazing real life adoption of artificial intelligence. Although many people were disappointed when Apple’s new iPhone was so limited in its innovations, the Siri application got me completely enthusiastic. The application has had a long history before it got to the stage it is in, look at this interview with Norman Winarsky, the co-founder of Siri.

Siri has all the potential of an incredible mobile learning and researching tool! It is also a spin-off of a US Government Artificial Intelligence program called the “Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes” or CALO program (started in 2003). Why do I feel it is a major cognitive actor for educational/research change? Just imagine an interface into which you can enter – by voice – the objectives or data fields you have in mind and which reproduces the results. Learning becomes even more contextualized, you enter your questions and get answers. Or for research any hypothesis that comes to mind might be tested to get a rough idea on whether your hypothesis is worth research time and investment. It is such a great human machine interaction. It is as if the imaginary friend from our childhood days has come to live. The voice does not discuss, it only offers assistance and answers to the questions we pose it. I admit that currently Siri is not yet able to do far reaching answers to complex questions, but it is easy to see how this personal assistant – or at least its algorithms – can grow towards a more complex human machine interaction tool. But let’s say Siri would grow up to be such a complex giver of answers – a modern day oracle let’s say, based on our joint data that is mined from the cloud. In that case I do wonder how our brains would adapt? Are straight forward answers beneficiary for cognitive growth or do our brains need frustration to learn and really embed high-end knowledge construction?

The future is such a nice space in time to think about. Some of us are of course better at envisioning the future. As such I see Siri as yet another link to Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry. Who is - in my mind - one of the most underestimated visionaries of the 20th century. To me, he is on the same line as Leanardo Da Vinci (he draw a helicopter, a glider...) and Jules Verne (submarine, new worlds...). Roddenberry saw the future at a time contemporary technology was only at its infancy (well… that is a sentence one can repeat every couple of decennia I guess), Siri is ‘computer’, the terminal that can be asked for information and adjustment in any Star Trek ship. Always there, always knowledgeable of straight forward facts… Siri makes it so tempting to buy the new iPhone. What an algorithm, sigh…

Choosing a free on- and offline #reference software: Zotero

As my thesis is becoming a reality, I felt a need to reevaluate the online reference tools that are currently available and choose one I would use for the next couple of months (at least).

After having a closer look at Mendeley, Zotero and Endnote, I decided that Zotero would be the tool for me. But I must admit it was a close shave with Mendeley. Why?

• There is an online and offline option (the offline one is called standalone);
• When searching in scholar google, Zotero got the most details out of the references (this was why I choose Zotero over Mendeley, the funny thing is scholar must have the option 'import into endnote' to import into Zotero :-);
• Zotero offers different publication styles for its references, and the one I need (APA 6) is amongst these options;
• Zotero allows pdf's metadate to be screened for its details and import it into Zotero itself (see here);
• You can build shared repositories for your research team or colleague group;
• It allows notes to be added: enabling me to put my quotations into the notes section, thus I only need to filter these notes to find relevant quotes;
• Zotero allows grouping of references;
• It allows tags to be added to the papers;
• Stored tags, notes and references can be searched;
• Free up to 100 MB (which is not much), if you want more storage space you need to purchase it on a monthly basis (which might add up to quite an amount, so be careful to see when switching to another reference tool might be necessary. But same is true for Mendeley and Endnote is a commercial software);
• You can add multimedia files as well as text files;
  
• And last but not least: I would think a mobile option will be built, but in the mean time the Zotero community is posting trials with android tablets.

So... off to add more references to the Zotero library....

On #Higher #Education and Society in Changing Times and searching for the reason why educational research centres are under siege

As the economic crisis is hitting a lot of countries, the strategies to counter this crisis are quite diverse. Certain countries opt to increase education and research (e.g. Germany) and cut budgets in other areas, other countries are slicing down education/research (e.g. United Kingdom). Personally, I cannot imagine how any politician that understands the growing knowledge era can vote in favor of research/educational cuts. But then I am a firm believer that education will add to human solutions (which is not the same as that education will save us all, but .... most of us will be able to improve our own path through life). In times of need, I think you must run ahead, move forward and explore to find new horizons. In that respect I like the American adagio of looking for the new frontier.

How strange is it to read on the one hand that education is changing rapidly and is in need for a new balance, while on the other hand educational research centres are - just in these times - shut down?

The UK has been a knowledge bastion for centuries (just like other regions in the world), but recently some major Technology Enhanced Learning centers were closed, without alternatives being set up. Last year Becta was closed, this year CHERI, or the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information is closed.

Before closing down, CHERI has published a final document that is of interest to Higher Education: "Higher Education and Society in Changing Times: looking back and looking forward."

It is an interesting document, looking at different aspects of Higher Ed:

• Higher education and social change: researching the ‘end times’ (John Brennan)
• Looking back, looking forward: the changing structure of UK higher education, 1980-2012. (Roger Brown)
• Globalisation and higher education.(Roger King)
• Learning and engagement dimensions of higher education in knowledge society discourses. (Mala Singh and Brenda Little)
• Supporting students in a time of change (Ruth Williams)
• Higher education in the ‘risk society’ (Sofia Branco Sousa)
• Implementing the Bologna Process: an example of policy recontextualisation – the case of Spain. (Marina Elias)
• The public role of higher education and student participation in higher education governance. ( Manja Klemenčič)

If a nation or region is in crisis, looking at succesful strategies to climb out of recessions, difficult situations, natural disasters... is a worthwhile investment. Cutting educational research downsizes chances for the weakest of any regions citizens, and a nation or region can only be as strong as its weakest members, or is this just some idealistic illusion speaking from within my heart?

#html5 #authoring tools and how you can code it yourself

Html5 is the new magical solution for cross-device publications. It is all the rave for mobile developers and newbies. The amazing thing about html5 however, is that it is not really breathtakingly new. In fact, like Brian Fling (expert in mobile design, so connect to his media to stay updated) mentioned on his blogpost on html5 anatomy: "if you know HTML, then chances are you’ll understand what’s new in HTML5 in under an hour."

Teach yourself html5
For those of you with html5 expertise, simply take the free, online html5 course offered by W3C.
But to make really beautiful html5 accessible webpages, you need to digg into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as well as they will allow you to produce an eye-catching look and feel. This is also at anyone's fingertips thanks to the W3C tutorial on CSS.

Now you have the basic coding, you have a nice look and feel, this combination will already allow you to publish neat html5 pages. But for those wanting to run the extra mile, the only thing that remains is to add more interactivity and for this you can use JavaScript. Take a look at these 6 free JavaScript books and tutorials from the read and write blog.

Why is html suddenly back as the best webpage coding language?
Let's be honest html is an easy coding language, as such it was put into a corner a bit, pressed away by php, asp, and other more complex coding languages. So I wondered, why did it become cool again to use html?
I feel that with the rise of html5 we see a rise in specialization in instructional design. This makes room for instructional designers that are in fact no longer building designs from scratch, but who use templates and designer tools to put any content in a beautiful and accessible jacket.

And ... of course html5 enables designers to come up with cross device designs, even allowing a variety of mobile phones to access material in a pleasing way (well, it is not that standardized yet, but we are getting there).

For those wanting to test there html5 coding
If you do delve into the html5 code and you have come up with some pages, make sure to test drive them through the free W3C markup validation tool. You have two validation tools, one is for html in general: html validation markup.
And one focuses on mobile html (great tool!), which will allow you to feel confident with the coding you are providing (and that it fits specific browser needs): Mobile Validation.

Looking for an easier option? Use html5 authoring tools
Simply take a look at these html5 designer tools:

Rapid Intake Mobile Studio (I really recommend this one, sooo easy!) and it allows publication to both Flash and html5, so really useful and it has scorm compliant quizzes (for the LMS lovers amongst us): http://www.rapidintake.com/products/mobile/mobile-learning-studio/

And an interesting tool from Adobe Labs, Edge (to download it you will need to make an Adobe account if you don't have one yet): there is an Edge 2 preview you can download http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/

For those using Mac, there is a nice app, the Tumult Hype app: http://tumultco.com/hype/

IBM has also launched a html5 authoring tool project, called Maqetta, but to look at this tool you need to upgrade (if needed) your browser to Firefox 4, Chrome 5 or Safari 5. This tool has to be installed on your server. Get more information here: http://maqetta.org