Mobile and handheld learning has been a hot topic of conversation at coffee time of late. We really love the Mediascape application that’s been around for a while now and have run several very successful projects with it in the classroom.

The basic idea is that students create a living map which is then downloaded onto a mobile device running windows and GPS. When the user walks around the location of the map they enter hotspots defined in the classroom which trigger simple bits of media to show on the mobile devices screen. Check the website for a better description.

With a bit of imagination the possibilities are endless.

The disappointment we’ve had is finding a mobile device that will work reliably in the field. We had bought a batch of Siemens Fujitsu EDA’s which were supposed to be the business but actually turned out to be a bit of a disaster. The GPS was unreliable and setting the devices up was time-consuming and erratic. Camera and sound quality are poor too. They were discontinued not long after release.

So, we’ve been searching for a decent device for a while now withe the basic spec of:

  • reliable GPS (gets a quick, accurate fix and holds it for more than a gnat’s breath)
  • reasonably tough
  • bright, biggish screen
  • wireless
  • decent camera for taking stills and video
It’s really only the iPhone that fits the bill but at the moment Mediascape won’t run on it’s operating system. See Chris Deering’s article here for an interesting view on the iPhone in education.
 
Another conclusion we reached was whether the traditional approach for mobile learning was all that effective: by a class set of devices, dish them out and teach the kids to use them.
 
PDA devices are pretty rubbish if you want to do basic ICT stuff like text input, spreadsheets etc. This can be done much better on the new breed of mini-laptops from the likes of ASUS or Advent. But that is still the old, top-down model.
 
Just about all kids at KS3 level have mobiles and they are getting more complex by the month (see iPhone). Why not make the relationship with the technology more informal? Get the kids to use their own phones as media collection devices so when they come across stuff in the real world maybe take a snapshot of it, video it, record a voice memo and then upload it to the learning platform using mobile internet. How might you use an application like Twitter on a field trip for example?
 
Schools tend to ban mobiles on site as a distraction and barrier to good class management so there seems to be a bit of a taboo against using them for school purposes.
 
Much of the chatter surrounding next week’s Handheld Learning conference is about using this ubiquitous but underused technology. 
 
If you’ve been to the conference let us know what you learnt…