Fashion mLearning update & survey

It's high time I updated you with the progress of our trial. I've been rolling along recording the screencasts of the lecturer demos in our Corel Draw class - gradually ironing out the technical issues. However, I've become a little less focussed on mobile learning as the broader eLearning strategy for our program is starting to take shape.

Towards the end of last term, we gave our Certificate IV in Applied Fashion Design & Technology students a simple eLearning survey. Primarily we were hoping to find out about their attitudes to both online and mobile learning. Our program has had little exposure to eLearning generally so we were anticipating that this information would help to shape our future direction in this area.

In an effort to actually get people to complete the survey, it was intentionally brief and simple. About seventy surveys went out and around forty came back, which is a decent enough sample from which we can draw some conclusions. The groups surveyed appeared to be quite indicative of our usual student demographic - Gen Y is predominant with a small proportion of Gen X and Baby Boomers (about 20%). Here’s the survey preamble:

“Dear student

We are currently looking at ways of enhancing our current classroom-based delivery by utilising eLearning in the delivery of our course content.

Firstly, we are looking at establishing an online ‘Fashion Hub’. This could contain general information for students, upcoming events, job opportunities, links, forums, and resource materials for download. Eventually, some units will also be available for on-line study.

We are also trailling the use of mobile learning (‘mLearning’). This involves having course content available for download to mobile devices and PC’s. Initially, we are recording screencasts (video with sound) of lecturer demonstrations in the computer-based units (Corel Draw, Style CAD etc.).

The recordings can be made available to students in a range of formats for playback on PC’s (as Quicktime movies) and video enabled mobile phones, iPods, portable media players, PDA’s etc. This would enable you to revise and review the demonstrations, both in class and at home.

We are also looking at recording selected lectures (particularly classes with guest lecturers) and having them available to students as podcasts (ie. audio only). The files would be available for download from the Fashion Hub or directly from a computer on campus (phone-based content can be distributed using Bluetooth on campus).”

Here’s the questions and the response data/comments:

1. Do you think that you would utilise an online Fashion Hub? If so, what type of information or content would you like to see included in the hub?
The response to this question was overwhelmingly positive with 96% thinking it would be a good thing. The students also came up with some great suggestions about what they’d like to see on the hub/delivery platform.

2. Do you think having audio/video content available for download and viewing on a PC would assist your learning? If so, in what way?
92% said yes to this. Again there were many comments but the most common observation was that it would be very useful way to recap or catch up on a lesson. A number of students observed that it would be useful both in class and at home.

3. Do you think having audio/video content available for download to a mobile device would assist your learning? If so, in what way?
The responses to this question were less emphatic, consisting of 48% yes, 42% no and 10% inbetweenies. Here some examples of the comments:
“Yes, because it would make it 100% accessible and would be very helpful.”
“Yes, because you can move around, pause and play at a more convenient time.”
“Yes, more access to info in my own time and more accessible to each student.”
“If I had the mobile device, yes. Eg. I could review while waiting (for a bus, for ……) or at home/whenever I am not doing something else eg. lunchtime at work.”
“I think it would help but everyone may not have a mobile that could play video, especially if they are long as some have limited memory. Also could have weak quality.”
“Yes, I prefer visual instructions over written theory.”
“Yes, it will make demo’s/catching up a lot easier/quicker.”
“Good idea. It’ll help make learning more independent.”
“Yes, can review in own time allowing for work/family commitments
“No. It would be annoying”
“I think using mobiles would be a waste of time”
“Spend the money on things we actually need”
“Nah – too expensive for me”

4. Do you have a mobile device that plays video (eg. mobile phone, video iPod etc.)? If so, which device/s.
52% said yes. Mobile phones were the most common, but there were a number of iPods, a PSP and a Blackberry. No Palms, of course – they are just soooo GenX!

5. Do you have a mobile device that plays mp3 audio?
63% said yes to this.

Any other comments?
As is often the case with surveys, there weren’t a lot of additional comments. The most interesting comment was one suggesting that we should forget about all this and use the money to paint our workshops! One student also expressed concern that we’d be phasing out lecturers….

Conclusions
Whilst I think that there is certainly a place for mLearning in our program, it’s fairly clear from the overall responses that our students were not wildly enthusiastic about having content available on mobile devices. They do however, like the idea of being able to review and revise what they’re taught in the classroom and they want to have easy and timely access to information – they just prefer to do it through their computer, not their mobile device.

The results of this survey have helped to solidify an eLearning direction for our program. For me personally, this project started out as an opportunity to learn about and play around with some technology that interested me. Through the process of exploring that technology I’ve been exposed to a wider variety of innovative eLearning practices – some of which I’m hoping to incorporate into our program.

To that end, we’ve taken our first eLearning steps by establishing a Moodle site and have began adapting our existing resources for inclusion on the site. I envisage mobile content being an important part of the resource tapestry that we’ll make available to our students in an online environment.

Pixel Art for Mobile Game

Following resent M-Learning students survey results we set up a short new project for the first year Game Art Student – “Pixel Art for Mobile Game”.

Students have to follow lecturer presentation and online tutorial and create simple Pixel Art Illustration suitable to be used as a graphic for a mobile game.

Pixel art is distinguished from other forms of digital art by an insistence upon manual, pixel-level editing of an image. In this form, it is commonly said that "each pixel was placed carefully" to achieve a desired result which requires quite a lot of time and effort.

The results and students feedback excided our expectations. The students enjoyed the process and came up with some excellent illustrations:

Adrian Hansen

David Wittaker

Lauren Barret

Paul Cherry

Simon Burford

From DMD Student Survey Results Report:

Under the section “I found the following topics challenging/ enjoyable”

We have received the following feedback:

“Pixel Art – it wasn’t something I have done before and found it fun and enjoyable”

“Pixel Art – I found this informative and challenging, it also left the room for creativity which is important.”

“Pixel Art was most enjoyable. It was challenging in the way that creating and pulling off the design to produce good pixel art takes patience.”

“Pixel Art was something I have wanted to do for a while”

Mobile Web 2.0

Planning for Mobile Web Students Project information and deliberation. Feedback and comments are welcome and appreciated!

DMD Students M_Learning Survey Results

Inspired by Kathy’s Mobile Learning survey I decided to find out what Digital Media Design (DMD) students thinking about use of mobile and internet technology as a tool for learning and medium for produce creative content.
Here are survey results.

Podmo Free Server at TTG TAFE

Over the past few weeks I've been "playing" with Podmo and we now have a working Podmo Free Server at Tea Tree Gully TAFE. It's possible for students and staff to logon to Podmo 24/7 and download content. Podmo are still "tweaking" their page that allows users to upload their own content onto the Podmo server, but when it is all working smoothly we hope to have an offical launch!

I think that the Podmo platform will especially be of interest to the Digital Media students who may like to upload their showreels to share with the public.

Something else I've be experimenting with is the ARED resources which create web based flash learning activities. Here are some links to my first attempts:

Motherboard Identification Activity

PC Port Identification Activity

PC Connector ID Quiz

PC Boot Up Sequence

Sue's blog

Sue has gone one step further and developed her own blog. To see Sue's blog click on her name on the bottom on the right hand side of the screen.
Cheers

Peta

Fashion mLearning trial

As I mentioned at the last meeting, my intention was to do screen recordings (with narration) of our PC-based classes and have them available in range of mobile formats. We only have one such class running at the moment (in Corel Draw) which is running on Fridays. Unfortunately, with other commitments on Fridays, I haven't been able to be there over the past three weeks to get this underway. So, in the end, I thought I'd just set it all up and leave the lecturer (Aileen) to it. I sat down with her last Thursday and gave her a tutorial on the software (CamStudio) and she recorded three demostrations in class the next day. I've converted them using Super to 3gp (for phone), mp4 (for iPod) and Quicktime movie (for PC). I've set up a bluetooth dongle on the PC and sent the file to a phone and put the mp4 on to my Palm (I don't have an iPod).

I'm generally pleased with the results although there's a few issues to attend to. Given the limitations of the mobile screen size, I had the software set to capture a relatively small window which tracks the cursor (ie. the cursor is always in the center of the window). This effectively shows close up detail of what she's doing and therefore makes best use of the small screen on a mobile. Unfortunately, Aileen changed the settings back to full screen! The results are still okay but they lack the detail required for it to be a truly useful resource on a small screen. However, full screen is probably better for reviewing the mov file on a PC.

The other issue was sound quality. I borrowed a microphone from the Marleston library and the quality was fairly ordinary - I had trouble getting the recording level high enough. I'll need to look into this - maybe we need to buy a decent quality mic. Anyway I'll do it again this Friday and see how it goes.

I also gave the lecturer an mLearning survey to hand out to the students which I'll hopefully have back over the next few days. I'll be there this Friday to do some bluetoothing/iPodding of the files to the students' devices and talk to them about this mLearning thing.

One thing that struck me was the ease and speed of the process. It took me just over an hour to convert all three files (albeit, there was only 11 minutes of total footage) to the three formats required. Potentially, the files could be avallable to the students before they leave for the day. At this stage, the distribution is only from a PC in the computer suite. Ultimately vodcasting is the way to go - I'm looking into it. A Podmo Free Zone at Marleston would also be nice.....

So far, so good.

Video player for Palm & Pocket PC

At the TTG animation workshop (by the way, great summary Kathy but you've got your Greg's and Graeme's mixed up!) we were talking about playing video files on Palm OS and Pocket PC devices. The application I've used for a while now on my Palm is an open source job called TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player). As you can see from the wiki info, it plays a wide range of video and audio formats and it's free. It's also available for the Pocket PC.

It's actually been superceded by a an app called CorePlayer and is now a commercial product (US $24.95), but the older free version is still readily available. Interestingly, the CorePlayer is about to be released on the Symbian platform (used by Nokia mobiles, and others) which will hopefully make them compatible a broader range of video file formats.

Here's the Wikipedia info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core_Pocket_Media_Player

The Pocket PC download:
http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia-Graphics/Video-Players/The-Core-Pocket-Media-Player-8609.shtml

The Palm download:
http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia-Graphics/Video-Players/tcpmp-Palm-OS-7895.shtml

CorePlayer info:
http://www.coreplayer.com/

Also, here's the link to the open source screencast (recording) application I was talking about on the day. It has nowhere near the feature set of Camtasia but it works pretty well and you can't complain about the price...
http://www.camstudio.org/

Cheers
Graeme

m-learning and Gen Y

In early August I was walking passed two Cert II in Electrical Technician students, Troy and Derek, who were completing some orientation tasks from their Research and Study Skills unit at the Regency Campus, TAFE SA. As part of this orientation task, Troy and Derek were asked by their lecturer to become more familiar with the campus.

Troy was using his mobile phone to photograh the layout of the building map. When I asked him why he was using his mobile phone he said, "I'm to lazy to write things down, and then I can refer back to the photo later".

I thought this was a great example of how our students are incorporating mobile technology into their training.

Stop Motion Animation Workshop with Sasha

We had a great workshop last Friday - learning a bit about Stop Motion Animation with Sasha from Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT). She took us through a workshop that she uses with primary school students (!!), creating video by making plasticine figures and taking individual photos - slightly moving the figure and taking another photo, then when you play all the photos in sequence it creates a moving video.

Then we learned how to use special software to convert the video into .3gp files that are appropriate for playing on mobile phones. Once the videos were created we practiced sharing them with each other using Bluetooth and Infrared technologies.

Thanks Sasha for providing us with a great, fun way to learn some new skills and about the features available in our own mobile phones!

Here are some links to our first foray into stop motion animation!

Kathy & Pam

Peta & Graeme

Pauline & Greg

Sue & Ilia

(By the way, "Quicktime Player" should play these .3gp files. Let me know if you have problems and I can give you instructions to point all .3gp files to the "Quicktime Player".)

We tried to record (create a podcast) the workshop, but there was a technical hitch (translation: "I pushed the wrong button") and it didn't record. Sorry to those who would have liked to hear it. But I'm sure those who were present can give you a quick tutorial and overview. The shareware software that Sasha provided was very effective and easy to use.

Here are a few photos of our Workshop - taken with my new mobile phone/camera/video recorder - player/Bluetooth device/Infrared device/Learning device!

I am on a steep learning curve at the moment!

There was also a demonstration of the "Podmo Free Server" that we have set up in the Computing area of the Tea Tree Gully campus. A few people were successful at downloading the Podmo application to their phones and accessing the FREE content! We will be looking at ways to use Podmo to distribute content - especially music / video / graphics that students have produced.

spoke to reid at bbm.net who use to be my contact for free sound.

Email reply was as follows:

No, we do not have free loops there anymore. We do have free loops at
http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-loops.html. Normally you would
need to purchase the loops to use them in your podcast (they only cost
$29.99 USD each) but if you can promote www.royaltyfreemusic.com in your
podcast I can let you use these free tracks in your programs.
Because these free loops are for demo purposes they have a little silent
audio after the loop sound. Edit out that silent audio to make them to loop
smoothly.

so there you have it. Podcast away!!
Mel

Podcasting for newbies

this was sent in an email from marlene manto for elearning. thought it might be useful to any of you who are new to podcasting.
http://poducateme.com/guide/
mel.

Debut Blog

Hi all
hooray i have finally allowed technolology to catch up with me. Hope all is blogging well.

Steve

Building an m-learning community with free access

Che Metcalfe (Kukan Studios) gave an interesting presentation to the m-learning Learnscope team last Friday 15 June, at Adelaide TAFE on how to build an m-learning community using free mobile phone network access using Podmo (http://www.podmo.com/) – a free access mobile phone network offering local search, maps, content and free Instant Messaging all within a secure local community).

He described how TAFE SA could become a Podmo Free Zone where students could access m-learning content for FREE! Using templates, staff and students could easily upload and download content within any Podmo Free Zone (ie UniSA, CIBO coffee shops, Adelaide Railway Station, and hopefully soon to be: TAFE SA trial campuses (TTG, Adelaide, Regency, O’Hallorahan) Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide Convention Centre and along the Torrens riverbank.)

Listen to Che’s presentation at: http://podzone.tafesa.edu.au/index.php?id=191

Intro to Podcasting Presentation

Kylie Edges, TAFE SA Croydon Campus, did an introduction to podcasting presentation on Thursday 14 June – listen to presentation at: http://podzone.tafesa.edu.au/index.php?id=188

Blogging on the go

In reply to Kathy.
Blogging on the go sounds great but this particular service is a US only service at the moment. I think there may be some Australian options listed in the handouts that Alison Miller gave us in her intro to blogging. Don't ask me which one yet though!!!
I haven't looked at all of them.
If i find one as good as this i will definitely post about it.

How to use bloglines (RSS Aggregator)

Hi everyone

I posted this as a comment in reply to Kathy's question but I note that comments don't appear unless you click on them so I thought I would repost.

Step 1 - sign up at www.bloglines.com and create an account
Step 2 back to bloglines but if you only wnat our blog go to step 3
Step 3 - click on "My Feeds" tab
Step 4 - click "add' button at top - use easy Subscribe and save our link to favourites - click button
Step 5 - select wen browser type and RIGHT CLICK on "sub with Bloglines" button. Select add to favourites and put it in an easy to find spot in favourites listing.
Step 6 - go to our blog then go to the 'sub with bloglines link in your favourites.
Step7 - click sunbsrcribe. When you go back to Bloglines and click on "My feeds" you'll find it there. When there is a new entry , it will appear in bold with the number of new entries added next to it. Click on the name.Now I'm exhausted - haven't done it myself so let us know how it goes!Instructions courtesy of Learnscope (but I shortened them a bit!)
CheersPeta

Hi Everyone

I am looking forward to the June 15th session and meeting you all in person. I am pleased to be part of this project and look forward to working with you all to discover how mobile technologies can enhance e-learning.

A Couple of Videos

I found this site with educational videos (they are from a site called "Teacher Tube" - I was a bit surprised that I could view them because I can't view video from YouTube) Here's a couple that have some relevance to mobile learning. (Some of you will have seen or heard much of this information before if you have been going to any of the e-learning events in the past few years).

Digital Students @ Analog Schools



This next video was created to encourge teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.

"Pay Attention"

First Post

Hi - I enjoyed our first meeting. Lots of great ideas to think about! One practical request - does anyone know a way that I could be notified when a new post is created on this blog? I've heard of RSS feeds, but am not really sure about how they work.

It was interesting to note that on the Blogger home page they had a link to an article "On the Go with Blogger Mobile" - using your mobile phone to post to your blog. If I had a phone with a built in camera, I'd try it! Maybe this project will give me the motivation I need to update my own technology.

Hi Everyone

It was great to meet you all the other day. Lyn Ham and myself will be working together on this project. We will attend most of them together however some sessions there will only be one of us present. We are excited to be part of this project and discover how mobile technologies can enhance what we are already exploring in e-learning.

So much to learn and so little time

Thanks Greg. Just spent some time looking through those sites. I didn't realise how much can be done with a mobile phone but I do realise I have a lot to learn before I can even think about how we might implement m-learning.
Che Metcalfe from KUKAN Studio is coming to our next meeting. I have asked him to give an overview of the use of mobile content and applications, a bit about the technology, how TAFE SA might be able to use PodMo and advice about the direction he thinks we should take with m-learning.

Cheers

Peta

Mobile crazy!!!

The 4th Screen is a festival for art and innovation on mobile phones. This link will take you to the Resources page which is chockers with interesting and inspiring sites and examples of deliverable content and softwares for mobile phones. It also has some great blogs listed, I'd recommend giving IN-duce: DE-duce a read, particularly the "location based mobile phone games" story.
Picture phoning is a cool site as well.

workshop one

It was great to meet everyone today. We have some really big plans and I look forward to working with you all to bring about some changes to our IT support systems!

Some websites to explore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-learning
http://www.pjb.co.uk/m-learning/articles.htm
http://e-standards.flexiblelearning.net.au/topics/mlearn.htm
http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/2007/04/mlearning.html
http://mlearningworld.blogspot.com/
http://learning.ericsson.net/mlearning2/index.shtml
http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/12/mlearning_tsuna.html

Welcome to the TAFE SA m-learning Learnscope project

Our project team will be exploring and trialling the use of mobile content and applications in teaching and learning.
We will use this blog to share our resources and experiences throughout the project.