m-learning Forum - Newsletter

1 January 2003 - Issue 8

Happy New Year everyone.

This newsletter aims to catch up on some of the activities in m-learning that have taken place during November and December last year. It reports on the MOBIlearn Special Interest Group Meeting that took place on the 5 November 2002 in Copenhagen, Denmark and also on mLearning: the Cutting Edge that also took place at the end of November 2002.

1. MOBIlearn Special Interest Group Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark

The SIG Group was attended by 26 people. An update on Mobilearn developments was provided

Planned outcomes are:-

Basic understanding of educational outcomes

Standards – security ownership of materials capturing events out of the field annotated content, quality factors

Applications and content will be propriety held by partners

Prof. Mike Sharples presented a framework for context state recognition as part of his work package. He also said that there was a need to develop international standards, which cover m-learning. Dr Eleni Murelli presented some scenarios for defining user requirements and evaluation.

Following considerable discussion it was agreed to form the following sub-working groups as part of the SIG Group:-:

No details of the next SIG Group meeting are available yet but further details of the project can be found at http://www.mobilearn.org

2. mLearning: the Cutting Edge

This one-day conference took place at Ericsson International Training Centre, Adelphi Centre, Upper Georges St., Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland on the 22 November 2002. Although a few people did not turn up at the last moment there were more than 70 people on the delegate list with more people on a waiting list wanting to attend. This event was organised by Ericsson in conjunction with other partners in a EU funded Leonardo project entitled “From e-learning to m-learning”.

Bronagh McMullen, Ericsson Education gave a presentation on “The Future is Wireless”. (http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/presentation/bronagh2211.ppt) Desmond Keegan, DEI, Ireland presented the Leonardo Project (http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/presentation/des1911.ppt). Three aspects of the project were covered by the following speakers after there were various workshops covering these areas:-

“mLearning for WAP Phones” by Paul Landers, Ericsson Education (http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/presentation/paul1911.ppt) 

“mLearning for PDAs”  by Torstein Rekkedal, NKI, Norway (http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/presentation/torstein1911.ppt) 

“mLearning for Smartphones “by Dr. Helmut Fritsch, FernUniversität Germany

(http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/presentation/helmut1911.ppt)

Paul Gorey, Ericsson Education concluded with a presentation on “The Future of Wireless Technology'

3. Upcoming events in 2003

m-Learning and MOBIlearn, two mobile learning projects supported by the European Commission, are collaborating to organise MLEARN 2003 in London, UK. A similar event will be held in 2004 in Rome, Italy.

The conference will bring together people who are interested in developing opportunities, systems and materials for learning with mobile and wireless handheld devices. Speakers and delegates will include practitioners, designers of learning materials, hardware and software technology developers, and researchers. This is an opportunity to find out what is going on now in learning with mobile devices and to share ideas and experiences!

On behalf of the conference organising committee, we are delighted to be able to invite you to attend this conference, which is being held at Inmarsat in Central London on 19-20 May 2003. We hope you will join us in what should be a very interesting conference. Further details at http://www.lsda.org.uk/events/mlearn2003/

4. Interesting Technology

I have come across a Finnish company that has developed a very interesting technology that could have huge potential for m-learning. Instead of seeing WLAN simply as a transport medium, Ekahau has developed award-winning technology to leverage the Wi-Fi to precisely locate PC, PDA, and other devices. It’s worth a look at their web site. http://www.ekahau.com/

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Last updated 30 April 2004