Developing digital professionalism - let's be careful out there!

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

I like the term digital professionalism used by Bernadette John in an article on JISC, "We’re sleepwalking into a surveillance society with the tech in our pockets". She raises concerns that we are often unwittingly sharing sensitive information due to the fact that the apps on our mobiles and tablets are uploading our photos and conversations to cloud servers without our knowledge. Even images shared over encrypted apps like Whatsapp are then shared automatically to Apple's iCloud making them potentially available for public view. Basically we all need to spend time understanding and trying to tame the powerful forces working around the clock on our mobile devices.

People are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. They're not aware of what their obligations are with regards to the tech in their pockets, they're just using it for work without mindfully considering what the risks and benefits are and making a balanced and informed decision about it.

She gives examples of doctors sharing patient information with colleagues on encrypted services, unaware that other apps are copying the images and saving them to publicly accessible cloud services. For example, all photos I take on my mobile are automatically uploaded to iCloud and Google Photos and so even a private photo that I do not share on any social media are visible elsewhere. If you are aware of that you can be careful what you photograph, but if you don't realise this you risk sensitive photos becoming public. Our mobile apps often have the ability to store and send tracking data, conversations, e-mails and other actions - we have of course accepted this by clicking OK in the terms and conditions. We simply haven't fully grasped the sometimes treacherous power of the devices we hold so precious.

This isn't a generation issue. We all need to become more responsible users even if it means moving from cool but "leaky" platforms and apps to less cool but more secure alternatives. 

We need to actively train students in what we expect of them with regard to how they carry themselves on social channels, and to make it explicit. We need to show them scenarios where things haven't worked out well for others, and ask them to explore those scenarios. But we can't do that without also doing it for the staff.

The article ends with a list of digital professionalism dos and don'ts with an overall message of "get smart". Remember that all those devices, platforms and tools are designed to be as sticky and addictive as possible. Check your profiles, security settings, permissions and shut down potential leaks. Think before you share and even when you do, be aware that whatever you share digitally can easily be shared by others. That doesn't mean we have to lock down everything and go completely offline. Sharing is still extremely rewarding and collaboration is essential for learning. But in the words of the sergeant in the wonderful eighties cop series Hill Street Blues - "Let's be careful out there."

Open education in Palestine

Bethlehem campus

Open universities all over the world aim to offer higher education to non-traditional students, often in rural and underprivileged areas of the country. The challenge is to create learning communities where students are spread all over the country and seldom, if ever, get the chance to meet physically at one location. This challenge is particularly acute at Al Quds Open University (QOU) in Palestine which I visited last week as a guest speaker at their conference Digital Transformation in Continuing Education (30 July). The university offers education throughout the West Bank and Gaza where travel between towns is either difficult or, in the case of Gaza, virtually impossible. The multiple campus university is united digitally and all courses combine online studies with on-site meetings and support.

Al Quds Open University was founded in 1991 and today has around 55,000 students, 8 faculties and 19 campuses/study centres (14 in the West Bank and 5 in Gaza). All courses mix online learning with classroom teaching at the local study centres. The courses are delivered through a variety of platforms: the learning management system Moodle, the academic portal, a media platform, QTube, with a wide range of lectures and information films, a portal for sharing slideshows, the open repository OSOL for scientific journals and other publications and various mobile applications. The university is committed to open educational resources and the vast majority of material has a Creative Commons license and they publish five open access scientific journals. Fees are kept as low as possible (around $350 per term) but are the major source of funding together with donations. As well as the standard e-learning platforms the university also has its own satellite TV channel, Al Quds Educational Channel, broadcasting both academic content as well as educational documentaries for general interest as part of their outreach strategy. The channel is free and reaches households all over Palestine and the programmes are also freely accessible worldwide via the website. I visited their studios where a dedicated team of media professionals produce an impressive range of programmes with many live discussions and lectures from their studio as well as documentaries.

Map showing the study centre areas

I was particularly interested in the study centres (branches) and how they support the students. The study centres host lectures, seminars and examinations but are also places where students can come to use computers, get academic and technical support as well as meet each other. Each study centre has academic staff who can teach on-site and there is also a network of part-time teachers who teach and work with course development. Blended learning is default since students need a social context for their learning and the regular meetings at the study centres helps to keep them on track even though most of the course work is online. They also offer courses on learning how to learn with a focus on learning online.

I visited the centre in Bethlehem which hosts around 4,000 students (78% female) and has 24 full-time teaching staff plus administration, a library and educational technologists. Last year 400 students graduated in Bethlehem and this year’s ceremony say 450 graduate. As well as these centres the university has two mobile educational centres; lorries equipped with laptops, generator, satellite wifi and teachers that drive to outlying rural areas and offer ICT training to remote schools. This is part of the university's commitment to continuing education, coordinated by the Continuing Education and Community Service Centre and offering lifelong learning, digital literacy and professional training all over Palestine via the study centres. At present there are even plans to start a study centre in Syria to serve Palestinians there.

Poster advertising the mobile educational centres

A particularly interesting new development is the range of non-credit self-learning open online SMART courses that are specially adapted for mobile delivery and are available via Google Play and similar platforms. These courses offer basic training in subjects like English, Arabic, digital skills and now the first Arabic open course on OER (Open Educational Resources). These courses are available to anyone for free and interaction between students takes place on Facebook groups. QOU are also active contributors to the pan-Arabic OER community, ALECSO OER.

Combining online learning with on-site support in every region offers students both the flexibility they need to study and the sense of community that will support them through their studies. With travel between many of the regions challenging and time-consuming the digital spaces provide a common meeting place for all.

How relevant is open education for refugees?

Group work in progress on-site and online

As part of my involvement in the ongoing European project MOONLITE, examining the use of MOOCs and open education for social inclusion and employability, we arranged a hybrid webinar workshop at the recent EDEN 2017 conference in Jönköping, Sweden. The workshop asked the question "How relevant is open education for refugees?" and comprised a combination of input from project members with group discussions both on-site and online. All the results from the session, group work, slideshows, link to the recording and links to other projects are gathered on a common Padlet page.

Padlet page with collected notes, slideshows and links from the workshop

We provided an overview of current projects and initiatives that offer MOOCs as a pathway to cultural and linguistic integration, higher education and employment and then asked the participants to answer questions assessing how relevant this form of education is for such a target group. I blogged on this topic recently, MOOCs for refugees - work in progress, and the ideas from this post very much reflect the workshop discussions. The benefits of using open online courses (massive or not) were clear to all participants, namely:

• Easy access, always available
• Mobile-friendly courses
• Large variety of courses in many languages
• No fees
• Flexible
• Preferably combined with on-site support, face-to-face groups with own language support

Obstacles to using open courses with refugees were more numerous and some have not really been resolved:

• Do refugees accept MOOCs as being culturally acceptable and relevant?
• Very heterogeneous group and hard to find any common denominator
• Lack of awareness of open education
• Lack of digital skills and experience of online education
• Cultural adjustments take time and many suffer from stress, preventing them from focusing on learning
• Are open education solutions addressing the right problems?
• Lack of recognition of open education in the host country
• Poor infrastructure in refugee camps
• Recognition of prior learning
• Provision of support and mentoring (both face-to-face and online)

We also asked whether existing initiatives had succeeded in meeting the needs of refugees. The general feeling was that although there were many success stories the use of open education is still largely fragmented and with very limited impact. The vast majority of refugees are still not aware of open courses or are unable to take advantage of them for the reasons noted above. MOOCs are only one of many options to address the challenge of integrating refugees into their new countries and top priority for most of them is recognition of their skills and getting hold of credentials that are valid in their country of residence. If open online courses can lead to such educational hard currency then they will be popular. They must be seen as a pathway to higher education and to employment, very much the focus of our project!

MOOCs and other types open education should focus on the most essential skills: language, socio-cultural integration and online study skills. However, in almost all areas a combination of digital and face-to-face solutions is essential. Refugees need to make personal contacts in their new homeland and online education can therefore only be part of the solution. The group discussions offered many examples of services and solutions that offer a smoother pathway to integration. Matching refugees with people working in the same profession is one method already in use in many countries. A Swedish initiative called Welcome is an app that enables refugees to make contact with Swedish volunteers to chat online or to meet up for a coffee and discussion. Another Swedish initiative, Minclusion, is developing mobile apps for learning Swedish and facilitating intercultural communication. The key is putting the refugees in contact with local people who can help them with everyday questions, language development, legal problems, coaching/mentoring, job shadowing and just everyday human contact.

Online learning can be very effective for people whose lives are otherwise full with career. family and friends. For refugees human contact, building up a new identity and regaining broken confidence are the main priorities. They can benefit from online education but always combined with physical meetings and support.

Watch the edited recording of the workshop.

Connected learners need connected teachers

Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano creates some excellent presentations and here's a new one dealing with the need for teachers to become globally connected. Read also her related blog post, Global learning - what do you mean?

Global Learning- What do you mean? from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

It's a simple message but for some reason it is taking a long time to reach all parts of the education system. If students are going to succeed in a global knowledge society they need teachers who are able to guide them. Assuming that students are digital natives and don't need support with digital literacy is resigning responsibility. Using today's social media and net-based tools require very little, if any, technical expertise; often much simpler than using the average washing machine or TV set.

We need to move away from seeing digital media as mysterious technology only for the initiated, to integrating them into education as natural communication tools. Maybe we need to stop calling it all technology because doing so gives many an escape clause: "I'm a teacher not a technician".
In the past when computers were deskbound and clumsy there were legitimate fears that students would be pacified in front of screens all day but today's "technology" is mobile and ubiquitous. Learning can take place anywhere rather than being confined to the classroom. But first we need to learn how to connect.

Inspiring encounters

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing two inspiring educators: Dave Cormier (University of Prince Edward Island) and Helen Keegan (University of Salford). It was at a major conference/exhibition for Swedish schools, Skolforum 2012, in Stockholm and we appeared in an event known cosily as The Cage.

Dave Cormier has featured in several posts on this blog before as the man who gave the world the acronym MOOC (working with George Siemens an Stephen Downes) way back in the days when the concept denoted an experiment in connectivist pedagogy rather than the mass market packaged commodity it has recently become in the hands of major university consortia. Helen is famous for innovative experiments in mobile learning and the use of social media in education.

I include three videos below so you can see Dave's and Helen's presentations followed by the interview show I hosted. Sadly we didn't get to sit in real chat show sofas and there was no house band but a fascinating discussion took place.

Here are some notes I made with snippets of wisdom from both of them. First from Dave Cormier's presentation which describes the thinking behind the MOOC movement and the power of the community in education:

• Prepare students to deal with uncertainty.
• You can’t collaborate alone.
• MOOCs are about forming networks around shared interests.
• Stop measuring learning
• The community becomes the curriculum
• MOOCs are community generators
• 5 steps to succeed in a MOOC: orient yourself, declare who you are, network with peers,form clusters,focus.

Helen Keegan looked at how we can drive student learning by awakening their curiosity and described a highly innovative course she ran in the form of an alternate reality game (ARG):

• Build education around curiosity.
• Hashtag has been the biggest gamechanger. Course number with # becomes metadata. Courses as hashtags.
• All about forming connections. Connections lead to internally motivated learning. Connections create engagement.
• Network and media literacies. Educator as broker – modelling behaviour.
• Get out there and things will happen.
• Howard Rheingold's 5 literacies: attention, critical thinking/filtering, participation, collaboration, network smartness.
• Losing control can lead to more learning.
• Learners driving the curriculum.

And finally the interview with them both.


The films are all licensed under Creative Commons CC BY

More mobiles than humans

  by  ElCapitanBSC

Mobiles will soon outnumber us according to a new BBC article, More mobiles than humans in 2012, says Cisco. This means of course that a lot of people own several mobiles and millions have never even seen one. Mobile data usage is mushrooming and providing an infrastructure headache to operators all over the world. Evidently by 2016 global networks will be shifting 130 exabytes of data each year, equivalent to 33 billion DVDs.

Today's pupils and students will be working and living in a highly connected world where mobile devices will be the natural way to use the net. Isn't it therefore essential that we start using these mobiles in education instead of banning and blocking them?

Mobiles for learning

Many of us have known someone who gave so much attention to his mobile that even if you were in the same room the only way to get his attention was to phone him. That way you couldn't be interrupted. Back in the nineties there was plenty discussion about mobile etiquette and everyone had stories of irritating ring signals in embarrassing situations. Fifteen years later and mobiles are still our most compulsive distractions.

However the potential of mobiles for learning is enormous. Students are today online round the clock and although much of that time is spent on social activities it is time for schools and universities to move into the mobile space. Many are already there but there's still a great degree of suspicion amongst faculty about the potential of mobile learning. The following infographic gives a hint of this (click on the picture for a full screen view).


Via: STUDYBLUE.com

Digital literacy for all

Most media focus is on the glitzy new devices rolling off the production lines at Apple, Samsung, Dell and company but we tend to forget that these are virtually impossible dreams for the vast majority of people in the world. Students and pupils in developing countries have no chance of affording an iPad, a Blackberry or a Kindle but they do need to lean the digital skills that will lead to qualified jobs in the future.

That's why it's good to know that there are companies producing affordable devices that may lack the bells and whistles of the market leaders but they provide people with a platform to learn. First there was the One laptop per child initiative that saw Uruguay become the first country in the world to provide laptops for all primary school children and several others have followed. Over 2 million pupils and teachers are now part of the global OLPC project. The low priced XO laptop has now spread to schoolchildren all over the world and is extremely simple, robust and energy-efficient. The laptops have been sent directly to countries' education ministries and have then been distributedto the schools just like textbooks. The result is that several developing countres have a far greater level of digitalisation in schools than many European countries (including Sweden).

  by  judy_breck 

There's more good news for affordable technology with the recent launch of an Indian tablet called Aakash (sky in Hindi) that has most of the features of the more famous touch-screen tablets but retailing at only $35-$50. Initial plans are to distribute 100,000 of these to selected university students over the next few months before rolling out fully. For most students this enables them to fully benefit from the educational resources available on the net in a country where standard devices are far beyond a student's allowance.

Watch a TV report on the Aakash tablet from Al-Jazeera.

Here's a report on the story from Newsy videos:


Watch India Unveils $35 Computer Tablet for Students in News  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Quality apps

The torrent of apps just keeps on flowing. There are millions of them out there and although there are plenty of excellent apps for education there are also plenty of less than excellent ones. Finding good quality apps is not easy and there's not much help out there even if you want to make a more discerning choice. App stores all have rating systems but they are often a poor guide since most voters give a simply thumbs up or down and little or no explanation. Many of the ratings are done automatically by bots. So how do you know what to download? Sadly there's no answer today.

  by  Jorge Quinteros 

This problem has been highlighted in an article on Mind/Shift, How do you find good educational apps?. Sifting through thousands on apps on iTunes or Google Apps is a frustrating process and you tend to rely on tips from friends or news articles. Some reviews are helpful but mostly it's a case of trial and error, not a particularly academic process. If apps are going to find their way into university courses and schools there must be quality criteria and ways of in some way certifying that the educational value of the app. Once again we need filters to be able to make more educated choices and it's not enough to only rely on the wisdom of crowds. Acquiring a lot of "likes" doesn't really count for much.

We need a credible peer review process for apps that are aimed at the education sector and some kind of approval stamp that educators take seriously. I read recently that the Danish Ministry of Education is planning to launch an app store for Danish schools by 2012 with approved apps (see article in Danish from ComputerWorld). This is a bold and admirable step and I think this official seal of approval is essential if mainstream teachers are going to take the plunge and try out mobile apps in their teaching. However we still need to develop some international standards so each country does not need to reinvent the wheel.

Read more on this theme in The world of children's apps: a shake-up? on GeekDad.

Altered images

Augmented reality has still not broken through as an everyday technology but it's developing fast and I suspect that in the not too distant future it'll suddenly be everywhere. Here's the latest in a line of videos showing new applications for augmented reality and each time it seems to be moving closer to finding that soft spot for mass adoption.

I like the interaction between mobile and printed media giving newspapers, books, ads, billboards, signs and so on digital content and creating a bridge between the two media. Too often we see dramatic headlines that the digital world will make all printed media obsolete in the very near future. This causes understandable reactions of panic or denial ("over my dead body") and unnecessary conflict.

A lot of discussion about digitalisation is rather too radical; that new technology will sweep away all traces of the old methods. This often just leads to traditionalists digging in even deeper. Let's look at all these amazing new opportunities and see what we can do with them to make learning even more exciting. Some old ideas will fade away, some will be retained and others will be remodelled. Evolution is the name of the gamer.

Anyway have a look at this video from Junaio.

Inspiration from Uruguay

Uruguay is the first country in the world where all children in public primary schools have their own laptop. Yes you read correctly. Whilst so many much richer countries agonize over the pros and cons of technology in the classroom they have just gone out and done it.  Of course this development has been built on the One laptop per child initiative and the inexpensive, no frills XO laptops but it still demands commitment from government level and a clear strategy; something that is sadly lacking in many richer countries.

The scheme has been a great success as the film below clearly shows. These children are learning 21st century skills whilst many children in Europe and North America are still learning as their parents did. Interestingly the film includes interviews with parents and teachers who have learnt from and been inspired by their children's success with their laptops. The children have helped the adults to become more digitally literate.

There are now plans to build on this success as can be seen in an article on the World Bank's blog EduTech, What's next for Plan Ceibal in Uruguay?. Now all public secondary schools will introduce one laptop per pupil and all schools will of course have internet connections.



According to the article the next ambitious stage in Uruguay includes the following measures:

• the conversion of all secondary and technical school (and some primary school) science labs into 'digital labs', utilizing sensors and other 'probeware' devices
• the piloting of new educational robotics curriculum
• new online nationwide mathematics contest
• the expansion of pilot efforts in online assessment and evaluation
• a roll-out of Plan Ceibal into kindergarten classrooms on a voluntary basis (teachers submit plans to Ceibal for funding)
• the regular refreshment/replacement of OLPC XO laptops already delivered
• a new Plan Ceibal Digital Library, to include 100+ books and other educational materials (such as those from the Khan Academy), hosted on local school servers

Wouldn't it be nice if our educational decision-makers took a closer look at examples like this?

The computer is dead, long live the cloud!

Our computers are going on a crash diet and could soon be ultra-thin. This video from Google could just be a major landmark in the history of IT. They are releasing a new concept in laptops, Chromebooks, and the revolutionary feature is that they do not need heavy programs, file managers and tons of extras like the standard laptop. Basically the Chromebook lets you access the net and that's it.

It's a logical step really since you can do just about everything you want in the cloud today, so why bother filling your hard drive with uneccessary flab? Without this heavy burden the Chromebook can start up almost immediately (the desktop I'm writing on now can take at least 5 minutes to get up and running). If everything is stored in the cloud you don't need to download anything and consequently there's no need to have virus protection. Irritating updates and patches will disappear since the version on the net will always be updated. When you can easily and cheaply subscribe to a massive cloud-based library of music/films/books/games why then go to the trouble of downloading copies? Of course people will always find ways of beating the system but this innovation could lead to the end of file sharing since there will be little point in it.

How long will it take before our trusty desktop computers and software-heavy laptops head the same way as the fat TV and CD-players? The tide could turn very quickly if the price is right. The only problem could be that the whole concept of cloud computing is still relatively unknown to the vast majority. It might however be easier to use than grappling with the extremely unpredictable and infuriating quirks of the average desktop.

What will this mean for education? It could make computing affordable for all since such thin terminals shouldn't costs anything like today's laptops. What does this mean for all the schools and universities that have just invested heavily in providing students with laptops and iPads?

Read Mashable's summary of this, Google explains life after the desktop.

All tagged up

QR codes (quick response)are finally beginning to provide useful services and before long they could be even more common than their less sophisticated cousins the simple bar codes we see on every product in the supermarket. The principle is simple. Most smartphones can download a QR reader app and so if you see a QR-code your phone can scan it and immediately take you to a website or instruction film. No need to put long web addresses on advertising since our mobiles will simply remember the site automatically if the code is scanned.

At the moment QR-codes are being used mostly in advertising where you scan the code and can see more product information on a website. DIY chain The Home Depot have started using QR-codes to let customers access video DIY tips, product demos and further information. You can see how to use the product before you decide to buy. See more on Mashable, Mobile bar codes come to The Home Depot.

In education there are already many innovative applications of this technology, as well demonstrated in this excellent overview (below) by Carol Walker from JISC RSC Scotland N&E (see original post). QR-codes are used in libraries to help students access e-books and e-journas, to speed up borrowing and returning and for catalogue access. QR-codes around campus can be used to help new students get acquainted with the campus. Museums can have QR codes on every exhibit to provide extra information, activate video or audio commentary. Books can have QR-codes leading to new updated material. The potential is enormous.



At the moment this is still not mainstream. You need a smartphone and you need to download the application before QR codes become meaningful. Hopefully new mobiles will have a QR reader pre-installed thus eliminating one major hurdle. We're still waiting for the critical mass to be reached but the potential uses are so wide ranging that the only reason QR won't take off is that an even better solution emerges.

Basically everything could be tagged like this and you can't help wondering when we can have a bar code on our foreheads so people can find out everything about us without all the bother of engaging in long conversations.

The QR-code above will lead you straight to this blog!

Augmented reality gets even realer

I've been following the development of augmented reality (AR) with interest over the past couple of years. It's still far from mainstream but a breakthrough could come soon, especially since so many people now own devices that can cope with it. By viewing the world through your smartphone you see extra layers on top of reality. It can be links to more information on a restaurant, historical building, a house for sale and so on. You could see monsters on your street that you have to fight or see instructions on how to work some equipment in front of you.

If you aren't sure of what effects AR is going to have in the future have a look at this amazing film trailer. It's a German film where you play one of the roles and you see the action in AR through your mobile. You have to actually visit the action scenes and your reactions to each situation determine how the film continues. The potential for educational simulations are enormous; for training emergency situations, safety routines, military training etc. Here you can practice situations that simply cannot be practiced in any other way.



For some more thoughts on why all this is relevant to education read a blog post by Vicki Davis, A lesson in simple augmented reality.

Making tech more human

The previous post had a video about a robot teacher and the moral of that story is that we should be trying to make the technology more human than the other way around. Here's another film, this time a TED talk, about making mobile devices more human. A cellphone could, for example, be built to distribute its weight according to function. When following directions in a city the mobile will shift its weight to the left when we should turn left and forwards when we need to go straight on and so on. The deice can also be built to vibrate more intensely when something exciting is happening and calm down when we stroke it reassuringly.

Shades of the tamagotchi really but probably just an extension of similar attenpts to make technology more intuitive. Remember Microsoft's Office assistant? The friendly paper clip/dog/cat that would appear on your screen with sometimes irritating regularity and suggest better ways of doing what you what you were trying to do. The idea was basically good but most people soon got tired of the know-it-all agent and discarded it.

I also remember experiments with a desktop where applications behaved like pets trying to get your attention. Applications that you often use would jump at you on the screen almost begging to be clicked on whereas system applications that run in the background almost hid themselves from you. That didn't really catch on either.

I'm not sure if we really want to have more human machines. Maybe its better to keep them as simply machines. Anyway, watch the film and draw your own conclusions.

Augmented reality meets print

Print media is under some heavy fire at the moment with devices like the iPad hoping to push the business over to digital format. Certainly digital versions of popular magazines on a high definition screen will open up many exciting new avenues but will there still be room for the print editions? The following video presents an unlikely link-up between the hi-tech world of augmented reality and a print magazine.

German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin has teamed up with augmented reality developers Metaio to produce the first print magazine that can be viewed through an AR application in a smartphone. The whole concept is still under development and the features shown in the video are merely a taste of what will be possible in the near future. Now, when does all this hit the education sector?



Soon after writing this I found another magazine also using AR this month, Time Out New York. See article Time Out New York premiers mobile augmented reality cover.

Txting gets serious

  by  ejbSF 

How many teenagers you know use e-mail regularly (if at all)? Or for that matter how many use their cellphones to talk? Not many I suspect. The communication defaults of many years are under threat and the winner of the communication battle seems to be good old texting. Curious, since texting/SMS virtually predates e-mail and is a supremely primitive service that was included in the old GSM mobile system in the early nineties. SMS became a success completely by accident since its main purpose from the beginning was to enable cellular operators to inform you that you had a voice message waiting for you. The operators were completely taken by surprise when youngsters started using the text service to communicate to avoid paying the high call charges. A fine example of an accidental technology that gets used for something completely different from what the inventors intended. The rest is history.

The lack of interest in e-mail and voice calling presents a problem to many colleges and universities. How do we communicate with our students? Standard student e-mail accounts are often unread and the only way to really get through is by texting. Texts are hard to avoid whereas it's easy not to log into your student e-mail account for a week or so. Texting is ubiquitous in that everyone has a mobile, therefore everyone is contactable. All other channels have an opt-in factor and often have competing and mutually exclusive solutions.

Texting has definitely come of age in the academic world; so much so that there's a whole conference dedicated to it. The University of Bath is host today to the Let's talk about txt 6 conference with sessions on how texting is being used in higher education for marketing, student communication and learning. The fact that this is the sixth such conference shows that all this is well-established even if it has taken me until now to discover it! I certainly am not aware of a similar volume of interest here in Scandinavia. Read more about the conference in an article on Merlinjohnonline, Leading texters head for Let's Talk About Txt 6.

I will certainly follow the conference proceedings with interest. The telecom boffin who decided to dedicate the 140 byte signalling channel in GSM to text communication should be pretty proud today.

Goodbye cellphone

With over 100% penetration in many countries and 4.6 billion subscribers worldwide the cellphone has become more than just a communication device. I remember in the early nineties hearing friends scoffing at the idea of owning one at all and the idea that everyone in the country would own at least one would have been dismissed as wild fantasy. Losing your cellphone today is for many people worse than losing your wallet.

However the role of the cellphone has already changed radically. It is no longer primarily a device for voice communication. We still use terms like cellphone and mobile phone but will soon have to change our vocabulary. According to an article from The Guardian, A new first in mobile,  mobile devices are now used more for data than for voice. We're using them to check websites, socialising on Facebook and Twitter, watching videos, taking and sharing photos and films and so on. The telephone function has officially been relegated to accessory. We can see this trend most clearly amongst teenagers where phone calls are few and far between and texting and instant messaging dominate. As George Siemens comments on his blog elearnspace:

"I would rather give up the call functionality of my phone than data/app functionality. My voice time is rather limited – I spend my time looking at my phone, rather than talking into it."

The moral of all this for education? It's time to revise our views on the use of mobile devices in school. It's time to take them out of quarantine and see them as the students' device of choice for net access. Instead of saying "take out your books and turn to page 54" we should be saying "switch on your mobiles and check this link."

Horizon report 2010

The publication of the annual Horizon Report has become one of the highlights of the edtech year. Which technologies will be in the spotlight this time? What challenges does higher education face? This year NMC actually released a sneek preview version of the report in December to set the discussion in motion. Now the full version has hit the streets and this will no doubt be one of many reviews and summaries that appear in the coming weeks.

The format of the report is as ever: six technologies are nominated that will have a major impact on higher education in the short, medium and long term. However I find the most interesting parts of the report are the pages where they list the challenges facing universities today. In the face of the social web revolution of today the very role of universities is being questioned:

"Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sensemaking and the ability to assess the credibility of information are paramount. Mentoring and preparing students for the world in which they will live, the central role of the university when it achieved its modern form in the 14th century, is again at the forefront. Universities have always been seen as the gold standard for educational credentialing, but emerging certification programs from other sources are eroding the value of that mission daily."

Ubiquitous learning has become a reality with students able to access information anywhere, any time and in many ways. Informal learning and alternative education paths are challenging traditional forms. According to Horizon the critical challenges today are:

• Role of academy - adapting education and teaching methods to the needs of tomorrow. Implementing and integrating new technologies.
• New forms of scholarly publication using net-based collaboration
  
• Digital media literacy vital in all disciplines and levels
• Financial constraints hit higher education. How to innovate and adapt despite the crisis.

I'd like to add another major challenge and that is the growing digital divide in higher education; those who understand the social web and are trying new models and methods and those who still work with the tools of the last century. When Horizon talks of technologies becoming mainstream they are talking about the edtech front runners. I suspect the majority of institutions today are still grappling with establishing LMS, using one way web sites and use mostly e-mail for communication. How do we win over the edtech sceptics?

The technologies

It's no great surprise that mobile computing and open content are the two technologies that occupy this year's category Time to adoption: one year or less. The advent of the iPhone and Android have brought mobile computing to everyone's attention even if there are still concerns with security, privacy and classroom implementation. They symbolise the concept of ubiquitous education and are becoming the devices of choice for many students. The challenge is for universities to harness this potential and find ways of integrating this technology into courses. The report, as ever, provides plenty of inspiring examples of universities using these technologies.

Open content is another disruptive technology that threatens many traditional activities like academic textbook publishing but which is judged to have sufficient momentum to have a significant impact this coming year. Having so much open content available increases demands on digital literacy and so-called 21st century skills:

"Open content shifts the learning equation in a number of interesting ways; the most important is that its use promotes a set of skills that are critical in maintaining currency in any discipline — the ability to find, evaluate, and put new information to use."

On the 2-3 year horizon the report nominates e-books and augmented reality. E-books are of course already evident but as more versatile, attractive and reasonably priced devices appear they will become mainstream enabling students to store all course literature onto one device and forcing radical changes in the publishing business as well as libraries. The report gives links to universities that are already using e-books and e-journals and have encouraged the uptake of e-book readers amongst students.

Augmented reality is being driven by the mobile computing boom with apps available already in both the iPhone and Android. Pointing the camera at an object, building or person will activate icons on the screen that can be touched for information. Google's SkyMap allows the user to see AR information on stars and constellations by pointing mobile device at them. There are also apps (see video TAT augmented ID) that will show you information about people, such as which social networks they belong to. There is massive potential in this technology but already the personal integrity warning lamps are flashing.

On the far horizon are gesture based computing and visual data analysis both of which are already evident but which will take a few years to become everyday technologies. Gesture based computing is already available in gaming with Nintendo Wii and the new challenger Xbox Natal but will no doubt become the natural way for us to interact with devices.

"The kinesthetic nature of gesture-based computing will very likely lead to new kinds of teaching or training simulations that look, feel, and operate almost exactly like their real-world counterparts."

Visual data analysis deals with presenting complex data in advanced graphical representations and manipulated in real time. At present this is restricted to fields like physics, chemistry and advanced mathematics since it requires enormous amounts of processing power.

Digital Nation

American PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) has produced an impressive website called Digital Nation. The project aims to showcase how the net has become an integral part of our lives and is reshaping the way we interact with each other. Most of the material consists of video interviews with experts, decision makers and members of the public on how they relate to technology and our increasingly net-based society. As the project progresses more films and other material will be added and this will all be the basis of a TV documentary later next year.

The site is divided into five main sections; living faster (daily life in an on-line world), relationships (friendship and socialising), waging war (training, simulation), virtual worlds (gaming, socialising) and learning. Predictably the obligatory stories about multitasking digital natives appear but hopefully that may be questioned by later contributions. Comments are of course invited on almost all the content. One quirky initiative asks you to write in only six words how the web and digital technology are changing the way you think, work, live, or love. Maybe the Twitter influence?

The idea is to create a digital collage reflecting different perspectives on life in the digital age. It'll be interesting to see how the project develops.