Mobile Learning

M-LEARNING:

           Mobile learning is simply learning multiple contexts via mobile devices. This includes
 smart phones, music players, laptops and tablets. It is just not about using mobile phones, the
 crucial  word here is context. Mobile learning allows wide range of contextualization in education  where desk bound learning cannot. sharing is almost instant among people using the same content  and thus the feedback and discussions can be simultaneously done.

WHY?
          Mobile learning is preferred more because of its non complex nature.Students find it
more comfortable because:

Portable: easy to carry and can be used anytime anywhere as far as mobile connection is
available.

Cost effective: learning more in the most affordable way.

Familiar: no special hardware learning is required.

Access: mentors, tutors and others learners can easily discuss, share data, capture live videos
and images.

Energy efficiency: consumes less power and stays upright for much time.

       Apart from all the above reasons, mobile learning is user friendly. Students can be easily informed in case of any reschedule or cancellation of classes. Since every student cannot afford laptops and heavy internet all the time, third population of them finds mobile learning economical.

          However like every technology, mobile learning also has its own drawbacks
like battery charging, network problems. But these are minute issues and are not
too risky.

An Era of Open Education

Open Educational Resources(OER) are free to access , openly licensed documents and media, which can be widely used by the teacher, students and also for research purpose.One of the prime advantage of OER is to explore beyond the boundaries as learners and educators can get access to wide range of information.

How it works:
The most essential thing to access OER
1.Internet access
2. Software installation in some cases and
3. Most importantly Desire to learn

OER has many advantages for learners and educators.
Advantages of OER:
1. Free to access.
2. Widely circulated in no time.
3.Continuous updates

There can never exist anything without a disadvantage, OER has no exemption.
Disadvantages
1. Lacking human interaction
2. Quality concern.
3. OER creators cannot sustain for longer time as  its free.

OER is globally most admired education system as it can be used by any one in the way they wanted, to reflect there own ideas, which can also be circulated faster. OER is not just a mere free access to information rather its an access to the people around the world from different origins, customs and cultures. OER certification is also gaining advantage in the real world.

Its an Era of OER, which has a phenomenal future ahead with its wide spread acceptance, but there is a need to monitor as it can misguided with irrelevant unsophisticated information because it can be accessed by anyone.
Have you ever tried OER? its a great resource to learn in the way you want.

Updating another video for in-depth understanding

Reference:
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Open-Educational-Resources-Research.html
http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf
http://libguides.umuc.edu/content.php?pid=98930&sid=742401

ONLINE TUTORIALS

Online tutorials or E-learning

Online tutorials can also be called e-learning. It means the learning conducted via electronic media, typically on the Internet. Successful e-learning depends on the self-motivation of individuals to study effectively. E-learning is good and for good reason, if done right, it can produce great results by decreasing costs and improving performance. Also, unlike a onetime classroom session, the e-learning course is available for others. This includes the static e-learning course as well as any ongoing conversations in networked communities.

E-Learning represents an innovative shift in the field of learning, providing rapid access to specific knowledge and information. It offers online instruction that can be delivered anytime and anywhere through a wide range of electronic learning solutions such as Web-based course, online discussion groups, live virtual classes, video and audio streaming, Web chat, online simulations, and virtual mentoring. E-Learning enables organizations to transcend distance and other organizational gaps by providing a cohesive virtual learning environment. Companies must educate and train vendors, employees, partners, and clients to stay competitive, and e-Learning can provide such just-in-time training in a cost-effective way.

E-Learning has many advantages. Through e-learning a student can understand the lessons more effectively. At any point of the lecture, if he don't understand the point, he can stop it right there, go back and play the lesson aging and again until he understands it. E-learning is cost saving, time saving and effective way to learn.

How many of you have taken online tutorials before joining this university?

What differences did you notices between typical classrooms and online tutorials?

Student Response System - Make Learning environment a Gaming experience

With the betterment of wireless technology, new devices utilizing wireless mode of communication are being developed every day to help the mankind. One of the areas benefited with advent of wireless technology and devices that I came across recently is Student Response System.

Scenario

I was doing a research project where I had to collect responses of 100 students about, how safe they feel about privacy option on Social Media sites. I was discussing with my Professor about the simplest and inexpensive way to collect this data. We came across different ways in which this can be done and at the same time we wanted the responses to be genuine. The problem with traditional paper style survey is the peer might not be interested thereby providing fake response. To make this session more interesting we thought of using technology and we came across Student Response System.

What is it?

In simple words, Student Response System is basically a handheld remote control device used for providing response by clicking the options they agree upon. It works like any other remote control device using Radio Frequency or infrared to record the peer’s responses to the questions being displayed or asked. A portable receiver is connected to the laptop which records the response and stores. The software running on the laptop provides the real-time view of the responses in form of graphs to the instructor. Student Response System makes the learning environment interactive and enjoyable for the peers and helps the instructor by providing immediate feedback.

Can I leverage this technology for my data collection?

After doing some research about this technology, I realized using this I can get the genuine responses from the peers in easiest and inexpensive way. To understand the technology, I read more articles and found that to use this technology each peer would require their own clickers to record responses and designing clicker based question requires a thorough understanding of the technology. This became my new challenge and I started to figure out ways to overcome this.

Can I use a Mobile application as Clicker?

My interest in technologies and readings articles on new technology helped me to overcome this challenge. These days’ smartphones have become the new platform for all the technical needs and every individual carries a smartphone. I realized using mobile application as a clicker I would incur no cost to conduct this survey since every peer can use their mobile phones to record responses. As I am a computer science student and love programming, I programmed a mobile application and a web server. The web server was used by me to project the questions on screen and the mobile application was used by the peers to answer the question. I worked out with my Professor and conducted this survey in every lecture of the Professor in the first 5 minutes.

How can it be useful for teaching and learning?

Interaction and participation in classroom are important for effective learning to take place. When students interact and participate they tend to think more and in this way their thinking ability increases. Using the Student Response System an instructor can make learning more effective and enjoyable for the students. It facilitates class discussion without chaos, encourage peer instruction, the instructor collects data and assess students in real-time, Offer pre-exam reviews and quizzes etc. Thus running a class like a game show makes it more interactive and enjoyable for the students.

More Readings

Student Response System in Higher Education

Learning as Gaming Experience

Clickers in Classroom

Engaging Technologies

Multimedia as an Educational Tool

Multimedia

Multi -Multiple

Media-Medium of communication

Multimedia, or mixed-media, is a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, or interactivity content forms.

The development of multimedia has dramatically changed the lives of many people.  It transcends various operations electronically as it suggests a diverse way of dealing with it. From this, it brought several applications into a newer approach making people much motivated and makes things done easily and faster. 

First top is in Education, student can easily access pertinent information in shorter time frames. They can use multimedia to validate their results and obtain immediate feedback. In Entertainment such as Online Games, it lets feel the gamer a new experiences because it incorporates fast action, vivid colors, 3D animations and elaborate sound effects which are essential to entertainment.   

Lastly it became an important tool in Business, because multimedia can provide a global communication. It provides an opportunity for every company to go international and to distribute it products and services directly to the end user at a reasonable price.
Generally, the development of multimedia has paved its way of evolving usual operation and transactions into a better way in a very attractive and persuasive manner.

Multimedia provides a better way of learning. Example is that it neglects the nonlinear way of processing of information because, with its hyper linking capability, it presents the content in a way that allows the learner to jump from idea to idea into such non linear way. Because multimedia applications are user-controlled, students can proceed at their own pace and focus on those areas that are most interesting and helpful to them. Multimedia can be extremely motivating by allowing the user to take charge of his/her learning experience. In addition, it can provide immediate feedback, adjust the level of difficulty and evaluate skills.

One of the greatest things about the use of multimedia is the fact that it helps students of all levels achieve a higher standard. Students can all design a PowerPoint presentation regardless of skill level. The beauty of multimedia such as PowerPoint is that students that need to be pushed can be by making their presentation more complex. They can add animated GIF’s, add sound, or even add movie clips. These students could also utilize a scanner to transfer pictures from books to their presentation. Students who may have learning disabilities can still achieve the standard of completing a presentation but on a simpler form such as adding some text with a few JPEG pictures.

Another way multimedia can be used with teaching comes with the use the web in an inquiry based study known as a web quest. With a web quest, students research to answer a question by linking to various websites. In the end of their quest, students present their information through a PowerPoint, a play, a song, or some other way that they design. By doing this activity, multimedia is able to utilize the multiple intelligence that Howard Gardner identified in the 1950’s.

What is the future of Multimedia in education?

Here are some of the articles that i referred,

Introduction

Multimedia Training

Future of multimedia in Education

Media Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The definition of media is the means of communication. Since ancient times humans have chosen different forms of communications. They started with scriptures written on walls. Then they started using metal and it slowly developed towards people using paper and ink. Historians started to capture event, poets started to express themselves in written languages. All were kept as records to be shared. As we humans developed and the technologies along our side developed the media changed drastically. The wave of change in media not only changed the mode of communication but the humanity and humanism itself.

In ancient years around 3100 BC people used clay tablets to write. Slowly as we moved BC to AD history shows establishment of libraries and use of paper. Then with time around 1500 print media were established such as newspaper, magazines and printing press. As the time passed and the world went through the world war the need of news became more evident and necessary. When no one thought media could span further remarkable strides are made by invention of camera and radio.

Another remarkable invention of media was television & phones. Invention of television made dreams of people to see world true. People enjoyed the comfort of their home and yet were aware of what was happening in the world. Their knowledge of world started to expand. When telephone was created nobody would have thought that how quickly it would synchronized the world and open new era of possibilities for media

With time telephone became more advance, pictures on print and television became more fine and clear. As a successor of telephone mobile phones were introduced. The device that allowed human to answer calls or talk to their loved one from anywhere. On similar note introduction of internet also revolutionized the world. What was written as a code for NASA to communicate to space shuttle became a necessity for humanity. Today internet has become one of a basic need after air, food and clothes.

I am a millennial kid, meaning I have read text books, hand written letters but also I am efficient to browse web and draft emails. When I wonder how much media have changed something that follows that thought is how much will it change tomorrow? What new invention in media will open up an entire new possibility of advancement or what old media will be lost with time? 

Online Courses: Do they live up to their hype?

After reading, "What College Students really think about Online Courses," I started to think about all of the online courses that I have taken.  This course is partially online as well.  Out of all of them, (this one makes 4), I am still not sure about how I feel about them.  They are becoming the norm for many graduate degrees.  When I was searching for a master's program, there were many full online degrees that I though about pursuing.  According to this article, other students also have mixed reviews of online courses.

The article made a point about how colleges everywhere are striving to meet students' growing needs and demands for more online courses.  Some colleges were resistant to making more online degree programs, but feared that they would lose out on students and funds that they desperately needed. However, there are many types of online courses and students definitely have opinions on which ones they like and dislike.

Most students prefer to have their online courses that set high standards.  They want the course to match what an "in-class" option would offer and expect.  Students also usually want to be able to have choices in the classes that they take, and take more that fit with their interests.  While math is offered online, the article states that students have a hard time with this subject.  In addition, the format of the class as well as the professor are extremely important aspects and will determine if the students do well and strive to do well.

Overall, the Adobe Connect classroom works very well for me because it provides interaction and time to ask questions and hear and see a lecture.  Out of all of the online courses I have taken, this one has seemed the closest to being in a real classroom on a daily basis.  Although, I do agree with the students in the article.  I would not take math online.

What do you think? What format of online classes works best? What doesn't work? Do you think colleges should stop the trend or keep it up?

Here are some links to the article I referred to and other articles on online courses:

What College Students really think of Online Courses
Benefits of Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning
Six Strategies of Successful Online Students