THE WORLD IN 2009: ICT FACTS AND FIGURES:A decade of ICT growth driven by mobile technologies

Report from international telecoms union if you had any doubts that the world is mobile read this report http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/material/Telecom09_flyer.pdf

lots of detailsbut high level stuff along with mobile subscriptions still growing at 15%

-Mobile cellular has been the most rapidly adopted technology in history.Today it is the most popular and widespread personal technology on the
planet, with an estimated 4.6 billion subscriptions globally by the end of 2009
-Mobile broadband subscriptions overtook fixed broadband subscribers in
2008, highlighting the huge potential for the mobile Internet
-In 2009, more than a quarter of the world’s population are using the Internet

worth a read a look at the tables .

Proffessional Teacher Magazine Mobiles in secondary

Article highlighting the work funded by becta grant on mobiles in Secondary carried out by Elizabeth Hartnell Young ex Nottingham University http://www.tda.gov.uk/upload/resources/pdf/p/professional_teacher_summer09.pdf

No comment but worth a read . I get a name check but actually others work.

Recent launched netbooks give glimpse of the future

The Smart phone/netbook are morphing again

• connected
  
• touch screen
  
• android or smart pohne style operating systems
  

worth a read


http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-308763.html

Want to learn/experience spoken French look at Madame Thomas youtube channel

For those of a MFL frame of mind or just interested in use of YouTube for education. This teacher has over 400 films made by herself or her students .

http://www.youtube.com/user/MadameThomas

Little Brother's iPhone is watching you

interesting take on things . institution owned devices but with a twist Japanese example from  Aoyama Gakuin University, located just outside Tokyo.

http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=45018&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10#

M-posium

Great synopsis of last weeks Learner Higher CETL M-posium at Manchester Metropolitain University  article by Bob Harrison on Merlin John Online . Great contributors if you ignore my efforts.

http://www.agent4change.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=319:mobile-learning-warning-for-schools-m-posium&catid=65:conferences&Itemid=194

Stanford University's iPhone development course free online

I thought this might be of interest to who are interested in learning to develop for the iPhone, particularly those non-corporate folks (e.g. students etc) who are on lower budgets.

Stanford University have just started a new taught iPhone development class
this semester and are putting it all up on iTunesU for free (at the same speed
as the course is taught), and some of the material is available on the
ordinary website.

More details here: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php

Hopefully this will prove to be a quality addition to Apple's developer
materials. An iPhone/iPod Touch is not essential for the course by the way.

Also, if you're looking at getting into iPhone development and don't have the
budget for the Mac hardware, this page has links to several tutorials enabling
OSX on PC hardware:
http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-ipod-touch-sdk-development-discussion/194881-official-iphone-sdk-windows-2.html
Obviously you'll need a legitimate copy of OSX too 

Slideshare goes mobile

Slideshare has gone mobile view presentation on your mobile device hurrah another good "M" tool . http://m.slideshare.com excellent News thanks to Thomas Cochrane in New Zealand for this.

following COSN conference in Austin Texas via twitter

Well I know Vanessa Pittard presented our web 2.00 work commissioned in UK schools by Becta at the Consortium fro School Networking Schools conference in the USA but other presentations are there as well .

http://www.k12schoolnetworking.org/2009/index.cfm they are also running a twitter feed http://twitter.com/CoSN

Worth following you can find conference programme here
Full conference programme can be downloaded here

some UK flavoured ones


Stephen Lucey of Becta presented on
TH501: UK Leadership: Home Connection and
Innovation Strategies


Another UK prsentation by
W306: Integrating SMS for education – the
European experience
MR412
Steve Sidaway, Sales & Marketing Director, txttools.co.uk,
Leeds, UK
Mobile phones are now universally available and accepted.
They are transforming how students interact and with each
other, with organizations and with ideas, and this is only the
beginning. The technology is there but each university, college
and school must explore and experiment with what it can do
for them and their students. This presentation will draw case
examples from one of the largest education message
communities in Europe.

Long way away but whats distance with technology anyhow.

Children’s Use of Mobile Phones – An International Comparison

worth a read

Children’s Use of Mobile Phones – An International Comparison
To gain a better understanding of how children use their mobile phones across the world, the GSMA has collaborated with NTT DoCoMo on research comparing children’s use of mobile phones. The report “Children’s Use of Mobile Phones – An International Comparison” was published in February 2009 with NTT DoCoMo’s Mobile Society Research Institute (MSRI), with support from KT Freetel (KTF). It compares mobile phone use by children in five countries - Japan, Korea, China, India and Mexico.
Over 6,000 children between the ages of 9 and 18 and their parents were surveyed on a range of questions on their use, attitudes and feelings towards mobile phones.

Whilst the main factor affecting children’s mobile phone ownership is their age (for each additional year in age, an additional 4% of children own a mobile phone), the network effect of friends starting to use mobile phones was also found to be a key trigger for take up of phones by children across all the countries surveyed.

Gender, parental age, parental income and ownership of video games and computers were also found to have an effect on ownership of phones across all the surveyed countries.
Gender - 4% more girls owned a mobile phone than boys, and 9% more girls who did not own a mobile phone wanted to.

• Parental age - the older the parents, the older the children are when they first start to own mobile phones.
• Computers and video games - children owning personal computers and video games are more likely to own mobile phones and start using them at an earlier age.
• Parental Income – the higher their parents’ income, the more likely children are to own a mobile phone.
• Contrary to theories that mobile phones can be an unwelcome distraction for children, the study found no effective correlation between children’s ownership and usage of mobile phones and the time they spent on other activities.

The study also examined children’s attitudes to mobile phones and the ways in which mobiles may influence them. It found that girls, more than boys, view their phones as essential tools in their lives and that children who use mobile e-mail/SMS more frequently tend to show higher levels of trust in new media such as the Internet and slightly reduced trust in traditional media including TV and newspapers.

The full report can be downloaded from the GSMA website at http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/Final_report.pdf

Learning Lab free TXT in education event

other technologies products are available ;-) Now I myself am on jury service but a chance to see Mike Short of O2 do a keynotes got to be worth a shot and its free.

Learning Lab and Edutxt are pleased to announce its one day conference at Priorslee Hall, Telford at the Shropshire Campus of the University of Wolverhampton.

Every student and 98% of parents have a mobile phone capable of sending and receiving SMS text messages. It is undeniably socially and digitally inclusive. Desktop SMS is now being used in hundreds of Universities, Colleges and Schools. This is your opportunity to find out from peers why.

This one day FREE* event is designed to give you an insight into how colleges and universities are utilising this simple technology to dramatically improve the way they communicate with their students and peers.

Learn from people who have been using this technology every day for years Experience practical case examples delivered by users
Understand how you will improve your service to students

Keynote by Mike Short, Vice President of Research and Development O2 register for your FREE* place now at:

Web: http://www.learninglab.org.uk

alternatve link and details here

Becta Emerging Techology New web area

excuse the work related post but this might be of interest to regular readers


Becta are pleased to announce the launch of a new Emerging technology area on the Becta website.

At http://www.becta.org.uk/emergingtechnologies
you will find:

• articles from the Emerging Technologies for Learning series (with a new article published each month)
• TechNews – with new content each week
• key technology trends
• technology research from Becta and elsewhere
• discussion forums
• information on events related to emerging technologies.
  

The area offers new ways of accessing TechNews including RSS feeds and the ability to compile a PDF* document from selectedarticles.

Initial content for the new area is taken
from January 2009 and previous TechNews issues but, from now on content will
appear on the Emerging technology area ahead of the pdf download version being
available.


You can propose research and events for
possible inclusion on the area, and we’re also keen to hear from you if
you have other suggestions or feedback. Via the website.


Please can you distribute this to your own networks

Gill Clough Geocacheing wonderwoman

Thats got you embarrassed Gill ;-). Gill Clough of the OU on the world service talikng about geocacheing worth a listen  on digtal planet of course

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/digital_planet.shtml

what do moles watch on the web or there phone well watch moletv of course !

Joking aside this is a great example of using technology and sharing !!!

As part of the Molenet project managed by LSN and funded by the LSC
on of the project has developed into http://moletv.org.uk this site allows you upload your own educational video content and allows users to download the material in the most common mobile device friendly formats .The clever think is the content is converted to the various mobile friendly formats directly on the site .

So on have a look and nice thing is no advertising on the site either .

New phone feature baffle users

Interesting report from mobile firm Mfromation featured on the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7833944.stm

Main points:


85% of users reporting they were frustrated by the difficulty of getting a
new phone up and working.
In the big sample of the 4,000 people questioned, 95% said they would try more new services if
phones were easier to set up.
Nice quote here "If an application does not work once or twice, they just will not use it or
try again," he said. even more scary some 61% of those questioned said they stopped using an application if they could not get it working straight away.

This mirrors my feeling on websites.

So come on mobile developers get real and get some proper user interfaces and users involved in design and testing. Whats cool for developers isnt always cool for user !!!

This could be a major barrier to Mlearning and one we must overcome !!

News coverage of Molenet funded project at Ludlow College

Little story shame the grant funded by the Learning and Skills Council and dispensed by the Learning and Skills Network didnt get a name check

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/business-news/uk-coventry-business-news/2009/01/06/campus-turned-into-wi-fi-hotspot-92746-22616432/

Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Source Item from Pew research

Item from Pew research no surprise here but another sign of changing times. my only question is how do you define television any more


link at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1066/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source

some key graphs below.



this great table from Pew shows for the young the internet outstrips TV

US SMS growth suggest wider growth of mobile globally

Thanks to Liam Lowe for this

Portio Research have a new research report out which states: link here


 The mobile messaging market is expected rake in $130 billion in revenues by the end of the year, and is on pace to climb to $224 billion by 2013.
At that level, mobile messaging will make up 60 percent of all non-voice service revenues.

At least some of those increased revenues might be due to the higher price of a text message and operators' push to encourage more bundled services at the point of sale.

Interestingly enough, although the U.S. is considered late to the SMS party, Americans now send double the number of messages that Europeans average each month.

Now its seems this data is quite robust and interestingly other data suggests qwerty keyboards on mobiles are more common in the US.

Has the American consumer between the network confusion (caused  US telecoms) and got the mobile bug .

From studying google alerts for mobile over 18 months its seems from UK and European domination the most often picked up mobile learning leads are the US and India.

Predictions for 2009 the world is mobile not. The UN report earlier this year suggesting the next billion internet users will be mobile internet users back this up.

cut and paste for ipod touch and Iphone

its a bit of work round but its a start . will install it later and let you know how it goes.

http://pastebud.com/

Teddies in space make the international and national media

Greetings from Berlin at Online Educa. Geoff Stead sent me this and its great because the learners are the hero's and there bears.

I am using the story to open my presentation on next generation learning very apt in the home of the teddy bear "the stieff bear"  .

Looks at Geoffs posting this is so cool and hopefully my audience will love it

http://moblearn.blogspot.com/2008/12/teddies-and-telephones-in-space.html