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October 31, 2005
mLearn 2005 Papers & Abstracts
You can download the latest papers, abstracts and a few podcasts of the conference on the conference website now. You can also order a DVD of the proceedings.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
mLearn 2005 Cape Town
The 4th International Conference on Mobile Learning was held in Cape Town, South Africa last week and was an outstanding opportunity to hear what's happening in mobile learning in both the developed and the developing worlds. The conversation has shifted from last year's event near Rome where most presentations were theoretical to this year where most were about actual implementations. There were several presentations on using SMS for learning administration and support, and a lot of presentations and papers on PDA based learning that showed how pervasive it is becoming. I'll point you towards the abstracts and papers when they become available.
Two weeks ago the Handheld Learning Forum was held in London with a focus on PDAs and phones used in schools. Over 200 people attended. you can see some of the proceedings by registering for free on their site here.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
Rag Doll Kung Fu
Today is the launch of Rag Doll Kung Fu, a very innovative and crazy looking game I can't wait to play after seeing it at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco this year in the "experimental" session. It's an independent game being released on Valve's Steam - which will also be used to distribute games in episodes or chapters on subscription. This model inspires me to think how "Serious Games" might benefit from releasing small new episodes with new learning objectives.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
RSS - Publishing & Subscribing to Blogs, Podcasts, Videoblogs
Producing audio and video content can be cheap and distributing and viewing it is getting easier!
I'm exploring the use of podcasting and videoblogging with a few of my clients. I've recently experimented with some free video blogging software and readers you may want to check out. I made this test video clip (still having problems with free video hosting site referenced below!!) with a regular digital camera and compressed it for much smaller file size using Windows Movie Maker which comes with XP. I uploaded it to a free audio and video hosting service called Our Media which I found by learning more about video blogging here - these nice guys tell you everything you need to know to create FREE blogs and how to post videos to them.
FireANT is an RSS reader I recently found which enables you to subscribe to blogs, videoblogs and podcasts so you get updates automatically instead of having to search for them. Give it a try - it's so easy, you just put in the web address of the blogs you want so subscribe to and it does all the rest. Wonder what those orange RSS buttons are for you see increasingly on websites? Subscribing!! If you want to give it a try, I'll use this opportunity to recommend Mark Oehlert's e-Clippings blog (copy and paste into Fire Ant or whatever you're using to subscribe to RSS (blog) feeds with) his URL http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/ where you can find COMPREHENSIVE links to all things learning, technology, mobile, games and more in addition to his interesting posts. A fun video blog to add to your new subscription is RocketBoom, a daily news show shot in an apartment in NYC which shows that video production doesn't have to be expensive to be interesting. It's also a good example of a video blog where you just get the video feeds with links to what's being talked about. I like this model and think it has applications for corporate learning, communications, universities and more...
You can also subscribe to Elliott Masie's Learning 2005 University site where you'll find several interesting interviews and step by step instructions (via a podcast, of course!) on what podcasts are all about and how to produce them, transcribe them and applications for learning here. In his podcast you'll hear him talk about his new Learning Feeds service where you can subscribe to content "channels" you're interested in, and be able to access them from iTunes. This new service is launching here.
It is truly getting easier to rapidly build and deploy content and to keep informed with what interests YOU!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2005
My First Video Blog
Here's my first attempt at video blogging. Click here for my "Zen" clip. Did you know that you can subscribe to video feeds just like audio feeds?
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)