It has been quiet in the MobilED project.
In the Helsinki team we have been writing an article where we conclude that probably the best area where one could use MobilED technology, and the basic interaction provided with it, could actually be rather generic community information system than a service used in formal education, such as in schools. This direction is not taking MobilED out from the “learning landscape” but it may expand the research focus. It will maybe help us to consider MobilED more as a media service – from people to people – than an “educational service”.
Any concrete examples?
I think MobilED could be something like a mobile community newspaper or …well… in case of digital world it would be something like craigslist but all in mobile. The service could provide local classified and forums for community news, jobs, housing, for sale, personals, services, and events.
How it would work?
You send a text message with the word “news” to the number of your community and the service will call you back. During the call you can listen what kind of news people have dictate to the MobilED service, jump from one to another and if you wish add your own news to the server. Similar way you could send text message with the word “jobs” and get a call back with a list of open jobs in your area. As the service works with the Mediawiki platform it could be accessible also from the web, and the editorial community could maintain the service in very easy way also from the website.
Any comments about this?
We hope to get the manuscript of the research paper discussing this idea ready in a few coming weeks. Please, let us know what do you think about the idea, so we can include your comments to the paper.
Discussion and talk about MobilED in Bogota. More information of the even in here:
http://www.karisma.org.co/conversatorio2008/
The UNICEF’s NY Headquarters’ Division of Communication has a great new initiative called UNIWiki. The big question in the UNICEF UniWiki projects is:
“How do we connect people who have no access to computers or the internet to people who do? How do we allow for some of the same faculties and functions that people in highly connected environments are used to when all that is available is a mobile phone or a radio?”
With their global network, UNICEF may have a real impact in the field. The list of the UNIWiki projects underway and plannned, as well as the technology they are planning to use in them, is very interesting. MobilED is in there, too.
The Wikimania 2007, the international Wikimedia conference is, talking place in Taipei on this weekend. Me (Teemu) and Kim from Meraka South Africa are presenting their projects, including MobilED.
Many participants are presenting ideas and proposals on how to use Wikis on mobile phones and how to distribute free content in the developing world. It looks that, sometimes people forget the “wiki way”(* and are more interested in to deliver existing wiki-content to the developing world (in English or in French). I hope we will not do the same mistake in MobilED.
*) Free content that is collaboratively authored.
Shareideas.org is an online community and a wiki for sharing ideas on how to use mobile communications for social and environmental benefits.
The education section of the site is gathering case study stories explaining how mobile tools have been used in education. MobilED case is already reported in there (thank you Kobus, for fixing it!). I also wrote an small article to the site with the title: Mobile learning - what is it?
I think shareideas.org is very important channel for us to disseminate the results and the innovations made in the MobilED project. I also know that in the MobilED community there are people who know about other cases too that should be available online. So, please register to the site and share your ideas.
Nokia has just launched two new mobile Internet services for the market in China.
According to the Nokia’s press release Mobiledu is China’s first interactive mobile learning service. Mobiledu starts with services targeted for language learning - learning English. Wisely, Mobiledu advocated the concept of studying together - any time or any place - on your mobile.
In addition to the mobile application – according to the press release - there is an online Mobiledu Community to obtain mobile learning materials. Mobiledu is supported by number of well-known educational providers in China. The language learning content focuses on cultural issues such as fashion, cosmetics, sports and health. It also includes vocabulary and practical exams.
Widsets is another interesting project. Already sometime ago I wrote about it here the first time. Later in the Flosse Posse blog I wrote about Widsets in the context of teaching and learning.
Today I made a MobilED widget (Note: MobilED not Mobiledu :-)). With the widget you can nicely read this blog with your mobile phone. I also made a Wikinews widget - giving you the latest news on your mobile from the Wikinews. The most popular widget on Widset is the Wikipedia widget - right, you can use Wikipedia with your mobile phone. It is picked and used already by more than 1 million people (in total today: 1 046 161 people)!
Congratulations for the Mobiledu and Widset teams! I think, both projects are very important for the future of mobile learning.
The MobilED Helsinki server is now up and running. The basic functionality works now. The server receives SMS search terms, makes the call back to you and reads the articles found from our own installation of the MediaWiki.
Our MediaWiki installation is called MobilED Helsinki test server. The server is publicly available online, so you may follow with what kind of content we will use it in the pilot over here.
If you are interested in to try out the service here in Helsinki, please drop me and email and I (teemu.leinonen@uiah.fi) will give you the phone number as well as access to edit the MediaWiki content.
We are still working with the MMS functionality and would really appreciate some installation documentation from our partners in South Africa. 
Right, our MobilED setup has been delayed since the second GPRS modem that we purchased took over a week to arrive. We got it just at the end of the week so we can continue setting up the server and should have it up and running during the next week.
In the last two weeks Tarmo and Jukka have been setting up the MobilED server in Helsinki. Our partners in South Africa have made a great job to improve the code. However, we still need to test it and make the package before releasing it. MobilED server is still a working prototype - no more, no less.
We are using net phone - a Finnish VoIP operator – to implement the five phone lines. This lowers our costs radically, as having “traditional” fixed phone lines is quite expensive nowadays. Also the calls made from the server are much cheaper this way than if made with a fixed phone lines.
We are right now setting up MediaWiki server for the pilots. Most likely we are not going to use the Wikipedia, at all, but our own content put to the MediaWiki. We are also planning to put our MediaWiki serever online and visible to the Web. This way, you may follow what kind of content there will be and what content the people taking part in the tests will contribute in it.
Setting up the MMS service has end-up to be rather tricky. We know that in South Africa they got it working already, so we hope that it will be fine in here too. For the MMS service we needed to order another USB GPRS modem, in addition to the one we already have.
We expect that in the end of the week the service will be up and running and ready for some testing in here. Now when the school’s “skiing holiday” is over we hopefully will get teachers and pupils involved.
We are planning to do the tests together with the Arki research group - another group here in our Lab. They are developing Urban Mediator - another mobile application, which is potentially interesting application for teaching and learning, though not designed for that.
The publications from the year 2006 are now available in the publication page.
We were very well represented at the mLearn 2006 conference with one full paper and three short papers.
What is now listed in the publications page is not a list of all the presentations given in 2006. The publication page contains only peer-reviewed publications that are published in a conference proceeding or in some other printed publication.
In addition to these the project has been presented in tens of other conferences, workshops and gatherings like the SOMECE, Mexico’s largest educational technology conference and IST Africa 2006.