World Texting Message Smashed!! (I guess this is good news)

A 27-year-old British woman has smashed the world record for typing the fastest text message. Apparently, she was able to text a message in 25.94 seconds.

But not just any message. The official message for the world record is: "the razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human".

The wonderful achievement was done using Samsung's new Galaxy S's "SWYPE" key pad, which enables users to input text without their fingertip leaving the screen.

Here is an article about the achievement

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Mobile Learning at the High School Level

A few weeks ago, Scott Newcomb a fourth grade teacher in St. Marys, Ohio informed me about a
Mobile Learning project he has been involved with for the last two years. They have been using smartphones in the classroom and every student in our school district from 3rd grade to 6th grade has their own mobile learning device. They are adding seventh grade next year and the ultimate goal is to have a mobile learning device in every students' hand from 3rd grade to 12th grade!

Here is information and the school's mobile web site.

Scott presented at ISTE this summer in Denver, CO, on the topic. You can download a copy of his presentation handout here.

Here is a video introduction about the Mobile Learning project, check it out!!

Next year, they will have over 900 mobile learning devices in their school district!

This ties nicely with the The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth article that appeared last week at Read Write Web.

Kids are embracing technology for their learning needs. Meanwhile I am involved with a very large company who is running a pilot to see if their employees would benefit from having mobile devices for communication, learning and collaboration. I think the school has it right!

Thanks Scott for the heads up!
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Want to Write an Electronic Book? Check Out Sony

Over at Wired I found a great article on the ability of authors to self-publish their own books directly to the Sony eReader.

The article, titled Sony Opens Up eBook Platform to Self-Publishers discusses how it is now possible for any author to upload virtually any content desired and make it available to the masses regardless of whether it was created by a major publisher or someone in their basement hacking away in an Apple IIe MouseWrite program.

You can check out Sony's eReader web site and see all the offerings they have in terms of books, newspaper and magazines.

As the article states:

To Sony, the reason for the deal is obvious — since digital shelf space is infinite, for practical purposes, there simply isn’t much of a downside. “We’re committed to providing our customers access to the broadest range of eBook content available and believe these collaborations will allow us to expand the store selection with a host of compelling works from independent sources,” said Sony eBook Store director Chris Smythe. “Additionally, we recognize that it is important to provide independent authors and publishers the opportunity to quickly and easily bring their ideas and content to a wide audience of readers.”

So an interesting development and puts it in greater competition with the Kindle.

Speaking of the Kindle, here is an interesting article about the Kindle and the eReader, Sony's E-Reader vs. Kindle: 5 Reasons Amazon Should Worry.

For me, the most value is the ability that these ebooks are going to have to alter training as we know it! The elimination of huge, cumbersome manuals, the easy access via key word searches, instantly downloadable Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the ability to download updates and new material as needed are all awesome features of ebooks for learning. And the ability to have a lighter backpack for my sons! This morning my wife lifted my sons backpack and almost fell over.

Check them out:





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How Widespread is Mobile Learning?

The other day at a presentation, a participant asked me how many companies have adopted mobile learning...was it widespread and if they where behind because they didn't have a full blown mobile learning roll out yet?

The answer is that mobile learning is just now starting to get a foothold but it is not widespread by any means.

In fact, two separate surveys indicate that m-learning is just now starting to become of interest to organizations. Although there are a number of contributing factors to m­learning only recently becoming of interest to organizations, the three biggest seem to be the recent proliferation of multi-functional “smart phones” with multimedia and broadband capabilities, the increasing availability of Wi-Fi connectivity, and the increase in screen size on many of the mobile devices.

Two external reports point to only a few organizations actually implementing m-learning.

One is by the Masie Group and that study revealed that only 3%, or six of the 204 organizations surveyed were deploying mobile learning widely throughout the organization (although 21% did indicate that they have implemented it in some areas of their organization.)

Another study by the eLearning Guild of survey of 940 of its members indicated that only 9% or 84 organizations had actually implemented m-learning.

Of the 9% who had implemented m-learning, 65% use it for less than 10% of their learning initiatives. These organizations are not developing content specifically for mobile devices; 70% of them indicated they create 10% or less of their learning content specifically for mobile devices.

Additionally:

The Masie Study revealed that 38% of its 204 member organizations indicated that they were not planning any Mobile Learning initiatives.

The eLearning Guild found 33% of its members had no plans to implement m­learning.

So now is the time to implement to seize a competitive advantage but the road will not be easy since there are not a huge number of case studies or examples to guide the way.

Here are a couple of books that could help:




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