mippin.com - internet aggregator for mobiles

I've had a pda phone for about 2 years now. Used to have the MDA and now have the HTC Touch.

So far on my pda phone, I've installed Newsbreak, a rss reader so I can keep up with the likes of Andy Black and Dave Sugden on the go. I paid a little bit of money for this.
Just come across mippin.com, which seems like a nice free 'aggregator' for the mobile phone, bringing together news sites and blogs in one site. Kind of like igoogle for your phone. It seems to work better than Newsbreak because it shows me the full blog, whereas Newsbreak shows me the headlines and a short version of the blog. To read more, it then launches Internet Explorer and takes me to the site. Mippin will let me keep my preferred sites as favourites and formats them nicely for the pda screen. Seems like a nice function to me.

And it has a mipplet that adds my Twitter stream so it appears on my mippin page! Nice...

Learning for Living and Work

Many parallels between the MoLeNET projects and the LLW projects. Here are some thoughts on kit for the LLW projects:

Top of my list has been:

psp with camera attachment: The camera is about £30 and you can download free editing software on to psp for it. Learners can view video clips and record video clips of themselves, or rotate the camera (180 degrees) to record what they see. (Bear in mind a bit of file conversion to get videos on to psp but no different from converting to put on any other media player eg ipod). Thanks to Di Dawson for inspiration!

bulletcam: To attach to moving objects for point of view, or to someone's head, again for point of view. Learner can show that they can perform a skill, or refresh their memory of how to perform a task. Great for tight spaces where not possible to film or situations where you need both hands free (eg under a car, in a tractor etc). Also available from Amazon and Woolworths. You can google bulletcam to see the original (which will be higher quality but more expensive) or Digital Blue do a version that is lower quality and cheaper....

Nintendo Wii: Brain training on the Wii is very relevant for numeracy skills, there are also word games. Plus if you get on the internet with the Wii, there are various educational games you can play. Found a nice basic drawing application you control with the wii remote. Would work nicely on a smartboard as well. Lots of other wiigames on wiiplayable.com. Dave Sugden can probably provide the link for making your own Wii interactive whiteboad?

Mimios and ebeam: Taking advice from the Techdis site on how these can support learners in the classroom. They are also far more transportable than fixed interactive whiteboards.

Netsupport: Where colleges are planning to supply learners with tablets or pcs, or even pdas, this software will allow projection of the teacher's pc on to learners' devices, and control can be passed to the learner, so works like interactive whiteboard without getting off your chair (especially if you can't).

Red Halo: This application can run on umpcs, pdas, psps and soon Asus eeepcs. Allows tutor to push files to learner devices and collect them as well. Allows teacher and learner to connect files together as an activity (web page link, image, notes, audio, video, inspiration file etc). Provides a copy of Inspiration on pda or tablet, which is fantastic! Has 5Gb of server storage space per learner so video files and audio files storage not a problem. Can sign up for free account (1 Gb storage).

An idea for use of Twitter/Jaiku...

I've been getting excited by the idea of giving students virtual work placements through Twitter and Jaiku: You ask a tradesperson or professional to keep a Twitter or jaiku throughout a day (or a few days). Students view these via the web or subscribe to it via their mobiles and can ask further questions (by commenting or replying). They can then add their own mini-reflections using the micro-blog or a full blog. This is supplemented by keeping up the Twitter or Jaiku when they go on work placement. Would love to see this happening and get case studies for this!

File transfer between multiple devices - Red Halo

At Handheld Learning last year, I came across a company called Red Halo. I've seen them around before but it never twigged how useful their offering was until MoLeNET came along.

Basically, you set up an account on their server, then download the Red Halo application to your device (I have it running on my HTC Touch and Q1 Ultra. They will soon have one for the Asus eee). Press the sync button on your Red Halo Application and voila, files go up to the server, and files come down to your device.

The idea is that a teacher can set up student accounts, put files in them (could be learning content, audio files, video files etc) and these would then be pushed onto the learners' devices when they sync. I haven't tested large video and audio files so will have to find out more about this. Also, I envisage that it would work best in a wireless environment, or if the learners have a flat rate data plan so they are not charged per Mb of data transfer.

At the same time, student files are sent from the device up to their student area: so photos, videos and audio they have created, notes and drawings etc are all uploaded and the teacher can view them and add a comment to them.

The Pro version also comes with some software to add functionality - The Windows Mobile bundle for PDAs and smartphones includes RedActivity, Inspiration, PhatPad, Pocket Painter, Photo Explorer, Opera, Red Media Composer, RedFlipper and Calligrapher. Sounds worth it for the software alone, never mind the 5Gb storage space you're given online!

You can contact them to sign up for free accounts at the moment. Anyone who has a lot of devices to sync should try it. Nothing to lose! www.redhalo.com

Q1 Ultra growing on me, plus HTC Touch for video

I think my Q1 Ultra is growing on me, but the main reason for this has got to be because of that little keyboard.
I set it up on the m-champions training day on the 11th and it hardly takes up any desk space (I was perched next to two participants at their table). I used it to make notes as others were presenting. It accessed the wireless network at the LSN effortlessly, so I was able to participate in updating the Moodle, downloading some apps that someone recommended (My Mobiler, http://www.mtux.com/ allows you to view your pda screen on your pc, similar to Cerdisp), twittering etc.
The problem came when I tried to connect it to the overhead projector. It's been a while since I've used tablet software for this, and they've updated it since but never fear, I though, John Whalley is here. As it turns out, it had been a while since he'd had to do it, so in the end, the Mac won out and we kept it connected instead! I'll have to master the tablet display options or start lugging my 17" Macbook around like Mick Mullane does!
On the journey home, I thought I'd catch up with some video entertainment - plugged in my earphones to watch a Chinese dvd film I'd ripped and converted into wmv. However, without subtitles, my viewing pleasure was thwarted as the audio was way too quiet for a noisy train environment. Is there a way of changing audio levels when converting a video? I'll have to check this out, or else start using my Q1 ultra for this as well. I'm assuming the audio volume will be better on this.
I'm beginning to think I might give my Q1 a pet name - getting attached to it!

Getting used to Q1 Ultra

Took the Q1 Ultra with me to a couple of meetings to take notes. Happy so long as I'm using the Keysonic keyboard with it (£15 from Amazon) so for me, the main thing is text input using these devices.
I'm still waiting to find out if there is a better driver for the built-in cameras since they are not very good at capturing video.
Someone passed my a mobile phone while I had the stylus from the Q1 in my hand and I was tapping away on the screen of the mobile phone wondering why it wasn't reacting. Duuuhh!!

wireless problems at home

Had hell all morning trying to resolve a problem connecting to the internet. Everything was fine last night. Went to bed. Woke up this morning. Nada.
So I've been round the houses, ringing up the ISP, checking for winsock errors (didn't really know what I was doing), finally decided to upgrade the firmware on the router. Still no luck.
However, I had my USB modem so I plugged that in and used that to poke around a bit more. Somehow, it all came back and the router's working fine again. What happened?
The DNS server suddenly appeared again on the router display, so for some reason, that got taken off or lost somewhere, somehow.
All I can say is that I'm now flooded with a sense of relief. Not having internet access on your main work machine these days is like working with your arm cut off.
Now I guess I'd better get down to some proper work...