Will the next big thing be a fundamental re-design of a the phone as we know it? Tech crunch has an interesting article on a bendable phone that is controlled by kinetic movements as much as touch. An interesting concept even if you hate the shape (which some seem to – I kind of like it). Some think the phone will also become implanted in a pair pf glasses, with an interface that virtually floats in front of your eyes.

The bigger concept to realize is that the iPhone is not going to be the last major re-think of cell phones as we know them. Computers themselves may one day “disappear” as they become so small that we no longer notice their presence – just their interface.

I’m still thinking that 3-D printing will be a major game changer in ways that we can’t image yet. Think of how it could change online learning if you can email actual physical objects. Even face-to-face learning could be greatly enhanced by the ability to print objects. A spontaneous question from a student could be examined in a matter of minutes rather than waiting until the next day (after the teacher has had time to go home and find what is needed to answer the question).

Or will the mysterious Google X lab come up with something so crazy that we can’t even imagine the possibilities?

I still think there is also great potential in virtual worlds. At some point in the near future, some one will crack the interface issues and steep learning curve that Second Life is infamous for and we’ll have Star Trek holodecks before you know it.

The times they are a-changin’…

But the LMS-based mentality of online learning has got to go. Even the newest version of Blackboard still makes me feel like I am in AOL circa 1995.

I’m not necessarily talking about course design or structure. There are some great ideas out there, everything from MOOCs to information foraging are popping up all the time. The biggest hurdle for all of these great open / social / connectivistic / whatever you want to call it designs is that technology is just not there yet to make them work perfectly. You can do a lot of great things with the whole DIY mentality… but often I get the feeling there could be so much more if we could just stumble on the right technology.

I read today about Google possibly starting another ”structured web programming” language called Dart. Some are thinking that it will be just a language that solves “Googlecentric” problems.  In some ways, maybe this something that education needs – education-centric technology to solve educational problems.

Maybe not our own programming language… but that is not a bad idea either. I used to dabble with Moodle extensions, and it was always frustrating to figure out how to “trick” php and javascript into doing what I needed it to do.

I have previously discussed how Rockmelt made me wonder if we could make a similar browser for education… basically, make the LMS become a browser instead of a web silo.  That could be interesting, but kind of leaves mobile learning a bit out of the picture in some cases.

Does the technology behind EdTech need to go the app route? Does the LMS need to leave the confines of “website” and evolve into a new form of technology? I’m not sure yet.  But whatever happens, we need this new idea to meet several criteria:

• Integrated. It needs to integrate into our everyday web activities. When we have those a-ha moments on Facebook, or find a great article that would be useful for our group project, or whatever the case make be… sharing it with our class needs to be just few clicks or swipes away while we stay on the object. Not a few clicks, surf to a different site, log in, copy-and-paste, click, click, click, submit, log-out, surf back to reality.
• Open. Education is going the open route. You can’t share what is closed, and surprise… people like to share!
• Flexible. Every feature that you use on a desktop would also be available in a tablet, a smart phone, or whatever comes along next.
• Search-able and Easy To Organize. I know some would say that we could just use Facebook or Google+ for all of this. The problem with those approaches are that it is really hard to find anything older than, say, 2 hours there. With learning, you need to go back and examine what you have shared and tagged. you need to dig into it and see what else you can find. There are a hundred reasons why… but you need to be able to go back and find everything. That is tedious at best on social networking sites.

There are some interesting projects out there that I think are doing great work in many of these areas, but no one has a product (or even a DIY solution) that meets all of these criteria.

But what if all of the mobile devices – as well as laptops, desktops, and other devices – could communicate with each other, no matter what they are or what software they are using?

Apparently, this is a problem that emergency responders have also had. So researchers at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies (in partnership with many other universities) have developed a set of tools that will let people communicate with each other using whatever device or operating system they want.

The details are in the article and they sound promising. This is what we will need in the classroom of the future – the ability to connect all of the different devices students could bring in and let them communicate with each other. Even if the Internet connection goes down, students could still connect and network. Obviously, future web apps and programs will need to be able to adjust to this new technology seamlessly. But the educational potential is very interesting.

In ten years, we may no longer have cell phones in our pockets, they will be built into our glasses and perhaps even contact lenses.

Sounds familiar to me :) But it looks like we are going to see augmented reality sooner rather than later – so I am going to start saving up for the iPhone 10 now….

The basic idea is that you get some content (probably some pictures on your phone), pick a theme in Zapd, add your content, and then save it all as a mini-site. You then share the link with just the people that you wish to share it with – you can post it to Facebook or just send it to a few colleagues.  The website mentions everything from travel pictures to small businesses to  portfolios. The only thing I don’t see is a way to keep your link out of the showcase on the front page on the Zapd website.

And about that website – you can’t sign up or do anything other than look at created sites on their main website.  Many websites let you sign up and do everything from their app, but this is one of those that has to be set-up completely through the app.  An interesting concept.

This could be a simple tool for educators to use.  Send your students out around town or school to take pictures for a project and have them create their portfolio on the spot.  Art, history, politics, social studies, music, science, and whole host of other subjects could use something like this to make it easier to apply the concepts from class to the world around the students, all the while giving students an easy way to share their learning.

I created a quick zap here: http://mgk.zapd.co/ (yep – seems like all links look like they are straight from some URL-shortener). I can go back in and edit or even add text entries under the pictures for more details. But it was pretty quick and easy. It also would have let me take a picture on the spot and use it – they didn’t have to already exist.

It would be nice to see videos added (like a YouTube embedder). Maybe even some mash-ups with Google Maps for location based sharing.  But it is still new and I am sure there will be other features added soon.

To me, it would seem that since the learner would be mobile, you would want to have them get out and interact with their surroundings, and not just send existing content to a mobile device.  Watching a lecture video on an iPhone might be a great way to save time for busy commuters – but you can also pretty much accomplish the same educational goal on a 50 year old television.  Where are the courses designed specifically for mobile learners – ie, learners that are mobile – and not just re-formatted for mobile devices.

So often it seems that when people talk about mobile learning, they are talking about mobile devices and not mobile learners.

Here are just a few ideas that could be possible:

• Instructor-guided tours of physical locations – a walk through the city to talk about civil engineering, or a tour of a local zoo that explores the political climate of the countries that certain animals are from. Why not make lectures more interactive? A political science lesson at a zoo? Why, you ask?  Well, just because it makes learning interesting and different – mixing subjects just for the heck of it. I loved doing that when I was a teacher.
• Have learners collect “artifacts” through out the day that relate to the week’s topics – pictures, voice memos, videos, notes, etc.  Students then sit down at some point and assemble an analysis of these artifacts into an interactive report.
• Augmented reality tests – students go to a Biology lab or Art museum whatever, and as they walk around questions pop-up that require them to examine what is in front of them and then answer.  You know – real world application and not just disconnected multiple choice questions. And there would be no set order or numbers of questions – you keep going until you have proven that you understand the topic and can aply it.
• Then there is the whole range of projects where students would create projects, tours, etc for other mobile learners – those possibilities are endless.

Wouldn’t it be great if your LMS had an app that helped your students do this, instead of half-baked blog and wiki tools?  Just make sure your school has a good supply of lower cost smart-phones to loan out to students that can’t afford them, a good set of back-up plans for accessibility purposes, and a good contingency plan and you are ready to roll.

Oh, if only I had the money to do all of this on my own.

(I would probably go bankrupt in no time…)

If you are in education, you could care less how your streaming video gets to you… as long as it just works when you  press play.  The big problem for education with this battle is that video is just a small portion of what Flash can do.  Most educators have found some educational game or utility (such as Aviary) that uses Flash extensively.  HTML5 is no where near able to replicate any of that. If Flash goes away, so does a huge chunk of good stuff on the web. Not good for education.

According to some… it doesn’t really ever have to be this way. As Remy Sharp points out in HTML5 vs. Flash:

“I personally don’t think HTML will replace Flash. I think HTML5 and the Open Web will replace Flash where Flash has been used as a stopgap…. The native video element will (eventually) allow us to drop using Flash for video. Flash has done an awesome job of pulling the braces up on browsers for the last decade, and we’ve needed it, but Flash is so much more than just video or font rendering…. I still think we’re a long way off HTML being able to able to natively replace applications such as Aviary and games like Bow Street Runner.”

I get that Flash is a bit resource intensive and needs to evolve with the times.  I get that smart phones need to conserve as much energy as possible, but Flash needs as much as possible. But you can still run the current version of Flash on a 10 year-old PC with no problems.

I think Apple is just embarrassed to admit that there are still things that their mobile devices can’t do that ancient PCs can.

In theory, I like the idea of everything happening natively in code.  You won’t have to worry about which students won’t be able to do what with your course activities.

But I also like the idea of being able to get rich, robust, interactive Flash-based games and applications on mobile devices.  Since Flash can be used at times to bring the gap between browser content and desktop hardware (such as cameras and microphones), just think what it would be like to bridge the gap between website and smartphone features (such as cameras and microphones).  Augmented reality could take on a whole new dimension if you could have a Flash based interface embedded in a website that can access your device’s camera. Security issues would have to be dealt with – but think of the possibilities.  Students could lead themselves on a tour of an art exhibit, with Flash-designed question popping up on the screen as the walk up to a painting.  They could answer the question, or leave a comment, or anything right on the camera capture, because they are connected to a website that could store their answer. The website could also store their whole trip in many different ways (geotags, camera captures, videos, etc).

I think I might have stumbled on the answer to my original question.  With Flash on an iPhone, any website could create an app-like program that would never have to go through Apple’s approval process. That might make the whole App Store pointless.  App makers could just embed their app on a website… and even charge for using it.

The possibility exists for an App that resides on a web page, accessing the page content and database, while at the same time able to access all of the functions of a smart phone.  This is what Flash gives us. This is why we need Flash. And this is probably why Apple hates Flash.

Gloe is a new service that, among other things, allows you to connect any website to a particular location in real life.  When you are at a physical site, your mobile device can then pull up websites that were voted most relevant for that location.  Of course, all of the regular “social” buzz-functions are there – tagging, FaceBook connections, etc. Gloe is still pretty new in some areas, but as this article on ReadWriteWeb points out, even if some function doesn’t work that great – at least the idea behind the function is really interesting.

We may have to wait a good ten years before any educational site or LMS catches on to this, but I like the possibilities of using this for education. I am sure there are more than a few EduPunks that are already using this (if you know of some, please post in the comments).  I love thinking about how one could transfer learning from a desk at home to a mobile device in the real world.  Maybe you could send your students on a scavenger hunt for a place in your city that best relates to your topic, and then they use a mobile blog app to complete an assignment? Or maybe they have to search the tags in the city and find something that relates to the week’s topic? Art students could go paint somewhere, snap a photo of the picture, upload it to a blog, and then tag that blog post to the location.  Humanities students could interview people or take surveys, then post the results online, and then connect the results page to the location where they collected it.  Students could begin connecting research results to locations and maybe even map differences between neighborhoods.

Many possibilities… depending on where the technology takes us.

• The biggest reason not to buy one: no Flash support. I’m no Flash lover, but how on Earth can you expect to surf the web without it? Even if Flash dies, it will be years before you can get around without it. Can someone please tell Steve Jobs to get over himself?  His anti-Flash rants are just sounding silly.
• Multi-tasking is pointless on an iPhone (or any smart phone).  I mean really – why would you want to do multiple things on a tiny screen? So what that you can’t listen to Pandora and write an email. Just turn on iTunes (you’ll get a better song selection, anyways). But on the iPad – kind of impossible to think of really using something that large without it. Another big gaping feature hole. Right next to where the camera should be.
• For that matter, why not just go with a regular OS instead of iPhone OS?  Well, one reason really – $$$$$. Can’t make money in an app store if people are free to install whatever program they want.
• Everyone keeps asking why get an iPad instead of a full featured laptop. My question with full featured laptops has always been “why do I have to buy all of these features I don’t use?”  Full featured laptops are usually overkill. And bulky at that. Get me the features I need in an easy to use interface like the iPad has, and you have a winner there. I can see the iPad becoming a laptop replacement for people that don’t want everything and the kitchen sink.

Will I get one? Probably not. I will probably wait for the Google Chrome OS to come out in a multi-touch pad device. The combination of an iPad experience with the openness of a fuller OS sounds killer to me. Not to mention cheaper.

So, a note to all educators pondering Kindles, Nooks, or even iPads for their schools/classes/etc: wait for the followers to come out with better ideas. Just because they haven’t been able to do that with iPhone doesn’t mean they won’t succeed here.

But the thought of a way to have your portable computing device actually interact not only with the World Wide Web, but also the actual world around you just seems so.. incredible.  But how close are we to making augmented reality a true reality in our lives?

Vuzix is working on a product that might just do that: the Wrap 920AV.   The 920AV is a pair of sunglasses that have a see-thru screen that allows you to watch a display from your iPhone and still see the world around you through the same display.  It even mentions on the page that the glasses are designed for augmented reality. Click on the accessories tab for some other cool options, like a motion sensor that tracks your head movements, and cameras that attach to the top of the glasses.

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of when I first blogged on iPhones and augmented reality.  Just think:  with these glasses you don’t have to have to hold the iPhone like in the video from that post – the metro map is just displayed on your glasses in front of you.  What if you mix this with Sixth Sense technology?  What if you just saw your iPhone display floating in front of you, and moved your hands to interact with the apps (kind of like a portable version of the computers in Minority Report)?

Talk about true mobile learning.  You know those audio tours you can rent at tour spots like Alcatrazz – the ones that talk you through the attractions?  Those can now make the jump from audio to visual – adding historical re-enactments, or showing you what lies behind the walls that they don’t want to tear down.

I’m sure this kind of thing will be expensive at first, and I really hope they don’t hype just watching movies on these things.  What I hope is that Apple catches a vision for this and makes it look really cool so that everyone will want it.