Using Mobile Tech in Seattle

For those of you in my session "Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction," here are the links to the cell phone stuff we did:

Photo blogging from a cell phone

Audio blogging from a cell phone

Polling via text messaging

And here are the results of the survey:

Ebook library

For months now, I've been writing about the curriculum for mobile devices we've been developing with school districts across the country.

We have put the best of this together into a cross-curricular ebook library. This is available on a classroom or school site license basis.

Have lab; will travel - this is what I need

This is a different approach to mobile tech!

Free interactive math ebook

Here is another free resource from K12 Handhelds. This is a good example of the interactivity that Mobipocket provides that we like so much.

This ebook can be used on Palm or Pocket PC and includes problem sets for:

- integers (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers),

- algebra (simple one- and two-step problems), and

- fractions (simplifying, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions).

Enjoy.

TiVo Season Pass

Here's a new way to think about explaining RSS -- RSS is like setting up a season pass to something on TiVo.

It doesn't cost anything.
It isn't a commitment.
It's easy to cancel.
It's just an easy way to get stuff delivered to your hard drive automatically.

New Dropairs Games

There are some new Pair Boards available for Dropairs from K12 Handhelds. These include some early elementary games (matching letters, numbers, colors, rhyming words, telling time, counting money) and upper elementary/middle school games (fractions/decimals/percents, geometry, algebra, inequalities).

Thanks to NorthGlide for making this software available free of charge, and thanks to the teachers who suggested ideas for these games.

Learn and benefit from my pain

Many of you have heard me singing the praises of the Flip video camera. I had one of the original ones and really loved it...never had a problem. So, for the holidays, I got a new Flip Ultra. This is the one with the tripod mount.

Now...problems have surfaced: I/O errors and various other problems when trying to copy video off the camera. And, of course, this is happening the one time that I have some really important video that I need to get off the device. :(

Upon a quick look on the web, I see that there are some known problems with this new model. If you have one, do yourself a favor and install the firmware update before you do anything else.

I'm doing that myself, and I'm sure I'll love my Flip again soon (after I finish crying, that is).

Postscript: I ran the update. It took a long time, because I had a lot of video saved on my device. They promised me that "videos stored on the camcorder will not be lost." And they were not. Even better, I can now get the video off the device. Yay! I am drying my tears and ready to shoot more video. (I also just plugged the camera into a projector and watched them on the big screen. Awesome!)

Webquests for March Madness

We have created three webquests for the March Madness NCAA Tournament. These are available as offline versions using Plucker, so you can use them on handhelds that don't have Internet access. They are also available as regular web versions.

Cheap + Mobile = Access

I did a hands-on session this week on my new favorite topic, Open Educational Resources, that was really well received. (I'll be presenting this at NCCE in Seattle on Feb. 28 and at CUE in Palm Springs on March 7 for those of you who will be there.)

This seems to be a topic that generates a lot of enthusiasm and passion; I know it has for me. While I was presenting, one woman raised her hand and said that this all sounded great, but her kids didn't all have access to computers. That's why I got into mobile technology, I answered. It provides cheap access to technology.

In OER, we think a lot about access in terms of the developing world, but it's important here too. This was a big a-ha moment for me, connecting OER with my "real job," mobile tech.

I'm becoming more convinced that a part of the answer is cell phones.

Free, open online course - Mobile Multimedia

Here is another free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course: Mobile Multimedia: Podcasts, Mini-Movies, and More on Handhelds.


This one covers finding, using, and creating multimedia resources for differentiating instruction with students.

In case you missed it, another earlier free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course I published earlier was Hands On: Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction. There is some overlap between these courses, but also some very different content.

Stay tuned for more of these. I am becoming a believer that wikis like these are a great professional development tool, because they extend learning beyond a f2f workshop. And because these are free and open resources, you may use them for whatever purposes you'd like, including using them for workshops at your own schools and districts. Please also add to them. (If you're about this, make your additions in the Discussion tab.) I hope they are useful.

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Black History Month

February is Black History Month.

There is a free curriculum unit on African American history available from K12 Handhelds. It includes an interactive ebook, a virtual field trip, and more.

Also, my mashup this month features audio from black history, as well as some great music. Give it a listen, and make sure to check out the free offer for a lucky listener on the site.

Also, on the mashup page is a list of multimedia resources you can use in your own classroom. Many of these are open, sharable resources that you can use with students to create your own mashups or other multimedia projects.