Pilot Plan Discussion

Finally, it is time for Mobiled developers to finish some mobiled features, which have not yet been ready, such as MMS feature and some new physical phone lines. I hope they are ready for the pilot in February.

Planning the Mobiled pilot in Helsinki, I had a meeting with Teemu Leinonen discussing about Mobiled, my field study in Finnish schools and some Mobiled-related issues.

I suggested to conduct the pilot with the Arabian Comprehensive School because I had previously conducted a series of field work there and found that mobile learning could be interesting and useful for them. In addition to good ICT infrastructure and tools for teaching and learning activities, the school has already adopted ICT for many years. Most of the teachers are ICT-literate people. Some of them are active ICT users, while the others prefer to use non-ICT artefacts in their pedagogical activities. Teachers have been using computers, Internet, smart board, camera projector and online encyclopedia in combination with other creative conventional teaching methods. The students are also generally ICT-literate.

Despite of high ICT literacy among the teachers in the school, they have not yet used mobile phones for teaching and learning. Even though most students and teachers own and bring mobile phones to the school, they cannot use their mobile phones during classes. In the context of education, some teachers use mobile phones only to call or send messages to other teachers and also parents about student problems. One of the teachers enthusiastically said that the application of mobile phone as a teaching and learning tool would be challenging.

During the meeting, Teemu suggested that the pilot does not have to be the same with the previous ones. I agree with him, because each school in each country faces different challenges. I also think that we need to understand the school situations, problems, challenges and potentials before embarking on a pilot.

Having got some inspirations from other mobile learning projects, I think it is a good opportunity to try out the Mobiled outside the physical classrooms because I believe in the idea of mobile learning as a vehicle to support flexible and contextual learning. The African team has previously tried out Mobiled to enhance indoor classroom activities, so I think it would be interesting to try it out for outdoor activities, especially if the students have to listen, record and submit information from the field. One of the main challenges is to make the activities interactive for both the teachers and students.

Inspired by mobile learning projects in Sussex and Maryland, I suggested that students work on some tasks in groups or individually within a limited range of area, where they can retrieve information about their tasks from some posts. For some tasks, Teemu suggested that students can call Mobiled server and retrieve related information using some search terms given on each post. He further suggested that it would be interesting to try out some materials combining science and English in the form of multimedia.

For the group tasks, I suggested to create some collaborative tasks that require information retrieval from Mobiled to accomplish their tasks in the field. I am particularly interested to try out the Mobiled's capacity as Wikipedia. Since the capability of Mobiled to add information is still limited, I suggested the use of available mobile phone services and features for enhancing such activity.

At the end, the active involvement of the school headmaster and teachers is crucial for this pilot, so I plan to arrange a meeting with them and discuss about the feasibility of conducting the pilot in February.

I'll catch you with my "cam" phone

Recently, I have been observing the use of mobile phones by several children from 4 to 8 years old. They used different kind of phones, such as Nokia N70, Nokia 5140i, Nokia 6630 and Nokia 6680.

All of those children were very fascinated with camera functions of mobile phones. In the beginning, they thought that it was cool to take a picture with a mobile phone. It seemed for them that interacting with a camera phone was easier and safer than a digital camera. Their parents often warned them when they touched and played with digital cameras. Yet, nobody reprimanded them when playing with mobile phones. They could also use one hand to play with them as well as move easily while trying to catch pictures of their friends. Most of them have already got some interaction with phones, either to make a call, send SMS or just playing with them. None of them have used a mobile phone with a camera.

When they were about to take a picture, they faced difficulties because they did not know what to do/press. Some of those children did not yet read or read fluently. The user interface and interaction on the mobile phones were more complicated than a normal digital camera. Compared to one button to press in taking a picture with the digital camera, there are more steps to do with mobile phones. Those steps include defining buttons to press, scrolling down choosing the right function, defining whether they want to take “image” (photo) or video clip, pressing a button to take the image or video. What the children usually did was coming to me and asking what to press and choose, then they tried to remember the steps by hearts executed the actions and repeated the steps .

I also observed how a very young child used SMS to learn alphabets and numbers by pressing the buttons of the mobile phones. The child could also learn some metaphors from user interface of the mobile phones and their applications. During the process of writing an SMS, the child was suddently confused when they could not erase some words because there was no “C” button on Nokia 5140i, because the child had memorised that by using other phones that a mistake in writing SMS could be erased by pressing the C button.

I learn that it is important to design a consistent user interface and interaction of mobile devices and applications for children. A mobile phone usually has limited numbers and possibilities for physical interactions, yet a physical button could conveys multiple functions instead of one-to-one correlation. Young children may not be able to read, but they interact by memorising a set of procedures. Consistent graphical user interface, metaphor, physical and visual interaction are important in reducing cognitive burden of those children and developing more enjoyable experience when using mobile devices. These aspects are also worth to consider when designing a mobile learning system for this group of users.

The “IF” that I missed

My excitement turned into a frustration this morning. After making a call to an offline Gizmo user, which was directed to a mobile number, I suddenly heard a notification that I only had 30 minutes left for a conversation. I could not believe what I heard and I kept talking with this person until I finally found out that I talked to myself.

I tried to contact this user again as I understood that I had the rights to call for free to landline and mobile numbers of Gizmo user with a qualifying number from one of the 60 countries, who was not online. A Gizmo voice message advised me to buy Gizmo Out credit to call this user's landline and mobile numbers of the person or call this user by PC-to-PC calling method for free. Interestingly, the voice message told me to check Gizmo Free Call Plan. If this user has a qualifying number, I may contact him/her for free.

Having received this confusing message, I checked the Gizmo project website again and found same information as I understood. Yet, I checked further the Gizmo website and found the following “IF” statement in FAQ that I missed before.

Calls between Gizmo Project users on the PC have always been free. The All Calls Free plan extends this "free calls, anytime" concept by allowing Gizmo Project users to make free landline and mobile calls to other fellow Gizmo Project users in 60 countries around the world.

If both parties are logged into Gizmo Project, you should just make a Gizmo-to-Gizmo call, which has always been a free call. If the person you want to call is not currently online or logged into to Gizmo at the time you call, you can then dial the "home phone" or "mobile phone" numbers they have added into their Gizmo Project profile.

That call will be free provided (IF):

(a) You both are active Gizmo Project users, which just means you make a few calls a week using the software and

(b) are calling a qualifying number in one of the 60 countries for which the plan is offered.

Skype and Gizmo

I have been using Skype and Skype Out extensively to communicate with friends and relatives abroad for the last two years.

Unless my friends and relatives have Skype account and be online, I would not able to call and communicate for them for free. The only possibility in this kind of situation was to call their landline or mobile numbers. Then, I need to have some credits in my Skype Out.

Calling international numbers with Skype Out is indeed cheaper compared to other VoIP services. However, one of the challenges is put the credit in my Skype account. Once, I used my European credit card. The process was fast and easy, but I needed to pay quite a lot of luxury tax. Now, I use my Asian credit card. In the beginning, it took quite a while for Skype to trust a credit card from this particular country, but finally after several time of transactions with the same card, the process becomes easier for a trusted customer :). Using this Asian card does not cost me extra for a luxury tax. Yet, I still have to pay to make a call using Skype Out.

Recently, I found Gizmo that offers similar services as Skype. Gizmo indeed requires my friends and relatives to have Gizmo account. This is indeed a good promotion efforts of Gizmo. Gizmo also has Gizmo Out service that enables you to call landline as well as mobile numbers of non-Gizmo users. Leaving message at Gizmo is also more convenient because the message will be forwarded to your e-mail that you can access anywhere even with your mobile phone.

There is also an attractive service offered by Gizmo Project that makes me think to use Gizmo more often than Skype nowadays. If my friends and relatives are Gizmo users and they put their landline and mobile numbers in their profiles, I can call to these numbers for FREE.
Isn't that wonderful?
(Note: you need to check the list of countries where you can call their landline and/or mobile numbers)

This actually creates a win-win situation for Gizmo as well as its users. They can get our data for free and we can use their call service for free as well.

One thing to remember
When you use Skype, don't ever open your Gizmo or vice versa, because either one of the programs will not work (even in my Apple).

Pilot plans - soon in Helsinki, Finland

It is planned that there will be school pilots conducted in Helsinki in February 2006.

I am very excited with the plans as we will try out updated version of Mobiled. Hopefully, I will see a significant improvement and better user experience of this mobile learning service through the pilots.

The Finnish schools normally have already got good ICT infrastructure and facilities, so I hope that these technical matters at the school would not be an issue in the pilot.

I am currently going through again the results from several field study that I conducted during spring and autumn 2006 at Arabian and Laajasalo Comprehensive School, which I believe would be useful for planning some pedagogical activities for the pilot.