5 key mobile trends you should know about [Lecture]

Recently I was invited to prepare a guest lecture for a small group of business and management students attending an E-learning course as part of their Summer School in Koper. I was told to choose a topic that would be fresh, something that students don't get to hear about that often in regular classes.

And that's why I decided to put together an overview of some of the key trends in the mobile industry that are already influencing the way we study, work and socialize, and will probably be an increasingly important part of our day to day life. You can find the slides and the video of my lecture, as well as a text recap, in this post.

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Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

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iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7: the facts and my experience [Part 1]

Q4 2010 brought a big milestone to the mobile industry: smartphones outsold PCs for the first time ever. And that's not even taking into account tables and iPods that provide similar functionality. In short, mobile devices - or "post-PC devices", as Steve Jobs calls them - are hot stuff right now.

However, it's easy to get lost and confused by all the devices and even by all the mobile operating systems we can choose from. Apple is certainly leading this new revolution with the iPhone and the iPad, but other software and hardware companies are trying their best to catch up and capture our imagination.

Last Summer I started blogging at Mobitel Tehnik, a blog about mobile technologies, on which my posts (in Slovenian) mainly cover news and tips related to mobile app development. As part of my assignment, I've been using and following the development of some of the recently most popular smart mobile operating systems on the market.

That is why I've decided to sum up some of the thoughts and experiences I've had with various platforms on my blog in two parts: in the first part, I focus on introducing facts and my personal experience with 3 of the most talked about smartphone operating systems: Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. And in part 2, I will try to imagine the potential of using iOS, Android and WP7 mobile devices in classrooms.

Ok, so let's take a look at the facts and my personal experience with each of the three platforms first.

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Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

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Imagining a mobile Moodle

For this year's 4th International Slovenian MoodleMoot I decided to explore the efforts being made to bring Moodle to mobile devices. I found several interesting projects in this field, although I think we're just starting to explore all possibilities, and that more interesting developments will follow in the next few years, especially when teachers start experimenting with things like geolocation, augmented reality and resources that can interact with sensors on mobile devices.

The main goal of my paper and presentation was to invite teachers to think about possibilities that mobile devices can offer for education and the ways we could embed mobile learning in Moodle, a well established Learning Management System.

Here's the abstract from my paper Taking Moodle Out of the Classroom: Making Learning Mobile, Context-Aware and Fun:

"Mobile devices are becoming increasingly more powerful, better connected and are able to provide better user experience and new services based around location and context of users, which opens new possibilities for learning. The paper presents an overview of mobile learning and the efforts being made to provide better support for mobile devices and learning activities/resources in Moodle. In conclusion we also present some future trends in mobile computing that could also provide new ways of learning on the go."

You can see a video of my presentation at the conference on YouTube (total length 15 min):



And if you'd like to learn more about the topic, you can read my full paper on Scribd:

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Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

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The Apple iPhone is (finally) here!

Wow, Steve Job's Keynote at MacWorld 2007 has just finished... and wow is all I can say for now about the new Apple iPhone :-D For anyone who missed the Keynote here's Engadget live report and the first iPhone news. Why the new Apple gadget (much more than just a mobile phone) is called iPhone still remains a mystery (didn't Cisco own that name?).

Anyhow, the iPhone has a really revolutionary multi-touch screen that looks pretty simple and efficient (I can't wait to get my fingers on one!) and it runs Mac OS X so it's much much faster than current Symbian based "smartphones". That is why I really think it'll also be a great learning device (although the price will be quite high for some time). What else is there to say but: keep them coming Apple! Personally I can't wait for an improved iWork suite - hopefully with track changes and cross references ;)

For more info on the iPhone check out the new site: http://www.apple.com/iphone/

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Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.

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