Trends in Distance Education and Open Learning: Policy ... - ADEA

Technology keeps changing -- stay tuned for "Super WiFi" -- the FCC is selling offnew frequencies that will augment mobile capabilities. Also compatibilitystandards – HTML 5, linux 2.2, Mac/PC, etc.E-waste – old cell phones – proper disposal and recycling (see some impactfulphotos of eWaste)PrivacySession: "Walking Ulysses: Joyce's Dublin Today"Walking Ulysses is a mobile learning project created by Boston College professor JosephNugent (and instructional designer Tim Lindgren co-presented). The goal was to afford a21st century visitor to Dublin the ability to walk around and experience, to the greatestdegree possible, the sights, sounds, smells, etc, of Joyce's 20th century city. They aimed toachieve this via the use of collaborative mapping and mobile technologies. Students arethus participants in a hybrid physical/virtual space and are also active contributors to thesite and hence the shared knowledge it extends.They initially tried using Google Maps to trace characters’ paths but were quicklyoverwhelmed its capabilities. Ultimately the BC instructional technology group provided agrant to Prof. Nugent for $10,000 to hire a developer to build something - but what tobuild? Website + iphone app? Couldn’t afford an Apple application, so went with a webapplication + a ‘mobile skin’. The instructional technology group had no prior experiencein this domain but figured it out as they went. They organized content by chapters(chapter = path), then tagged content by ‘sense’ (sound tag, smell tag, etc). They thengave those items location tags and put them on a map. But they wanted the map to bereflective of the time period and hence needed a Google Map-type interface capable offiltering between people, buildings, events, etc. .The team used the Google Maps API but then also worked with the Drupal open-sourcecontent management system both because they found it to be a powerful webdevelopment platform but also because it offered a lot of the basic functionality theydesired (especially when combined with JavaScript for interactivity). They first focused onwireframing/prototyping and started with the web interface prior to the mobileinterface. Ultimately they considered the ‘user on the street’ use cases – a person lands inDublin and wants to explore city through the lens of the novel -- what features andfunctionality would help them?Session: Mobile Learning at Tufts Medical SchoolSpeakers for this session included Susan Albright, Director of Educational Technologies,Technology for Learning in the Health Sciences (TLHS), Tufts University SciencesKnowledgebase (TUSK), and Mark Bailey, Manager of Support for TUSK.105