Serendipity35

You might have guessed otherwise, but teenagers have actually been behind adults in their ownership of cell phones. (It just seems like they all have cell phones.) The Pew Internet & American Life Project has done some surveys that now show that teens (12-17) are now closing in on the grownups.

They started surveying teenagers about mobile phones for their Teens and Parents project in 2004. Then 45% of teens had a cell phone. The number climbed to 63% in fall of 2006 and then to 71% in early 2008.

Cost is obviously a factor in adoption by teens. It is easy to join Facebook, but probably still more difficult to get your parents to purchase a phone and add you to their plan. That might be especially true because teen users are heavy users of text messaging, MMS and data plans. And they are more likely to want that fancy feature phone rather than the one that comes "free" with the plan.

The Project results show that older teens are much more likely to have a cell phone than younger teens. It also shows that young teens also connect to friends via mobile gaming devices like the Nintendo DS and DSi and the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). This is most prevalent with teens ages 12-14). 67% of 12-14 year olds own a portable gaming device, compared with 44% of teens ages 15 to 17. The big drop occurs at age 14. Those middle school transition years change everything!

You might not see the connection between cell phones and these devices. Briefly, beyond local game play, a PSP offers internet connectivity. It also has a version of Skype which is the voice over IP application that allows users to make calls (many free) and instant messages over the internet.

It doesn't surprise me that the numbers show that mobile gaming devices are more likely to be owned by boys - 61% of boys owning one versus 49% of all girls. I was surprised that there seems to be no differences in ownership by race or ethnicity or by family income or education.

Read the Project report

The Research and Development Team at Serendipity35 has developed (and is announcing) new support for you Smart Phone users out there that don't use an Apple iPhone.

The new mobile site for Serendipity35 is www.s35.org. The content remains the same, but there will be less graphics to clog up your Edge or 3G pipeline to the internet.  Pages will load faster and the formatting will still be readable on device's smaller screens. Also, if you happen to have an iPhone and want to see Serendipity35 in a regulation browser (like Safari) without being automatically tossed into the WebApp version of Serendipity35, www.s35.org just might be the format for you.

The development of a micro-site version of Serendipity35 comes directly from the work I've done with making a portable version of Moodle.Though it remains to be seen what kinds of classes, instructions, FAQs and micro-information fit into a portable device, the platform is just about ready to begin delivering content even though very few people (if anyone) know what that content should or will be.

I don't envision anyone studying  graduate courses  on their Smartphone, but if you need to change a tire, reset your dashboard clock, or (safely) jump your car's battery, there may be a portable Moodle class in your future and it may be delivered by the same engine that runs the new www.s35.org

Friends with iPhones keeping telling me about something they downloaded. And those commercials are on all the time telling me there's an app for that. An app to solve all problems.

I saw a list of the 100 Best iPhone Apps for Serious Self-Learners. There's even an iPhone app for the complete works of Shakespeare.Almost all the ones folks are downloading are free. And me without a smartphone...

One bug in all this free app talk has been the recent Google Voice application for the iPhone that was shot down by Apple. According to Google, "Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users--for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers."

All third-party applications that use Google Voice have also been pulled by Apple. There were varying explanations about why this was done - the apps duplicate features that come with the iPhone etc.

But most of the buzz online about this centered on the theory that AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., wanted it killed.  Google Voice is a free application that some say is an "end run" around wireless carriers because it allows for free texts and international calls for a few pennies (users do still use minutes on their AT&T phone plan).

Of course, Apple has its own reasons too. They probably don't want Google's Android operating system, which is a big competitor to the iPhone OS, to gain any extra ground, especially from within their own app store.

Corporate intrigue abounds... The Federal Communications Commission is checking out things and sending letters
to Apple, AT&T and Google. Google's chief executive stepped down from Apple's board.

Text messages are big moneymakers for the carriers - 20 cents for you, basically no cost to them. International calls? They didn't block Skype, so why block Google? Oh, that's right - because they are GOOGLE.

Google says they can work around the ban with a specialized, iPhone-shaped web page that will behave the same as the app. Would Apple dare to block a web page?

I'm not a hardcore follower of mobile learning efforts, but I monitor a few blogs that do - mlearnopedia.blogspot.com, mlearningworld.blogspot.com and mobilemind.net, for example.

So, I read posts about "Ten Reasons for Mobile Learning eLearning" (the reasons coming from an Intel strategist talking to a university audience) and I wonder if "partial brain learning" is happening and that if "creativity is limited when teachers and students must comply to learning system methodology to conduct learning activities" will mobile learning solve the problem? Does a web portal solution and "the forced repeated downloading it requires, make[s] it very difficult for students with slower connections to receive the information?"

I see that trainers outside of academia are looking at "Authoring Best Practices for Mobile Learning Content Development" and wonder if schools are doing the same things, or if we are behind already.

Cheryl Johnson says in an article titled "Thinking Differently About Mobile Learning" that we limit our efforts by continuing to think in familiar terms - modules, quizzes, tests, assessments - even though this delivery method is quite different and offers the possibilities of different methods.

Just this week, Blackboard announced that it purchased a student-run company that produces iPhone applications. For those schools and instructors who are teaching students to build those apps (and Serendipity35's Brother Tim is one of them at NJIT), there is a great student motivational story in that Blackboard bought TerriblyClever Design for $4 million.

TerriblyClever was founded by two Stanford students (one will be a senior this fall!) all of two years ago, and their MobilEdu application lets users access campus services on iPhones or other mobile devices.So, your students could check out the course catalog, get news on events, watch lectures, even use GPS to find their way on a big campus. Sounds like a great orientation app.

They have some schools that have adapted the app already - Stanford, Duke, Texas A&M, UC San Diego.

I guess it's encouraging that companies are looking at mobile learning (Blackboard Learn was already available to access Blackboard courses), but what about the schools themselves looking at the pedagogy to use these apps and platforms?

I freely admit to being out of touch with this area and would welcome comments about efforts at campuses K-20 to do innovative "teaching" with mobile devices. I created a "mobile" category on this blog because I know I can't avoid the topic and stay relevant. What interests me is the the learning half of mobile learning and not the mobile portion. (INSTRUCTIONAL technology not instructional TECHNOLOGY.)

It's great that at  Stanford the MobileEdu application has been downloaded 45,000 times. That means that it's not just students, but also parents, prospective students, staff, faculty, alumni and visitors. Now, tell me how it is improving learning.