GENEVA — A United Nations telecom meeting has approved the next generation of mobile technology, which experts say will make devices 500 times faster than 3G smartphones and eliminate the wait time between the tap of a finger and the appearance of a Web page.

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TheRecord – Mobile devices set to get 500 times faster.

Computers have certainly aided learning in recent years, but they haven’t yet fostered the promised revolution in education that has been discussed for over 40 years, according to Apple cofounder, educator, and all-around geek Steve Wozniak. Woz made the comments during a keynote discussion at Abilene Christian University’s Connected Summit last week, discussing his views on the use of technology in education and the need to adapt teaching and learning to be more effective. According to Woz, we need to focus more attention on younger students before they begin to adopt a perception that they are “failures.”

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Woz to educators: “be brave, use the new technology”.

“Mobile” has sufficiently cemented itself among the buzzwords of 2012. Here’s a look at top trends and predictions for mobile learning in 2012 from industry analysts.

1. Increased proliferation of tablet and smartphones in the market, forcing schools to relent and allow devices into schools. (In 2011 40% of teens had a smartphone.)
2. Improved broadband access to account for increased mobile tech use.
3. A surge in “bring your own device” (and the need to accommodate for it) in schools as students use their own mobile tech for school and home learning.
4. Expanded use of ebooks and online instructional materials as the main learning resource rather than as supplementary pieces.
5. Rise of digital content curation services to help users make sense of all available resources.
6. Growth in creation of and use of open source materials that allow for greater collaboration and cross-device use.
7. Further integration of social networking integrated into learning to increase student collaboration and connections with teachers.
8. Move to cloud computing and online classroom management systems that gather student achievement data and allow for more personalized instruction.
9. Adoption of the flipped classroom, where the traditional lecture is accessed at home through videos or podcasts, and the students spend their class time working with teachers and peers on projects, discussions, and collaborative learning.
10. Explosion of “truly educational gaming.”

Read more…

10 Mobile Learning Trends for 2012 « Educational Publishing.

More and more schools are using mobile learning devices to help boost student engagement and achievement, and a new monograph from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) examines some of the best practices in mobile devices from schools across the nation.

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Tips and success stories for effective mobile learning | eSchool News.

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.

via M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All – Forbes.

by David Parry

In the book Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold argues: “The mobile internet . . . will not be just a way to do old things while moving. It will be a way to do things that couldn’t be done before.” In part because of this, he then suggests: “A new kind of digital divide ten years from now will separate those who know how to use new media to band together from those who don’t.”¹ Rheingold wrote that in 2002. In other words, that ten-year horizon has nearly expired. While recognizing that digital access is not evenly distributed in the United States, which is to say nothing of the global distribution, we can safely say that this transformation is already here; we are already at the moment in which the ability to use social media, and particularly social media as amplified through the power of the mobile web, has become a key literacy. (Literacy here is perhaps the wrong term, for the skills needed to navigate and take ownership of these spaces far exceed the comparatively simple skill of comprehending written text.)

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Mobile Perspectives: On teaching Mobile Literacy (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.

Here on the last day of the year, I offer my predications for the big and shaping trends we’ll see in the enterprise mobile learning space for 2012.  As in the past, this year’s list includes predictions across a gamut of new technologies, consumer/buyer trends plus a few anticipated seismic shifts in the world of business that should collectively reshape the landscape for the adoption and accelerated growth of mobile learning for businesses.

Read more:

mLearning Trends: Enterprise mLearning Predictions for 2012.

Columbia, MO — (Dec. 8, 2011) –  LearningWeb was named one of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship Rising Venture I.T. and Web Companies at the 9th annual I.T. and Web Venture Forum in Houston last week. Information Technology and Web companies showcased their new ventures at the largest venture capital conference in the Southwest with more than 400 attendees, including investors, venture capitalists, industry representatives, business leaders, service providers, and entrepreneurs.

The one-day event culminated in an announcement of the 10 Rising Venture I.T. and Web Companies chosen from more than 60 presenters and judged by the Rice Alliance I.T. and Web Advisory Board, based on the companies’ business plan or elevator pitch presentations. The elevator pitch simulates meeting an investor on an elevator and having only 90 seconds to convince them to invest in your company.

Five new I.T. and Web companies were pre-selected by the Rice Alliance I.T. and Web advisory board to present their 10-minute business plan presentation at the forum, and as one of the chosen five, were also named a Most Promising I.T. and Web Company.

Rice Alliance managing director Brad Burke, announced the winners of the Most Promising I.T. and Web Company awards at the event. “Every year the quality of companies improves. This year we had a diversity of companies including several addressing niche social media markets, security issues and on-line advertising.  As a group, the companies this year are further along. Most have developed prototypes, sold to customers, demonstrated results and raised previous funding. This makes them more appealing to current investors, who have commented on the improved quality of the companies.”

Most Promising Companies, based on their elevator pitch presentations:   

Chai One– (Houston)
ChaiONE is a leading mobile agency with a specialty in mobile sales enablement.

eyeMe  - (Houston)

eyeMe provides a mobile and web community for for meaningful connections and memories.

Flextrip – (Boulder, CO)
Flextrip offers the largest selection of tours & activities as an API for travel companies to use to cross sell to their travelers, increasing average passenger revenue.

Guardian Lion – (Tampa, FL)

GuardianLion Wireless, LLC has developed LEO, a fully functional life-saving personal emergency response wristwatch with GPS locator, alert, cell phone and 9-1-1 response system technologies.

Kolarity – (Austin, TX)
kolarity has developed Cinegif is a video conversion software which allows the insertion of instant-open, instant-play high frame rate, sharp video anywhere that a still image in the form of a .gif file can be used.

LearningWeb – (Columbia, MO)

LearningWeb is BaseCamp for learning: SMEs can develop mobile, gamified learning courses in minutes and distribute them to anyone, anywhere.

Nimbix – (Dallas, TX)
Nimbix provides a simple to use web service to enable customers to process big data on accelerated cloud systems.

Provenio Group, Inc. – (Austin, TX)

We make real learning possible for all students by helping teachers and parents engage their students in healthy learning relationships.

Qukku – (Spring, TX)

Qukku is a crowdsourced platform connecting leading brands and consumers through user-generated video advertising.

YouData – (Houston)

YouData has created the first advertising system that consumers attach directly to their preferred online payment method (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, or PayPal) and use on-demand advertising to sponsor on-demand content.

Top Five Most Promising Companies, based on their business plan presentations:   

CipherPoint – (Round Rock, TX)
CipherPoint provides a content security platform to secure sensitive and regulated information in Cloud and Enterprise collaboration systems such as Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs, Box.net, and Yammer.

Datafiniti – (Houston)

Datafiniti is a search engine for data allowing individuals and companies to search for data across the web.
Fuisz Media – (West Hollywood, CA)

Fuisz Media is re-inventing online video advertising by deploying patented technology that allows users to click and act on anything they see.
Night Owl Games – (Houston)

Night Owl Games creates immersive hardcore social games playable from Facebook and other social platforms.
RedFlag – (Houston)

RedFlag is a tool for parents to protect the safety of their children on Facebook.

About The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance) is Rice University’s nationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of technology commercialization, entrepreneurship education, and the launch of technology companies.

Since inception, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 305 start-ups which have raised more than $1 billion in early-stage capital. More than 1,300 early-stage companies have presented at the 130+ programs hosted by the Rice Alliance and raised more than $2.0 billion in funding.

Recent recognition:
- 2011 NASDAQ OMX Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence Award – GCEC

- 2011, 2010, 2009 Top Ten Best U.S. Graduate Entrepreneurship Program – Princeton Review and
Entrepreneur magazine

- 2011 #14 Best U.S. Graduate Entrepreneurship Program – US News & World Report
- 2011 National Model MBA Entrepreneurship Program – USASBE
- 2009 Outstanding Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership – GCEC
- 2009 Outstanding Technology Entrepreneurship Program – USASBE
- 2008 Houston’s Greatest Economic Development Ally – Greater Houston Partnership

If you’re a regular GeekTech reader, you may have seen our post about an emerging technology that lets you control you phone just by waving your hands in front of it. You also may have heard of this thing called Siri that answers your questions when you talk to it.

Pretty cool right? Not compared to Senseye, which strips out the need for hands and voice altogether, allowing you to do things like scroll through Web pages and play games using nothing but your eyes.

The hardware uses a tiny camera to track your pupils, and it passes this input along to your device. Its creators project that the technology will make it into new phones by 2013. However, they plan to have a product out before then that you’ll be able to attach to existing smartphones and tablets.

Read more…

Eye Movements May Soon Control Our Smartphones | PCWorld.

There is a lot of excitement and controversy around HTML5 these days. HTML5 is predicted to have a big impact, perhaps because it seems to simplify the complexity associated with so many different mobile operating systems and bring us closer to that mobile-friendly ideal world that so many of us long for. In this article, I would like to explain what the excitement is all about, how it impacts learning professionals, and what the implications for handheld mobile devices are.

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HTML5 — Opportunities for Mobile Devices by Yael Even-Levy : Learning Solutions Magazine.

When it comes to buzz words in online education, “mLearning” is making a lot of noise. In an attempt to verify whether or not the hype is warranted, eCollegeFinder.org ended up discovering why many top online schools are looking to incorporate mLearning with their online courses.

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Online Colleges Gear Up For mLearning | Online Education Program.

New York’s museums have moved beyond the audio wand.

The American Museum of Natural History is opening a new exhibit, Beyond Planet Earth, this weekend, with an ambitious mobile application that conjures up three-dimensional images of solar systems and spacecraft on visitors’ phones.

Read more….

Technology Goes to the Museum — App City – NYTimes.com.

Mobile technology is on the minds of higher education professionals more than ever before. At the recent HighEdWeb conference in Austin, the itinerary included several ways schools can use social media, blogs and mobile technologies to better captivate its student body. And last week, hundreds of orientation professionals gathered in New Orleans for the National Orientation Directors Association annual conference, where they discussed how to engage with prospective students in modern and relevant ways — including mobile — to welcome the next freshman class.

Read more…

5 Ways Higher Education Is Leveraging Mobile Tech.

(We have created an 8-part comprehensive report containing a series of two-to-three page “briefs.” This is part 4: mLearning devices and platforms: What you need to know. If you would like to see the collection in its entirety, click here.)

The issue that halts enthusiasm for mLearning is the device wars. People want to know which device to use. Our answer is that companies need to be prepared to support multiple devices and that the issue REALLY needs to be tablet versus smartphone

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mLearning devices and platforms: What you need to know | All things related to educational technology.

Mobile learning is certainly a hot discussion topic with elearning and training solutions providers in Australia – like anywhere else in the world. In my meetings with clients and prospects in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne over that last couple of weeks, it is clear that the interest in mobile learning is very strong. Yet, the most common question is – how do we actually use it in workplace?

Read more:

Three Ways to Use Mobile Devices in Workplace Learning | Upside Learning Blog.