Category: Mobile

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Coming soon to a classroom near you

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Coming soon. This little girl. And millions more like her. Curious. Smart. And not afraid of technology.

Let me rephrase that… Not only is she just “not afraid” of technology, she will expect to grow up in a world where technology comes in the form of easy-to-use devices that just work seamlessly to let her do things. She represents a generation of children for whom access to such technology is as basic as access to air, food and water. Look at her as she plays with this device… she didn’t read an instruction manual, she isn’t waiting for a training session in how to use it. As she grows up she won’t necessarily know or care how these things works, only that they lets her do the things she wants to do. She interacts with technology but probably doesn’t even think of it as interacting with technology.

When this little girl gets to school in just a few short years will she walk into a classroom where technology devices like this are an accepted tool in the learning process, or a classroom where they are banned? Will she be working in an environment where technologies are used as seamless and transparent tools for learning, or an environment where she has to go to the computer lab for her one hour of computers each week? Will her teachers start teaching her about technology by getting her to “do a PowerPoint” or type a letter using Word, or will they give her tasks that can be solved using collaborative communication technologies in innovative and creative ways. Will school for this little girl be an interesting and vibrant place which she is excited to attend, or will she become a student for whom school is a boring and unavoidable interruption to her day?

Perhaps the bigger question is, will you be excited or intimidated to have this little girl in your class? Because she is coming whether we are ready for her or not…

Thanks to Kim Cofino for twittering about this video.

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Skype + Phone = Skypephone

3skypephone.jpgAs an existing customer of 3, Australia’s first 3G mobile phone network, and an avid user of Skype, I was interested to see this new product just about to be released here in Australia. It’s a 3G/Wifi enabled phone that lets you make free Skype-to-Skype calls over wireless LANs. Given that I spend all day at work, and all my time at home bathed in the radiant glow of wifi, the ability to make free calls is pretty attractive. I’m assuming that it reverts back to a standard GSM phone when you wander off the grid, and switches back to wifi when you get back into a wifi zone. I need to read the fine print of course, but it’s an intriguing idea.

While it’s not exactly an iPhone (far from it) it certainly looks interesting and suggests that the already competitive mobile phone business is about to get a whole lot more heated in the next 12 months. There’s been no word from Apple as to when the iPhone might land in Australia, so this push by Skype and 3 might be a positioning strategy to establish themselves as players in the developing VOIP mobile scene before Apple gets a chance to dominate it completely.

Either way, we live in interesting times!

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Mini Movies

I mentioned in a previous post that the average cell phone these days can do SO much more than most people ever discover. This revelation struck me when I saw someone demonstrating a video clip they made from footage taken on their phone’s camera. What this person didn’t realise was that some phones can not only shoot the footage, but can also edit it as well. I won’t repeat the list of stuff that can be done – you can go read the other post if you really want to know more – but I was surprised at just how simple it is to throw a short clip together.

To put the theory to the test, I went to watch my kids play tennis today and took some footage with my phone. (Well, mainly of my daughter… my son kept telling me to go away. Fathers can be so embarrasing!) I shot 6 or 7 clips, then used the phone’s editing software, called VideoDJ, to trim each one, add titles and transitions, place the clips in order, and render a final movie. I could have added music in the background too, but I thought was going overboard a little. Total time taken to edit from start to finish was about 6 minutes – in fact I did it while standing in a shop waiting for a hamburger to be made for my lunch!

Of course, the quality is a bit ordinary, as this particular phone only shoots at 176×144 pixels at 10 fps, but still… I uploaded the finished video to YouTube, not so much as a video masterpiece but more as a proof of concept. For what it’s worth, here it is…

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