"There is still an obvious need for a traditional website but the
shifting habits of consumption mean you can’t make mobile an
afterthought." - Ryan Kim, Gigaom
What does this mean for traditional publishers & content creators? Do you have a mobile strategy?
FROM GIGAOM *30% of Fab.com traffic is from mobile 3 months after launching a mobile app *350 million of 800 million Facebook users access via mobile channels *54% of My Yearbook traffic comes form mobile *79% of smartphone users currently utilize phones to help with price comparison, product searches and locating a retailer
Neilson says US teens are among the biggest consumers of mobile content. FROM NEILSON *teenagers ages 12-17 consume nearly twice as much mobile video content as other viewers in different age groups *mobile subscribers 12-17 watch 7 hours 21 minutes of mobile video a month *58% look at mobile ads
Simon Pulman of Starlight Runner Entertainment interviews media scholar Henry Jenkins about his forthcoming book Speadable Media, co-authored with Sam Ford and Joshua Green.
Interesting comments about the participatory divide and how kids can engage with media in a "meaningful way."
"Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua
Green–co-authors of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media–share recent
experiments from independent filmmakers, video game designers, comic
book creators, and artists and discuss the promises and challenges of
models for deeper audience participation with the media industries,
setting the stage for the issues covered by the conference." - Annenberg Innovation Lab
"This
session is a discussion of the "I Live Over Here" web and iPhone/iPod
Touch/iPad platform as a tool to introduce global, culturally diverse
student groups to meet and share learning through interactive 360 photo
panoramas and short blogs, and a project-based learning approach for
deeper learning of multiple digital literacies for classes that decide
to create their own "DIY app" within the platform.
The "I Live Over Here" project is both a Wordpress based blogging site
as well as an iOS app (for iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone), featuring
collaborative content from contributing classrooms around the world.
This project came about through a collaboration between Heidi Siwak, a
Grade 6 & 7 teacher at Dundas Central, Ontario Canada and her class
of Grade 6 students, and three collaborators from Being Prudence, a
digital education publisher (Ian Chia in Melbourne, Australia; Esa
Helttula in Espoo, Finland; Cynthia Jabar in New York City, USA.)
Since April 2011, Heidi's Grade 6 class has been developing their own
iPhone app through a project-based learning approach, creating all the
content for their own tourism app for the town of Dundas. Their inquiry
project has involved multiple cross-curricula strands: literacy
(researching and writing marketing texts for local attractions in
Dundas); numeracy through real-world skills involved in digital media
and the maths involved in drawing computer graphics; geography through
the use of the app's GPS-based mapping systems; digital photography and
image manipulation for the photographic galleries and the GPS based
augmented reality camera system; visual arts and interactive design for
the app's user-interface; and ICT skills in learning/using digital
content management systems (Wordpress and Google Sites) for project
management and data entry and digital media asset management.
Since then, the project has grown to include a special-ed Grace 4-6
class in Cambridge, Canada developing a tourism app/website of their
town and a Grade 5 science class in Ohio, USA developing a biology
science app/website of their school's butterfly garden investigating the
ecology of the biosystem for the garden.
A high school Indonesian
language class in Perth, Australia is planning to create an app/website
of local Perth resources for the Indonesian immigrant population in
Perth, by researching relevant English speaking businesses and community
resources and translating/creating content in the Indonesian language.
We are moving onto the next phase of the project, where we integrate
global classrooms of co-creators into a common, shared, open and
semi-personalized "platform" to encourage further global connections
between contributors and collaborative learning.
Our aim is to build a
global base of culturally relevant creative-commons licensed curriculum
by organic contributions, along a similar approach to the
Rhizomatic/Connectivism model of learning as discussed by Dave Cormier's
"Community as curriculum" research. ("Rhizomatic Education: Community
As Curriculum" Dave Cormier - Innovate: Journal of Online Education, v4
n5 Jun-Jul 2008
http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/
)
The project's has two primary approaches:
1) In order for K-12 students to be introduced to a connected "global
classroom", the barriers of entry must be sufficiently easy to introduce
gradual experimentation with relevant engagement to multiple systems of
education in different countries. "Your" local community as a subject
area is predominantly a starting point for social studies within the K-8
domain.
Blogging is also increasingly encouraged as a means to engage
learners for early language acquisition skills in the elementary level,
with evidence in the US, UK, Canada and Australia pointing to concrete
benefits with participatory commenting leading to strong student
engagement. However, a number of education blogging systems are local
"walled gardens" (such as Australia's Vicnet in public education),
protecting students from a global participation balancing concerns of
cyber-safety/cyber-wellness.
This poses problems for meeting/exchanging
learning for global partners.
The global blogging portion of I Live Over Here offers a free, and
limited system of blogging with a focus on a few posts from each
participant class on their local community. They are encouraged to use
the $2 iOS app from Occipital called 360 Panorama to capture
accompanying 360 degree virtual paroramas of their local school and
community, using their text to accompany a simple, immersive experience
of *where they live.* This offers schools the ability to "test the
waters" with collaborative global blogging in a safe environment where
participants are other schools from around the world.
Contributors are
pinpointed on a Google world map within the website and app, and
commenting is enabled for students to comment on other classroom's
contributions from around the world. The system is designed to encourage
learning digital citizenship skills through blogging and commenting,
discoverability of global participants and understanding more about each
others' local cultural contexts, and provide pathways to encourage
further global collaboration outside of the project between interested
schools using Skype, Quad Blogging and other means.
2) Classes who wish to delve into deeper project-based learning can
participate in growing streams of inquiry focus.
For example, the
tourism apps offer far deeper engagement in cross-curricula skills to
create content for their local community. The science stream hopes to
grow various apps of content about local ecology and energy systems from
around the world, allowing an audience to browse and download free
content created by these classes. Science classrooms can build upon
particular tagged streams (eg. butterfly ecosystems) and collaborate to
learn about systems in various countries.
The language component allows
learners to create content in different languages, opening opportunities
for foreign language exchange as well as offering resources to students
impacted by ongoing trends in global migration.
We are also
investigating the opportunity for location based storytelling for an
arts stream, encompassing visual and performance art integrated with new
media transliteracies.
We envisage that the project-based learning DIY app building component
of the project will have a nominal fee per classroom (possibly $15 per
class regardless of student numbers) in order to support the ongoing
hosting costs of the more comprehensive media assets and technology for
the PBL technology, and welcome ongoing discussion with global educators
in the developed world about practicalities in light of austerity
measures and cutbacks in the US and Europe.
For interested participants
in the developing world, the nominal fee would be far lower in direct
proportion to the means of the participants, and we welcome learning
about what would be practical for schools in these regions.
The session will explain the deep levels of engagement in student
learning through global collaboration thus far, and discuss and
demonstrate the next phase of this project. We hope to meet potential
educators and classrooms in this session and learn what would make this
project more useful and relevant to various regions' contexts.
A presentation by Heidi Siwak on the learning achieved in her classroom through the development
of the initial pilot app. This was presented at the 3rd Reform Symposium
online conference in 2011.
http://www.slideshare.net/siwak62/app-titude-for-learning-rscon3-heidi-siwak
Awiki where we have been documenting the ongoing process of open
development by the student learners, and the ongoing curriculum
resources that the classrooms are contributing to.
http://iliveoverhere.beingprudence.com/
Storytelling pioneer Lance Weiler created ROBOT HEART STORIES, an experiential educational vehicle for kids to talk to each other all over the world, tell stories about their life on earth and ask a girl robot who has crash landed in Montreal, questions about where she is from and why she landed here.
They ask questions like:
"What might you want to do here on Earth?" - Vincent, NJ
"Why is the heart on your chest so big?" -Brenna, NJ
"What would happen if you landed in New Jersey?" -Michelle, NJ
"What did you do on Earth?" -Daniel, NJ
"Why would you dress like that?" -Meghan, NJ
REMIX THIS MUSIC FROM BEN THOMPSON I
met Ben on twitter last year when I was looking for some music for an
animation script. I listened to his music again recently and thought it
would work really well for a ROBOT HEART STORIES REMIX of some kind. He
is nice enough to let kids remix it with their images &
stories. Come back and check to see what we do.....if you want to add an
image to our animation,,,let us know @cynthiajabar. Share your remix. ;
)
This is Laika on the cover of her first school not
So who is Laika?
Laika (named by the class in Montreal), is a robot who has crash landed on Earth and is making her way from Montreal to Los Angeles with the help of kids all over the world.
You can help her reach her destination by participating & sharing what you LOVE. Love makes her move!
Visit the website: ROBOTHEARTSTORIES.com and download a heartpack to color or make a toy robot.
Here is Laika chillin' out in NYC.
That's the George Washington Bridge in the background.
GO AHEAD, SHARE WHAT YOU LOVE
It's all in your hands as the collaborator.
"For each photo or piece of art featuring the robot that is submitted, the signal strength of the robot grows stronger and helps her get back home."
Here's what the LA science team has to say about what fuels their passion & creativity.
"I like to be creative because if I wasn’t I would be boring." –Gabriel Alaniz
This is Laika admiring the graphiti in Paris, France.
"I feel passionate about Laika because she is brave." - Caitline Molina
"I am passionate about flowers because they are colorful, smell good, and are interesting to watch sway in the wind." - Agenda Domsitz
"I like to be creative because then whatever I make, I like, because it came from my imagination." - Alessandra Rugamas
On the JOURNEY BLOG, you can also follow what Laika's has to say about science, geography & the other strange things humans do here on Earth.
Laika wondered what this tiny brown thing was.
En route to 46° 32’ North by 84° 20’ West.
Parry Sound is a “town” along a body of water called a “bay.” Smaller groups of humanbots live in “towns.” The buildingbots are fewer and smaller, too.
Teambots afraid of effects of air pollution. Alternative
energy sources identified: solar energy, biomass, animals, magnetic,
wind, geothermal, ocean currents, and ocean tides. Fear drains energy reserves.
Giant Laika visiting a class in Sydney, Aust
Check out this experiential learning project using math, science,
history, geography, creative writing & art to propel the
imaginations of kids across the world and help get Laika home!
Really interesting interview with inventor, Etienne Mineur who talks about the importance of playing and seeing the world from the point of view of a child.
"Mix high technology & low technology" - Etienne Mineur
Mineur invented technology that allows real life toys to connect & talk to the iPad. Disney recently released an ipad game/toy hybrid using this technology called APPMATES.
