background preloader

5 Ways Higher Education Is Leveraging Mobile Tech

5 Ways Higher Education Is Leveraging Mobile Tech
Jeff Kirchick is Director of Universities at SCVNGR, the popular mobile game about going places, doing challenges and earning points. He presents regularly about the future of mobile and location-based services in education. You can follow Jeff on Twitter @JeffreyKirchick or e-mail him at jeff@scvngr.com. Mobile technology is on the minds of higher education professionals more than ever before. It’s no mystery why: The latest numbers show 40% of teens plan on buying an iPhone within the next three months. There's a recent debate about whether schools should create mobile apps or mobile websites. To be fair, universities have come a long way. As tomorrow’s grads become increasingly married to their mobile devices, here are five ways that mobile tech matters just as much as social technology in the higher ed space. 1. Students today seem unable to go five minutes without checking their phones for a text, notification or email. (88% of students even text during class!) 2. 3. 4. 5.

Mobile Technology Changing Education In the 21st-Century University, Let's Ban (Paper) Books - Commentary By Marc Prensky Recent news that South Korea plans to digitize its entire elementary- and secondary-school curriculum by 2015, combined with the declining cost of e-readers and Amazon's announcement earlier this year that it is selling more e-books than print books, prompts an interesting question: Which traditional campus will be the first to go entirely bookless? Not, of course, bookless in the sense of using no book content, but bookless in the sense of allowing no physical books. My guess is that this will make some institution famous. Already, just about everything that an undergraduate needs to read is available in electronic form. Whatever isn't there electronically, librarians, students, or professors can easily scan, as many already do. Some colleges are already heading in this direction by requiring or handing out iPod Touches, iPads, Kindles, or Nooks, often preloaded with textbooks and other curricular materials, or by disallowing paper texts for online courses.

College admissions officials turn to iPad to streamline applications Two major universities sign on with software company run by admissions experts By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor Read more by Denny Carter December 20th, 2011 The ratio of applicants to enrollments has dropped every year since 2003. What once took a week to collect, organize, and collate has been reduced to a few clicks on an Apple iPad in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s admissions office. Matchbox, a startup company launched by former and current college admissions officials, announced Dec. 19 that MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management are among the first schools to use an Apple iPad application that stores reams of student information usually kept on paper in filing cabinets. Using the cloud-based Matchbox iPad app could save admissions offices up to 75 percent of the time it takes to collect, review, and process student application forms, which are often more than 30 pages.

mLearning Enterprise 2.0 maturing with a focus on how we manage, measure, and motivate Have you ever been to a technology conference where the technology wasn't the most interesting part? That was my experience last week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, in Santa Clara. Seven years after we first started using the term "Enterprise 2.0," the most interesting content at the conference was about how this type of technology is both enabled by and enabling new ways of managing, measuring, and motivating people. Moving beyond technology Of course, there's still a lot of technology at the heart of Enterprise 2.0. The problem? Here's how it usually works: Many organizations start by throwing a bunch of money at a variety of social business tools and "hoping for the best." Enterprise 2.0 management While it makes sense that these words are at the heart of successful communities, they aren't used very often in the boardroom. "More companies are realizing that relationships, people, culture are their competitive differentiator," argues Happe. Enterprise 2.0 measurement and motivation

How to build a university mobile application: best practice and insight | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional Nicholas Oliver is creative technical director at communications agency TheBlueHive and formerly creative technology and project manager at Precedent Communications, @nicoliver86 Don't get bogged down in the large strategy development surrounding digital - consider short term solutions and wins too During my time at Precedent, we noticed that universities are shifting away from creating recruitment apps, and are looking more at developing applications that benefit existing students. These serve a dual purpose. As mobile is relatively new universities seem to be struggling to find quick solutions while they develop their wider digital strategy. Our first education sector mobile app was for Southampton University, it helped Southhampton deliver prospectus style content in an innovative way. We are currently seeing a large number of universities exploring mobile. Matthew Draycott, enterprise associate, Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, Glyndŵr University @DraycottMC Resources:

Evernote Peek iPad app review Evernote Peek is a fun little iPad app that you can use with your iPad’s Smart Cover to improve your smarts. If you’ve got an iPad and a magnetic Smart Cover from Apple (or other suppliers at this point) don’t miss out on Evernote Peek. To start, you’ll need to close the Smart Cover. You place the cover on the iPad and as you peel off the first flap, you’ll peek inside the app and read a clue or question. Once you download the free app it comes with only a single tutorial and Sushi quiz to get you started. What’s more is you can use your very own Evernotes to create peek quizes. So the only downside to this app is that it works only if you have an iPad 2 & the Smart Cover. This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.

Taking OER beyond the OER Community; my responses in the online discussions Taking OER beyond the OER Community is a joint initiative of UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning (COL). I am posting here my responses in the series of online discussions conducted as part of the above initiative. The responses in this blog are related to the queries on the following two themes:- (1) Policy and capacity & (2) What works, what does not and under what conditions?. Theme: Policy and capacity: Definitely Neil is right in his analysis of the economic changes taking place in the education content market and, in fact, I would say, it is a desired change also. When knowledge repositories are not open, so called reinventing the wheel will happen at the cost of invaluable natural recourses. Theme: "What works, what does not and under what conditions?" Prof Ulf-Daniel’s selection of topic name 'Big Shift. In the application of such laws I would also suggest that researches should be conducted to the legal frameworks in support of OER.

College Professors Create Mobile Apps for Students As smartphones and tablet devices are incorporated into college classrooms around the country, many students and educators have turned to mobile apps to help supplement their daily academic lives. While the education market has been flooded with mobile apps created by textbook companies and technology firms, some professors are making their own custom apps to engage students in specific courses. [Discover five apps students should use this year.] For Anant Sundaram, a professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, who collaborated with Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, the motivation for creating a mobile app for business students arose when they considered writing a textbook. "We looked at the textbook landscape and said, 'Who needs another textbook about valuation?'" "You get the sense that [the students] have something in their hands that they have immediate access to for a very long time that a textbook doesn't offer," he says.

Finding the Right One: Mobile Technology in Higher Education Key Takeaways Given students' close connections with their mobile apps, finding the right app involves a search process rather like finding the right person for a rewarding relationship. A team at Lancaster University embarked on a quest to find the most appropriate mobile technology for the institution's mobile needs and the right company with which to form a productive long-term partnership. The outcome of the university and supplier's successful partnership, the iLancaster mobile app, has gained a strong reputation in the British higher education sector. At a Lancaster University management meeting early in 2011, senior leaders realized that Lancaster had a negligible presence on mobile devices and that the rapidly increasing number of smartphones on campus could not be used to access university services. Why Senior Leaders Support the Mobile Project Just Looking: Understanding the Market What shape is your IT service in? First Dates: Meeting and Learning More Types of Mobile Application

Где же будущее электронного обучения? В своем выступлении на Саммите HR-директоров и на клиентской конференции Websoft Алексей делился своим – довольно футуристическим - видением будущего электронного обучения. Его прогнозы строились в основном на технической стороне дела. Существует еще, однако,и гуманитарная сторона, в том числе и образовательная. Поделюсь сначала своими впечатлениями о клиентской конференции. В очередной раз нашел подтверждение гипотезы, что технические (программные) решения значительно опережают методологические, педагогические и даже управленческие в местах своего потенциального употребления. К счастью, на конференции присутствовали люди из компаний, которым правила игры задает бизнес. Подробнее

Related: