воскресенье, 16 сентября 2012 г.

Aurasma -- augmented reality app

Today I found this TED talk via Audiovisual Academy page on Facebook.
Matt Mills and Tamara Roukaerts demonstrate Aurasma, a new augmented reality tool that can seamlessly animate the world as seen through a smartphone. Going beyond previous augmented reality, their "auras" can do everything from making a painting talk to overlaying live news onto a printed newspaper.
The talk is is about interesting implementation of augmented reality technology which can be used in eduction. Just imagine that you can connect any physical object with any dynamic content without QR-codes. The app will show your content (video or even animated 3D models) over the physical object (the anchor you choose). It will be mapped in realtime.

The app called Aurasma, btw. It avaliable both on iOS (iPhone, iPad 2) and Android 2.2+. Here is the apps site: aurasma.com.

Now find the time to watch the talk! :)

My attempt to define mlearning

Inge and other participants provided us with several definitions on mobile learning, but still everyone has a bit of their own understanding of the term based on personal experience. This is my attempt to define mlearning for my own goals.

First of all we must to remember that every definition has its goal. A definition helps us to see a problem under the right angle. First question is "What problem?" Next question is "What definition will be helpful?" Let the problem will be how to easily distinguish the mobile learning from other types of learning in relation to its instrument (whether it's digital or not).

What if we define mobile learning simply as any type of learning that is mediated with personal digital device which is associated with learner and can be brought anywhere? Any type of activity is learning (Halperin), and mobile devices helps us to empower the learning component of our activities. Also network connection is important, but isn't crucial.

In general, I don't need any special device to learn something. I learn anytime when I do something. But conscious (intentional) learning needs mediation device, and when it's digital we talking about elearning. The most interesting thing here: as we make our devices more mobile and ubiquitous, our learning can be less conscious and less formal, but still mediated. This leads to empowering of the learning in almost every type of activities.

Lets start!

Hello! My name is Ivan Travkin and I teach math at Sakhalin State University. This blog is something like my learner profile while I participate in the MobiMOOC 2012. Feel free to comment on my posts. Remember that I'm not a native english speaker so don't be confused by my weird writing style :)