Harnessing the Smartphone Revolution

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Braden Turner (the innovations manager at Vodafone NZ) was a keynote speaker at the ICELF conference, and he spoke about smart devices, and harnessing the 'revolution'. He fronted up by saying that he is not an mLearning expert, and he will be speaking about network capability, and how this will impact education in NZ.

Smartphones have changed significantly in the past couple of years, and Braden reinforced this point by showing a short video. Much of the video focussed on the technology making decisions for you to "make life easier". It felt as though Braden was searching for links between his corporate presenation and how it may relate to education. Wonder if a little more homework might have helped :-) One suggested example was a student reading a text on their smart device, hopping into their car to get to lectures, and the device automatically switching to an MP3 to continue working with the text.

Apparently 33% of people would rather lose their wallet than their phone - you can always borrow cash, but you can't borrow someone else's phone for the day. Ninety one percent of phone owners will keep their phone within 5 meters of themselves 24/7.

Augmented reality is the concept of using your camera on your mobile device to interface with realtiy. For example, you might be reading a text about welding, and the phone will bring up a video about how to weld, and therefore enhancing the learning experience. Hmmm - someone just tweeted about "where is the human in all of this?" - tend to agree.

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We were treated to an overview of the future of  the Vodafone network (Long Term Evolution)...while it is interesting to be reassured that, in theory, the network will cope with heaps of students using their smartphone and from any location (e.g. rural locations)....hmmm - a Tui advert in the making ;-)