 Good day everybody. My name is Aga Palalas and welcome to the webinar on the handset. It's built in capabilities and their applications in mobile learning. At the end of this webinar you should be able to determine how to apply the affordances of mobile phone to enable effective mobile learning in your specific educational context. Two key questions have to be answered in order to create effective mobile learning content delivery and experience. First of all we should gauge the current student readiness for mobile learning in terms of what mobile technology and mobile infrastructure they have access to and they use every day. As well as we have to ask whether they can afford data bundles that satisfy the requirements of the mobile learning applications that we are hoping to use. We have to ask questions regarding the handset availability to the student. This is the device ownership device readiness which is the capacity of the mobile device to run those certain mobile learning applications as well as their mobile learning device usage patterns and habits. It is equally vital to look into the mobile learning infrastructure within which the students and teachers operate. This is the network connection including the type of connection the coverage offered by the provider as well as the speed of the connection. We don't want to include video webinars in our mobile learning courses targeting learners who use low end feature phones and connect over the over a 2G connection for example in rural areas that have not established any 3G 4G or LTE coverage yet. There are other aspects of user preparedness such as awareness and attitude towards mobile learning or self-efficacy but for the purpose of this short video I would have to leave them out. Let's have a look at the main types of the handset starting with the basic phone often referred to as dumb phone. It can make phone calls, voice calls and syntax text. Basic phones are affordable and although they might be a dying breed they remain popular in some regions of the world since they offer outstanding battery life, pretty durable design and affordable prices. Feature phones lay somewhere between those basic phones and smartphones as far as they feature and their pricing. They offer quite a number of capabilities for instance an ability to capture high resolution images, listen to sounds, music, connect to social networks via built-in apps or charge the battery using a built-in solar panel. With the advancement of technology feature phones have become more and more like smartphones. Smartphones offer high-end computer-like features and options but they are not cheap. A smartphone typically runs on a mobile operating system. The operating system provides APIs that allow third-party apps to execute. The smartphone also includes internet connectivity via Wi-Fi and 3G, 4G or LTE a processor, a high-resolution camera, voice recorder, built-in GPS, a capability to run various downloadable apps and many other features, some of which we are going to discuss in the following slides. And I will emphasize the features and affordances of smartphones mainly because it is projected that by the end of 2020 100% of all phones sold will be smartphones across the globe. I did mention in my other webinars though that while the vast majority of mobile phones used in developed countries are smartphones today, in developing countries the majority of people are still using feature phones or even basic phones. But at the same time we have to consider the rapid increase in a smartphone market share. Competition between the major cell phone providers results in rapid changes to the handset landscape. Not only are smartphones and tablets increasingly more available and affordable but the cost of data bundles is also decreasing which is definitely good news to the teachers and learners involved in mobile learning. Let's take a very quick look at what the most popular smartphones are, for example in India. This is the list of those rated the top 10 smartphones in India in October 2013. As you see, those are high-end phones mainly with the Android operating system, offering various sizes of display, memory from 16 to 64 gigabytes and connectivity ranging from 3G through 4G to LTE as well as Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi hotspots, DLNA and Bluetooth in one word, very powerful computers. So considering direction the mobile handset market is taking, I will concentrate on the smartphone affordances including both hardware and software features. And let me look at some hardware features of a handset starting with wireless connectivity which allows downloading and uploading of large amounts of media rich educational content. And then the display which is the way for the user to interact with the content then audio camera capabilities helping with the creation and retrieval of learning artifacts and educational materials, radio and television as well as storage. The higher the storage, the more learning artifacts and materials can be stored locally assuring a seamless online offline learning activity. And then USB connectivity that provides PC to phone connectivity that's data sync and battery-retarding capabilities. Then we have 3G 4G LTE connectivity as well as GPS capabilities, location or features and the CPU itself providing the computational capabilities and obviously its performance is crucial for providing a good learning experience. Some of the newer phones, some of the newer smartphones would also have accelerometer built in electronic component that measures tilt and motion of the phone. These are quite often worked into some educational games for example. As far as the software of the handset, it all starts with the operating system and then come in all kinds of user applications that can be utilized in the design of mobile learning. For example, internet browser. Students through the browsers access a variety of mobile learning materials. They access social networks and through those the experts and peers and organizes calendars, alarms help students with their time management and thus learning management. Audio video recorders and players help create new learning artifacts, share other artifacts as well as interact with audio video content. Quite an amazing tool for example in language learning or field practice. Some educational games are very powerful methods of practice and learning. Speech recognition, recording and retrieval tools once again very well liked by language learners and those that prefer to learn using audio, video or recording notes using their own voice. Students can also access learning management systems through various applications as well as social networks, multimedia applications that potentially offer richer learning experience, mobile assisted language learning tools, time management, learning activity management tools, mobile context aware applications such as augmented reality applications allowing learners to interact with the environment around them by creating layers and interacting with layers that are imposed over the objects and artifacts and the real life setting students actually interact with the information available in the environment. The mobile context aware applications can be also used during walking tours and field practice museum tours etc. Mobile data collection applications are amazing when students go into the field practice again and actually capture the various experiences or information that surrounds them and then administrative tools that are great with performance support which is a very important part of learning and training. I'd like to share with you an example of how students use the affordances of the handsets. I've looked at a study by Nacre and Van Der Marwy 2012 that report the 10 top handset affordances according to over 372 higher education institutions students in South Africa. Number one on the top 10 list was SMS. Students used it to share downloaded and download data, share student generated artifacts and data, then they use the photo cameras to take photos which then afterwards they would share. The Bluetooth technology was used by almost 85% of the students and once again to share and download data as well as student created artifacts and information. Then video and voice recording capabilities were used by 85% of the respondents to record sounds, voice recordings to take audio notes and then exchange audio artifacts. The media player used by approximately 81% of the respondents, then MMS capabilities used by 80% of the students in order to exchange various posts to wikis, blogs, forums. The mp3 player would be used to review audio notes, recorded sounds, audio learning materials downloaded from the internet and then email made made it to number eight. Email was used by 76% of the respondents to share and download data once again to exchange student generated artifacts, ask questions, communicate and additional memory was listed by students as number nine and number 10 mobile web capabilities that were used by approximately 71% of the students who through the web would contribute once again to the web-based forums, wikis, blogs, collective blogs, would access social networking sites, use the mobile mail, mobile email, download content, access information, access all kinds of materials, communicate with people. Other examples of how students can and do use these handset affordances would be for students to take photos and type along a message, record sound or even send some animation and then exchange it with other students. They also would make videos of some practical tasks of task demonstrations on complicated procedures which would allow students to review them later on and other students to view what these with these particular earners actually captured in their videos. The iPod portable media for example would allow users to download podcast, audiobooks, music, again photos and videos. SMS is often used in both indirect and direct teaching. It's used to ask questions, provide feedback, scaffolding, support. It's used for updates and reminders and then video, video and pictures and recorded sounds are often used for training, for language skill acquisition and maybe I should mention some of the newer capabilities of the Bones GPS location where exercises are a big part of mobile learning nowadays. Students also make notes on their memopads and share information via all kinds of applications that are available on basic feature in smartphones. And now a snapshot at how college and university students across the US and Canada use the various mobile phones. According to the EDUCAS e-car survey 2012 62% of respondents own a smartphone, 42% of them use these devices for academic purposes. At the college I worked at 99% of students actually owned smartphones. Now in 2012 the number of students owning smartphones was 55% as opposed to 62% now in 2012. Also nearly twice as many in 2012 than in 2011 said that they use these for academic purposes. Now have a look at 15% of the respondents own tablets, 12% own e-readers and they use these various mobile devices for quite a number of academic activities. First of all they use mobile devices to access course websites and syllabi. They access the learning management system quite a lot. They check their grades, access financial information, register for courses and they also would purchase textbooks using their phones and access library resources amongst other things. So now that you've had a look at how what the features of the handset are and how students are actually using these features I'd like you to reflect on this question. What are the three main affordances of your learners phones and how would you utilize these capabilities in your unique mobile learning context considering what type of phones you students use, what the infrastructure is, where they use them, when they use them, what type of learning outcomes they use them for and what are you students specific needs and learning preferences.