Tested To Destruction "TTD": mobile devices good enough for fieldwork?

Image of a Trimble fieldwork kit
used by Geology student here
at Plymouth University

Many of you may have probably wondered what electronic devices are durable enough to take out in the field, without having to attach numerous protective covers.  If you watched the Gadget Show last night you would have seen the team testing a number of mobile devices out in the field and I can assure you they were not handling them carefully.  If a device can take this sort of abuse it has a good chance of lasting on just about any of our field trips!

Devices (that survived...even being subjected to explosives!) included:

* Kodak Playsport camcorder -  also reviewed on CNET UK
* Garmin Oregon 450T (GPS) - also reviewed on Free Geography Tools

The full test can be seen on video via Gadget Show blog. I'll leave it up to the viewers to decide what they would choose!

Climbing the hill of learning technology development

As I've been relatively quiet on this blog in the last month or so, I thought I would share a little insight into why. Recently I've had numerous people saying to me, "It must be a quiet time with all the students off campus...", which is probably the understatement of the year (in the nicest possible way of course!). In fact, this is the busiest time, which can sometimes seem like an uphill struggle with no view in sight, but equally the most fruitful and exciting time for developing learning technologies. There are also great opportunities to collaborate with my fellow learning technologists! You can be sure that better ideas spring up from these developments which more often than not get implemented later on in the academic year.

Why so busy you ask? Im currently juggling six main projects ranging from mobile technologies for fieldwork; e-portfolios for budding scientist; collaborative learning environments to interactive websites. Plus and not forgetting continuing professional development, writing papers, peer reviewing for TEL journals and last minute fixes, all of which covers a range of disciplines, from chemistry to ecological economics. It's just one of the few times that academic staff actually have the opportunity to think about and actually 'do' the things they have been wanting to do throughout most of the year. I will certainly be sharing all of these developments with you as soon as my workloads come to some sort of normality...so as people say, watch this space...

Mscape now available on the HP website.

The Mscape software that many of have used is no longer available from the www.mscapers.com website as the site has been pulled down (forums and all!), users are now greeted with an error message. A particularly sad demise of a perfectly usable website and software, which had a very active user base. Fortunately the software can still be found on the Hewlett Packard Labs website, but with extremely limited information on building your own mediascape. At the time of writing this post, Create-A-Scape still provides users with their own method for creating mediascapes, though you will need to use the HP lab link to download the last version of MScape. So those of us with Windows Mobile GPS enabled PDAs can still continue to enjoy the software.

Some of the original Mscape software developers have now formed a company called Calvium. Currently the company has published a GPS Draw software for the iPhone.  There is indication that they are programming for the Android too, which is good news. I had heard through various sources that they were considering software 'similar' to Mscape, but of course due to copyrights etc, it will not be Mscape!

The main feature of Mscape which is particularly appealing, is the ability to use your own maps.  When building teaching and learning materials for remote fieldwork locations, you don't really want to be depending on your 3G networks, for two main reasons: cost and availability.  What does the future hold? There are applications coming out on the Android Market, such as MapDroyd, that allows users to down load a whole country or even the world, for free! This application of course uses the popular open source map Open Street Map, the very same map source functionality added to MScape not long before its demise. Here's looking forward to a greater wealth of mobile applications for teaching and learning!

Mscape and other logos are the property of their respective owners.

Google App Inventor for Android

Im keeping a keen eye out on mobile devices software that have some educational potential and functionality that relate to the science and technology disciplines and could be made freely available to students. Google have now released an application 'inventor' for its android based phones. Its esentially a way to write your own 'Apps' without actually getting involved with the nitty gritty of hard core programming. Its very much a visual programming language. I think their video says it all, with a basic example.

For me the bit Im excited about is that to quote Google:

"...App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. You can build an app to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum."

A piece of free software that allows access to the GPS is good news for field work as far as Im concerned. It will be interesting to see how good this software is...

Creating your own Google My Maps

I have been working on a number of Google Map related teaching and learning projects recently and have used Google Maps to good effect within web pages for a number of my projects. Previously this process required some javascript added to the web page code, of course there are occasions more complicated applications will requires these maps to be hard coded... however, My Maps has been coming along in leaps and bounds and negates a lot of this process altogether. It even creates the necessary embedding code for you!

You will need to create a Google account to use this facility, if you already have an iGoogle, then log in with this first. Ok, so you're logged and on the My Maps page, what next? The above video by Google explains the process very well and those of you that use My Maps may have already been greeted with this video. Note in the video that when adding photos, the items must be hosted on the web for example Flickr or Picassa to name a couple. Enjoy your mapping.

GEES Anniversary Conference - the value of PDAs in extending fieldwork practice in the Earth Sciences

I'm currently attending the GEES Annual Conference here at Plymouth University. Where geography, earth and environmental science academics, support staff and friends come together to share best practice. It's a special occasion for the GEES subject centre, this being its 10th anniversary.

Why the image of a PDA? Well yet again TEL pervades the realms of this conference, there is a technology stream throughout. Happily I can report that the first day contains a series of field trips with a TEL theme. My colleagues Drs Mark Anderson, Meriel Fitzpatrick and I will be running the PDA (GPS) based fieldtrip to Kingsand (as detailed here), where delegates are invited to do the very same as our geology students!

Derek France is also running a parallel session (unfortunately I miss this one!) where delegates are taken on an iWalk, they will be shown various interesting parts of our city and film elements as they go. Then later create an electronic story board showing their findings. I was talking to Derek about this and he said that his students do the same thing at his end of the woods, they typically can turn out a story board using MS Movie Maker in 1.5hours! Yes you guessed it, in effect a short film/podcast.

Also in the afternoon is Dr John Maskall, Dr Paul Lunt, Dr Trevor Collins and John Lea fieldwork session to Devon Great Consuls, 'Improving accessibility to environmental science fieldwork using a portable communications network', which back in March I had the pleasure of attending their trial run.

There is so much going on at this conference regarding TEL, from Facebook to Google Earth. This should be an interesting one!

Update! - Photographs I took at the conference

Earth's gravity podcast example

I've generally been keeping an eye (and ear) out for simple science based podcasting applications and have particularly enjoyed the sort of outputs that the BBC News online produce. I'm not talking about their high end productions but their simple use of audio, usually reinforced with images. Although most would agree that good use of descriptive audio can stand alone - we can all still learn a lot from radio broadcasting techniques - think of the plays or shows with narrators setting the scene before the characters talk... If I may point you to this recent BBC News article on Earth's gravity.

I'm being a little bias, as this was a topic I remember well from my geology classes. Did you know that earth's gravity varies across the earth surface? Those of you from disciplines that link to environmental/geological studies will of no doubt know this as the Bouguer anomalies.

I digress... Notably this articles page includes a very simple podcast from Professor Reiner Rummel, explaining the gravity map (see GRAVITY - A MOVING TARGET) OK its not called a podcast on the page, but it has all the characteristic. Essentially a typical BBC interview asking questions combined with the images. I cannot stress how simple and effective short bites of audio are for enhancing learning. Why bother? Well the beauty of using audio (only) is that it's easy to do and students are able to carry these snapshots of knowledge with them. A simple application could be an image on our tulip ('MS Sharepoint') and a link to the audio (held on iTunes U or our new UpMedia system), would you not agree this could be effective? Enjoy being creative with your favourite subject matter.

Image courtesy of ESA - GOCE High Level Processing Facility.

TEL at the Vice Chancellor's Conference

VC's Conference - 30 June 2010, a set on Flickr.

Just a few shots of the team at their stand for the VC Conference!

YouTube Editor, how does it fair?

I created this video to demonstrate how simple short films can be made using the new YouTube Editor. Ok its a little basic, only allows 7 video clips to be included in the time frame, there are no transition effect and there is no audio editing other than an 'AudioSwap' feature that allows users to add creative commons music. For this example I only used 4 original clips taken on a Canon 550D camera that I uploaded directly from the memory card. The clips were then shortened further (using the YouTube editor cutting feature) and pieced together on the (max 7 video) time frame, its all drop and drag!

At the time of producing this, the Editor was in its early stages of development. Yes its crude, but the results are very reasonable. Unfortunately videos created in this way are not available for MP4 download, BUT, if you did not use AudioSwap the MP4 download option does appear.

I think key points to remember are:

• Uploads can be time consuming if using slow connections.
• The editor will currently only allow 7 separate video clips to be pieced together in the final item. Keep them short, as you are only allowed a max of 10 mins total for a 'complete' video.
• No editing of the sound is available as yet. Although royalty free music is included and can be added by drop and drag.
• The video created with the editor does not currently appear as something that can be re-edited.
• Processing of your final work can take time, thankfully you can happily turn off your PC while it chugs away and view later!
• videos created in this way (and using the AudioSwap) are not available for MP4 download, if you dont use AudioSwap, its not a problem... (N.B. and single videos that you have uploaded can be saved as an MP4 - worth knowing if you wanted a simple converter)
• Completely FREE!!!!!!

Podcasting gets a mention in TEL News

Further to my post on May on Pod/Vodcasting, the TEL team brings you a FULL guide to podcasting!