UNICEF Rapid Prototyping Lessons

Interesting lessons learned excerpted from UNICEF’s Stories of Innovation …

This video is a synopsis of the projects, themes and trouble-shooting expressed at the Design Days event on May 10-11 at UNICEF NYHQ.

We have edited down a conversation between UNICEF sponsored rapid design prototypers to profile what they have created in order to respond to and alleviate actual needs of families and children. This video is intended to help make transparent the iterative process that development must undergo in order to create a new device that can respond to global concerns. Also touched on are ways for the organization to make the process of creating prototypes more streamlined, and the best method to take what is developed and to make it open source in order to create a sustainable and beneficial outcome to those that need it.

For Design Days we invited designers and engineers who have worked with us to discuss UNICEF, the design process, and recommendations for future design collaborations.

Lessons Learned:

UNICEF needs methods for iterative and flexible design contracting; we can’t always know what the end result will look like.

UNICEF would benefit from understanding and discussion of the design process before embarking on projects.

We need to work with open-source designers and engineers so that whatever we pay to have produced is public domain.

“Research” and “development” need to happen with end users, in the field.

Related article:

• UNICEF to Offer Free SMS to Nepalese Youth (appscout.com)

Why Mobile? Rick Rasansky and Roy Rosin

Chariot Solutions sat down with Rick Rasansky CEO of Yorn, and Roy Rosin VP at Intuit in their offices to discuss why it is important for web developers to be paying attention to mobile development (in the video below). E-learning developers should take heed as well because mobile technology offers the ability to deliver untethered content that your target audience can use where ever they choose to use it when ever the time is convenient. Offering a user the ability to learn when and where he/she is most comfortable is highly effective.

The limitations of this technology lie in the fact that there is no single platform that is universal. In the smartphone marketplace Blackberry is dominant with business oriented users, but the iPhone is gaining users rapidly, while Windows 7 Mobile, the newly open source Symbian OS, and the revitalized Palm OS are also attempting to gain a piece of the marketplace. Yet the most dominant  demographic is the host of individuals still using text only mobile devices. In developing countries text only mobile technology is sometimes be the primary access users have to the web, so understanding mobile delivery is paramount to companies seeking to deliver content outside of the US. Creating the use cases and understanding the platforms of your user group is vital to develop an effective mobile learning application.  Here are two key players in the mobile industry take a look at the video below to get their perspectives on why you should be considering mobile delivery for your e-learning content.

Related articles

• Symbian lays out mobile OS road map (infoworld.com)
• Symbian Foundation Teases with Symbian^3 (phonereport.info)
• Shaping the Future of Mobile (eon.businesswire.com)
• Intel and Nokia merge platforms (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Why the Next BlackBerry Browser Won’t Be So Terrible [BlackBerry] (gizmodo.com)
• MeeGo: A New Linux OS to Fight iPhone, iPad and More (readwriteweb.com)

Education and Google Buzz…A Match?

It seems, Google has thrown down the gauntlet…Google Buzz is a incredibly powerful attempt to take a piece of Facebook’s market share in social networking. Google Buzz is powerful because if you have a Gmail account you are already a member. Within minutes of logging in to my Gmail account I had followers and I was following a number of people. This is how “friending” and “following” on Google Buzz works. Google has filtered users’ Gmail inboxes and Google Talk IM contacts and used algorithms to determine the users that they communicate with most frequently. Users can then share Buzz posts with the world (and Google search), or they can share privately through their existing Gmail groups or custom-made groups in Buzz. Here are a few a videos that explain the tool in more detail:

When I logged in for the first time with buzz activated, I could not believe my father was instantly among the people I was following. I liked that, no more sending him links… he is not a “first adopter” like me, and if Google can get him to interact with the social stream I am impressed. I’m not sure liked the asymmetric follower/friend model, though, because there were a few people that appeared on my list that I did not want knowing my business… or my whereabouts, so this feature made me a bit uncomfortable.

Augmented Reality and Education

Five Dutch content providers participated in the development of worlds first AR (Augmented Reality) browser. There are a variety of developers working in this area currently and it is the new buzz word in tech circles. Augmented Reality is technology that allow the user to point AR equipped devices at objects to see an additional layer of information about the object. We have seen this in the heads-up displays in the helmet view screens of high tech characters like Robo-cop or Iron Man for years. Now portable, processor and GPS equipped, smart phone devices, like those on the Andriod OS, will allow us to experience this first hand.

Of course, the first versions will focus on consumerism. They will allow you to point your phone to spot real estate for sale and enable easier shopping. But, It is easy to understand the educational extensions of this technology. Imagine a lesson where you can take your students on a tour of a old town and when they point their phones on different areas of the town info from a famous book or books written on the area appears for them to read. Imagine taking a tour of New York and being able to point you phone at each building to see the year it was built, architect, building style, materials, or even sections of the blueprints. As an instructional technologist I see it as a ground breaking utilization of GPS and I can go on and on with the ideas.

Here is press release and video of one of the first successful AR projects to launch:
AMSTERDAM, Tuesday June 16th, 2009. Mobile innovation company SPRXmobile launches Layar, worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser, which displays real time digital information on top of reality (of) in the camera screen of the mobile phone. While looking through the phones camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs, healthcare providers and ATMs. The first country to launch Layar is The Netherlands. Launching partners are local market leaders ING (bank), funda (realty website), Hyves (social network), Tempo-team (temp agency) and Zekur.nl (healthcare provider).

How it works
Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

A Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, is the foundational voice and an advocate of the free culture movement, Creative Commons and Open Source. The Open Video Allience will present a live webcast of a talk by Lawrence Lessig at the end of Feburary. For more background on his ideas view his speech: Free Culture: What We Need From You (Ogg). This was Prof. Lessig’s keynote speech at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. (via Lessig.Content: Audio/Video ) In this video he discusses the emerging remix culture as both the source and outcome of societies embrace of digital technology. Lessig feels a new literacy has emerged due to these changes which should be embraced and taught because it is the key to preparing society for further innovation into the 21st Century. Last year at Educause 2009 he stated:

The ‘ecology of education and science,’ Mr. Lessig said, is inherently collaborative, and it is being strangled by copyright-law principles based on exclusivity…”Scientists and educators are busy creating,” he continued, “so it is up to chief information officers and other information-technology specialists to devise ways to make those creations both legal and widely accessible.”

Location (Map) Based Social Network

A simple overview of social mapping along with a listing of  some mapping sites and
A Location or Map-Based Social Network’s is a real-time representation of social network nodes via a map interface. This environment dynamically allows users post their location and/or to geolocate personal information, events, entertainment, public places, or other information that affects the virtual communities and its evolution. Some versons also allow users to track each other via a map interface. This dynamic map interface aids social mapping and the development of an online community by connecting nodes of info around geospatial data. Groupings or categories of similar types of information can filtered via the map interface and its search tools. These grouping of mapped info is developed based on the predetermined goals, categories or tags of the community. Ideally, this data is used to guide interactions and focus the development of the community.

To my knowledge, the first such map that was launched was the Eco-mmunity (developed by David Grandison Jr.  for the Sundance Channel) which was launched in 2007 to allow “green” members to geolocate their homes and demonstrate it’s sustainable features, as well as, mark their favorite “green” locations.

Other map-based social networks include:

EchoEcho.me- A twist on the location-based social network because allows you to query your contacts about their locations.

Foursquare.com

Gowalla.com

Brightkite.com

Townqueens.com

Townkings.com

Sosauce.com

via Google Knols

Related articles:

• Foursquare, Metro Partnership Shows How Media Can Benefit from Geolocation Apps (poynter.org)
• Brightkite finds way to BlackBerry App World (news.cnet.com)

WhiteHouse.gov Offers First iPhone App

Last week WhiteHouse.gov announced the new White House App.  This new App delivers dynamic content from WhiteHouse.gov on to your iPhone or iPod Touch. This device ushers in a new age of mobile Presidential access.

One of the key features that caught my eye was the live video streaming aspect of the App.  You can use the app to watch the President’s public events at the White House, frequent web chats with Administration officials, and other events like key speeches and press briefings in real time asynchronously. The White House also promises to launch mobile.WhiteHouse.gov, a mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov that is optimized for any internet-enabled mobile device, including many other phones very soon.

The White House’s Press release said; “Mobile internet access is an important way Americans are staying informed.  Mobile web usage grew over 100% in the last year in the United States and higher worldwide.  As part of President Obama’s commitment to an open and transparent government, the White House App makes getting all the latest news and media from the White House easier than ever.  And of course, we’ll continue to look for new and emerging technologies to engage the American people and make information about the President and his administration easily available.” This is a powerful statement that makes me, as a technology advocate and developer, feel America is, once again, back on track to becoming a high tech leader in the world eye.

The Edublog Award Winners

The winners of the 2009 Edublog Awards were announced recently.

I was psyched to see that Karl Fisch, won an award for his viral videos. Karl Fisch won the Lifetime Achievement Award. Karl is the original creator of the “Did You Know?” (Shift Happens) presentations that have been seen by millions of educators world wide. I have posted them on the front page of my site http://UrbanThinking.net many times. The viral video “Did You Know?” is now into its fourth official remix. Be sure to check it out below to learn a bit about the state of the high tech world and how we need to educate our students for the future.

A number of sites that I subscribe to won as well. One of my favorites Free Technology for Teachers won in two categories; Best Resource Sharing Blog and Best Individual Blog. Congrats to all of the winners!

Read the entire post at http://UrbanThinking.net