Day 1: My lack of m-learning…
What, when, where and how are you doing m-learning now?
As we are referring to cell phones, I am not using any kind of m-learning. This may be for several reasons…
A) I am living in Germany and I am not sure how long I will be here for (getting a smartphone plan is at least a 2 year contract)
B) I brought over an un-locked phone from home and am on a pay-as-you-go plan. My Internet package is limited and takes so long to upload that I rarely use it.
C) I have a blackberryL (I thought I would really enjoy having this phone but as it turns out I am an apple girl and find that if I had an iphone I think I would use it more often for school, emails and other Internet searching)
So for now, I am using my unlocked-blackberry strictly for texting and calls.
Like others have stated, I am using other devices for my learning including my ipod touch, MacBook Pro and Kobo.
Jenaca
Posted in: Week 11: Mobiles
David William Price 6:07 am on November 15, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Data plans are a huge issue with m-learning. They are the entire reason I still have a feature phone (and it’s a handset I find highly frustrating). Speaking with a multinational about their m-learning strategy, data plans came up as a major issue… a small video could cost $20 on one person’s data plan… multiplying that by the thousands of employees could quickly add up to huge costs for a single video!
The limitations of web-browsing for mobiles have likely led to the explosion of specialized apps for phones. Apps allow you to store most of the content on your phone instead of having to browse & download every time you want to learn something.
Do you use your mobile for checking news, weather, Google, Wikipedia or maps? (performance support). How do you think your m-learning might change if you had an unlimited data plan?
Allie 10:38 am on November 15, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I *completely* get what you’re saying about being, beautifully ironically, too mobile for for a smart-phone plan (always contract-based). I was also mobile until quite recently, and I’m still not sure how settled in Vancouver I really am. I’m not keen on committing to a contract that is punitive should one be.. too mobile.
In Canada, the company Wind is addressing this through their “windzone”‘ concept*; you can take your plan with you to other major cities in the country with ‘windzones’. It’s useful for people going betwixt and between places like vancouver, calgary, toronto, though less so if you’re posted to a rural area, small city, or anywhere east of Ottawa.
*they’re also one of the newer wave of contractless providers in Canada; however, unless one wants to pay dearly upfront for a phone, one is on a “tab” (which I find possibly worse… it de facto locks you into the company, and if you leave before paying off the cost of the phone, you’re stuck paying the balance for a phone that is in all likelihood obsolete).