Appropriate to the collective authorship theme of 523, I would like to acknowledge that the ‘seed’ Week 2 materials were originally assembled by MET alumnus Ping Zhang.
Mobile technology has changed our world and lives immensely. What is inside this technology? Where did it evolve from? What are the trends? How do networks and devices cooperate to enable such diverse services? In this week, we invite you to collectively explore for answers to these questions.
There are two activities in this week: “Resource Reviewing” and “Resource Mining”, along with some discussion topics. Before diving into activities, we would like to briefly clarify the term “mobile technology”. In many resources, “mobile technology/network” specifically refers to “cellular technology/network”, apart from a wide spectrum of wireless technology such as WiFi, Bluetooth, WiMax, etc. But in a Mobile Internet era, this connotation needs extension. Today’s handheld devices can integrate different types of physical access points, switch between various networks imperceptibly, and enable ubiquitous connectivity to a globally converged service cloud. In this course, we use this broader connotation of “mobile” to refer to all “mobile and wireless” means of connectivity in traditional and emerging contexts. As well, given our inclusion of social, open and flexible influences on the mobility of learning, we encourage examination of technologies specific to these areas (primarily platforms and applications rather than hardware and devices).
In this activity, you are expected to explore resources available in the Knowledge Mill under the “Mobile Technology” category. Many of these resources are assignments posted by previous students, but there are also items of independent news, analysis and research on this topic discovered and posted by your peers. Your role is to add value to this stream as follows:
Step 1: Peruse (browse, search, sort, filter, etc.) the posts in the Mobile Technology category sufficiently to identify at least two (2) posts of particular interest to yourself.
Step 2: Critically consider your selected posts, along with any existing reviews that may be present. Add critical value to the post by: A) providing a “thumbs up” recommendation for any reviews that are particularly insightful; B) rating the post itself using the star rating criteria introduced earlier; and C) if you have something original and worthwhile to contribute, author your own review using the Comment (“Leave a Reply”) field.
Elaborating on your experience with the existing set of 523 resources, go forth boldly into the full Mobile Internet to find other (better, more recent and different flavored) resources to expand our Knowledge Mill. Here are some tips to help your mining:
Tip 1: Use keywords or ideas you encountered in Activity 1 or the Frontiers Poll to narrow your search range.
Tip 2: Use your mobile browser to find mobile-friendly content. We’re only at the dawn of Mobile Internet – most content is still created by desktop authors for desktop readers. We’re looking for resources designed for, or at least easily accessed on, mobile devices.
Tip 3: Count how many seconds it takes to access the resource and give up any site or file that cannot be opened in 8 seconds — that is an optimistic limit of a mobile user’s patience.
Tip 4: Choose content based on credible sources, unbiased research and thorough reporting, not advertisements or marketing material. Consider the origin date — mobile technology is developing so quickly that content even a couple of years old may be out of date — if possible select content posted within the last few months to ensure you don’t duplicate something already present in the Knowledge Mill.
Tip 5: It might be strategic for you to mine one or two topics you are considering for your Assignment #1 – this activity would be a great way to get a head-start.
Tip 6: If you don’t find anything of significant interest or critical value, don’t post something inferior just for posting’s sake.
When/if you find an appropriate new resource, please make a new post under the category of “Mobile Technologies” in the Knowledge Mill, embed the resource link in your post, or upload in a file format. Then write a brief review for it, including why you consider it worthwhile.
Once you have completed the activities above, please move on to this week’s discussions.