A ‘very alpha’ build for 2010…but moving along…
Despite hearing that our work so far on the Mobile VLE will result in a reduced initial offering, I’m hoping that this will stimulate further suggestions for features during 2010. Building on the groundwork now reaching the end of the current development cycle (about to go in to ‘code freeze’), the LIO is now commissioning 3 development strands from Q1 2010:
- Extending the Mobile VLE optimised templates to Resource pages and Structured Content, also reformatting pages with left-hand-side navigation. Evaluating rollout of the template to VLE tools such as forums, wikis and blogs.
- Enhancing Structured Content so that the work on the ePub format (via XSLT) can be automated and added to the workflow, resulting in an additional link alongside the current ‘printable view’.
- Exploring mobile application development, particularly to create an ‘umbrella’ application that can allow selection and inclusion of other OU modular apps and WebKit-based resources and activities.
Separate from the development work, we are also now ‘benchmarking’ how other HEIs are increasingly offering mobile services, and how they’re going about this. Most of the publicity we’ve seen on this tends to be on campus-based services with little mention of teaching and learning support, but Mike Innes will be working for us in digging beneath the press releases to uncover more.
And on the external focus note, all of the OU presentations were received well at Handheld Learning and we have the option to include in a RCETJ special issue. [I've also included the overview presentation and paper on Slideshare]. Related to this, it was great to see that Gavin Cooney and Learnosity received the Secondary sector Handheld Learning Award for innovation, and that Valérie Demouy from the L120 research study team presented successfully in Toledo.