Japan is the Mobile Blogging Capital of the World!

I just finished reading this article by Japan Market Intelligence.  It is a marketing agency that looks at trends and the trend they are discussing is mobile blogging.

It appears that the Japanese are the world’s most frequent bloggers and that they are writing from their mobile devices.  According to this article, 37% of the blogosphere is written in Japanese – second place English is at 36%.  In addition to this, two other interesting facts stick out for me.  Firstly,  the topics of Japanese blogs are much less serious than those written in English.  This seems to demonstrate that blogging is more a part of everyday life for the Japanese rather than just being used for “professional discourse”.  The other interesting fact is that 66% of blogs are maintained using mobile phones with another 20% of blogs being maintain using both a mobile phone and computer.  This seems to point to the fact that while in North America, living a mobile lifestyle and communicating online using mobile devices is an emerging lifestyle shift, this mobile lifestyle is already an entrenched way of life for a sizable proportion of those in Japan that currently publish online.

Can we continue to brush off technology as a “passing trend” or is this mobile culture here to stay?  Just because many adults do not publish online, let alone use their mobile devices to publish online, does that mean that the children in their lives also refrain from publish online? Does that also mean that the children in their lives also refrain from publish online using their mobile devices?  What can we do to incorporate these new forms of communication and these new communication tools into the education of students who live, and will continue to live, in this ever changing technology-based culture?

iPods in Education Part 1: Audiobooks

I am beginning a series of reflections on the ways in which an Apple iPod can be incorporated in education. How many parts this series will have is unknown at this point. However, one sure bet is that many different integration ideas will be shared. The assumption here is that one of the following iPods is being utilized: a 5th Generation iPod, a 3rd Generation iPod Nano, or an iPod Touch.

This first part will focus on using an iPod as an audiobook reader. Teachers have often used audiobooks to assist students in developing reading skills, to model good reading and to assist students in understanding the meaning within the text. Whether it’s book on record, books on tape or audiobooks on CD, teachers have tried to help students understand the content of text by appealing to multiple intelligences. Accessing audio helps students follow the text as it is being read to them. However, the difficulty with the traditional use of audiobooks is that the text is always separate from the audio and while students have always been able to take the text with them, they’ve never really been able to take the audiobook version with them.

In comes the iPod. With these newer devices, students can access the text and audio 0f a book at the same time from the same device from anywhere. Let’s deal with each piece separately. In terms of the text, if a teacher is using books in the public domain, they can access the text from ManyBooks.net. Unlike the Gutenberg project, ManyBooks has public domain books already formatted for various handheld devices. If a student or a teacher downloads a book for an iPod, Manybooks will provide it in iPod Notes format. The text will be divided into various files and each file is linked to the file that comes before it and the the file that comes after it. ManyBooks does this because there is a limit to the number of characters allowed in one iPod notes file but no limit to the number of “Notes” files than can be uploaded to an iPod. Once the files are downloaded to a computer, the files have to be copied into the “Notes” folder on the iPod. iTunes is not used in this file transfer but one iTunes setting is important in order to access this “Notes” folder – in iTunes, click on the iPod and ensure that the “Enable Disk Use” box is checked off. This will allow a student or a teacher to access the “Notes” folder through Windows Explorer on a PC or through Finder on a Mac.

In terms of the audio, Mp3 files can be downloaded and uploaded to an iPod just like music is uploaded. The question is, however, where can we get free audiobooks? Once source is LibriVox. This site hosts free public domain audiobooks that are read by volunteers. These are not professional readers but then again, they are human voices reading the text. Another option is convert the text to audio. If a school district subscribes to software such as Premier Assistive, text can be converted to voice (the voices are computer voices, not human voices). A free text-to-speech service is SpokenText.net (also computer voices). These files will all be converted into Mp3 format. A nice feature of the iPod is that when an audio file is paused, it will remember where you left off so long as another file of the same format is not played. If a student or teacher has audiobooks and music on an iPod, it may be in their best interest to convert the Mp3 file into an audiobooks format (M4b) using the the free MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter.

The power of the iPod will make itself apparent once the two files are on the iPod. Once the files have been uploaded to the iPod, a student can then start the audiobook and then open the text version of the book in the “Notes”area of the iPod. This allows the student to read and listen to the book at the same time. This is especially powerful when working with student with special needs or ESL students who need to have reading modeled for them or for all students when they are reading difficult texts such as plays by William Shakespeare.

…and then there was Jott

After reading several blog posts about individuals using Jott, most notably Liz Kolb’s blog post, I decided to investigate the educational potential of Jott. As you can easily imagine, I quickly found this service to be both useful to me as a communication tool with amazing educational potential as a learning tool.

In case you have yet to try Jott, this free service allows subscribers to use their cell phones to send messages to themselves or to others by through e-mail or text message by translating voice to text. Unlike desktop software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, you do not have to train the service to understand your voice. There is no sign in when you call the service as it uses caller id to identify who you are. In addition, subscribers can use Jott to write blog posts, post Twitter tweets, and even schedule calendar items in Google calendar. While I am currently having a bit of difficulty with the text message piece, sending e-mail trough Jott is a breeze.

Potentials for education?

Communication and Collaboration: in utilizing the cell phone, students can communicate with others through e-mail without paying for a data plan. Students can use text messaging for collaboration without needing to pay for a text message plan. Students and teachers can send Jott messages to one person or create contact groups and send a message to everyone in the group at once. You can send Jott’s through a mobile phone or from their website, thus addressing the needs of students who don’t have cell phones (as an aside, Jott’s website is currently blocked in my school district).

Organization and Time Management: instead of carrying around those hated paper agendas (my experience is that students hate to use those paper agenda), all students, but especially those with special needs who have difficulty writing, can use Jott to send themselves homework information and to-do lists. The service is even set up to allow you to schedule reminders! Great for students who have to submit assignments or for teachers who have appointments with parents.

Completing Assignments: I haven’t heard anyone mention this one yet – using Jott’s free voice to text tool, students can use Jott to record voice responses to questions which will automatically convert what they say into text. Here is a perfect way to modify the manner in which a special needs student with fine motor or other writing issues takes tests or records homework responses. Theoretically, you don’t need a cell phone to use Jott. A subscriber can assign multiple phone numbers to their account. Add a land line and have the student speak into a regular telephone. All responses are directly translated to text for FREE. While there is a 30 second limit per message, you can send unlimited messages; therefore students have 30 seconds to respond to each question. They can preview their Jott before they submit and rerecord if necessary.

Services like Jott demonstrate yet again that cell phones have a place in the classroom. While the prevailing attitude continues to be “get those cell phones out of schools”, my question will continue to be “why, on the one hand, are we begging governments for money to purchase more computers in schools and then, on the other hand, trying to ban mobile computers that students already have with them?”

Here’s a 2 minute video that summarizes how to use Jott:

Writing Fiction on the Go: Cellular Storytelling?

It’s interesting that my del.icio.us feeds led me to this article today discussing how Japanese writers are beginning to write novels on their cell phones.  I’ve started to experiment with this a little myself but still have to train myself in the art of constructing longer writing pieces on my mobile device.  This article has inspired me to work on developing this skill some more.

Here is the future folks…already here today! Are we teaching our kids to be open minded enough to be creative using whatever tool is available or are we forcing them into the mindset that writing only happens with pen and paper?