Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Handheld Mobile Computing at the Museum

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The NY Times is reporting that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is handing out iPod Touches loaded with pictures, interviews, and video to its visitors.

Below are some quotes from the article:

Like almost every major art museum in the country, according to communications officers here and in other cities, the San Francisco institution is using mobile multimedia devices — iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones — to tell the stories of its exhibits in new ways.

“Essentially, we’ve liberated the audio tour,” said Peter Samis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s associate curator of interpretation. “We’ve developed five hours of content, made it extremely portable and easy to use, and devoted it to rediscovering aspects of our collection and its history. This is not about techno-fetishism. It’s about focusing on artworks in meaningful sound and video.”

When I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, back in December, I saw they gave out handheld devices to use throughout the museum. At the time I remember thinking why don't they just make that information available for my iPhone so I could use that instead. You had to pay to use the handheld devices at the Met. If they made the information available for free for my iPhone it would have been cutting into their profits I assume.

Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size of Desktop Internet

According to a Morgan Stanley Report, blogged about on the ReadWriteWeb Blog, the mobile Internet market will be twice the size of desktop internet. Apparently Morgan Stanley bases the on analysis comparing Internet users with mobile subscribers. 

Additionally, ReadWriteWeb states that the Morgan Stanley report:

...starts out by saying that Apple's iPhone/iTouch/iTunes ecosystem "may prove to be the fastest ramping and most disruptive technology product / service launch the world has ever seen."

Growth in the Mobile Internet is being driven by 3G adoption and the increasing popularity of smartphones, of which the iPhone is the leader in terms of Web traffic. Morgan Stanley predicts that smartphones "will out-ship the global notebook + netbook market in 2010E and out-ship the global PC market (notebook + netbook + desktop) by 2012E."

These are interesting predictions by Morgan Stanley. Judging by my own internet consumption, I use my iPhone to access the web for information far more than my work Desktop or my home Tablet PC. My wife almost exclusively uses her iPhone for web content. She touches the home laptop maybe once every two weeks. It is just faster and easier to get the information we need via our iPhone's. Regardless of how the growth of mobile computing goes, it is obvious that it will be a disrupting influence for the next several years.

Abilene University Embraces Mobile Technology in a Big Way

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I have mentioned the iPhone initiative at Abilene University here and here, but it was in reference to something else and not the entire initiative the University has undertaken. In the Fall of 2008 Abilene University gave each of the incoming freshman an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The ACU website says the following:

Freshmen use their iPhones or iPod touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances. Applications from Apple's online App Store helped many teachers discover new ways of teaching their courses.

The University created a mobile portal called ACU Mobile. The portal allows students to connect to campus news and calendars, course documents, various forms of media, and serves as a pocket guide to local events, restaurants, and sporting events.

The University filed a report about it's findings during the 2008-2009 school year. The report mentions two students who began developing apps for the iPhone. It talks about professors who used podcasts to augment their classroom instruction. You can follow the link to read through the full report.

I like the approach ACU has taken. They standardized on a device and built a mobile portal to provide content that is optimized for the mobile device. I know there are pros and cons on device standardization but in my experience when you have the same device it removes a lot of barriers to wide scale adoption by your faculty and important stakeholders. As a teacher if I know all students can access my podcasts easily then I will invest the time in creating them. On the other hand if I have to spend my time helping kids access information via a number of different devices and entertain excuses as to why they could not get the information, then there is a chance I might not get involved in using the technology in the first place. Ease of use and access are key ingredients when undertaking a major technology initiative like ACU has.

Top 10 Mobile Applications identified by Gartner

Gartner has released a list of the top 10 mobile applications for the year 2012. The factors influencing the decision to include the applications were based on their impact on consumers and industry players, revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value, and estimated market penetration.

The press release acknowledges the increased consumer interest in smartphones. The list is below. Follow the link above to read detailed explanations of each item on the list.

Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012
 1: Money Transfer
 2: Location-Based Services
 3: Mobile Search
 4: Mobile Browsing
 5: Mobile Health Monitoring
 6: Mobile Payment
 7: Near Field Communication Services
 8: Mobile Advertising
 9: Mobile Instant Messaging
10: Mobile Music