ok….so its taken a while to organise the first event of the year but everything is now in place!

The first e-learning forum of 2009 will take place on March 18th at the St. Andrews Financial Services Academy in Norwich. Richard Hubbard from Renaissance Learning is going to be demonstrating the AlphaSmart Neo 2. Richard is bring along a whole set of Neo’s so that people can actually participate in this session. Over the next few days we’ll be emailing out an invitation with more details of the event.

If you are interested in coming along and don’t think you are on the email list please use the contact form at http://www.norfolkelearningforum.co.uk/ or http://www.realprojects.co.uk/contact.php to request a place.

We’ll also have a quick review of new material and products from Learning Technologies and Bett.

I’ve recently read a number of articles about the iphone, google phone and other pda’s which are apparently going to change the way that we think about out internet usage. These super fast devices are going to let us browse on the move, check email, get GPS positions and a whole host of other applications. Whilst reading the articles I thought back to my first mobile phone purchase: the size, the cost and the weight of the thing! Just when did mobile phones become so widely adopted in our society?

In 1993 I had access to a shared mobile (more of a breeze block than a mobile device) which was used mainly for incoming calls. It was pretty impractical and the thought of carrying it around let alone using it to check emails seemed a tad ridiculous. 5 years later I had my own mobile phone along with most of my friends. Along came flashing aerials, text messages, address books, using it overseas; it all became common place without anyone realising it.

When will I look back and think about how obvious it is to use my mobile phone to provide a gps of my position, which then pings me traffic news, food options, relevant shops and loads of other information via some kind of information burner. I can imagine a scenario where I am overseas trying to book some train tickets but need somehelp. My position is sent to my personal web profile, I’m then sent a series of learning packs to help me, a short podcast, time information, cultural information, perhaps a translation to show the assistant….or my profile generates a personal bar code which I pass over the ticket machine. My online ticket account is debited and the train ticket uploaded to my pda.