Meeting with VU Building Design re mobile treasure hunt and virtual world activities

Yesterday Dale and I met with Patrick White and Sue Habib from VU Building Design. It was a fruitful discussion, with the following outcomes:

A. Mobile phone project

- delivery set for shortly after return from Easter break, (Monday May 2nd for TAFE)
- will be to 2 groups of 18 students. Each group to have 6 teams of 3 students each using a phone. Class length is 3 hours.

- to be in the form of a competition. As per library, if wrong answer is chosen, 1 minute delay occurs before sts being able to try again. (Possibility of annoying animation/sound if they get it wrong?)

- up to 20 question sets. Each set to have initial multiple choice question about the building style. Some will have follow on questions, some not....this will depend on the complexity of the style and similarity to other styles.

- GPS to trigger questions when buildings are reasonably far apart. If too close, questions will be triggered by completion of previous set, with new instructions (eg...'go three houses down to 136 Williamstown Road')

- sts to refer to text book on location. Library has 15 copies.

- sts likely to car pool.

- we will work out a 'loop' of locations, with groups starting at random at various points until they complete the loop.

- everyone to meet up at a cafe afterwards?

B. Virtual world activity

- to occur in Semester 2 (times tbc)

- focus on building framing, trusses etc

- students to go into virtual world and answer questions on building houses, triggering animations of things being built (aka Construction). Likely to leverage construction buildings currently being built by Craig.

- Patrick to finalise assessment details for this activity

- possibility of sts observing entire process of house being built as animation. Could be in-world and/or exported as machinima, stills

- Patrick to develop exercise details by mid March

Battle of the mobile web browsers!

Now that we have selected a winning device it was time to find the right web browser for the project. Android users are spoilt for choice when it comes to HTML5 compatible web browsers, with the default Android browser, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and even a new Mozilla Firefox Beta in the works. The pivotal criteria for the project being geo-location, it was crucial that the browser had support for the geo-location API's of HTML5.

While all the above browsers claim to have such support, it wasn't until we got an Xperia into the lab that we could actually put this to the test with a real world demo. We quickly learned that the native web browser on the Xperia X10 running Android OS 2.1 was incapable of even rendering the embedded Google maps applet. Next we decided to trail Mozilla Firefox 4 for Android which is currently in beta 4. We got a little bit further rendering the map applet however the geo-location positioned us in St. Kilda, quite some distance from our humble Footscray office.

Lastly we tried Opera Mobile which is currently available from the Android Market. Almost instantly the page loaded with our location accurately displayed. So excited by the accuracy of the geo location I quickly ran outside to verify the results. Refreshing shop front by shop front Google accurately returned the address of where I was standing. I quickly ran back to the office to share the results with the team, we had our browser!

Mobile project device selection

After yesterdays careful comparison of the top 5 Android devices currently on offer in Australia we have decided to eliminate the HTC Desire and Motorola Defy based on screen size, while the HTC Desire HD and Samsung Galaxy S were eliminated based on price. This left us with the unlikely favourite of Sony's Xperia X10, which up until late last year coped some negative press due to delays in firmware updates.

While the press may have contributed to the more competitive price, when purchasing 10 devices it quickly stacks up as a saving of over $2000 compared to the next favourite, the Galaxy S. The X10 also had a clear advantage over the other devices in screen real-estate as well with a slightly higher resolution display than the more expensive Desire HD and Galaxy S. When an additional 54 pixels could mean an extra answer in a quiz, this weighed heavily in it's favour. Now all that's left is securing the devices.

Numbers of words on Android mobile screen for questions and answers

From Dale and Tiago's research:

Based on the example mockup (see Tiago's post below), we can fit 86 words on the screen without needing to scroll (preferable). As a rough guide, this equates to a maximum of 54 for the question and 8 for the answers, given four multiple choice options.

Meeting about 'library treasure hunt' trial involving mobiles and student rovers

This morning we met with Rob McCormack, student rover coordinator for VU Learning Support Services. Rob will run the trial for the library mobile treasure hunt. (one of the 3 trials we are running for this project, which will see us working with VU TAFE Music, Library/student rovers and Building Design).

This one looks very promising, in terms of both its impact and possibility of future expansion.

Here's what we're looking at doing:

- competitive lunchtime activity (30-45mins) involving new students, working in pairs with guidance from the rovers, answering 15 questions related to finding things throughout the library and thereby learning how to use the library

- to be run during one week in May - five lunchtime sessions involving 12-16 new students per day

- grand prize to be iPod shuffle (or similar) with daily prizes of double movie passes

- total of 75 questions to be developed by Rob and rovers - 15 question sets with randomly rotating questions appearing from a pool of 5 per set (similar activities but different answers to eliminate cheating). Questions to be developed by end of March. Can be trialed on paper in April by rovers.

- if students answer wrongly, system will give them another question from the same set until they get it right, then will move on to the next set

- at the end of doing the exercise, system screen will appear with time it has taken them to finish the 15 questions. Will take this to the rovers who will note the figure down. Fastest times for day and week will win presents.

- at the onset, participants to type in VU student numbers. Rovers to offer advice on how to answer questions throughout exercise

- treasure hunt to be promoted by rovers in advance (ie is voluntary, opt in activity)

Mobile Geolocation Project Research

Requirements

Platform: Android OS

Geo location: GPS based

Display: Large

Resolution: 240dpi

Performance: Capable of running web apps well

Recommendations

Firmware: Android OS 2.2.1

Geo location: GPS and Assertive GPS

Display: 4”

Resolution 480x854.

Performance: 1000mhz CPU

Device Comparison Matrix

Android HTML5 Compatibility Test

Android OS 2.1: 151

Android OS 2.2: 176

Android OS 2.3: 176

Android UI Examples

Available Screen Real-estate Mock-up

Victorian Elearning Innovations Online Expo

Here are all the other 2011 Elearning Innovations projects in Victoria funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, including our Mobile Phone Project.

http://www.netvibes.com/framework_innovations#Victoria_2011

Meeting VU Music regarding mobile project

Yesterday we met Adam Hutterer and Stephen Rando at Kindred Studios in Yarraville, where the VU TAFE music program is based. They took us on a quick tour of the facilities, which are developing rapidly and offer good scope for future projects.

We then discussed how the mobile phone project might work with their students.

They had a lot of good ideas including;

- A tour of Melbourne music venues, crawling from Brunswick St Fitzroy, through the city, to St Kilda.

- Venues include live music venues, studios, music stores, and places of historic musical interest.

- a 'treasure hunt' tour of the Kindred facilities as a form of orientation for new students (for future extensions of the project)

Questions may cover aspects such as;

- Technical setups: PA arrangements, acoustics, stage setup, venue size etc

- OH&S: hazards and risks, mitigation strategies in place etc

- Melbourne music history: sites of former venues and scenes

We will meet them again in a month, by which time we will have some precise parameters for them to work with, including how many words can fit on the screen for questions and answers.

Virtual world construction project - teacher development, Feb 2011

We've had three very productive days at Newport campus. Justin, Jason (who has been able to join us for the full three days) and Mark have been brainstorming, with input from Craig, James and me, their ideas for developing the virtual world activities and assessment for the three competencies we're targeting for the Cert II Pre-apps:
- VBQM697: Workplace Safety and Industry Induction
- VBQM698: Workplace Procedures for Environmental Sustainability
- VBQM708: Workplace Documents and Plans

This is where we've got to:

- we will take a hybrid, 'mix and match' virtual world and paper-based approach to these competencies

- activities will be delivered to students in their first couple of weeks at VU. They will have largely arrived straight from school etc with little introduction to the construction industry or its practices. So this will form a kind of introduction to how things work in the industry.

- all three units will be integrated into one in-world sequence of activities supplemented by one paper-based workbook covering all three units. Students will use the workbook to progress through (as before) - but particular sections will refer students to the virtual world to undertake specific activities and assessments, which will cover some but not all aspects of the units' learning objects (ie those aspects where the virtual world can add value to the learning and be relevant to the learning outcomes). This currently already happens in the Sustainability unit where students are referred to the online EPA Carbon Footprint calculator.

- the rationale here is for students to become familiar with what they will see in the real world including paper-based audits, safe work documents and building/site plans, yet benefit from the use of virtual in an integrated way (eg using paper-based audit documents to do safety audits of the virtual building site).

- Justin will spend the second week of his non-teaching time developing the resource workbook.

What the guys are working on now is the details of the activities. The story here is this:

- students arrive as builders' labourers

- they have to undertake an OH&S audit of the virtual building site to be promoted to supervisors

- once promoted, they enter the virtual building site office, complete an offline safe work statement, and are directed to their own empty site (each student has their own) as well as their paper site plans in the workbook

- they then go through a series of stages of setting up the site with OH&S and sustainability considerations as part of this (based on in-world multiple choice questions). This will end the OH&s and sustainability part of the exercise

- they then start 'building their house' on the site, which will involve the Workplace Documents and Plans unit - interpreting the 2D plans, orienting themselves, and understanding the symbols etc


Students will enter the world with 100 points that they have to keep. Every time they choose a wrong answer to a multiple choice question, they lose a point. This method is to ensure that they take care in considering answers (not just click at random until they get a right answer), which they can research through the information in their workbooks.

Above is a copy of the flowchart for the project todate, based on the brainstorming on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.