Seated, coffee in hand you retrieve from your coat pocket your new to you iPhone4. You sign in and see that it is already connected to Shaw Open. In an instance you are checking your emails. The most recent is a group email from your OLTD 509 instructor, an update on the previous nights online Collaborate session outlining that there is new material in the course, a web link is provided You click on the link and you are taken to the course home page hosted in the LMS Canvas, viewed without even logging in to the course. You click on a link, which is for an external URL, and are taken to a paper on “Mental Models”. You proceed to read this on your iPhone.
Article read, you go to the OLTD 509 Google + Community site to see if there are any new posts or response to one of your posts. A note pops up asking if you wish to get the free “app” for Google+. You accept and click to install, which takes just a minute or two. You now easily access Google+ by clicking on the app icon on your iPhone and then sign in with your user name and password.
While looking in Google + you see your post from last night that includes a link to a tweeters Scoop-it site. You click on the link and are taken to the Scoop-it site where you discover other articles that relate directly to emerging technologies and want to share with others in your cohort. You leave this page with the click of a button and then click on your web browser app, Safari, and do a Google search for Twitter. It brings up a number of website options. You click on the main website link. Surprise it asks you if you want to download the free Twitter app, but off course.
Done in the blink of an eye, you then click on the button again and are back at your iPhone springboard page, this is where all your apps are. You click on the Google + app and then on the Scoop-it link in your post and you are back to the Scoop-it site. You find again the article in Scoop-it you wish to share, click on the tweet button and a post is shared on your twitter page. In a short time you figure out how to post and retweet to the course hashtag #oltd509.
You then decide to look to see if 25 minutes has passed and realize that you have been in “flow”, as over an hour has passed. You push the button to leave the site you are on; click the button at the top of your iPhone and the screen goes dark. As you get up you say wow mobile devices, in this situation iPhone 4, can be amazing. You realize that if this had been but a month ago you would have sat with your coffee either reading a paper or people watching as the Android phone you had did not have the features that you have just discovered on your iPhone.
Thinking this would be a great topic for your week seminar you start outlining your ideas as you are driving home. One thought, where were we all in our use of mobile technology two years ago? Me, it involved using an Android phone to text and call people. Was this true for others in our cohort, I wondered. I thought a Doodle checklist, Google survey or Padlet could be used in a course to answer this question in an interactive way. I could use Weebly as my course base and include YouTube videos.
Started thinking about how some people in our cohort had just started using iPads when we began OLTD and now many more are joining in our collaborate sessions via iPad or on a mobile device. Boy the change we have seen in just a year and a half.
Arrive home, hyped about learning more about “Mobile Learning”. I get my iPad and access our course in the LMS Canvas so I can complete and submit the topic selection form, created in Google Drive. No mobile learning on the list, what? Look back in the course and see it is crossed off as we will cover this in our next course, sad face. Back to my iPad and proceed to look at the other seminar topics and before you know it I am on to being inspired by a new topic.
All this began because I needed to have a chip in my windshield repaired.
This scenario and how it revolves back on itself, all be it with me accessing my iPad at the end instead of my iPhone, made me think about the book "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie". I believe in the past when encountering emerging technology I would have been very much like the mouse asking for help each step of the way. Thanks to OLTD I have come a long way. I now have a confidence I would never have known possible. For this I say a big thank you to both our OLTD instructors and the amazing cohort that I am a part of.
Youtube video retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Dc1ZBJB3U