IAmLearn Newsletter - 2016 - 1

In This Edition

IAmLearn Executive Notes

• Greetings from the President
• Executive Committee Elections

mLearn Notes: From the Mediterranean to the Land Down Under

• mLearn 2015
• mLearn 2016
• A New Home for All Things mLearn

What's Happening: News & Notes

• Broadcast Thoughts: PodCasts and VodCosts
• Reflections from mLearnCon 2015
• AU Goes Mobile
• What Killed the Mobile Learning Dream - Traxler
• Global Mobile Awards 2016
• Mobile Learning Research Project from Poland

Upcoming Events

• UNESCO Mobile Learning Week
• FocusOn Mobile
• 2016 AMO Awards

Contributing to the Newsletter

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IAmLearn Executive Notes

Greetings from the President

Dear IAmLearn Colleagues,

Welcome to this first 2016 edition of the IAmLearn newsletter! Together with my colleagues at the International Association for Mobile Learning (IAmLearn), I would like to wish you again a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2016!

I am honoured and privileged to assume the role of President of IAmLearn. I am deeply grateful to my predecessor, Marcus Specht, for his leadership and contributions to IAmLearn. I would like to also thank the Executive Board and the IAmLearn members for electing me and putting their trust in me as I preside the association for the next two years. I look forward to continuing this important work toward fulfilling the mission of IAmLearn, serving its members, and expanding the reach of the association. In this special role, I am supported by my colleagues on the Executive Committee – John Traxler (Vice President), Jocelyn Wishart (Secretary), Tom Brown (Treasurer), Robert Power (Communications Officer), Dean Cristol (Member-at-large), and Marcus Specht (Past President). I am humbled by their expertise and achievements, and inspired by the commitment of the Executive Committee and the past presidents toward the IAmLearn mission. We are lucky to have some of the most talented and accomplished experts and leaders from across the globe steering our association.

IAmLearn is a premier international non-profit membership organization promoting excellence in research, development, and application of mobile and contextual learning. It is custodian of the annual mLearn international conference series and manages a website (www.iamlearn.org) to collate and disseminate information about new projects, emerging technologies, and teaching resources.

Throughout the upcoming months of 2016, we are looking to serve you even better as we continue working to be a member-oriented organization. We must come together to share ideas and resources so we can reshape and create a better future for the next generation of students, faculty, researchers, and other m-learning practitioners in academia and industry. Hence, I invite you to get involved by working on IAmLearn committees and sharing with us any ideas and communication artifacts that you would want to see disseminated through our IAmLearn website, newsletter, Twitter, and Facebook.  You can find details on how you can exchange information about your projects, resources, and other mobile and contextual learning materials at the end of this edition of the IAmLearn Newsletter.

I am also very excited about the upcoming mLearn 2016 conference, this year with a theme “Mobile learning futures: Sustaining quality research and practice in mobile learning.” More details about this three-day event are included in this edition of the newsletter.

I also strongly urge you to get involved in IAmLearn by expressing your ideas, inquiries, and hopes via the email addresses listed at the end of this Newsletter. I will continue our dialogue through the IAmLearn newsletter and social media channels. There are some exciting changes coming to IAmLearn next month. Make sure to visit our IAmLearn Facebook regularly.

It is my utmost pleasure to serve as your new President!

Yours Sincerely,
Agnieszka (Aga) Palalas, Ed.D.

Executive Committee Elections

A few changes to the IAmLearn Executive Committee following elections held at the 2015 Annual General Meeting during mLearn 2015. Dr. Agnieszka Palalas (Athabasca University) was elected Association President. Dr. Marcus Specht (Open Universiteit Nederland), who was elected to that post at mLearn 2013 in Doha, Qatar, now moves into the Past President position on the Executive. Dr. Rob Power (Fraser Health / University of Ontario Institute of Technology) was re-elected as a Member-at-Large, and has undertaken the role of Communications Officer. Dr. Dean Cristol (Ohio State University) was also elected as a Member-at-Large, and comes in as a new face on the Executive Committee.

You can check in on the IAmLearn website where you can always find the latest information on the Executive Committee Members and Association Directors.

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From the Mediterranean to the Land Down Under

mLearn 2015 - From Small Ripples to Massive Open Waters

The mLearn conference series is known for travelling to different countries, in different parts of the world, each year. 2015 saw the idea of the traveling mobile learning conference go truly mobile. mLearn 2015 took place in October 2015 on “the high seas” of the Mediterranean. The conference took place aboard Royal Caribbean’s Splendor of the Seas, which departed from Venice, Italy, and made several ports of call throughout the region. The conference offered participants a unique blend of “mobile” learning that included the typical academic and practical sessions of a conference, and the variety of local cultural highlights from the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. The mLearn 2015 Conference Proceedings are available through Springer.

mLearn 2016 - Mobile Learning Futures: Sustaining Quality Research and Practice in Mobile Learning

The mobile learning community will converge on Sydney, Australia from Oct 24-26, 2016. The 15th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2016) will be hosted by the University of Technology Sydney. The 2016 conference theme is Mobile Learning Futures: Sustaining Quality Research and Practice in Mobile Learning.

The mLearn 2016 paper submission system is now open, and the deadline for submission is May 30, 2016. Full details can be found on the Call for Papers section of the conference website.

A New Home for All Things mLearn

As part of the IAmLearn Communications Team's ongoing efforts to streamline communications with members and the wider mobile learning community, we're moving towards a single point-of-contact to get information about the mLearn Conference Series. You can already access information about mLearn 2016 via the IAmLearn website's new mLearn page, where you can also find links to archived versions of the past conference sites. Our aim is to turn this page into a one-stop-shop for all future conferences.

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What's Happening: News & Notes

Broadcast Thoughts: PodCasts and VodCasts

One of the longest standing debates amongst mLearning researchers and practitioners is the actual definition of mobile learning. IAmLearn Secretary Dr. Jocelyn Wishart and President Dr. Aga Palalas recently participated in a podcast about defining mLearning. We invite you to listen to the podcast, and share your thoughts on what mLearning is in the comments section for this edition of the IAmLearn Newsletter.

  Dr. Jocelyn Wishart and Dr. Aga Palalas on Defining Mobile Learning

IAmLearn Executive Committee members Dr. Dean Cristol and Dr. Rob Power recently "sat down" for a vodcast to discuss emerging trends in educational technology and mobile learning. The session used Google Hangouts On Air to broadcast live to participants in the Ohio State University's Literacy, New Media, and Creative Pedagogies for Classrooms undergraduate Education course, and is available now via YouTube.

Reflections from mLearnCon 2015

IAmLearn President Dr. Aga Palalas had the opportunity to network with a number of mobile learning and educational technology specialists at mLearnCon 2015. The event, organized by the eLearning Guild, took place June 10-12, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Dr. Palalas recorded a number of candid conversations about their experiences at mLearnCon, the value of the conference, and their views on key issues in the mobile learning sphere. Dr. Palalas interviewed three eLearning and mLearning experts who are published authors, consultants and regular presenters at local and international conferences: Joe Ganci, Phil Cowcill, and Krista Hildner.

Watch the following video compilation of her mLearnCon Colleague Connections.

In the next video, Dr. Palalas talks to colleagues, including Krista Hildner, about the Relationship between mLearning and Performance Support.

The Future of Mobile Learning was the subject of conversations between Dr. Palalas, Phil Cowcill and other colleagues.

Access the full playlist of Dr. Palalas’s mLearnCon Colleague Connections. Check out the Upcoming Events section in this newsletter for information on FocusOn Mobile - the evolution of the mLearnCon series for 2016.

AU Goes Mobile

IAmLearn Founding Director Dr. Mohamed Ally was recently featured in a Globe & Mail story about increasing uptake of mobile learning strategies, including at Athabasca University. The story also featured Hanny Alsahzly, a former student in AU's Master of Education in Distance Education program. You can check out Learning untethered: How mobile is enhancing how students learn via the Globe & Mail, and AU's post about the story, Mobile Learning - Plugged in Across AU.

What Killed the Mobile Learning Dream - Traxler

IAmLearn Vice-President Professor John Traxler recently spoke at JISC's Digifest about the current state of mobile learning research and practical implementation efforts. He told participants that "mobile learning has stalled," and challenged them to "examine what's happened and how can it get back on track." Check out the message from Professor Traxler's presentation What killed the mobile learning dream? via JISC.

Global Mobile Awards 2016

The 2016 Global Mobile (Glomo) Awards were announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, which took place from February 22-25, 2016. Worldreader and Opera's entry, Worldreader Mobile, took top honors in the Best Mobile Innovation for Education category. Worldreader Mobile is an application that uses extreme compression technology to provide access to digital books to over 350 million users worldwide, using very little bandwidth and devices that they already own. The 2016 Glomo Awards judges noted of Worldreader Mobile that it is a “highly effective and useful platform-agnostic compression system, providing social development opportunities – borne out by the huge market take-up.”

You can use your mobile phone to check out Worldreader Mobile, and you can get an overview of the application from the Glomo Awards site. You can also check out the Glomo Awards website for the full list of winners in all categories.

Mobile Learning Research Project from Poland

Currently, our company from Poland is preparing an application to get funding for a project regarding mobile social learning for families struggling with chronic diseases.

At the moment, we are looking for a scientist who would help us to do the research phase as well as to develop a methodology of social learning on mobile devices for families with chronic illnesses. We would like to cooperate with a researcher who is interested in this topic or specializes in the area. The target group is very specific so it’s important that the expert knows this area or would like to go deeper regarding this subject. You can read more about the research project to date HERE.

The best person would be from Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Italy or Turkey.
Please contact us: ikostrzewa@domszkolen.com

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Upcoming Events

UNESCO Mobile Learning Week (March 7-11, 2016)

UNESCO's Mobile Learning Week has been scheduled for March 7-11, 2016 at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris France. This year's theme is Innovating for Quality. A number of IAmLearn members are planning to attend the event, and we'll be posting a newsletter update with their summaries and impressions. If you cannot attend the event, you can still catch some of the highlights. UNESCO will be streaming recordings of some of the key proceedings online.

FocusOn Mobile - Austin, TX (June 8-10, 2016)

Part of the FocusOn Learning conference, FocusOn Mobile "continues the industry-leading conversations of mLearnCon that explore cutting-edge examples of mobile being used to transform learning and performance support."

2016 AMO Awards - Shanghai, China (June 29 - July 1, 2016)

Following on the 2016 GSMA Mobile World congress in February, the 2016 Asia Mobile Awards will take place from June 29 - July 1, 2016, in shanghai, China. Entries are still being accepted in a number of categories, including Mobile Apps, Connected Lifestyle, and Technology Innovation. Nominated entries will be announced in June on the AMO Awards website.

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Contributing to the IAmLearn Newsletter

Do you have an upcoming event, research study, posting, or a story about something happening in the mobile learning world that you would like to share through our newsletter? Have you participated in a recent podcast or vodcast that might interest our members? Share your ideas and resources by getting in touch with the Rob Power (robpower@hotmail.com) or Nicole Berezin (nberezin@unm.edu)

Your thoughts and comments are also welcomed via the Comments section for this edition of the IAmLearn Newsletter (below). Feel free to post your comments about anything from this edition. We'd really love to hear your thoughts, particularly about Dr. Palalas' and Dr. Wishart's podcast and defining mobile learning!

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