Just some reflection on my keynote at IPON (ICT Platform Onderwijs) in Utrecht today.

first find my slides in dspace at:

Basically IPON is a trade show with a variety of podia and stands of all kinds of technology and software companies offering services on the dutch market.

I gave a talk about “mobile technology for learning” mainly following the argumentation line:

1. A calculator is a mobile device used since ages in the classroom.
2. smartphones deliver the same functionality and much more!
3. so but there is one problem …
4. kids do not want to use it for the things that teachers want them to do.
5. So as a follow up I showed several apps and some ideas on how to use them in the classroom and beyond as the main power of mobile devices lies in that they
   • are a bridge to the world of the users
   • these are personal and always with them devices
   • they can be used in and outside the classroom
   • they can collect media of all sorts
   • they can be contextualized (or adaptive to the situation)
6. some of the apps that I used:
   • iStandford, Moodle Mobile
   • audioboo, Evernote
   • weather, Nike+, bar coo, wikitude
   • whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook
   • ARLearn, Mooble

Basically one can say already with quite some basic tools you get out of the box you can implement mobile and ubiquitous learning support today. In most cases users should focus on one feature to be introduced at the time, and understand what they can do with it.

After that I watched two other sessions: Guido van Dijk was talking about Connect College and how the school developed a vision leading to the ICT implementation strategy. The result of this project was a quite impressive movie about the vision statement of Connect College which I will post as soon as I get my hands on.

A second session was announced about Bring Your Own Device, but to be honest as a conclusion of that session one can say: “You need a safe and stable network on which users can log in with different devices!” Yes! and of course you should purchase that with supplier XYZ.

In general there have been quite some interesting sessions on the trade show, further I have not seen so many interactive whiteboards on a trade show ever. Ok the last years I have not been on trade shows in general. So in this sense it seem obvious, lot of vendors want to sell their 80″ touch screens that you can use as table or hanging on the wall. This seem to fit quite well with our research works on Ambient Displays and how to use them for learning. Nevertheless most of these solutions are really expensive still, so you can ask: Should I school really invest in screens of 10.000 each? ups.

Today I came across a toolkit for building corss platform DIY sensor recording apps on iOS and Android.

AntiMap http://theantimap.com/

“The AntiMap is an Open Source creative toolset for recording and visualising your own data. The project currently consists of a smart phone utility application (AntiMap Log) for data capture, and a couple of web/desktop applications (AntiMap Simple and AntiMap Video) for post analysis and data visualisation.

Our aim is to produce new and creative representations of data. If you would like to contribute or have created a visualisation you would like to share, please contact us.”

They have a nice snowboarding video:

AntiMap Video application: Unofficial snowboard edit from Trent Brooks on Vimeo.

Music: The XX – Intro (1984 remix) http://soundcloud.com/the1984/the-xx-intro-1984-remix.

My aim for this project is to aid in the progression of snowboarding and skiing by means of gathering real-time rider data and post analyzing with video synchronization.

HOW IT WORKS:
I used an Android phone (HTC Sensation) with a custom built application (AntiMap Log), placed upright against my lead hip/waist inside my pants to log all the stats and information. This position is the most stable and yields the most accurate results for spinning/rotation when snowboarding. Just placing it in any of your pockets works fine for everything else except rotation as it moves around when loose.

Video was captured with a Go Pro camera. In the first segment of the video I had it attached to my helmet, and in the next segment I’m just holding it (I forgot the camera strap – idiot!). Whilst I decided to film myself for these early tests, having someone else do the filming would be ideal.

So data and video are recorded separately to keep the riding experience as unaffected as possible. Then once your pow riding day is over and you’ve recorded that perfect run, you can synchronise your video and data easily with the AntiMap Video desktop application and play it all back.

POTENTIAL USES:
– Real time snowboard/ski games. I was originally inspired for this project by playing Shaun White snowboarding on Nintendo Wii.
– Making personal snow/ski movies.
– Training/tutoring tool.
– Competitions. I’d love to see technology like this used in an accompanying role at televised events such as the Winter X Games. Giving spectators a bit more insight through data and stats would be invaluable.
– Whilst I specifically built this application for snow/ski, it could just as easily be adapted to suit other sports such as mountain biking, skateboarding, parkour, gymnastics, even running or walking.

TECHNICAL DETAILS:
Data is gathered through a smart phone utility application built in Processing called ‘AntiMap Log’. The application logs latitude, longitude, compass direction, speed, distance, and time to a standard CSV file at 30fps. Currently Android only, iPhone version is under development.

The post analysis application, ‘AntiMap Video’ is a desktop application built in Openframeworks. It allows the logged data from the mobile application to be synced with video footage (not captured with phone). The standout feature of the AntiMap Video application is spin detection, which uses the compass data to accumulate a rotation value and attempt to determine when a 360, 540, 720, 900, 1080 has occurred and which direction (frontside/backside). The rider’s path and current position is graphically generated from the recorded latitude and longitude into a mini map. Speed, distance, and time stats also update on screen.

AntiMap Video is still an early working prototype at the moment, but I will be continuing development and improving before making it available for download. Application and source code will be released free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). This is the first of a few free applications I plan on releasing for the AntiMap project which visualize logged data from the mobile application.

SNOWBOARDER’S & SKIER’S:
I am looking for testers to help create the first official AntiMap Video. I failed in my search for the perfect run at Mr Ruapehu (1 bluebird day at Whakapapa with no helmet strap for the camera and no park, followed by 3 days of whiteout at Turoa). I just recently left New Zealand, and won’t even be close to snow till at least next winter, so need some help! In short, I just want someone to film their perfect run landing a couple of spins off medium/large jumps whilst running the mobile application. If anyone is interested, drop me an email theantimap@gmail.com. All you need is an Android phone and a camera (preferably a POV helmet cam like the Go Pro).

I’m a little disappointed I was unable to find my perfect run and had to Frankenstein together videos to show different parts of the applications functionality. But overall I’m happy with the results of the tests.

UPDATE:
Applications and source code for iPhone & Android available: http://theantimap.com/

Classroom response systems are often named as a popular way to integrate mobile technology in the classroom. As comprehensive collection of best practices and reflection on educational practices can be found at:

Last year I build some apps makeing use of sensors build into the iPhone.

This blog post gives an overview of resources I have explored and found helpful as also examples used.

I tried out some sample code and started to experiment with sensors build into the iPhone.

So a lot of times I come across the problem that I have to look up a word or check the detailed meaning of a word when reading and writing dutch. 

Most of the time until now I used van Dale widget, which gives you a good solution but I never found a good way to integrate with the existing dictionary in OS X. So now solution found.

On the the website http://mysite.mweb.co.za/residents/clasqm/os-x/extra-dictionaries-for-dict/dutch.html

I found several dictionaries as

From Dutch:

Čeština ➠➠ Nederlands (2.8 MB)

Dansk ➠➠ Nederlands (442KB)

English ➠➠ Nederlands (1.6 MB)

English ➠➠ Nederlands (1.6 MB)

Français ➠➠ Nederlands (2 MB)

Svenska ➠➠ Nederlands (1.3 MB)

To Dutch:

Nederlands ➠➠ Čeština (2.5 MB)

Nederlands ➠➠ Dansk (726KB)

Nederlands ➠➠ Deutsch (3.5 MB)

Nederlands ➠➠ English (4.6 MB)

Nederlands ➠➠ English (2.2 MB)

Nederlands ➠➠ Français (3.3 MB)

Nederlands ➠➠ Svenska (1.4 MB)

that you just can download and add to your system folder for dictionaries, after restarting Dictionary.app in OS X you can use these ;-).