Linda Briggs of Campus Technology recently posted a handy article that delineates the top ten strategies for introducing new technologies to faculty members. Briggs highlights a number of techniques that San Diego State University’s IT Services Director, James Frazee, and Associate Director of Instructional Technology Services, Jim Julius, have developed to successfully bring new technology into SDSU learning environments. While the list comprises a number of tips discerned from a multi-year project introducing classroom clickers to faculty and students, it is certainly also a valuable resource for university’s seeking to launch converged mobile initiatives.

Here are ten tips for introducing a new tool or technology, based on successes that SDSU’s IT services department has had:

1. Move quickly, before preferences are staked out. Deciding on a technology standard early can help avoid cases of faculty who have already settled on a favorite tool and are reluctant to change.

2. Make the selection process inclusive of students, faculty and staff. To make the process more inclusive, Julius said, “publish, raise awareness, involve the faculty–let early adopters become conduits” to help convince peers of the value of a new technology.

3. Do the product research. Explore the ways in which other university’s are using the technology, listen to the needs of your faculty, bring the technology to campus for presentations to various potential users—faculty and students.

4. Save time by skipping the pilot if you can. “Some schools have done pilots that go on and on. Then the information has changed, so it’s too late” to adopt whatever product has been chosen

5. Get creative to gather feedback. It’s not always easy to convince either faculty or students to take the time to test a product and offer feedback, or to participate in focus groups or other information-gathering forums.

6. Remember integration issues. Integration with existing campus technologies is obviously crucial.
7. Take your input to the vendor. Occasionally, the vendor is willing to work to meet specific demands or prices.

8. Keep the initial group of adopters small. This allows time for lots of support from IT staff early on. Since early adopters get plenty of help, they then pass on their positive experiences, talking up the product enthusiastically to others.

9. Be ready to transition support when you reach a tipping point in adoption. As the technology becomes adopted, think about moving users to a type of support that is less hands-on and intensive for IT staff.

10. Remember your goal. In the case of clickers at SDSU, the saturation rate among professors is still relatively small–just 50 or so are using the eInstruction devices in classes. It’s a tiny percent of faculty, Julius admitted, but affects a huge percent of students–and that’s really the point.

For more be sure to read Briggs’ full article at Campus Technology.

Recently, SumTotal Systems, Inc., a global provider of learning, performance and talent management solutions, announced that the upcoming release of its industry-leading ToolBook Instructor will include the ability to rapidly create learning and interactive content for Apple’s iPhone. Using new ToolBook SmartStyles—layouts optimized for the iPhone and new support for the Safari web browser—organizations will have the ability to create rich, interactive content, enabling a Web 2.0 experience for mobile users that was not available before.

The iPhone will be the first of other devices, such as Windows Mobile phones, to take advantage of this solution. Josh Bersin, president of SumTotal, states, “One of the truly miraculous things about the iPhone is how many Web pages work—and work well— without any thought to redesigning them for a small screen. It is the first small, portable, won’t-leave-home-without-it device where Web sites not designed with a small screen in mind just work.”

“There is a strong trend toward development of rapid, informal content which employees can access at any time,” says Bersin. “More than one billion devices are now in operation. SumTotal’s solution enables organizations to easily deliver online learning to employees through one of their most popular devices—their mobile phone.”

With a microsite dedicated to mobile learning, SumTotal is providing examples of mobile learning content for the iPhone, a whitepaper on best practices for creating mobile learning, demos, and the ability to sign up for the free ToolBook Instructor 9.5 beta program at http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/mobile.

For more, check out CNNMoney.com’s full article.

Recent reports from multiple sources, including Engadget, assert that researchers at Nokia are developing a project called noBounds, a low-power software solution that seeks to allow the pairing of a cellphone or handheld with virtually any type of display to deliver full HD video at 30 frames per second over USB or WLAN.

Much like the TV-Out functionality present in Nokia’s N95 and N82 smartphones, the noBounds project is a low-power software solution for devices that aims to extend HD quality video and functionality to a second screen. noBounds is a Python-based application which not only can be used to attach an external high resolution display to a mobile device, it can also seamlessly use available input devices such as a keyboard or a USB mouse.

According to Brighthand.com, to date, a network of market leaders in flat panel, projector and the smartphone industry have joined to push forward the idea and application of noBounds.

Needless to say, this software would be an invaluable mLearning tool, providing students and teachers with an opportunity to seamlessly collaborate in the collective construction of classroom presentations.

Be sure to check out Engadget for a demo video or to read more.

At the 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, California, Blaise Aguera y Arcas—architect at Mircosoft Live Labs—shows off Photosynth in a standing-ovation demo.

“Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation.” “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007.

Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images. Despite the fact that it runs on Vista, this software is absolutely amazing. Imagine the learning possibilities as everyone’s pictures link automatically together and share metadata and information…

Campus Technology recently posted an interesting article discussing the usage of FarSightNet software at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. This interactive document software engages students in hands-on problem-solving activities in classes like physics and astronomy.

Jeff Brenner, the quasi-retired professor who wrote the FarSightNet software several years ago under his company name, SpaceTimeLinks LLC, asserts, “Too many people are delivering lectures with lovely PowerPoint presentations. There’s nothing that forces the student to think through the problem.”

Brenner’s software is like other commercial collaboration products in that it allows a professor to mark up PowerPoint slides or other material on a tablet computer in class during a lecture. The slides and notes are projected onto a large screen for students to view. The software saves the marked-up slides, with all handwritten notes captured as well, so that students can download them later. However, FarSightNet differs from many products in that it allows interactive written responses from students in class, each of whom is equipped with a wireless tablet computer. FarSightNet allows the professor to “call” on a student to solve an equation and can project that response on the board for everyone to see.

Lectures imported into FarSightNet can be in a wide variety of formats, including PowerPoint, Word, Photoshop, and many others. Other material can include textbook contents from a CD, a typed document, or an Internet site. The software converts the content into pages and presents it in scrollable windows, allowing the instructor to add notes by drawing on or marking up any screen. Jeff Brenner claims that the software uses little server processing power, relying on the client instead. And there are no constraints in FarSightNet on the number of students who can connect wirelessly at one time.

How probable is the implementation of something like FarSightNet on the touch-screen interface of the iPhone?

Be sure to visit Campus Technology for the full article on FarSightNet.

According to Google, the era of mobile Internet is at hand. In recent months, the company has seen sharp increases in mobile Internet usage spurred by Google services offered on BlackBerry, Nokia and iPhone devices.

Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, asserts, “We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage.” He suggests that while per-minute charges of the past discouraged mobile Web browsing, the availability of flat-rate data plans from carriers encourages consumers to connect with the Internet over their phones. Of course, Waddell also remarked that improved Web browsers and well-designed services from companies like Google are fueling growth.

Recent Google software has allowed mobile users to increase Web search speeds by up to 40%. This increase has significantly contributed to the exponential growth of mobile Internet users. Waddell states, “We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people.”

“Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow,” Waddell said. “Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage.”

It will certainly be interesting to observe and explore the ways in which the “era of mobile Internet” will impact teaching and learning in the 21st century. For a full article on Google Mobile, check out MobileCruch.com.

Yesterday, David Pogue posted a handy overview and interesting projection on NYT Blogs concerning the recent beta-test form release of the iPhone SDK and the announcement of iPhone 2.0, which is scheduled to appear at the end of June.

In the post Pogue suggests that the iPhone is chasing the BlackBerry by pointing out that the new 2.0 software will tap into Microsoft Exchange, the e-mail distribution system used by hundreds of thousands of corporations. This feature will allow users to receive “push” e-mail, meaning that messages will appear in real time on the iPhone. And when someone changes the calendar or address book on your computer at work, your iPhone will be automatically, wirelessly updated, wherever you happen to be.

Pogue goes on to assert that the new SDK, which enables programmers to write authorized, tested, legitimate, and often free software for the iPhone, will give birth to the “third major computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone.” There will be thousands of iPhone programs, covering every possible interest, making the iPhone a valuable tool for far more than simple communications tasks; “it will be the first widespread pocket desktop computer.”

Pogue, of course, acknowledges that there are add-on programs for the Treo, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, but claims that they’ll never achieve the ubiquity or popularity of iPhone apps because Apple will preinstall the iPhone Apps Store on every phone. This will provide an online catalog of iPhone programs, which you can browse, download and install wirelessly, wherever you happen to be. In addition, Apple intends to be the exclusive source of all iPhone apps. You won’t be able to get iPhone add-ons from the usual shareware sites like Download.com, Shareware.com, VersionTracker.com, or even from the developers’ own Web sites.

Pogue writes, “The release of iPhone 2.0 is over three months away, but I’ll stick my neck out and make a prediction: it will be a gigantic success, spreading the iPhone’s popularity both upward, into the corporate market, and downward, into the hands of the masses. iPhone 2.0 will turn this phone into an engineering tool, a game console, a free-calls Skype phone, a business tool, a dating service, an e-book reader, a chat room, a database, an Etch-a-Sketch…and that’s on Day One.”

Be sure to check out Pogue’s entire post, “Hello BlackBerry, Meet the iPhone.”

Books on iPhone is a new web app offering over 20,000 books and articles to read in an iPhone optimized format. The site is free to use and seems to be quite a good option as an ebook-reading alternative for non-jailbroken iPhones.

Though the app is still a little clumsy, it does offer some very handy features.

• Book on iPhone enables you to adjust the font size (between 8 to 14 point) and choose between around 9 fonts to use for the body text.

• It also lets you maintain a “ReadList” of titles you are currently reading or ones you want to earmark when browsing through your search results.

• You can upload virtually any text from a desktop machine onto their site, and have it formatted for the iPhone and added to your reading list.

• And finally, the app allows you to add personal notes to pages as you are reading—providing quite a useful study-aid.

For an in-depth review of Books on iPhone, check out justanotheriphoneblog.com.

Last week, Six Apart—a leading blogging software and services company— announced plans to develop a native TypePad mobile application for the iPhone with the recently released Software Developer’s Kit (SDK). As you may know, TypePad and Movable Type users already benefit from an optimized iPhone blogging interface through their device’s web browser; however, a native TypePad iPhone app. promises to make usage even friendlier.

Stephane Delbeque, mobile product manager of Six Apart, asserts: “Our users are already embracing mobile blogging and the advanced capabilities of smartphones. Providing a mobile option for our customers has always been a priority and we will continue to develop applications as the mobile market and our customers’ needs grow.”

For more information about mobile blogging with the iPhone on TypePad, to sign up for alerts about the development of the native iPhone application for TypePad, or to start a free TypePad trial, visit http://www.typepad.com/mobile.

Today, our friends at iPhone Atlas report that coder Preston Monroe has managed to deliver on one of the most requested developments for the iPhone, Copy and Paste functionality. Monroe has developed a bookmarklet that gives the user the ability to copy and paste within Safari on the iPhone with surprisingly few limitations.

Dubbed “iCopy,” this bookmarklet can copy paragraphs of text and URLs from Safari and paste the information back into Safari or into email messages. Here are Atlas’ instructions for how it works:

• Install iCopy. Navigate to: http://www.biocow.com/iCopy/ on your iPhone and follow the instructions.

• Navigate to a page from which you’d like to copy text or the page’s URL.

• Access the iCopy bookmark in Safari (should be named Copy/Paste). This will display a JavaScript-generated dialog box of sorts with the copy and paste options.

• Tap Copy.

• Select the copy option you’d like. If you select “Email text” (by far the most useful and nifty function), you’ll get a message that says “Ready to Copy.” Select the paragraph you want to copy, and instantly a new email message is created with the text in the body. If you select a different copy option (if, for instance, you’d like to copy text or a URL from one page into a form) you must access the Copy/Paste bookmark again then select paste where you’d like to place the information.

Atlas points out that iCopy can be added to a slew of other innovative usages of the bookmarklet model. Bookmarklets have been used for password auto-filling, viewing Safari-embedded YouTube content, performing a “Find on Page,” and converting Web pages into locally stored code.

Monroe does offer a caution concerning the usage of iCopy: “The text you paste is added to the URL and sent across the Internet. This is VERY UNSECURE so be sure not to copy and paste important private information.”