Yesterday, Jeffrey Young of The Wired Campus posted an article that discusses a recent patent application filed by an Apple employee, which details software that would capture video and slides from college lectures and automatically edit them into video podcasts.

The application, titled “Automatic Content Creation and Processing,” was originally discovered by AppleInsider. The name on the patent application is Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. Young asserts that an Apple spokesman could not be reached for comment Monday, but the company is notoriously tight-lipped about products that are still in development.

Perhaps the most interesting feature described in the new patent application is the ability to determine automatically when to run video footage of the professor speaking and when to splice in images of lecture slides. As the patent application puts it, the software would determine “a time to switch the first and second streams from the event data.”

As Young suggests, many college officials are looking for easy ways to record large numbers of lectures and offer video or audio recordings to students. The obvious objective of this prospective application is to capture and distribute lecture podcasts without requiring professors or other staff members to perform time-consuming editing or file management.

Be sure to check out Young’s full article in Wired Campus.

Last week, the MASIE Learning Consortium released a new mobile learning paper that explores the impetus for the mLearning explosion, traces out the scope of its current impact and projects the future ubiquity of handheld learning devices.

Elliot Maise introduces the paper by suggesting that “we are at an inflection point for the use of mobile communication devices. The release of new devices and applications, including the new Apple iPhone 3G, highlights the rapidly expanding interest in handheld devices that are both phones and computing capable. Our mobile telephones are evolving into platforms for collaboration, knowledge access and performance support. The MASIE Center is convinced that one the next frontiers will be designing learning and performance applications that fit naturally into our hands, pockets, purses and lives. We invite the learning field to think “out of the box” and take an evidence-based approach to exploring these capabilities.”

Download a pdf of the paper at mlearningopedia.

Today, Open Culture reports that Google has launched the beta version of its new content initiative, Knol. For you staunch decriers of Wikipedia out there, this news could be potentially good and bad. Educators might think of Knol as a more credible resource than Wikipedia because it caters to the individual author/expert, not to the wisdom of crowds. Each encyclopedia entry is generally written, edited, and revised by one individual. However, Wikipedia’s collaborative approach is not being entirely abandoned; thus, modernist pedagogues might think of it as a slippery slope.

According to Open Culture, Google’s model leaves ample room for collaborative writing. It keeps open the possibility that multiple authors will write an encyclopedia entry. The initiative also allows for “moderated collaboration” — meaning that “any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.” Collaboration is built into Google’s model. It’s just not taken to an extreme conclusion.

This week, Desire2Learn—a web-based platform for the delivery of online teaching and learning—announced a new mobile application of its Desire2Learn Learning Environment. Desire2Learn 2GO uses Learning Environment 8.3 to provide access via Blackberry.

Campus Technology reports that Desire2Learn’s recent Fusion 2008 user conference in Memphis, TN, showcased mobile access to what Desire2Learn describes as “core Desire2Learn Learning Environment data and functionality.” The application includes features for collaboration, interaction, communication, access to course details and class lists, the ability to view and edit user data, support for connecting to multiple organizations, and viewing and editing grades.

The company has schedule several Webinars on mobile e-learning in the coming months.

Yesterday the folks at Teleread reported that the Stanza ebook application may be downloaded for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

According to Lexcycle (the provider of Stanza), this app provides built-in support for a number of document formats, including “HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, and Rich Text Format reading, as well as all the major eBook standards: unprotected Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and the International Digital Publishing Forum’s new epub Open eBook standard.”

Lexcycle has this to say about taking your ebooks on the road with your iPhone, iPod or PDA:

“Stanza features the ability to export your reading material to a wide array of formats that can be read on your mobile device. Its native export to the iPhone makes it the first product that can convert all of your digital texts to iPhone “bookmarklets” that sync with your iPhone for reading anywhere — no internet connection required.

Stanza can also export to MobiPocket, enabling you to use the popular MobiPocket Reader to read your exported book on your Blackberry, PocketPC, Palm OS, Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson UIQ, and many other mobile devices.”

Download the application at lexcycle.com.

As you know, Apple’s iPhone App Store went live last week, and a number of new applications look to be pretty handy tools for teaching and learning. Perhaps the one with the greatest educational potential is Stage Hand, which allows you to control your Keynote presentations from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Stage Hand also shows you the notes for your current slide for those moments when you need a quick reminder and allows you to tilt your iPhone to view a miniature of the big screen on your small screen. You can also draw your audience’s attention with the Stage Hand highlighter: tap anywhere on the screen to spotlight your slide with a choice of graphics and colors.

For Stage Hand to work, you’ll need a small helper application, Stage Manager, running on your Macintosh. Stage Manager communicates with iPhone or iPod Touch devices to control your presentations. The application also requires Keynote ‘08 part of the iWork ‘08 suite, on a Macintosh computer with OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or later. Windows/Powerpoint is not supported.

To read more about or download Stage Manager and Stage Hand, visit Wooji Juice.

TUAW reports that the iPhone firmware 2.0 enables users to easily take and share screenshots of their iPhones without having to download any additional software. To take a screenshot, just hold down the home button while quickly pressing the sleep/wake button at the top of the phone. The screen will flash and an image will be saved in your Camera Roll. iPhone users can easily share screenshots via email with the share option in the Photos app.

This could be a pretty handy tool for teaching and learning, especially for university training sessions or instructional websites. iPhone screenshots might be used to demonstrate educational, social and administrative uses for the device on campus to students, faculty and staff.

For more iPhone tips, check out the iPhone 101 section at TUAW.

Yesterday, our friends at Flux posted a very interesting video of Grainne Conole’s recent presentation entitled “Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities.” Conole’s presentation, which was delivered at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008, explores some of the web 2.0 developments and their implications for learning, learnersand education. If you have the time, it’s certainly worth a watch.   

Yesterday, Campus Technology posted an article about the new initiative organized by Stanford University School of Education and Innovations for Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit, which will bring the $50 Teachermate Handheld Computer to extremely underserved children in Latin America.

Teachermate is a compact mobile learning tool that resembles a hand-held game and is intended for early elementary students. It uses a 500 MB NAND flash card for storage and has a 200 MHz 32-bit ARM9 processor. The device can be charged with an AC/DC adapter or through a USB connection to a PC. All stories, instructions and other content in the system are in both English and Spanish. Students can record words on the screen into a built-in microphone and can then compare their own voice recordings to the computer’s rendition of the story. A variety of math game activities are designed to reinforce basic numeracy skills.

Campus Technology reports that the first implementation of the handheld computer system will be in Baja California, Mexico in collaboration with CETYS Universidad en Mexico. A pilot of the handheld computer for reading and math education will be launched in September in cities in Mexico where many poor migrant populations are concentrated. CETYS Universidad’s Education and Engineering School will also develop local content for the Teachermate handheld computer while its Business School will develop and enhance scalability and sustainability models.

Paul Kim, CTO for Stanford’s School of Education, states: “Mobile learning technology loaded with innovative educational content for basic literacy and numeracy seems to be in a dire need in many regions of the global community today. For those who have no opportunity to watch TV and do not own a single book, a mobile learning solution may be a viable educational option.”

For more information, be sure to check out the full article at Campus Technology.

Users of iTunes U now have a lot more elementary education material to choose from—a new initiative launched by several state education agencies, along with the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) will create a home for K-12 educational content within iTunes U.

The initiative, which launched July 1, brings the creation of a K-12 destination to iTunes U with a broad range of content from a number of state and district agencies—including Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Utah—as well as museums and other educational institutions.

T.H.E. Journal reports that according to SETDA, the idea of the initiative is not only to bring state and district resources to K-12 educators within their own states, but to provide nationwide and global access to educational content, curricula, learning materials, news, best practices, and other resources.

“This comprehensive collection of quality digital content offers teachers and students a single location to access resources on topics from Florida history to the Navajo language to nano technologies,” said Mary Ann Wolf, executive director of SETDA, in a statement released Tuesday at the NECC 2008 conference in Texas, where the initiative was unveiled. “Teachers can now access these resources in real-time to support teaching and learning. The new K-12 resources on iTunes U address the critical need to engage students through technology-based resources in the core curriculum areas.”

For more, be sure to check out T.H.E. Journal’s full article.