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.

In anticipation of the rapidly approaching iPhone 3G debut, HighEdWebTech has compiled a handy list of likely impacts of the device on higher education technology and web professionals.

HighEdWebTech’s first discussion point is the obvious deluge of devices to be precipitated by the significantly lower, $199 (8G) price tag. The article asserts that the increased number of iPhone-toting students will expect wifi access as well as websites optimized for browsing on iPhone. Authentication issues and other wireless security options will certainly need to be reviewed.

Next, the article treats the automatic geotagging of photos offered by the iPhone 3G. The new iPhone will allow users to automatically, via the internal GPS, record the exact location a photograph was taken. While this is a potentially useful feature, university administrators and IT departments are going to have to be extra-vigilant in keeping an eye on what photos are attributed to their schools or taken on their campuses.

Strain in server resources is another potential impact of the new device. HighEdWebTech suggests that schools that have an email setup using Exchange probably won’t see a huge bump; however if a large number of new iPhone users are checking their email every few minutes, schools may see an increased load on email servers. If you outsource your email to Gmail, for example, you won’t see this.

Finally, the article discusses the possibility of offering additional connection options at stations that offer power and network connections. For example, the iPhone is of course powered through USB port; adding this port to current power stations would allow students to keep their phones powered on and charging while they study, do research, eat, etc.

For more, be sure to check out HighEdWebTech’s complete article.

Today, The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) released the long-anticipated update to its National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) framework.

As our friends at T.H.E. Journal report, the original —released in 2000—focused primarily on the transition from static learning content to electronic, interactive tools for the enhancement of teaching and learning. While it did emphasize collaboration to a certain degree, the role of teachers themselves remained largely transmitter/facilitator of textual materials, albeit electronic ones, and the primary emphasis of the framework was on technology knowledge and skills–something that seems fairly remedial by today’s standards.

However, NETS-T 2nd ed., which launched this week at the NECC 2008 conference, takes an entirely different approach, casting teachers into the role of facilitator, collaborator, and, significantly, “co-learner,” rather transmitters of information.

An introductory note to the revised document reads, “Now and in the future, effective teachers of digital-age learners will be challenged to move away from models of teaching and learning as isolated endeavors. As they model work and learning that reflects inventive thinking and creativity, teachers must become comfortable as co-learners with their students and with colleagues around the world. Today it is less about staying ahead and more about moving ahead as members of dynamic learning communities. The Digital Age teaching professional must demonstrate a vision of technology infusion and develop the technology skills of others. These are the hallmarks of the new education leader.”

Be sure to check out the revised NETS-T for yourself.

Information access software provider ClassLink recently announced a partnership with HP focusing on the utilization of both thin-client and virtualization solutions for education. ClassLink provides unlimited—anytime, anywhere—access to instructional software and files for students and teachers.

“Our interests are aligned,” said ClassLink CEO Berj Akian, in a prepared statement. “ClassLink provides a unique, award winning technology solution for delivering educational software 24/7 using application servers and virtualization. HP, with its continuing dedication to thin clients, blade servers, virtualization, UMPC’s, etc., makes this partnership a great fit for the education market. Together we can help students and teachers access their instructional software on a platform that’s affordable, reliable and available 24/7.”

According to our friends at T.H.E. Journal, the benefits of these technologies include cost-effective computing, increased reliability, and application stability. ClassLink and HP will showcase their “vision for the future of instructional technology” in San Antonio, TX, next week at the 29th annual National Educational Computing Conference.

Sun Mircosystems recently publish a handy collection of white papers intended to underscore the importance of industry standards in developing a network-computing model for education. Sun asserts that open architectures are crucial to the world’s education marketplace and envisions a network-computing model for education in which teachers, administrators, students and communities will have unlimited access to the tools that enable them to access information, web learning, peers, parent-teacher communities, and greater learning opportunities.

Click here to download a PDF of Sun’s Open Standards in E-Learning white papers.

As you may have noticed, Apple’s iTunesU now includes an area called “Beyond Campus,” which features a wide range of audio and video materials from sources not necessarily tied to colleges and universities, such as American Public Media, The New York Public Library, PBS, 92nd Street Y, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Science Digital Library, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Smithsonian Global Sound. Like all of iTunes U, Beyond Campus is free, easy to use, and accessible via any Mac or PC.

Today our friends at Open Culture posted an article highlighting Beyond Campus’ ResearchChannel. Housed at the University of Washington, the ResearchChannel brings together content from leading research and academic institutions and then distributes it to consumers mostly through satellite and cable but also via the web—iTunesU and YouTube.

The ResearchChannel may prove to be quite a handy resource for supplemental teaching and learning material, offering insightful programs such as “Dark Energy, or Worse: Was Einstein Wrong?”; “Bioenergy and Biofuels: An Overview”; “The Psychology of Blink: Understanding How the Mind Works Unconsciously”; “The Teen Brain” and “Mesopotamia to Iraq: Perspectives on the Middle East.”

If you’re interested in reading more about The ResearchChannel, be sure to check out oculture’s full article.

The University of Cincinnati and Apple are hosting Vision 2020 the first week of August. The theme for the event is “Digital Ubiquity & University Transformation”. The conference will provide the opportunity for administrators and faculty from around the country to share ideas and best practices concerning digital ubiquity in higher education. Conference organizers suggest that this is the conference for anyone interested in integrating notebooks, iPhones or iPod touch devices into their campus environment.

Featured speakers include former Maine Governor Angus King, the University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher, dean and CIO leadership panels, NMC CEO Larry Johnson and KnowledgeWorks CEO Chad Wick—who will address “Emerging Technology Trends: Shaping the Future of HIgher Education”— along with over 25 other college and university presentations. Institutions are encouraged to bring teams of 3 or more; teams receive a substantial discount if they register before July 11.

For information on the conference, speakers and registration, visit the web site at http://daap.uc.edu/vision2020/

Today, Ruth Reynard posted another interesting article for T.H.E Journal in which she discusses ways to “move beyond the obvious” in the educational usage of podcasts. Reynard asks: “Can more be achieved with podcasting in the context of student authorship and academic collaboration that would heighten student engagement and maximize knowledge building in instructional contexts?”

In response to her own question, Reynard begins by asserting that student engagement through authoring is an area in which podcasts can serve a tremendous educational purpose. She suggests that with the mobility and compact nature of podcast technology, capturing and publishing student voice becomes even more powerful for students as a publicly accessible and multidimensional representation of that voice. The public nature is accentuated through the mobility in that student voice can now be heard by multiple users and within multiple contexts and it can both present a multimedia publication and receive multimedia and multi-user input.

Reynard goes on to state that podcasting is also a powerful way to build knowledge through collaboration; it can provide a great way both to represent and to modify new ideas. She writes: “through individual or group authorship, ideas can be represented symbolically or realistically through the use of various media and published in a public space. Once the idea or ideas are made public they are not owned but can be modified by others through a process of collaboration.”

If you’re interested in working podcasts into your instructional repertoire, be sure to check out Reynard’s full article in T.H.E. Journal.

As you know, Monday’s WWDC keynote revealed a number of interesting new applications for the iPhone that will be available through Apple’s new App Store. The store will offer applications in a variety of categories—games, business, education, entertainment, finance, health and fitness, productivity, social networking, etc.—that will utilize iPhone technology like the Multi-Touch interface, the accelerometer, GPS, real-time 3D graphics and 3D positional audio.

Among the vanguard of iPhone apps are a number of potentially useful applications for mobile learning:

• First, an advanced to-do list application called Zenbe Lists, which allows you to keep track of chores and calendar lists. In addition to making lists, the application enables you to check off accomplished tasks and sync events with your contacts. Sounds great for keeping track of assignments, appointments, etc.
• Two new medical applications were demonstrated during the keynote. The first, Modality, is an anatomy application for students, which is linked to Wikipedia and Google to provide a multitude of sources. The second, MIMvista, allows doctors to view and manipulate PET and CT scan images from their iPhones.
• Kooaba might be one of the most interesting new apps because it uses the relatively new concept of an image driven search. With image recognition, the application allows you to point the iPhone’s camera at a movie poster and receive information and show times on the movie. While this might not be incredibly relevant for teaching and learning presently, the concept of image recognition offers a host of potential educational uses.
• As we’ve previously reported, TypePad has developed a new blogging client, which will work on the fly and will allow geo tagging of images. Images can be uploaded right from the camera on the iPhone. Also, it will support photo blogging, which is a huge plus for many.
• The AP showed off their mobile news network. This application will cache news for you so you can read it on the go. Because it caches the news, you won’t need a network connection to stay up-to-date on all the latest news.
• Finally, a social networking application called Loopt uses location feeds to help you find friends on the go. With Loopt iPhone users will be able to pinch, tap and drag an interactive map to find their friends and see what they’re are up to. This might be a handy way to meet up with classmates, colleagues and teachers.