Please join me on Wednesday, April 29th for Picks from the App Store! This is the first in a series of free workshops for SIGHC members by SIGHC members. Even if you know nothing about SIGHC, you're still welcome join in. Here's the description of the online workshop:

The hottest handhelds today are Apple's iPod touch and iPhone. In addition to being great audio and video players, the iPod touch and iPhone run a mobile platform with over 25,000 software applications available from the App Store. With thousands of apps listed in the Education section of the App Store, it can be hard to find the very best apps for teaching and learning. SIGHC member Tony Vincent shares his educational app picks on Wednesday, April 29th at 3PM PST on Ustream.TV. Tony will present the first half-hour and the second half hour is reserved for participants to share their own picks and to ask questions. You can participate by joining the chat room on Ustream.tv and by calling in your picks via webcam at www.ustream.tv/channel/tony-vincent.

Before the beginning of the workshop, sign up for a free Ustream account so that you can pick out a username for the chat. To create a new account, simply click Sign Up, which is located in the top-left of each Ustream.tv page.

Participants are encouraged to have their webcams and microphones ready so they can talk about their own App Store picks and so they can ask questions. While the workshop will most likely be recorded and archived, I really hope you can join us live.

Labels: iphone, ipodtouch

The original The Oregon Trail was released in 1971. If you have a hankering for the Apple II version of Oregon Trail, you can play it online--with old time graphics and sounds--at Virtual Apple 2. Students probably won't appreciate the ancient-looking game. The original version has a lot of text and unimpressive graphics.

What might impress them is the new iPhone/iPod touch version of Oregon Trail from The Learning Company. Available for $6 from the App Store, the Oregon Trail is quite fun to play. Here's the description of Oregon Trail from iTunes:

Westward, Ho! Your favorite pioneering adventure game is back and takes you to an exciting, historical side-scrolling adventure entirely rethought to fit the Touch experience of your iPhone / iPod touch.

• All of the decision-making and problem-solving fun of the original game, plus additional parameters to take the Oregon Trail experience even further than you've played before.
• 8 skill-based mini-games, including 2 accelerometer-based challenges: hunting, fishing, river crossing, rafting, wagon repairing, telegraph, berry picking, and gold panning.
• Random events (disease, bandits, hitchhikers, etc.) faced by real pioneers increases the challenge.
• Side-missions add more excitement to your journey, affecting your westward trek.
• Prepare for your departure: Select the members of your party, choose your departure date and purchase supplies.

Oregon Trail shares information like what clothing to wear, how much oxen weigh, and which is the best seat in the wagon. Of course, by playing students get to practice map skills, conserve resources, and develop a strategy. Teachers using this in school will enjoy teaching students about dysentery (and other historical diseases) as well as having students compare the game to the real struggles pioneers had traveling across North America.

Oregon Trail is getting rave review in iTunes. I've had a blast playing it and I know youngsters who were born after the 80s will too!

Besides Oregon Trail, the there's Westward in the App Store. This $5 game is a strategy game where you "control the destiny of the Wild West by building thriving towns, exploring uncharted plains, dense forests and rocky canyons and guiding settlers to safety and success." Westward is rated 12+ for mild profanity, fantasy violence, and tobacco and alcohol references.

Labels: appstore, iphone, ipodtouch

Two of my favorite educators are Cathie Norris and Elliot Soloway (who have been evangelizing mobile learning for nearly a decade now). This dynamic duo are featured in a new video from the Mobile Learning Institute's video series A 21st Century Education. In the video Cathie and Elliot speak with teachers and students as they travel to some handheld-using schools. While en route, Cathie and Elliot talk about mobile learning. Here are some quotes from the artistic video:

"Mobile computers are the future. Laptops are very 90s. They're your daddy's computer. They're your parents' computers. They're not the kids' computers." - Elliot Soloway

"Just like a business person uses the computer 24/7--they use the computer for everything they do. That's the way we now conceptualize the way we use mobile computers." -Elliot Soloway

"It's going to be amazing to see how many of them [schools] go to cell phone computers rapidly because they're seeing that every child has one, every child knows how to use one, and that's why when we see districts like Keller saying, 'You know what? Rather then fight it, let's see if we can take advantage of it. Let's use the infrastructure that the tel co has. Rather than us spending our money building a wireless infrastructure, let's just use the tel co's structure.'" -Cathie Norris

"Mobile technologies are going to make a bigger change to our lives than the PC and Internet together. I mean, the PC changed everything. The Internet changed everything. But the mobile technologies is every bigger than that." - Elliot Soloway

Cathie and Elliot work tirelessly to deliver their message to anyone who will listen. I'm really pleased that together they have started a blog called Tech Disruptions. Here's how they describe their blog: "We will address topical issues that arise as technology continues in its inexorable way to engender changes in K12. Here is your opportunity to express opinions about the changes that technology has wrought."

I really enjoy the format of the blog--it's written as a transcript of a jovial conversation between Cathie and Elliot. So far Tech Disruptions has tackled topics like eBooks, mobile phone bans, and cloud computing.

Labels: mobile phone, palm, pocket pc, ppcket pc, windows mobile