For those of you who read my previous post about blogging you will know that this is not something I find easy or enjoy doing BUT that I have been microblogging  (using Twitter) about technology for several weeks and have found it much easier and more enjoyable. So, in the name of technology and learning, I’m going to carry out an experiment for the next few months, cease to blog here (apart from the occasional update on my microblogging experiment) and share my technology related discoveries and thoughts via Twitter, where in 140 characters or less you can say what you are doing (or thinking, feeling, wishing …) at that moment in time.

Aside from the recent Twitter publicity by the likes of Chris Moyles, Jonathon Ross and Steven Fry, the potential for using microblogging in education has also been written about. Twitter for Academia gives some ideas of how it can be used to support learning … my two personal favourites from here are:

• Public notepad: Twitter is really good for sharing thoughts as they pop into your head. Your thoughts are recorded AND you can get inspiration from others who use Twitter.

• Instant feedback: Twitter is available 24/7 (with an internet connection) and can be accessed via a number of mobile phone applications, so as soon as you ‘tweet’ (post a microblog/comment to Twitter) everyone can view it.

I think that these will be the two main uses for me over the course of my experiment, along with hopefully the opportunity to collaborate and share ideas … which leads me nicely to … Twitter collaboration stories,  giving a whole range of examples of how Twitter is used to enable effective collaboration – a good enough reason on its own to use Twitter, IMHO.

For those of you wishing to follow my Twitter tweets during this experiment you can either view my page here at http://twitter.com/helenhrsc  or create your own Twitter account and choose to follow HelenHRSC. Two other fellow RSC Wales tweeters are Justin – view at http://twitter.com/justinrsc or choose to follow JustinRSC and Paul – view at http://twitter.com/paulbrichardson or choose to follow PaulBRichardson. Happy twittering!

With the launch of Amazon’s new Kindle (currently only available in the USA) and Google’s Book Search service designed to run on i-Phone and Android phones E-books are getting a lot of press at the moment. Speaking at the launch of the Kindle, Amazon Founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said: “Our vision is every book, ever printed in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.” This is quite a commitment!

Recently Nintendo released their 100 Classic Book Collection which Contains 100 classic books from authors such as Austen, Dickens, and Shakespeare. You might think that the DS screen is a little small for reading books but we’ve tried it and it’s surprisingly easy particularly as you can change the text size.

So how can you jump on the band wagon? Well you don’t need to go out and buy a dedicated e-book reader although they are an excellent solution (if a little expensive at present).

Most “modern” devices including laptops, mobile phones, portable games consoles and e-book readers can display PDF documents. Some devices are more convenient than others; reading a complete book on a 5cm screen might be a little difficult for some but being able to search for relevant text or information on the go could be invaluable. Bite sized revision notes here we come! PDFs are also very accessible so they cover a lot of bases in one technology.

Another format that many devices have no problem reading is plain old text (.txt) files. Project Gutenberg and their affiliates have over 127,000 texts are available for free on their website. To search their database go here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

If you prefer to listen to a book or need to make it into a podcast then you can convert it using free software such as DSpeech.  DSpeech will read to you or convert the text into an mp3 which can be loaded onto a computer, portable mp3 player, uploaded into Moodle or embedded into learning materials. DSpeech does sound a bit robotic at first but you do get used to it after a while. Other voices can be purchased from various companies a quick search engine trawl will find them.

This week Nielsen Online published its findings regarding mobile internet usage in the UK.

According to their research mobile internet usage increased by 25% (an increase from 5.8 to 7.3 million) between the second and third quarter of 2008. PC based internet usage grew by 3% in the same period.

Nielsen found that there is a higher concentration of younger users (aged 14-24) using mobile internet services compared to services accessed via a PC.

BBC news, Google Search, BBC Weather and Facebook are the most popular mobile sites indicating a need for fast access to resources and information.

It’s interesting to see that mobile internet usage is increasing so rapidly; Sometimes I hear the arguments that mobile internet access is prohibitively expensive or requires advanced handsets that many people do not have. All inclusive “web” deals, subsidised phones and faster mobile networks have chipped away at those arguments. Almost anyone can now have cheap and easy access to the information they want when and wherever they want it.

Many students I have talked to don’t consider their phone to be mobile technology, it’s just a part of their day to day life. A mobile is slipped into the pocket without any thought, just like putting on a pair of shoes before you go outside.

To read the full Nielsen report click here (PDF)