Why an interest in mobile technologies?
The following is an extract taken from a paper written by Richard Hull and Josephine Reid of Hewlett-Packard, and summarises the thinking behind the development of the mobile technologies.
"Mobile technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive in developed economies. Mobile phones are already ubiquitous, laptop computers are widely used in business and academia, and handheld devices are beginning to gain a foothold in the market. As computers increase in power and memory size, while size, power consumption and cost all fall, we can expect to see the advent of two related phenomena:
- Wearable computing, in which users increasingly carry or wear powerful, context-aware devices that aim to do the right thing for the user, at the right time and in the right place
- Ubiquitous computing, in which functionality migrates from distinct computing devices into the fabric of everyday life
One way of thinking about these developments is to imagine the emergence of a new, digital dimension overlaying the physical world. This new dimension will be mediated in part by a user's personal devices and in part by the intelligent signposts, bus stops, shop fronts etc now populating the urban landscape. The question is: what will we find in the digital dimension and why will users value it?
In particular, we expect the emergence of what we have termed Situated Digital Experiences in which the experiences reflect and enhance their physical locations. Examples include digital art interventions, virtual games played out in the city streets, and context-sensitive tourist and local history guides.
Our research is being undertaken in the context of a larger collaboration between Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and the University of Bristol, known as Mobile Bristol, which aims to equip the centre of Bristol as a living testbed for wearable and ubiquitous computing. This involves the deployment of 802.11b base stations around the city, the development of prototype client devices capable of sensing the user's context, the development of prototype context-aware services, and the subsequent studies of what users make of it all.
As this year progresses, we will start to move our experimental experiences out of the protected environment of the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and into the city streets. Using our provisional model of experience as a guide, we will attempt to deploy and evaluate applications that emphasize social, achievement and/or sensation oriented dimensions of experience, and use the feedback from those experiments in turn to refine and extend the model. In doing so, we hope to develop our expertise in experience design for pervasive mobile technologies, and help determine the future of the digital fourth dimension."
Richard Hull & Josephine Reid
Why an interest in mobile technologies for learning?
It could be said that the work of Futurelab should involve finding technological solutions to real world problems in education, starting from the teachers and the learners to identify what their needs and concerns are.
However, research into young people and technology over the last five years has taught us that we need to pay attention to the ways in which learners' uses of technology outside schools impacts on attitudes to, styles of, and expectations of learning inside schools. If we consider, for example, games consoles; we know that children's experiences of games play shapes the ways in which they engage with other digital environments and that their experiences of rich multimedia worlds outside school affects their expectations of learning environments inside school. We also know that mobile phones are the most popular technology owned by young people, and that these are technologies that, in particular, young women make daily use of.
The possibility, then, that the 'face of computing' may well be changing radically as we shift towards mobile and ubiquitous computing and away from the PC, raises questions that should be of real interest and concern to educators. Central to which is the question of how might young people use these technologies in their day-to-day lives outside school, and what do we, as educators, need to be thinking about as a result in terms of how we design our learning environments in the future.
While these technologies, then, are only now emerging, Futurelab sees an understanding of these technologies, their pitfalls and potentials, as a central part of its work - a 'future visioning' that will allow educational institutions to be prepared for, and responsive to, the challenges and opportunities opened up by these new resources.
About the technology
At present there are two distinct experiences available to the user - the first as a creator of digital soundscapes; the second as a user of digital soundscapes.
Using digital soundscapes
By way of example, HP and the University of Bristol along with local artist, Liz Milner, and musician, Armin Elsaesser recently developed a project in the atrium at HP called 'A Year and a Day'. In this exhibition, users donned a headset linked to a PDA (HP's Jorcanda) and, as they walked around the exhibit of photographs of a nearby wood, heard different sounds - music, ambient sound, conversation in different areas of the exhibit.
The ambient technology was able to identify the location of the user and transmit sound to her headset based on her location. Two different users of the exhibit could potentially hear the same sounds, but at different times, according to the path that they took through the exhibit. The headset served to relay the sound to the user, and as a location device enabling the GPS to identify where the user was at any given time, to transmit the relevant sound for that position www.hpl.hp.com/hosted/mbristol.
Creating digital soundscapes
The above exhibition involved professional artists producing soundscapes and environments for other users, but equally, the technology can be used for individuals to produce their own soundscapes. Using the PDA users are able to add 'locating tags' to a map of the environment. Then, on a website, they simply link these tags to sound files located on the web. On the website, they are also able to alter the size (diameter) of the sound 'auras', producing a map of circles overlaying the physical space, which will be experienced by the end user as circles of sound as they walk through the space.
Background to the Ambient Technologies Workshop
The workshop idea originated from a presentation given by Morris Williams of the University of the West of England CISC group, suggesting that this technology might have an application in supporting young people's physical freedom in local areas. Essentially, Morris argued persuasively that young people are increasingly constrained in their physical freedom and that technology such as this might provide a means whereby children were able to re-engage with their local environment.
This suggestion provided the basis for a longer discussion between Jo Reid, Richard Hull, Constance Fleuriot (University of Bristol, Mobiles and Wearables Group), Futurelab and Owain Jones (University of Bristol Geography Department) during which plans for the workshop were developed under the heading 'a sense of place'. The discussions leading up to the workshop were concerned with finding ways in which this technology might be used to support children's access to public spaces. Arising from these conversations it was clear that a workshop with young people would be key to understanding whether this idea 'had legs'.
The workshop
The workshop was carried out at HP Labs, in partnership with the Sir John Cabot City Technology College. Ten Year 7 children (6 girls, 4 boys) visited HP Labs for two days, during which time they were given an overview of the technology, had a day to produce their own soundscapes, and took part in a brainstorm to discuss their experience of the technology and their sense of its possible applications.
From a general perspective, the response of the children (and the many teachers who visited the Labs during the two days) was overwhelmingly positive. The children reflected on the ways in which the technology could be used to improve their local areas - through providing information reports to police, to giving instructions on how to behave in those sites, through playing music and having games set up in sound that would enhance the experiences in those areas. The children also commented on the potential of the technology to keep their parents informed of their locations - sometimes only to ensure that their parents would come to pick them up when they were wanted!
The children also suggested that the technology might have important applications for people with a range of disabilities, and would provide a useful additional 'layer' of experience for those entering unfamiliar environments. Importantly, the children seemed to see the potential for this technology in producing soundscapes for people that they knew or in listening to soundscapes made for them by others that they knew - very different from a broadcast model.
Mobile technologies for education?
Although the workshop was not set up to provide insight into the technology's use for conventional educational settings, a range of outcomes for these settings did emerge. In talking to teachers and children during the day, it became clear that a key benefit of the technology for educational purposes was the fact that it liberated children from the stationary, seated position usual for 'normal learning' and allowed children to move about, stand up and sit down as they wanted. The children repeatedly cited this as an important part of the experience, and teachers themselves emphasised the potential of this, not only for these children, but also for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Suggestions for formal learning environments also included the development of soundscapes by teachers, combining visual clues with the audio of the soundscape. For example, teachers could develop environments on the subjects of volcanoes, famous scientists, language learning that children could walk around and experience instead of sitting at desks.
Outcomes from the workshop
Beyond the classroom walls?
It was clear from the workshop that these emergent mobile and wearable technologies provide a new model for interacting with and producing informational resources and lived experiences. Recognising that young people, in fact all learners, are likely to be using these technologies in the near future presents a range of challenges to formal educational settings - not least in the degree of personalisation and mobility that these technologies afford. What is the role of the classroom, its 30 desks and chairs (or even the computer lab) at a time when powerful hand-held devices enable young people to access informational resources, games placed in space, soundscapes of compelling beauty?
We may need to move beyond the idea of devices that can be controlled through physical barriers, and begin to explore what might happen when young people are able to access and control their own digital landscape through personal technologies that they can bring from home to school to street to local park. At the very least, these emergent technologies provide a potentially serious challenge to the model of centrally controlled informational resources in schools, and will require a responsive and iterative relation between the educational setting and the learner.
Towards the cityscape
All the partners in the project are now actively developing the next stage of the project in a variety of different ways. Full scale trials are envisaged for the technology in public spaces around Bristol and a dedicated workshop for young people in one of Bristol's large parks is being discussed. A range of papers from the workshop are currently being written (and links to these will be provided here when available) and a major research project focused specifically on young people, education and mobile technologies is currently under consideration by the ESRC.
Further Information:
Hewlett Packard: Josephine Reid - jr@hplb.hpl.hp.com
University of Bristol, Mobile and Wearables: Constance Fleuriot - fleuriot@cs.bris.ac.uk
University of Bristol, Geography: Owain Jones - owain.jones@which.net
University of the West of England, CISC: Morris Williams - Morris.Williams@uwe.ac.uk
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