2Loud? Monitoring traffic noise with mobile phones

The World Health Organization has recently focused attention on guidelines for night noise in urban areas, based on significant medical evidence of the adverse impacts of exposure to excessive traffic noise on health, especially caused by sleep disturbance. This includes serious illnesses, such as hypertension, arteriosclerosis and myocardial infarction. 2Loud? is a research project with the aim of developing and testing a mobile phone application to allow a community to monitor traffic noise in their environment, with focus on the night period and indoor measurement. Individuals, using mobile phones, provide data on characteristics of their dwellings and systematically record the level of noise inside their homes overnight. The records from multiple individuals are sent to a server, integrated into indicators and shared through mapping. The 2Loud? application is not designed to replace existing scientific measurements, but to add information which is currently not available. Noise measurements to assist the planning and management of traffic noise are normally carried out by designated technicians, using sophisticated equipment, and following specific guidelines for outdoors locations. This process provides very accurate records, however, for being a time consuming and expensive system, it results in a limited number of locations being surveyed and long time between updates. Moreover, scientific noise measurements do not survey inside dwellings. In this paper we present and discuss the participatory process proposed, and currently under implementation and test, to characterize the levels of exposure to traffic noise of residents living in the vicinity of highways in the City of Boroondara (Victoria, Australia) using the 2Loud? application.

The future of mobile apps for teaching and learning

A new definition of m-learning has been presented in the first chapter. It was modified from a definition presented by Sharples, Taylor, and Vavoula in 2007. In Chapter 1, Crompton, Muilenburg, and Berge defined m-learning as "learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices" (Crompton, 2013, p. 4). This chapter departs from this definition and focuses on mobile applications (apps) and technologies in this context.

A review of the current status of mobile apps in education - implication for emerging countries business education strategies

Mobile applications (in short: mobile apps) are software applications designed to run on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers. These technologies have come a long way since the opening of the Apple App Store in 2008, especially in their applications for business, information, communication, health and gaming. Most mobile devices are capable of processing and disseminating information in an efficient way. Smart devices, such as the iPhone or iPad, are equipped with innovative functionalities and unique features for easy delivery of content, information sharing, and collaborative work over the Internet. This is the basis for the use of these technologies in the education industry.

Using mobile media to create a more diverse public sphere in marginalised communities : how to mojo

Mojo is a new mobile journalism project in isolated Indigenous communities providing skills and mobile technologies to empower Indigenous people to create locally produced user-generated stories (UGS), from their own perspective. This paper explores the degree to which these practices and technologies can help create a more diverse cultural voice in remote Indigenous environments. Diversity is a central component of the broader principle of a robust marketplace of ideas and a catalyst for greater democratic representation. A lack of diversity of opinion from and about marginalized communities in Indigenous Australia has led to underrepresentation in a highly mediated Indigenous public sphere. In the mid-1980s the deployment of AUSSAT—the Australian communications satellite—led to an influx of Western media into remote communities, creating even greater marginalization of content at the source. This resulted in an under representation of local views and culture and a lack of exposure. This paper describes the empirical study—the technical practices and outcomes of mojos recording, editing and publishing complete UGS directly from their iPhones to the Internet. This practice has the potential to create more diverse media skills, representation and new job opportunities in local media. A making of NT Mojo video can be viewed at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRmGACFJd Jo. Mojo stories can be viewed at the following URL: http://ntmojos.indigneous.gov.au

Community-based learning (CBL) via facebook mobile “it is time to BYOD (bring your own device)

 The penetration of social networking platforms such as Facebook is becoming pervasive in education, along with mobile applications (apps) and mobile devices. Students are using these technologies and apps to organise their learning material. Social media via apps is the most popular activity among college students. In this paper we discuss how teachers could take advantage of Facebook social media platform to promote community-based-learning environment that is flexible, portable and challengeable. We describe how this could be achieved with no restriction to any particular mobile device brand or operating system and how student would simply bring their own device (BYOD).

Is this an ipad revolution or mobile learning revolution? A global perspective across countries : " iWorld, iLearn"

 This evolution of mobile technologies and application integration in education across the world has provided a shift to a new learning environment via various mobile platforms.Educational institutions globally are missing to identify specific mobile technologies initiatives and strategies as a method to evaluate these mobile technologies and to expose both students and teachers to the potential it engenders.This panel will undertake a cross country comparison among culturally diverse countries: Turkey,UAE,USA,Lebanon,Iceland,Israel,Japan,Germany.Questions will be raised such as:Why some countries are branding mobile learning and their integration of these technologies has been made device specific, app specific and operating system specific?Is this the right approach?The digital gap between countries will be discussed?Availability access, barriers and limitations for some countries are described.We will try to figure out similarities,differences and challenges among these countries.

iTeach we learn via mobile apps : "a case study in a business course"

Mobile smart phones and Mobile applications (apps) can be seen as an added opportunity for education and for teachers in particular, this can be true if educational institutions are willing to enable this type of delivery mechanism. With the recent development of app technologies in today’s society and the shift towards mobile technologies (devices and applications), it seems hard to imagine better devices and tools that can grant students easy and on demand access to learning content. These smart devices and technologies are multitasking and can offer variety of educational apps that teachers and students are able to integrate into their daily learning activities and can carry with them anywhere. In this paper mobile apps and their integration in education are discussed, a case study on the use of three mobile apps (e-Lecture-Producer, Dropbox and QR Code) in an educational setting in a Business e-commerce course is described. Results and outcomes are discussed based on the results from the case study.

The ipad global embrace! Are we branding mobile learning?

 Mobile computing is taking the educational institutions into a new era of instruction. Educational institutions globally are opting for new mobile devices to integrate, and it seems that the vast majority are integrating the iPad without even looking at other options, they are unintentionally branding mobile learning. We believe that mobile learning should not be branded, should not be restricted and should not be made device specific, operating system specific, controlled and brand specific. This paper is based on a global panel discussion entitled: Is this an iPad Revolution or Mobile Learning Revolution. Also this paper presents an argument as to why is the iPad dominating in education with a focus on the current iPad initiatives in the UAE, few possible assumptions on why educational institutions are opting for the iPad are discussed, and some suggested recommendations on what educational institutions should know before making the decision about this integration.

The teacher education evolution : the shift from online to mobile learning in curriculum, assessment and delivery

Most teacher education programs have online applications. Increasingly teacher education programs are expanding their distance education applications with mobile learning, or m-learning. Although related to online learning, m-learning focuses on the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. Mobile learning is a big step towards providing flexible teacher education; it has brought about a new forum for learning, decreased limitations of learning location, and provided learners with choices about how and when they access learning materials. Universities are finding themselves grappling with how best to utilize mobile technologies for learning, while staying within their educational missions and resources. In this paper the mobile devices used in higher education and the current status of mobile technologies as learning tools at universities are described. The background of approaches and methods which are currently in use are also discussed, plus universities and teacher readiness for this transformation are also reviewed. Affordances and constraints are considered.

Introducing a mobile learning attitude scale for higher education

The Mobile Learning Scale v1 .0 consists of seven Likert items drawn from the key points developed for a paper on mobile learning prospects for informal learning in higher education (Khaddage & Knezek, 2011 ). Many of these points had been initially developed during the 2011 International Summit on ICT in Education (UNESCO, Paris, 2011 ), where the first author was Rapporteur for the working group Co-Chaired by the second author. In order to assess the performance of the instrument, data were gathered from 81 undergraduate and graduate university students during August and September of 2011. Data were assessed for strength of agreement on individual items and for internal consistency reliability of the seven item-scale. Initial indications are that the instrument has good reliability for university students (Alpha = .85) and can be useful for assessing attitudes toward mobile learning technologies and applications within the intended audience of higher education learners. Potential uses and plans for future research are discussed.

Freehand 3D Scanning in a Mobile Environment using Video

This work is motivated by two important trends in consumer computing: (i) the growing pervasiveness of mobile computing devices, and (ii) the users’ desire for increasingly complex but readily acquired and manipulated information content. Specifically, we develop and describe a system for 3D model creation of an object, using only a standard mobile device such as a smart phone. Our approach applies the structured light projection methodology and exploits multiple image input such as frames from a video sequence. In comparison with previous work, a significant further challenge addressed here is that of lower quality input data and limited hardware (processing power and memory, camera and projector quality). Novelties include: (i) a comparison of projection pattern detection approaches in the context of a mobile environment – a robust method combining colour detection and a phase congruency descriptor is evaluated, (ii) a model for single view reconstruction which exploits epipolar, coplanarity and topological constraints, (iii) the use of mobile device sensor data in the iterative closest point algorithm used to register multiple partial 3D reconstructions, and (iv) two heuristics for determining the order in which buffered single view based reconstructions are merged. Our experiments demonstrate that visually appealing results are obtained in a speedy manner which does not require specialist knowledge or expertise from the user.

Mobile devices supported learning for novice programmers

Mobile learning is considered to be an advanced stage of E-learning. Mobile devices supported learning provides teaching materials anytime, anywhere, and eliminates space and time constraints for learners. Mobile devices-supported learning includes all portable devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, tablet PCs, and e-books. This paper aims to investigate the issue from a different perspective. Firstly, we consider how many novice programmers have personal mobile devices and what type of mobile devices they are using (PDA, tablet PC, e-book). Secondly, we consider whether the Buraimi University College (Oman) Information Technology infrastructure supports mobile learning. Thirdly we consider students' behavior and attitude towards mobile devices supported teaching materials. For this purpose, the survey method will be used as a research tool to collect responses from 1st year students enrolled in introductory programming courses at the Information Technology department of Buraimi University College. This paper also describes a set of findings which helps instructors to take steps to promote mobile learning for novice programmers.