The School of Informatics is delighted to welcome

Dr. William Rankin
Director of Educational Innovation
Associate Professor of English
Apple Distinguished Educator

and

George Saltsman
Executive Director of the
Adams Center for Teaching and Learning. 

to talk about their experiences introducing mobile learning to the Abilene Christian University in Texas.

In 2008, ACU made headlines when it became the first university to provide an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch device to every first year student.  

Are they gadget nuts? Isn't this rather extravagant for educational budgets?  Would it improve students' learning experiences?  

Are they just plain mad?

Dr. Rankin tells a very different, and far more interesting, story.  As might be expected of an English professor with an interest in Medieval and Middle English texts, he sets the context for ACU's mobile learning project with an overview of the history of knowledge starting from the scroll and moving through books to the current day of internet, Google and social networking.  He argues that changes in the storage and delivery of information demand fundamental changes in teaching.  

Is this more a technological challenge or a cultural one?

George Saltsman gives an overview of the technical challenges they had to overcome, speaking on infrastructure, deployment and research.  Most university infrastructures contain many disparate legacy systems.  How to connect them together for a mobile platform?

As a chief architect of ACU’s Connected initiative, Saltsman helped develop a vision for how hyper-mobile connected devices can serve academic, social, and administrative needs. Since 2008, Saltsman has presented this vision at more than 36 international venues, and in February, 2009, he served as host for the ConnectEd Summit, a conference attended by 425 educators and educational technologists from 119 institutions in 31 US states and 8 countries. Saltsman and his team have been recognised with numerous awards, and in June, the New Media Consortium named ACU a Center of Excellence.
 
Saltsman is currently working with a consortium of six K-12 districts in Texas to deploy iPhone- and iPod touch-based learning and has been instrumental in forming an international research consortium (involving more than a dozen UK and US universities) to conduct joint mLearning research and share results.

What is the impact on students?

A year on from the launch of this programme, what have they learned about its impact on their students? The speakers describe the research they undertook during the first year of the project, some results and their pedagogical implications.

How could this work in a UK educational institution?

This promises to be an interesting and though-provoking presentation of interest to technologist, educators, students, administrators, programmers and many others working and studying in all levels of education.  

The presentations will be followed by a Q&A session with the speakers. There may also be time for informal discussions between participants and speakers.  

( Participants may decide for themselves if it's mad! )