Yesterday I gave a couple of presentations to a group of teachers in an ICT PD cluster here in Hamilton.  The day finished off with me going to dinner with Westley Field of Skoolaberate who was the conference key-note.  This was a great opportunity for me as I hadn’t been able to make it to any of his key-notes.  Much of the reading I have been doing of late has been around the idea of the implementation of new technology in education and in particular I have been focusing on the Horizon Reports so it was amazing to have him all to myself to talk to for a few hours!

As I haven’t begun my research with the students yet, the groups I spoke to yesterday were the first to get their hands on the actual phones!!!

I began with a poll from polleverywhere to find out why people had chosen my workshop. The vast majority hadn’t used phones in their classes and wanted to know how it would be done.  There were one or two people who admitted they were skeptics but unfortunately we ran out of time at the end and I couldn’t find out if I had converted them.

It was my first speaking session on my research and the first presentation was definitely much shakier than the second!  I felt rushed and flustered and felt I kept tripping over my words.  However, the second was much better.  I was relaxed and there was much more interaction from the audience which made it a much more enjoyable presentation for me!

All of the teachers were able to trial the phones.  I had bookmarked a number of sites so that web navigation was quick and easy for them.  One of the bookmarks was their own cluster Moodle so it was good for people to be able to see how easy it is navigate and contribute to a Moodle site.

Many people expressed frustration with earlier mobile web experiences saying they found it to be slow and very difficult to navigate and read.  None had tried out OperaMini and many were off home to download it to their phones so they could give the mobile web a second chance.

Here is a copy of the presentation I gave.  I only had 55 minutes and I tried to present a range of ideas - from very basic, free uses to looking a bit further out at the potential if students all had 3g mobile access.

I will be posting a reflection on this presentation after I have had a good think about it.  I feel like I crammed too much in and I will be thinking about what I would change in the future.