Since my previous post with the initial ideas for my final project I’ve done a bit more research and thinking to help me decide which idea I should take and develop further. However, after finding out almost every one of my ideas have been done in some way or another I started thinking how I can combine them together to make something different (if that is possible!) Here is a mind map that I’ve created based on my research (click on the image to enlarge):
I decided that I don’t want to include the digital divide into my project as I want it to be high tech, which would make it hard to relate to the digital divide. I found the idea of a blogject very interesting though and am thinking to collaborate it together with the idea of collective blog. I don’t think I will have a social network within my project as there are a lot of them out there (including mobile social networks) and it does not seem to be very original anymore. I would still like to see if I can integrate mobile learning, however, I’m still now sure how. Research have given me even more small ideas but has not helped me develop my original ideas to make them better, which is what I need to do.
The next stage for me is to take all my chosen elements from the above model and combine them together into a final idea so I can start creating the project.
From the beginning, I knew that I was interested in creating some sort of mobile application due to the fact that everything nowadays is becoming mobile. I decided to take mobile learning as my dissertation topic and from that I wanted to create my final project idea. I didn’t know whether it has to relate directly to the dissertation but as it will be about ‘all things mobile’ it would relate to it at least in that way.
Initially I came up with the following 3 ideas for the project:
1. A collective/urban location based blog. This would be a mobile phone application that would allow users to add to the blog for each location, depending on where they are at the time. So each location would have its own blog full of user experiences, images and sounds. I also thought of creating a website for the online representation of this blog (in addition to the location mobile representation). This would be in a form of a map that would show where blogs are available and by clicking on them you can read the posts and comment on them, just like in a normal blog. However, this would not be a blog per person but per location.
2. A mobile social network just for schools or universities. This would be a mobile application also that would create a social network between schools and/or universities. For example, students and/or teachers can send messages to each other or to groups of people (e.g. to people in the same class), they can add public announcements or notifications for certain modules etc. This would only work in a location that corresponds to a school or university and it would be possible to interconnect these networks so that school/universities can work together and share information.
3. A mobile learning location based game. This would be a field trip based game, similar to a treasure hunt. This would be mainly aimed at young school children. As an example, on a trip to the zoo a teacher adds questions/quizzes to certain locations in the zoo. When a pupil goes to one of the locations that question pops up on his/her mobile phone, he/she has to answer that question to get a clue to where to go next. To find an answer the pupil would have to look around the location and may be watch animal behaviour or read notices. The aim of the game is to get children to make the most of their zoo experience as nowadays a lot of children ‘can’t be bothered’ with it so they just walk around the zoo and end up learning nothing. To make pupils play the game to the end they would be given points (or extra marks) by getting to the final location first.
