I came across a twitter posting (called a tweet) by Dave Cormier (@davecormier) about the University of PEI's progress in creating a mobile site (Theming and going Mobile: drupal@upei) using Drupal. Here is a link to an image of what the site looks like on an iPhone: http://www.upei.ca/misc/doart/fpmobv2.png.

I know AU has been researching and testing the use of mobile learning, but I have been wondering lately where all this is leading? I purchased an iPod Touch recently and I am quite surprised at just how good it is for using email, Twitter, and Facebook apps. I keep wondering how it is being used to support teaching and learning? How do we move beyond the stage of merely capturing lectures (podcast lectures) and provide a  learning experience that is collaborative, interactive, and meaningful?

How can this technology best support teaching and learning? In some of the podcast studies I have read the conclusion has been that podcast lectures are great for supporting the f2f environment, but there are doubts as to the effectiveness of it as a primary method of delivering teaching and learning (I have an online presentation about this but it is temporarily not accessible to the public due to spammers using the comment section).

How effectively can it be utilized for distance education? I am currently involved in the mcast research project with Dr. Terry Anderson. We are trying to setup the hardware and software necessary to create podcasts (audio and video) and screencasts for distance learning at AU's Center for Distance Education.The plan is to research the effectiveness of mcasting once the planning and implementation stages are complete. I can envision this as a great resource, but I am wondering how it will be used?

Finally, I am interested in examples of the effective use of mcasting (podcasting, video, screencasting) in education and distance learning. There are a lot of examples of how universities and other post-secondary institutions are using iTunesU and YouTubeEDU, but how do you determine which are effective at using these technologies? I think more work research needs to be done in this area.