Author: Dennis Dollens

Urban Drift — Mobile Summer e-Learning

Cover: uDrift Student Handbook

The uDrift Summer Student Handbook (interactive PDF) is almost ready. It’s a laptop and mobile guide to the concept of urban flânerie/dérive/uDrift (walking or cycling) research. The uDrift-book presents the class using social media and GPS mapping. It includes a small guide to iOS and Android smartphone apps for tracking, drawing, in-phone video editing, TweetDeck messaging, QR Codes, etc. The non-credit class runs 2-22 July and is designed to challenge you for 6 to 8 hours per week with ideas and exercises involving mobile e-learning conducted in an urban or natural setting. It has relationships to work you might do in the MScEL and is a wannabe cousin to IDGBL. We have just expanded enrollment from 10 to 20 — JOIN THE DRIFT

For further details, contact Dennis Dollens at D.L.Dollens@sms.ed.ac.uk

uDfift: app & Google Earth project tracking

manifesTWEETS • coming to your mobile phone


manifesTWEETS • Design, Nature / Design as Nature
Follow Twitter = manifesTWEETS

First hearing of the Japanese mobile phone novels a few years ago, and wanting to use cell phones for design work and classes, I began to think about using the more directed, though more restricted, format of Tweets for class texts. The intention was not to fully run a class or stand-alone text in Twitter, but to use the Tweets as points of contact, relating back to a fuller suite of apps. The Tweets, could communicate quickly, be collected as a full text on a corresponding site, be linked to discussions, comments, and tutorials while serving as a site for eLearning 3D design and software.
This is the first run — the design tutorials will follow later. Beginning 1 November, for 30 days a design manifesto will be TwitterCast. The Tweets will be collected on a website where animations, like the one above, will be based for each of the 30 points, and eventually linked with drawing and fabrication lessons as they evolve. One of the goals is to test Twitter as part of an eLearning suite of free technologies.