EBL on your iPhone

EBL (Electronic Book Library) titles can be downloaded to the Sony Reader, but now also EBL’s new reader is already accessible on an iPhone and iPod Touch?

Users can access EBL titles on their iPhone or iPod Touch through the standard EBL interface. In fact, EBL's online reader will render the full book in just about any mobile browser.

And news just in… downloading EBL ebooks to the iPhone/iPod Touch is soon to follow. Adobe have just announced a partnership with Stanza Reader, the reader application designed for the iPhone. Read more on the EBL blog

This is really setting the scene for a mobile learning future.

Edith Cowan University (ECU) has had the whole EBL catalogue loaded into its OPAC for 2 years now. In this demand driven acquisitions model, our users have book choice within their control. Budget permitting, of course.

Australian unis on iTunes U

This report on ITWire gives some background on the involvement of six Australian universities in Apple’s iTunes U project, whereby academic course content is being provided free via iTunes.

The Aussie unis in this project are: Australian National University, Griffith University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Melbourne, the University of Western Australia and the University of New South Wales.

Other new participants include the Open University and University College London (UK), the University of Otago (New Zealand), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland).

MIT and Yale started providing free recorded lectures and other content via Apple's iTunes U service a while back. To access the iTunes U channel go to the iTunes store and there it is.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and whether the quality of the content being made available, meets expectations.

Read more at the UNSW and Griffth uni websites

UNSW launches iTunes U channel

Griffith in tune

A glimpse of the mobile learning future?

Picture this, on day one at Orientation each university student is handed an Apple Iphone which contains all their course ware, contacts, and everything they need to progress through their studies.

Trevor Bennett, ECU Instructional Designer, and resident “podcast guru” alerted me to this report on the future of MLearning from Abilene Christian University (ACU), Texas

Follow the link to the YouTube videos, which give a glimpse of the mobile learning future when “every student, faculty, and staff member is connected"

The videos track their progress over 2 days.

I noted that no mention is made of accessing the online library on the iphone, but maybe these students leave that to week 3 when the panic of first assignments sets in… ;)