Phone update

Looking back over my blog, I wrote a fair bit about using the iPod touch instead of my old Windows Mobile device (a Dell Axim). I moved on again last year, getting hold of an HTC Desire running Android. I love it. I can pick up home and work email, edit or read docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, sync with my Google calendar (I use Touch Calendar - better than the stock app) and - of course - do all sorts of other things like control my Media Center PC or play Angry Birds.

When I teach "future trends" in ICT, I always seem to end up pulling my phone out of my pocket. Today it was real time translation (interpreting really), which is (or was) a hard CS problem.

Amazing.

Android App Inventor and Kodu

App Inventor has been around since summer 2010 and I've been playing with it since then (though recently I've hardly had the time!). I attended the Norfolk ICT Conference this week and heard several inspiring speakers (Ewan Mactintosh and Dawn Hallybone amongst others) talking about games-based learning and students creating stuff - "entrepreneurial learning". I know there are some projects going on to use App Inventor in the classroom but I haven't heard much about Kodu. Having looked at it last night the potential is enourmous: you very quickly create 3D worlds to explore, and add simple event-based control to build up game logic. The game can be played on PC or... Xbox 360. Interestingly, about 10% of my 9 students have an Android phone; more like 50% have an Xbox.

When I get time, I'm going to do something with these great tools.