The Learning2Go Blog and Podcast - podcasts, ebooks and news from the Wolverhampton Learning2Go Initiative

Over the last two years, the Learning2Go Initiative has placed over 1000 handheld computing devices (PDAs) into the hands of Primary and Secondary School learners across the city of Wolverhampton. Learning2Go has attracted signficant national and international interest as a pioneer in the use of mobile computers in education. This year the project was awarded a BECTA Award for Collaboration.

This site forms part of a new project to utilise PDAs in an exciting, innovative, and potentially, very powerful, way. A collaboration between the Learning2Go support team, led by David Whyley, and Wolverhampton City Learning Centre, has led to the development of a project with three main components:

• This site - a blog (weblog) - which will be used to facilititate communications between the students, teachers and local authority support staff involved in Learning2Go. Information, tutorials, podcasts (audio files) and ebooks created by teachers, learners, and Local Authority and CLC staff, will be published to the site. All materials will be accessible from a conventional desktop PC as well as a PDA.
• The distribution of a special version of the PocketPC newsfeed / podcast receiving software FeederReader. The City Learning Centre has worked with the software’s author, Greg Smith, to modifiy it for an educational audience. Using FeederReader, information, podcasts and ebooks posted to the blog can be downloaded direct to a learner’s PDA using an RSS feed. Learning2Go schools will also be supported in incorporating the possibilities offered by RSS feeds from news sites, educational sites and podcasts into their everyday teaching practice.
• A number of Learning2Go schools (starting with four in the Autumn Term 2006) will be supported by in-school training sessions from CLC and Local Authority staff in creating their own podcasts for publication to the website.

We are very excited by the possibilities - further details will distributed to schools soon.