Mobile Learning Blog

Audiobooks are a great way to get students reading on the go. No, they may not be reading the words, but sometimes it’s just as good for students to hear the words. And in some cases they can read along with the audio version. There are many uses, but the point being, audiobooks are highly portable. They can be played on phones, mp3 players and some ebook readers. You’ll be surprised at how many audiobooks are freely available online.

Free Audio Books

• LibriVox if you don’t know it already, is the king of free audio books. You can use the catalog to search through their library of nearly 1000 works, all part of the public domain. If you’re feeling generous, you can even contribute wiki-style by recording audio of your own.
• LearnOutLoud.com is your one-stop destination for audio and video learning. Browse over 20,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos.
• Free Classic AudioBooks. Digital narration for the 21st Century. Free classic audiobook downloads in mp3 audio and ipod audio book format.
• Project Gutenburg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. They also have audio books, both human-read and computer-generated.

Buy Audio Books:

• iTunes Music Store
• Simply Audiobooks
• Jiggerbug
• Amazon
• Audible

Say you are a lit teacher, and you’ve assigned a novel for your students to read. Depending on the novel, you may find a free copy in the public domain. For instance, I teach D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in my ENH295: Banned Books & Censorship class. I provide links for my students to download the ebook version for free online and a link to just read it online. But LibriVox goes even a step forward by providing audiobooks for free. I couldn’t find Lady Chatterley, but I did find 6 other Lawrence novels. Here’s a link to Women in Love.

The site provides a brief summary from Wikipedia and links to:

• Gutenberg e-text
• Wikipedia – D. H. Lawrence
• Wikipedia – Women in Love
• LibriVox’s Women in Love Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book – 729MB
• RSS feed · Subscribe in iTunes

Total running time: 25:19:21
Read by Ruth Golding

LibriVox makes reading or listening to a novel on your mobile device super easy, especially with the quick and easy “Subscribe in iTunes” link. With one click the book can be added and ready for sync with your iPhone or iPod. If students have trouble listening to audiobooks, they can visit the About Listening to LibriVox page for help.

Here’s a link for more help with downloading and listening to audiobooks on LibriVox.

Session 2-3: Smart Phones, iPod Touches, Netbooks… OH MY! 10:40am – 11:25am Room CM447

• Introduction to Mobile Learning Blog (5 min)
• Current Mobile Devices and How Best to Use Them (10 min)
• Creating Course Content for Mobile Delivery(10 min)
  • WordPress Blogs
  • iTunes U
• Accessing Course Content Using Apps (10 min)
  • iTunes U
  • Academic Sync
  • eReaders (Stanza)
• Engaging Students in Course Content (10 min)
  • PollEverywhere
  • Posterous

REFLECTION:

Respond via Cell Phone Using Gabcast: Answer the following question by calling 1.866.282.2457. When prompted enter the channel number: 9070 and the channel password: 3341.

Questions: What would be the most challenging part of your course to adapt to learning or what would be the easiest?

Follow-up post to: Creating Course Content for Mobile Delivery

I’m about one semester away from teaching a fully mobilized ENG101 course. What do I mean by a mobilize course and mobile learning? Mobile learning is learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. Mobile gadgets are everywhere, and just about every student has a mobile phone in his/her pocket. Why not take advantage of these learning tools, as like to refer to them?

So this semester I introduced a mobile learning opportunity to my students in the ENG101 class. I created content that could be viewed, read, watched and listened to on a mobile device. Then I created this video to tell students about it. How they take advantage of what I’ve created and to what extent is yet to be seen.