Category: hand held learning

Xbox Live Games on Windows Mobile 7

Posted on by John McLear

So I don’t feel emotional about this, that pretty much sums it up..

I think its cool that Microsoft are trying but I don’t believe it’s enough.  Shame though because I think a load of educational games tied into an Xbox live type reward structure would be highly motivating and more motivating than a reward structure that is purely focused on Edu.

5 main barriers for Microsoft:

  1. WM7 has too much catchup to do on android
  2. WM7 doesn’t have a following of developers
  3. WM7 devices wont be as open as android
  4. The Xbox live market is pretty small (compared to Google owned farmville etc.)
  5. Lots of xbox live games just wont translate well to mobile (control/interface issues etc).

Will I be looking to develop some educational games for xbox live?  Nah.  I’d rather stick with Flash/HTML5 games and a free/open scoring/reward mechanism.

Further reading on xbox live on WM7 is available here.

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#hhl09 Hand Held Learning day 1 review

Posted on by primaryt


First presentation of the day by Dawn was great. I didn’t agree with the guy from the second presentation. I then walked around the exhibitors hall, most of which was pointless and confusing as at a hand held learning a lot of devices exhibited were net books which as far as I’m aware isn’t hand held according to um.. Hand Held Learning…..

I don’t know who vetted the presenters but that might need reviewing.. It was good to see the spinny netbook things we have ordered in the flesh before they arrive in the office and also a semi affordable class feedback system (£1600 for a class set)

I didn’t eat/drink at the conference as I went to meet friends/family at a pub for lunch, we came back to see a few semi decent presentations on web2 and mobile learning then it seriously went off on a tangent..
Lots of people who I wanted to meet were there. My twitter was buzzing and I think I gained a lot from chatting with people.
After the conference we headed out for food before heading back to the conference venue to the evening function which we left during the awards ceremony.. The awards ceremony was a joke and I won’t be going again next year. Sorry to say that but at £6 for a bottle of beer and £25 for the best value bottle of wine…
My impression from the conference was that it wasn’t about learning but about money. Everything was incredibly over priced, from the tickets to the exhibitors stands and from the wine to the nibbles. In comparison to #fote09 this was not an inclusive conference..
Time to practice what we preach? Let’s see if BETT2010 is a similar experience…