Yesterday, as I was on a lengthy drive, I was sorting out a possible connecting between Google Search, Google Books and the Semantic Web—>tied to Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity.  I think my brain grew a new wrinkle but whether or not the connections I was trying to make make sense or are part of the scheme is probalby beyond my ability to determine.  But, that observation aside I set out to learn more about Google Search, Google Books, and Semantic Web and present that here and finally take another look at Kurzweil’s Singularity.

First of what what is it about Google Search that makes them unique, how do they do it?  Well according to various sources. Fundamental to how Google operates and even why it does what it does is it’s mission;

And while it is not my intent to discuss the history of Google here it should be noted that:

and another source of information on the number of web pages here:  http://hubpages.com/hub/How-many-webpages-do-you-think-actually-exist-on-the-Internet.

I have been reading Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near When Humans Transcend Biology, and maybe I should say…TRYING to read this book!  What follows are some of my random notes and observation on this book and the concepts, theories presented by Kurzweil, those things which I found significant from my reading of Kurzweil.   Fundamentally this is a fascinating book that is based upon science FACT…everyday that I get up I read something about an advancement in technology that demonstrates that why Ray Kurzweil presents in The Singularity is happening all around us everyday.

We are more dependent upon our technology for our day to day routines than we were 10 years ago … one may even ask if you can live in this world today without some sort of dependence upon technology..and the answer to that would be … no. Even without reading Kurzweil’s book, watching the videos, or reading articles about singularity what he presents is truly evident in today’s society.

So what is the Singularity. Kurzweil defines this as a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid and the impact so deep that our lives will be irreversibly transformed. (pp 7)  Kurzweil sets the date for the singularity, representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability as 2045.

In my perspective what is happening now, and what provides a foundation for Kurzweil’s singularity are the concepts behind artificial intelligence.  I am not a student of artificial intelligence, it is somewhat of a “murky” concept for me.  A web search indicates that artificial intelligence is..AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as “the study and design of intelligent agents,”^[ where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success.John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” (retrieved from  wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence)

Advancements in the field of research of artificial intelligence and brain research will tie the concepts together and provide machines, computers specifically, the ability to do “pattern recognition” which is what are brains are outstanding at doing.

Kurzweil identifies several things that our brains differ from computers  .. a quick summary of these are:

Kurzweil describes Moore’s Law, or the exponential growth of technology.  It is important to note that this exponential growth of technology does not extend itself just to computers, but extends it self to many areas such as development of alternative energy and capturing, for example solar energy.  This theory also extends itself to biology and the field of medicine, extending our life spans, almost everything that impacts our lives…is going to be impacted by this exponential growth of technology.

As Kurzweil describes it..we humans view growth as linear..however that is not the case, growth is exponential.  This is defined as:  “intuitive linear” view of technological progress rather than the “historical exponential view.” To express this another way, it is not the case that we will experience a hundred years of progress in the twenty-first century; rather we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (at today’s rate of progress, that is). (retrieved from Kurzweilai.net  http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1)

What seems to underpin much of what Kurzweil presents is the law of accelerating returns.  The Law of Accelerating returns is defined as:

We can organize these observations into what I call the law of accelerating returns as follows:

• Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. As a result, the
• rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time. Over time, the “order” of the information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases.
• A correlate of the above observation is that the “returns” of an evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall “power” of a process) increase exponentially over time.
• In another positive feedback loop, as a particular evolutionary process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost effective), greater resources are deployed toward the further progress of that process. This results in a second level of exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself grows exponentially).
• Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process.
• Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process. Indeed, the emergence of the first technology creating species resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore, technological evolution is an outgrowth of–and a continuation of–biological evolution.
• A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem, e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach to making more powerful computers) provides exponential growth until the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a paradigm shift (i.e., a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, which enables exponential growth to continue.  (retreived from http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1)

Kurzweil proposes that we can, in my words, reprogram our cells..reprogram our biological “computers” to increase our longevity..can we live forever?  An article from The Futurist magazine...presents more on Kurzweil’s theories and launches a trailer on a movie on Kurzweil The Transcendent Man.   As this article conveys..what makes Kurzweil’s paradigm on The Law of Accelerating Returns and Moore’s Law is that it is based on tracking history of technical change back to the dawn of man.    In other words (my observations) our learning from one technical change to the next has been exponential since the dawn of our history.

So if change is happening as Kurzweil presents..why don’t we notice it, why isn’t more significant..because these changes are somewhat imperceptible to us for the most part.  If it has some significant impact on our jobs, disrupt our routine, or is a technology that we could fix ourselves one day and had to call in a specialist the next… I contend that these changes are not easily identifiable.

There is more so much more to this book…I could never hope to cover it in one blog..my observations are superficial.  What is important or significant to me may be different for another reader.  In the back of my mind remains the thought of how this would impact education and learning….of course Kurzweil’s Moore’s Law and Law of Accelerating Returns will certainly require increased cause and support for the “lifelong learning movement,” support for movement such as Micheal Trout’s “Learn anything, anytime anywhere..”  as well as his Eduit or eSingularity.

Resources on Kurzweil:

Kurzweilai.net

Inteview of Kruzweil by Dag Spicer at the Computer History Museum

This google video of Kurzweil’s presentation at Stanford.

Google Book:  The Singularity is Near when Humans Transcend Biology

The book is available on Amazon.

The 2009 Horizons report covers six emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research or creative expressing for education.  This report was produced by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Institution.  Based upon information and data gathered these are the trends that NMC and Educause have identified as significant over the next one to five years:

1.)   Mobiles and cloud computer  One-two years  already established on campuses

2.)  Geo-everything and personal web  in common use in other sectors but not education

3.)  Semantic aware applications and smart objects  not yet commonly found in an educational context even thought research In these areas is growing

Definitions of each:

1)    Mobile technology:  cell phones, smart phones, I Phones, ITouch

1. Adopted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity and social networking

2)    Cloud computing large scale data farms, large clusters of networked services

3)    Geo-everything “geo tagged/coded data

4)    Personal web:  aggregate the flow of content, rather than simply  viewing it

1. Collection of widgets that manage online content
2. Can configure and manage the ways in which one views and uses the Internet
   1. i.    Explicit defined to the individual=

5)    Semantic aware application

1. Tools that gather the context in which the information is framed

6)    Smart objects:  a set of technologies that imbues objects with the ability to recognize physical location and respond appropriately

1. Knows information about itself

Key trends that impact how and which tech is adopted:  Increased globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate and communicate

• The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.
• Experience and affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those developing education initiatives.
• Visualization tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive. As tools of this nature
• As more than one billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecedented innovation, driven by global competition

My observations on trends:

• Financial constraints due to economy
• Changes in job work demands
• Obama administration initiative
• Rapid growth in distance education
• Changing structure / theories of learning. what it means to learn in social networking

IBM’s future trends report identified the following trends that they term five signposts:

• Technology immersion—immersion of students (using technology for learning)  Driven by mobile technologies
• Personalized learning paths—(personal and varied learning paths)  Using semantic web technology to push the appropriate course materials to a student which meets his/her individualized learning needs. Students are also exerting more pressure expecting more individualized learning to meet their needs in the workplace.
• Knowledge skills—(for service based economies)  The third signpost for the future is a shift in the requirements for workers’ skills toward more knowledge-based competencies—i.e. how information is accessed and how it is used to create new knowledge
• Global integration—(global integration of systems, resources, and cultures,  Advancements in technology have eliminated traditional lines that defined the boundaries of an educational institution)
• Economic Alignment—(education’s critical role in a 21^st century economy)

:

My research in each trend from the Horizon’s 2009 report found the following:

BusinessLink ( www.businesslink.gov.uk ) identifies mobile technology as any technology that provides access to the Internet that is mobile:  cell phones, pdas, laptops, netbooks, gps, etc.

There are many types of content that can be accessed via the mobile device:  podcasts, videos, audio bytes,  live events, pictures, pdfs, documents, slide shows.  In addition to this there are many sites that provide access to resources that best demonstrate how to use mobile technology:

Mobile Learning media:

The author of this blog is “Judy Brown a Mobile Technology Analyst who has been involved in technology for learning for over 25 years and with mobile learning since 1996. She coordinates the mlearnopedia.com site.”

Judy Brown’s collection of mobile learning/elearning resources

Handheld Learning:

The mobile learner

Cloud computing in higher education:

Educause resources

Higher education needs a national computing cloud

Smartschools:

The Ups and Downs of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing basically lets you access software applications, hardware, data and computer processing power over the web. You don’t have to purchase and run software in your computer anymore. The cloud, the abstract physical description of what the Internet can do (personal computer, processor, storage), is there for you anytime, anywhere.

Outsourcing and Cloud Computing for Higher Education

To summarize what cloud computing is, what its relationship to outsourcing is, what areas in the information technology arena are available for outsourcing, and what some of the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges of outsourcing are. It will provide a focused check list on some legal and policy issues to address in contracts between institutions and outsourcing entities and, finally, make two recommendations, one for an internal procedure by which to address these issues and the other for a collaborative approach to some of these challenges from the perspective of higher education.

Next Gen Ed:
Cloud computing is when a company or organization connects many computers to distribute processing power. Those linked computers would be called that companies ‘cloud.’ The cloud pulls information from many computers together and then gives the user the final product. This allows for much faster computing

Personal  Web:

About Personal web:

Wikipedia defines personal web as:

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature. The content can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. Personal web pages can be the entire content of a domain name belonging to the person (which would then be a personal website), or can be a page or pages that are part of a larger domain on which other pages are located – an example of one such larger site is GeoCities.

Personal web  pages:

Personal Web Page is one published by an individual who may or may not be affiliated with a larger institution. Although the URL address of the page may have a variety of endings (e.g. .com, .edu, etc.), a tilde (~) is frequently embedded somewhere in the URL

About.com  Personal web tools

Information on how to build your own personal Web site from scratch. Create your site with or without HMTL and other Web site codes. Learn how to use layouts, colors and graphics to design your Web pages. Find out the do’s and dont’s of Web site design so you can create great looking Web pages and an easy to use Web site.

University of Florida’s Personal web pages server:

http://usfweb2.usf.edu/university-communications-and-marketing/marketing/web-services/personal-web-pages.asp

Personal Web Pages

USF provides student, faculty, and staff with their own Web pages. These Web pages, as permitted by the university or individual departments, are not included in the Web guidelines but are subject to the guideline located in the appendix I “Personal Web Pages” at the end of this web page.

Cornell University decommissioned their personal web spaces because of so many other alternatives:

University of Minnesota personal web spaces:

Duke personal web space

Personal web tools:

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature. The content can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. Personal web pages can be the entire content of a domain name belonging to the person (which would then be a personal website), or can be a page or pages that are part of a larger domain on which other pages are located – an example of one such larger site is GeoCities. Another example would be a student’s website for school. Personal web pages are often used solely for informative or entertainment purposes. Defining personal web page is difficult, because many domains or combinations of web pages that are under the control of a single individual can be used by the individual for commercial purposes, ranging from just the presentation of advertising, to electronic commerce: the sale of goods, services or information; in fact eBay began as the personal web page of Pierre Omidyar. ^[1]

Wikis:

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

Personal Wiki

What is a PersonalWiki? It’s like WardsWiki, but it’s yours. It can be:

• a free-form database
• a PersonalInformationManager
• a journal (see WikiJournaling)

blogs:

https://www.blogger.com/start

Free patient blogs:

http://www.carepages.com/

http://www.caringbridge.org/

Make a free website:

Weebly:

What can I do with Weebly?

• Create a free website & blog
• Easy drag and drop interface
• No technical skills required
• Dozens of professional designs
• Free domain hosting

WordPress:

Get a free blog here

http://wordpress.com/

Live journal:

http://www.livejournal.com/

Get your own free blog:

http://www.blogwebsites.net/

Spurz has all kind of free website ideas:

http://www.spruz.com/

Geotagging:   is the process of adding geographical identification metadataRSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names. to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or

Flickr geotagging group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/geotagging/

GeoTagging  metadata:

Metadata makes the difference between a shoebox full of unsorted photos and a nicely-organized album that lets you browse photos of your Paris vacation. It’s the data about where, when and how you captured each shot, and most of it comes from your camera, which embeds the data automatically with every shot.

What is still lacking is the ‘where’ for each photo, and that’s where location-based metadata comes in. Location-

Google is finally adding the facial recognition features you can find in Picasa Web albums to its desktop app. With today’s release of Picasa 3.5, when you add a name tag, it scans your entire photo library and applies that name to every match. If it’s not sure it’s the same face, it gives you the option to apply the tag.

Overview of the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services program (OLCOS) and Open Education Resources

The OLCOS state aim  “at building an (online) information and observation centre for promoting the concept, production and usage of open educational resources, in particular, open digital educational content (ODEC) in Europe.”    According to the report on the OLCOS, Open Educational Resources, Open Eduction Roadmap, published in January 2007 the purpose is to “carry out a set of activities that aim at fostering a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Education Resources—(OER).  The following overview will define the terminology associated with OER and OLCOS, identify the range of sites that provide open education resources, the development of WEB 2.0, Web 3.0 and the benefits and challenges associated with OER.   This report addresses the need ‘to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency based educational framework.”

OER is defined as access to open content, including meta-data that is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners.  It is intended that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favorable free from restriction to modify, combine and re purpose the content, consequently that the content should ideally be designed for re-use in the open content standards.  The development of Web2.0 complimented OER very well.  OER is based upon the collaboration of teams in reviewing and ensuring the quality of resources.  Given that Web 2.0 is various defined in this article by O’Reilly as fundamentally user driven, collaborative, user designer, interactive, and dynamic.  Further definitions of Web 2.0 can be found in Wikipedia, expanded by the advent of personal learning environments which is defined as: systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to  set their own learning goals,manage their learning; managing both content and process,communicate with others in the process of learning, and thereby achieve their learning goals.    Guides such as this Web2practice maybe helpful in further defining the role of Web2.0 in teaching and learning.   “Web2Practice is a site which provides guides to emergent technologies and innovative practice,” retrieved from the website.
OER provide benefits to the following stakeholders:  Instructors, learners or students, and employers
Personal Learning Environments are further defined here by Graham Atwell as recognizing that learning is ongoing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognizes the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations and will not be provided by a single learning provider. Linked to this is an increasing recognition of the importance
of informal learning.

Open education resources and learning object repositories provide access to resources which a learner can use for creating his/her own personal learning environment in order to achieve certain learning outcomes.   OER may include free and open textbook sites, learning object repositories, documentary and video sites, document sites, etc. A list of some of these is as follows;

Open Education Resources:

iBerry is a non-profit making, private website providing information and resources for learners, educators, researchers and anyone else with an interest in Higher Education.

Learning object repository:

Merlot:  a leading edge, user-centered, search-able collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

New Media Consortium maintains this directory of learning object repositories on the web.

Online books and textbooks:

FlatWorldKnowledge: Our peer-reviewed books are written by experts, professionally developed and supported by supplements.  There the similarity to traditional books ends. Our books are free online  in multiple formats (softcover, audio, self-print versions) and open-source so you can modify them to fit your course.

OpenTextbook: Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation

Video:

Top Documentary Films: TDF offers full watchable documentaries and information on documentaries by quoting reviews from trusted sources. In case you decide to buy your favorite documentary film, or you want to get some more information on some of the docs  (documentaries)  there is a store available for that. Documentaries are classified in categories and you can easily find what you are looking for.

The Internet archive: The archive maintains a moving images library of free movies, films, and videos.  This librayr contains thousands of digital movies uplaoded by Archive users which range fromclassic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts.  Many of these videos are available for free download.

Snag films: is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve.  SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web. With a library of over 850 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free.

Virtual reality:

Virtual body: Just found this one today!

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The goal of the project is to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore aspects of Chinese culture and history

Second Life sites such as:  Frank Lloyd Wright Museum,   Sci-lands, Goethe Institute, Caledon, The Tut exhibit, and business maintained sites

Semantic Web Initiatives such as

Folksemantics

Aardvark

Twine

Olnet.org   To search out the evidence for use and reuse of open educational resources…..stated purpose from the website;  the aim of OLnet is to tackle gathering evidence and methods about how we can research and understand ways to learn in a more open world, particularly linked to Open Educational Resources (OER) but also looking at other influences. We want to gather evidence together but also spot the ideas that people see emerging from the opportunities.

This blog posting started as an overview on the use of Twine as a content manager  for education however it evolved into something else entirely.    Twine is defined as a semantic web or web 3.0 tool, given that I started a bit of web search to identify a definition of those terms.

We have had the industrial age, the information age,  and what some have dubbed as the knowledge age..I propose that what we are now entering is the first phase of the Social Everything Age…I just received in the mail a book entitled Socioeconomics, by  Erik Qualman Social Media, Social Networking, Social Learning—-on and on!  Or perhaps we are entering the Semantic Age which is difficult to define as I am not sure that a singular definition of Semantic has been identified yet..but perhaps that isn’t important various definitions of Semantic are as follows:

Semantics is the study of meaning.

Semantics: is of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language

Further searches  on the term Semantic Web lead me to this:

Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of    people and machines to use the web content

For more in-depth reading on the Semantic Web I suggest reviewing A Semantic Web Primer by Grigoris Antoniou, Frank Van Harmelen available in Google Books.

I started this post with a single purpose of writing about Twine.  I am using Twine as a social bookmarking tool, but have engaged in discussions with others which lead me to the conclusion that they found it to be much more.  In the process of using it as a social bookmarking tool I started to join Twines, add items and interact with others. However the single purpose of focusing this posting on Twine lead me on a safari.  I entitle this a safari because In the process of discovering Twine I also discovered Flock and AardvarK!

While I was thinking and planning this post on Twine I was reading about Semantic Tools from a feed in Google Reader and was reading about a Semantic Web tool called Aardvark. I signed up for Aardvark and based upon my personal interests I was quickly connected to a network of people who shared similar interests as me.  Because was researching for this post on Twine I asked my network if they had any experience in using or applying Twine for education purposes, I swiftly receive a response back via Instant Messenger (which is also integrated with Aardvark as an option when you sign up).  That response/dialogue is as follows:

“Based upon the article and my experience in using Twine it works like this:

Example of the Twine Digest:

As you review this posting I want you to be aware that these are things that I put together in a matter of a few hours, reviewed, had a dialogue with individuals and all at my “fingertips..”  I am sure you have had similar experiences, however I am of the generation or background that is amazed by having all of this at hand.

Ultimately this started as a quest to determine the application of Twine to education..I can see that  Twne maybe used for adding content to courses, collabortion and communcation by students a well as bringing experts into the discussion.  I am sure I will be writing more on Twine in the future.

The focus of this entry into my blog is on eTech Group’s June 2009 report on Global Mobile Learning, IPod Touch and Studywiz Learning Environment. I happen to own the handheld Ipod Touch, if you are not familiar with this device I suggest you go here http://www.apple.com/ to find more information. Understanding the use of the mobile device and its application to learning is essential. According to research conducted by the Pew Research and American Life Project the use of handheld devices will be the primary way to connect to the Internet by 2020. Using mobile devices to access the Internet via mobile cell phone access is seen as more possible instead of the use of computers via broadband connections. It is estimated that approximately 4.6 billion cell phones are currently in use. Contrary to this report Brandon Hall Research reports that “by the end of 2009…2.6 billion mobile phones will be in use. That works out to 41 percent of the global population carrying mobile phones by the end of 2009,” (retrieved from http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/mobilelearning/mobilelearning-comesofage.shtml August 2009).

The ubiquity of mobile devices is changing the way we learn as well. The eTech Group’s is a presentation of the application of handheld devices for lean ring. This study addressed several things including studying the potential of handheld devices such as the Ipod for learning. In this study the learning management system or learning environment, Studywiz was used. Information on Studywiz can be found here, this study was my introduction to Studywiz and this is something I will have to explore further. Two school were included in the study, the study was at the elementary grade level.

This study sought to answer several questions, two primary ones are:

How can a mobile device (such as the Ipod Touch) improve our student’s understanding of themselves in a global context.

And…

What impact does movie learning and multicultural text have on student achievement and cultural appreciation.

Several activities were designed for the students to apply in using their handheld devices:

Putting Google links and projects in a blog
Browsing the Internet for research
Synching tunes with Itunes
interviews with local media
Calendar settings
Using video with the Ipod
Discussions in English
Using Studywiz Learning Environment
Quizzes
Audible for Audio Books
Numeracy Web Applications
Dictionary.com
Whiteboard

Students also created their own podcasts.

The Ipod was also used for:

Sending attendance logs by faculty to administration
Immediate communication from one teacher to another
Pushing emails in Studywiz environment
Encourage parents to log-in to Studywiz Learning Environment to read messages and blogs from teachers

Details on Studywiz:

After the class the students indicate increased confidence in:

Word Processing
Studywiz learning environment
Presentation software and Internet

Main activities included:

Researching school assignments
Blogs, wikis, chts
Downloading music and videos
Social Video sites
Increased the use and range of techniques
Increased the use of Internet research
Blogging downloading audio and videos and podcasts

The students agreed, when giving their feedback that the use of technology was important in improving their lives. Some of the challenges that the teachers found in applying the new technology was the need for time in using the technology and changing their pedagogy from that of a teacher centered focus to a learner centered focus.

There are many resources on the use of Mobile Learning/handheld devices for learning on the internet. I suggest you get out your Blackberry,I Phone, Ipod touch and search them out!