Cambridge Training and Development (CTAD) are an independent educational research and development company with more than 20 years of experience at the leading edge of policy development and implementation.
The Media Board was originally developed as a pilot study aimed at helping children with learning disabilities use technology to improve their learning experience and learning abilities.
Learning may be a matter for individuals, organisations, institutions, societies or industries. In each context it retains common features but will take different forms and be experienced in different ways. There is no single formula that will guarantee that learning will be relevant or effective. There are many different issues and ingredients to be identified which in turn will provide the most appropriate solutions. CTAD approached LShift to help them produce a crossmedia but predominantly mobile application targeted at young people with learning disabilities.
Together we designed the 'Media Board' which is a learning system that allows a tutor to set up a game based on a town (or other location) map. Players of the game (the students) can upload media (pictures, text, audio) to the game from their 'rich media' phone. During the upload, the media can be associated with a location on the game map. The system can be used in a number of ways to create trails, treasure hunts or similar games. Students, tutors and observers can view the game in different ways:
Clicking the icon will play the media and give details of who uploaded it and when. The following is an example of the gameplay:
The young adults who have been involved in the trials are
Initial activity focused on investigating this dynamic audience. We are continuously watching and updating our research according to the technologies that emerge for use as mobile-learning delivery vehicles.
EJB, J2EE, Java, MMS, SMS