This one's a recent article by Ross Dawson about trends in location-based mobile social networking. Included, too, is a link to an excellent TechCrunch summary on the state of location-based social networking apps on the iPhone.
If you're not familiar with the concept, think: your cell phone with a google map showing where all your friends are at this moment. It can also show people who--or things and locations that--match a profile you complete about yourself and your interests on a related online service.
Highlights from Dawson's article about trends in location-based social networking:
- The advent of next generation phones including the iPhone combined with people’s familiarity and engagement with social networks means that the space is – finally – ready to take off.
- The original location-based social networking application(s) (were challenged with the fact that) very few phones had GPS, so the location of each phone had to be determined by cell tower triangulation, giving an accuracy often not better than one kilometre.
- (In contrast) There are two main ways that location-based social networking is taking off today: through the development of new location-based social networks, and the extension of location capabilities to existing social networks.
- There are a variety of iPhone mobile social networking applications...which allows both locating your friends and now proximity dating.
- One of the big questions is who will dominate location-based social networks.
- The likelihood is that existing social networks will predominate. People are likely to actively maintain their profiles on just one or two social networks, so it will be difficult for new players to gain traction.
The reason for my interest is in the topic's similarity to discussions (free linkedin membership requied) I've had recently on the uses of applications like Twitter to support learning. As critical mass develops over time for location-based mobile blogging and networking, I'll be interested to see the innovations trainers and instructional designers can make in the design of geo-integrated learning programs. (Did I just coin a new term? Well, you heard it here first.)
It's kinda happening now.
Geocaching, for example, an activity that's long been associated with outdoor GPS-based adventure and hiking activities, has seen its share of geo-technology's adaptations for learning.
A geo-integrated learning program could, for example, leverage geo-networking activities to, say, online science programs that draw learners to realworld locations while receiving relevant learning content asynchronously from teachers, trainers or program facilitators.
Synchronous multi-site/multi-group field trips?
Taking that a step further, a teacher of civil war history might, for example, synchronously hold virtual field hours. That is, set times throughout the week where she logs in from a remote location to view a map of student pinpoints relative to various historical sites as suggested by a course syllabus. Unlike traditional field trips, students won't have to visit one location at the same time in order to receive instruction. They can be "set loose" to spread out across the Virginia landscape to visit various historical battle sites while the teacher, seeing where they are on a geo map, can interact with her students in one-to-many fashion via an iPhone/GPS teleconference. Sorta like a WebEx meeting, but on the move. And, instead of a PowerPoint presentation as your focus, you're talkin' about the real McCoy.
What do you think? What other scenarios have you seen used for location-based technologies to support learning? As the technology and critical mass evolves for location-based social networking, what applications do you imagine for corporate learning programs?
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