iBeacons For Good: The Educators Looking To Reclaim Location-Aware Tech

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You visit your local supermarket on a typical Thursday evening. Some minutes later, high above, something winks down at you over a Bluetooth frequency. It’s embedded in the fluro lighting, and before you know it, that app you downloaded last year to find the beetroot aisle finds you. A notification blinks to life on your phone to tell you you haven’t yet visited the non-GMO section! And that prices are down down down!

An increasing deployment of iBeacons by retailers (also just called beacons or ‘motes’ in the non-Apple world), are the reason for this. And the next popup, and the next.

So what are they? Well, iBeacons are nothing more than an always-on broadcasting spot that calls out: “hey, here is my universally unique identifier!” to any Bluetooth 4.0-enabled device that may be listening. And if you have a recent iOS device with Bluetooth turned on and an app installed from the owner of that iBeacon? Boom, magic happens.

Well, for the retailer anyway.

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As mobile phones have become our must-carry gadget, and as location-aware smartphones have replaced our Nokia and MOTORAZR phones of yore, the extra data that our devices collect about us has become of interest to all kinds of organisations – just ask the NSA.

For retailers of course, information such as where we have and haven’t been in a store? That data may provide insights into which physical areas need sprucing up.

Or, knowing the contents of a shopping list you type into their app? That can help them look at data from a wide set of users to help keep certain products in stock.

Sound creepy? Well, this could actually be a good (or at least neutral thing) for consumers. Really, they are increasing their efficiency and ability to make money thanks to your activity. It’s a monetising of consumer behaviour on a whole new level, and if retailers are not careful, they’ll see a mass revolt. Shoppers will just turn off Bluetooth altogether in order to keep the pop-ups at bay.

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But there is another field where iBeacons are being deployed that serves as an example of this technology being used for good and not for gain. Savvy educators in schools that have already deployed digital devices have been evaluating the tech since late 2013, to see how it might serve to enhance student learning.

News of Paul Hamilton’s first ever use of iBeacons in a school hit the web earlier in 2014, and this triggered quite a wave of interest in the ed-tech world as well as in the general media.

Since then, there has been a gap in time as other schools and developers have been working hard to develop similar location-aware learning projects on a bigger scale. I myself am part way through developing an app to support professional development training of teachers with Crowdsify, but it takes time.

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However, the waiting period to see which schools will be next is over. A major project was announced last week involving a partnership between Australia’s largest independent school (Hailybury), a private school in the UK (Bryanston) and Specialist Apps. This agreement will see the already-used eLocker software used by these schools to support students use of iPads.

Combined with augmentation by iBeacons, this will give teachers a contextual trigger for curating learning content and experiences inside an already successful and familiar tool.

The tech behind this project was first publicly detailed at the recent EduTECH Australia conference in Brisbane which was attended by Reckoner. Geoff Elwood has more (including the objectives) in a detailed post on LinkedIn.

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Almost at the same time, we have another UK School who are launching their own project. Titled iClevedon, it leverages the work of a student developer to add iBeacon support for the schools digital handbook. In addition, location-specific triggers and notifications will make the very act of moving around the school an interactive experience.

Finally, they are also using their back-end file management system (Foldr) to allow the beacons to trigger access to content for students as they need it. You can view the iClevendon launch video and follow them on twitter for updates.

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The learnings from all of these projects are also contributing to a chart being created to map iBeacon use cases against the SAMR model of Dr Ruben Puentedura [PDF]. This model addresses constant technological change with a detailed framework of how technology can be implemented in ways that actually bring about productive change.

The chart under development will provide a big picture view of where everyone is starting from with using iBeacons for educational gain (eg. generally just substituting iBeacon use for a previous almost identical tool) and what is possible in the future in terms of aiming for deployments where iBeacons allow learning tasks to be totally redefined.

And who knows. One day, some of the students in these early deployments may just grow up to re-invent the ways in which technologies like iBeacons can be deployed…