From Brooklyn Museum - lessons from a building wide deployment

Came across this article shared by Geoff Ellwood at the LinkedIn iBeacons group and found it a fascinating read and one well worth sharing wider. I have to commend the Brooklyn Museum iBeacon team for not only such a persistent effort, but also for being so open in describing what worked and what didn't. 150 beacons is a big project, and it seems they are finding solutions and sticking to their original vision of staying agile.

While many in education are only looking at much smaller deployments at least to start with, there is still a lot that can be learned here: READ

Announcing a partnership with Crowdsify to fuse iBeacons with learning

At the moment everyone involved with iBeacons is experiencing a platform in constant flux and evolution - its an exciting time, especially for educators who see new tools to support linking the wave of digital devices now deploying in schools and universities with real, physical locations.

As I've been experimenting from the learning side with Estimote, Nomi and Gymbal beacons as well as apps like Beecon and Beacondo, so have many developers been working to get new types of apps ready to capitalise on what a well-supported beacon-ecosystem can make possible. One of these developers is Crowdsify who have been active on twitter and especially on the ground in Europe deploying location and proximity services that leverage iBeacons. After chatting with them over the last few weeks I'm now pleased to announce a collaboration project where we can bring their expertise and my education background together to build something new.

It's early days, but our specific focus is looking at how an iBeacon app looks when adapted for educational needs. We want to build something that is at once a first class demonstration of the possibilities of tools like heat-maps and notification triggers, as well as a an app that can be used to directly support classroom and training sessions.

Look out for much more on this project and what we learn very soon...

Massive visual collection of iBeacon related stuff

One of  my go-to places for keeping up with the latest in iBeacon developments is Gary Bass's Pinterest page. Why? One - because the list of pins there is already massive, but number two - because its a collection curated by an experienced fellow-educator who is also a developer working with iBeacons now himself - in other words this site has cred, and yes, you should follow it too!

http://www.pinterest.com/garyb0au/ibeacons/

Passbook as an iBeacon app

Fellow Apple Distinguished Educator Gary Bass of Advaita Digital has pointed me to a discussion about how the Passbook built into every iPad/iPhone can be used with iBeacons: 

"Over in apple communities there is a raging and wide ranging discussion..with a discovery about PassBook and passkit just revealed..

An App is not required to detect beacon(s)..

- could be very useful in schools!

Teachers use MBP as 'virtual beacon' from their projector connected computer.

As student approaches the classroom..or learning space, messages pop-up (recall wifi is not needed for bluetooth).

Perfect for excursions..the imagination begins to go wild!!

But, better yet, no specific App is necessary to detect the beacon.

Details over on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6028034#25277013

(warning!! ..a bit nerdy..so some IT speak will be encountered.."

- Thanks for sharing this Gary! 

Gallery of free stock iBeacon images

As I've been working with my Estimote beacons, I've been creating a series of images to help show what they can do - as I know other educators are also going through the same process, I've decided to make them available as a free gallery for others to use - as long as attribution back to jnxyz and beaconsforeducation.com is given :)

Here is the link to view and download images: iBeacon Stock Images Gallery

You can also access the collection via Flickr.

Video of first school-implementation of iBeacons

ADE and Edtech pioneer Paul Hamilton has deployed Estimote iBeacons at his school and worked with developers to create a first-of-its-kind school deployment. You can read more about his progress via his blog HERE, or watch the video below.

Shared iBeacons knowledge base

COLLABORATIVE CHALLENGE

As is this is a new field, my challenge to everyone is to collaboratively share what we are learning - and to back this up I have created an online Pages document where educators playing in this space can share their knowledge. 

You can view the results of what has been created so far HERE.

> Contact me if you'd like to join in adding to the doc    

Interesting student attendance use for iBeacons

BeHere is an iBeacon app exploring how the bluetooth location capabilities of such a deployment might be used to automate student attendance. An interesting idea, though as the commentators at this iDownload article point out, there are several issues need to be addressed also such as privacy, students swapping devices or deleting the app etc.

5 great iBeacon learning ideas

As we are still in the very early days of exploring the use of iBeacons, beacons and motes in education, I've been scouring the web for ideas and examples to share. Today I came across this short but valuable slidedeck from LearningLab - in it you will find the beginnings of 5 iBeacon learning ideas - enough to trigger some thinking in the right direction on where bluetooth proximity-triggered beacons might take us.

iBeacons - five learning concepts from LearnerLab