Activities / Projects

vetConnect

Background
This vision is the next iteration in the mobile learning concept that is being researched by LIVE.  The first iteration produced a product called ‘myPad’ and lots of research findings, which have shaped this next vision.

Overall Purpose
We are envisioning a community "noticeboard" system to record, share and discuss thoughts, questions and files (pictures) which can be sent from mobile devices, providing a method of getting feedback from others in the college (especially useful for students) and providing a way to notify a group of an event or an interesting case (especially useful for staff to communicate directly with students when they are not present and not at a computer).

• Post to your own noticeboard, either publicly(within the RVC) or privately.
• Post to one or more specific community noticeboards (for example "Cardiology", "Lambing", "Anatomy of the head").
• Create new community noticeboards.
• Be notified whilst on-the-go (by SMS/MMS) of posts to noticeboards that you are "watching"' - if your phone is compatible and the post is not too big you will be sent the entire post.
• New posts can be created from a standard mobile phone i.e via SMS, MMS, Shozu, or via the web interface, or by Email.
• Search noticeboards.

Concept
A number of community noticeboards are setup, these include for example the noticeboard for 4th year BVetMed students doing soft tissue surgery, or radiology or large animal medicine, or 1st year students doing anatomy.

• Users can visit any of the community noticeboards online and make new posts, view existing posts and have the option to "reply".
• Users can visit any other users noticeboard to view their personal posts, including any replies to them.
• Users can choose to add any noticeboard to their favorites list and optionally be notified of any new posts to the noticeboard via their mobile phone (SMS or MMS) or by Email.
• When there is a new post on a users favorite noticeboard (that they have chosen to be notified) they will be sent a message via their chosen method containing the actual post (to which they can reply) or just part of the post if the content of the post is too large to send via the chosen method (SMS limit = 160 characters, MMS=limit may be imposed by phone).
• # All posts made by a particular user to any noticeboard, can be viewed by selecting an option on the users noticeboard
• Users can choose to make a private post to their noticeboard, which only they will see. Optionally by using the web interface the user can choose to make these private posts public or repost them to a community noticeboard.
• Users can post to each other and these will be stored in their noticeboard as a private post.
  
  

Sponsorship
Orange UK are sponsoring this project by covering the costs of all SMS and MMS messages sent from VetConnect.  Orange has also provided us with 30 devices, with data contracts, for the myPad project which may also be used at some point within this project.  The RVC and LIVE would like to thank Orange for their continued support.