Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Mobile learning has been around for a while; it refers to the idea of lifelong learning under the guidance of the use of mobile communications devices such as mobile phones, PDA, MP4 and handheld e-book reader devices. With the acceleration of the 3G technology, mobile learning really enables learners to learn at anytime they want and anywhere they want. From Twitter to iPhone, mobile learning has taken a giant step forward. Today on the bus I saw a student checking the discussion board in her WebCT course and posted comments right away. She might have just earned 1% of participation mark for that class! Of course not every student could afford a $500 iphone and $80 monthly cell phone plans with 3G mobile internet access. But I truly believe the yet expensive data plans will soon be lowered just like how the voice plans have been dropped for cell phone users.

What’s happening around the world on mobile learning?

In Europe:

There are government funded research projects on using the portable mobile devices to provide information and learning content to enable learning for those whom are unable to participate in school. The learning content focuses on the interesting topics of the young generation such as soccer, music, etc., as well as to develop their language ability and mathematical knowledge.

In the United States:

Stanford University Learning Lab (SLL) believes that by helping us to stay connected with each the web, the mobile devices today are helping us to fill up the "debris" time. They have developed mobile based language learning modules that involves vocabulary memorization, self tests, repeating excises and much more. They also studies how are these mobile content helping the learners to achieve a better mark in schools.

In Asia:

Mobile devices are much more popular in some Asian countries than in North America. Their 3G network is also more advanced than other part of the world. Asian learners are already using their mobile devices to access rich media based learning contents such as video, audio and flash based learning tools.

Today we installed Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC on Uli's new toy - UTStarcom 6700. It is a pocket PC phone that comes with MS mobile 5.0. The phone has a fairly large touch screen (Vivid 2.8" diagonal, 65K-colour TFT LCD) and a 1.3 megapixel digital camera. The processor speed is 416 MHz, 64 MB of ROM (extendable) and 128 MB RAM.

After the installation, we tested 4 Learning Tools and 3 Pachyderm presentations on this device, guess what? All showed up beautifully in both vertical display mode and horizontal display mode. The learning tools we have tested with the phone are: Timeline tool, Multimedia Learning Object Authoring tool, Character Stroke Recorder tool and Flash Card Tool(Mobile Version). The tests were conducted in the alive mode (no cached or physical files, browsed to the real websites using UBC Campus wireless connection with VPN). Here are a couple of screen shots:

Pachyderm on Pocket PC Phone

Flash Card Pocket PC Edition

Very exciting stuff! One thing noticed is that Pachyderm needs a mobile version due to the screen size makes the text in the presentations un-readable. But overall, the navigation, xml parsing and UI layout all passed the test! Those of you with a PDA, check them out! It's time for some mobile learning (visually).

The first flash player on hand-held devices that support Actionscript 2.0 and XML Socket and Web Service/SOAP API officially released - Flash Player 7.0 for Pocket PC.

Flash Lite 2.0 and Flash Player 7.0 for PPC will push mobile based rich internet application into a new dimension!

Sony announced there will be an official Flash Player intergrated into PSP in the coming month. The player should be Flash Player 5 or later. I just hope it has XML parsing functions. Can't wait to intergrate the learning tools into PSP! Oh, forgot to mention, Sony is also releasing the Chinese Font Set, how is the idea of learning some Chinese while you are playing PSP?

China Mobile published their 2005 financial report today. They pocketed 53.55 billion RMB (CAD $7.9 billion) in the year 2005, an 28% increase compare to the previous year. SMS (Short Message Service) alone gained 24.67 billion RMB (CAD $3.63 billion) in the Chinese mobile communication market. Ringing Tone download service and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) are the other two major profitable services offered by China Mobile.

According to my experience, SMS is way more popular in China than here in Canada. Maybe this is due to the "cheaper" telephone rate and "fancy" mobile service plans we have here.

The world's biggest mobile phone market, China just reached 400 million cell phone users according to a number published by the government yesterday. (Ministry of Information Industry)

The first mobile phone network in China was launched in 1987. It took this market 10 years to reach to 10 million consumers. The number of mobile phones in China surpassed the number of residential phones in the year 2003.

There were 33.8 billion text messages in January, compare to last year's figure, there is a 65.7% increase!

A joint effort between the local television companies and the wireless service providers, Cell Phone based television programs is now spreading out in China. Many Chinese now have an option of subscribe to monthly TV programs which enables them to watch TV programs (mostly news and entertainment programs) from their mobile communication devices (PDA, Phones etc.) any where, any time. Cell Phones like Motorola A780 (like mine) has a built in Real Media player which support streaming and progressive downloading media that belong to the standard Internet formats. Have I ever mentioned about many (over 50% in the major cities) of the public transit systems (Taxis, subway, bus, ferry) have Plasma TVs installed in them and broadcasting TV programs at all times?

Ever since Apple launched their video iPod, Video Podcast started to gain popularity. However, believe or not, the most excited group about this new technology is the Pornography industry. According to a porn web site, it's subscriber downloaded over 500,000 movie clips to their video ipod (a special format, possibly mp4) within 24 hours.

Studies show two out of every five Internet users log into pornography websites on a regular basis. 3% of the overall Internet bandwidth is taken by pornography contents. The Internet based pornography industry has reached 2.5 billion US dollars in 2004. There is a clear indication that this number will increase because the new video Podcasting technology. In the meanwhile, pornography companies have also launched specially formatted video clips for the popular hand-held game device - PSP. Matter of fact, I wonder how is the huge profit driven industry going to improve the video distribution technologies including media repository, media meta-data, wireless media delivery and mobile device media distribution technologies. According to the professionals, people love to be able to carry pornography contents using mobile devices. One thing we should be careful with is there seems to be lack of regulations on the pornographic contents being delivered to pre-mature audiences.

I have been planning to migrate some of our learning tools and Pachyderm templates onto mobile devices over the last few months. But Flash Lite 1.0 is just not powerful enough. Flash Lite 2.0 is coming in 2006 according to the web speculations. There has been information indicating this player is being built based on the Flash 7 engine. This means it should support ActionScript 2.0. I am expecting it should support object targeting, audio/video support, external file fetching (images, media files), and most importantly, XML parsing. In the meanwhile, I believe Flash Lite 2.0 will have a higher adoptions over the mobile phone industry.

A Japanese manufacturer of wireless communications equipment (Maspro), has developed a transmission system that can send Wi-Fi signals as far as five kilometers. The client needs a pair of special antennas to receive the signals from the transmitter from 5 km away. Using one of the two antennas can receive the signals within 2 km. The product is reasonably priced: the 5-km version costs around $5,000. This technology can be used in surveillance systems. Having a spy camera hooked up and receive the signal within 5 km radius that cost only 5 K is quite amazing.

viewing full length movie on your MP3 player is just around the corner. According to website Apple Insider, Apple has begun production of the new iPod Video which could be in stores by as early as the 18th of October 2005 (That's one week away!) Although PSP already has the capability of playing video files but the battery has always been a challenge for the hand held video devices. Hope Apple can make a break through on this new player. What I am really interested is whether this new player will support Macromedia Flash or Flash Lite standards.

Google recently bid on providing 300 kbps wireless Internet connections over entire city of San Francisco. Of course this service will make profit off the online advertisements. Google will have to compete with more than a dozen ISPs to win the contract. Who just said Google is monopolizing the digital advertising industry? Oh yeah, think it was Bill.

Be aware of the ipods, they kills your hearings. The new generation grown up with head sets and walkman/CD Player/MP3 Player are losing their high frequency hearings thanks to the new technologies... I personally have the feeling that after a few days of intensive listening to the MP3 player using ear phones, my hearing really decays...

Went to the legendary "Cell Phone Mall" today and could not resist, bought the brand new Motorola PDA/Media/Cell Phone - A780. Love the phone, some worth to mention features: 1.3 megapixel camera with full-screen viewfinder; Video record/playback and streamed video* playback; MP3 player supporting MIDI/WAV/AMR/WMA, Real and AAC files; Embedded Bluetooth wireless technology; Viewer for PDF and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents; Java (J2ME) MIDP 2.0 with 3D Graphics; Internet access via WAP 2.0, WML, xHTML, HTML (Opera7). Going back to the mall tomorrow to get a 256 MB flash card and a bluetooth ear plug then I will be all set... What else do I need? maybe a portable data projector based on my watch... :)

Sorry for lack of blog lately, just too much to write and don't know where to start...