Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Hi Michael
Whats the build quality light? does it look like it will stand up to being used?

Jon

May I just groan :-) Good to see you here bob.

[typo likeliness alert I had to retype this 3 times due to browser and OS crashes :-) ]


Hi wolf, no problem. I know the Palm platform is fadeing away (a pity as I knew the API pretty well). As to who cares, well the existing user base arent too happy at having to change platform, but I guess StyleTap will clean up from them. I tend to see things from a Palm perspective as thats the platform I worked with most in the past and the community of developers I communicate with have mostly been from the PalmOS world.

There were in the early days a lot of things about small device usability that Palm got right (I think more accurately Jeff Hawkins got right)that others have yet to manage or comprehended(hello microsoft).

The business model seemed to work for a few years (some very successfull games companies), but the market and platform changed.  Not always for the better, I sometimes think PDAs didnt get better, just able to do more things badly!
 
I still want a small phone (hence small screen) and a decent screen for other things, but dont want to carry around an eeePC sized device all day.
So do I want a smartphone, or iPhone.....err no.  I have a collection of both phones, smartphones and PDAs of various flavours (no I didnt ram-raid a carphone wherehouse,) but still carry Palm TX (coz it crashes slightly less than any of my WinMob devices) and a small phone (because it doesnt take  minutes to reboot if it crashes like any smartphones Ive tried)

I now use index cards as much as my PDA. (they have better battery life, the screen is readable in sunlight, syncing is a pain but at least its not activesync). If the apps I use most were available in adequate versions for WinMob I might use that device more. In fact if Styletap could hotsync that would possibly move me to a WinMob device......


a thought.....
.........market fragmentation also means we have some choice  :-)

Good to have some discussion in here, we really need Graham to be contentious about something to liven things up a bit :-)

I am surprised firestarter has not been in here for a while....


Jon

Yes indeed it all worked fine when there was a clearly leading platform or two...(eg PalmOS) but then things became less clear. Even for Palm developers things started to break down...Palm kept changing the api, and doing generaly brain dead things like handling the same thing (eg the 5 way nav button and popup graffiti area) differently on each device.

For mult-platform interoperability Java was going to save us all....but the mantra of write once run anywhere soon became write once, then debug and customise it everywhere. (no-one has mentioned WAP yet.......)

I much prefer native apps that do not require network connectivity to run  and there are still niches where native apps are unavoidable eg, for those applications that need to be used even when there is no internet available (in some hostile industrial environments for example) and industry or customer specific applications. 

But the assumption that the network will be there is the current thinking , I guess this is Palms thinking behind Nova.

..and it would help things along if the uk charges for data on phone networks were not as high.

Main drawback is once the network is down, there go  your applications (assuming you keep the data on your device).

For that reason alone, I'll be hanging on to some sort of non-network reliant device for as long as I can.(perhaps I should bulk buy some Palm Z22)

So is the PDA dead yet? not quite, but without any applications to eat its going to fade away.....
Perhaps, had it remained a simple device that did a few specific things well (Like the Palm IIIx) it would have faired better....


Jon

may be of interest...
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/

Certainly from reading the developer lists many of the names in selling mobile software having been giving developers a hard time.
apparently....on average the resellers took >40% of the cost of an app and often would not allow direct contact details for developers to be shown with their products.

Reminds me somehow of the music industry giving less and less to the actual provider of the product.....

Also last week Motricity (aka PalmGear) cut staff http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/2475416/


Jon

I dont think F-S ever gave the device long enough to iron out the problems. The fact such a device even made it to market is a credit to somebody. After  all other manufacturers had shunned the education market in the UK.

The machine it was based on was a good PDA, that seemed to work well. The built in GPS could have been used to enhance so many applications.

The aspect of such a project that always worried me was the aging of the device. Within 12 months or so the device would seem "old hat" to students and you can be certain that any device that followed it would not fit into the rugged-ised case :-). Sealing the case was a bad idea, I wonder how much of the screen alignment problem is due to the case putting pressure on to the digitiser.

Your observations on battery life reflect my comments about PDA designs in general on one of the other forum threads today.
 
But these are pioneer times to an extent, dont be put off by bad experiences with one family of device.



 

Hi Philip , I know your name from somewhere, cant think where...... anyway welcome to the forum..

(the naming problem has plagued similar list, the usa list became HMC for handheld and mobile computing. The jisc list www.jisc.ac.uk/pda-edu  retains PDA in its name but also welcome discussions of anything related to mobile learning )

Elsewhere this week Ive seen the term  "multiplatform e-learning".

The various convergences (and divergences) of device and functionality have blurred the lines between devices. However the move to mobility does require different approaches to  provision, design and support of educational materials. (and other things as well)

The forum has proved an excellent resource for lively discussions of how these may be achieved (and indeed how some approaches have failed).


... for me handheld and laptop are two different classes of device. Not least due to the need for a different interface for the smaller screen :-)

But like so many great ideas 'PDAs' suffered from being compared to a similar technology...small laptops. (aka gravity well effect or something like that)

Then the "special" people in marketing departments tried to make the comparisons more favorable, eg gave the device more RAM, more CPU speed, More colours. Result was we ended up with PDAs with pathetic battery life that looked even worse when compared to a laptop, with screens that were unreadable in daylight (oh and gradually got physically thicker* and more unreliable. (the unreliability really did make them more like (ms) powered desktop machines.

I agree with views suggesting that industry fell into (what Palm called) the pc mentality of more is better, more speed, more ram, more storage, bigger screens.

What a lot of people want is something simple that works and is reasonably cheap. The eeePC popularity has surprised a lot of people.

These are interesting times , just need to get a bit more discussion going here, things have been a bit quiet of late.



Jon (and nothing above is meant to be contentious ok :-))

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/palm-emulated-on-the-iphone-finally-we-can-leave-that-iiic-at-h/

...if only they could emulate the battery life of a Palm IIIXe it might actually make me want an iPhone...
 

Jon

The differences arent just the pupils/students pedagogy but culture of the sector.
...the differences in the staff responsibilities are also important.

In HE staff may be more interested (or more likely pushed) into pursuing their research responsibilities  (especially to get their RAE points) and perhaps less likely to spend time looking at introducing any new teaching related technology.

and a preception I have is that... HE  talk about it, form working parties which spawn committees, discuss whether it will work then may eventually try something....meantime schools and FE get on with using things,:-)

I was going to make another contentious statement about teaching in HE but I'll save that for anither day....

Bluetooth posters like this now at Stirling station
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7228905.stm

Lillian talked about this system at hhl last year
http://www.xlearn.co.uk/sms.htm


Jon

I realise my suggestion of members only could be misinterpreted. I only meant limited to members of the hhl forums, not just members of some sub-group.

Yes and no....

Education seems to be so fragmented when it could be better joined up.
The less divisions there are the greater the chance of useful information crossing sectors.....

Industry will  do things differently to schools/FE/HE, so I guess there could be a training/lifelong learning/post compulsory education Forum.

Industry can be a bit paranoid though (not saying education isnt)
but I wonder if its time some of the more interesting discussions were only available to members :-)

An organisation, not far from where I work has decreed that everyone use a new content management system with long-form naming of pages,
such as this.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/electronicsandelectricalengineering/postgraduatestudy/taughtdegrees/electronicselectricalengineering/computercommunications1/

Now putting this in manually or embedding it in an email is going to be interesting. Has anyone seen this sort of trend anywhere else?

Jon

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/28/nokia-trolltech

Could have some interesting implications and potential....

Jon