Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Now that's I call exciting!

Google Gears released for mobile devices

That means the old sometimes-connected idea can be extended to mobile web applications. Some of my comments on why native mobile applications are still necessary in this thread are therefore pretty much becoming obsolete. If you can devise a smart mobile web site to do a lot of the hard work at the server-side, you can now just save your stuff on the device when you lose connectivity.

Of course you can do that with installed applications (and you still have to install Google Gears once), but it brings together existing web applications and mobiles.

It's only on Windows Mobile so far, but soon to be released for Symbian and Android, I expect.

Very good indeed.

Wolf.

Just for completeness, here's a current post by Michael Mace, acknowledging some of the criticism his 'Mobile applications RIP' article raised.

Lots of things to consider in this debate. I'm an avid reader of Michael Mace's blog and I think he usually gets things spot on, but on this occasion I don't agree entirely. What kind of meaningless graph is that in his article, to start with? 

It's slightly early to write off local applications on handheld devices, just by citing people who used to publish Palm applications. Jont, you're not going to like me for saying this, but who cares about Palm these days? Clearly Mace doesn't any more, and their market share and spread amongst users is really not significant, at least not here. PDA software in general is quite a niche business now, just as PDAs are dying out more and more. The innovation is in smartphones (and feature phones), and for those devices local applications still have a big part to play.

The disadvantages of local apps are clear:

• Distribution - Pushing out application downloads is hard, and operators cream off potential revenue (as mentioned)
• Mobile web sites are hence easier to access and promote. Although that isn't entirely true either, considering the recent problems with operator transcoding and filtering
• Huge device/technology fragmentation
• Resulting costs of development

The fragmentation issues has led many people (including me) to believe that true innovation can only happen at the server-side, ie the mobile user just needs a web browser on their device. That's simply because innovative stuff is so hampered by installed platforms like Java etc. BUT, if you believe that the current mobile web browsers can handle all that fancy stuff that would make a learning experience really rich, engaging and useful, you are fooling yourself too. Yes, the browsers are getting better, but the idea of 'one web' that is the same for desktop and mobile, is just as unrealistic at the moment as building a business model for selling Palm applications.

Some very experienced people in the mobile space have posted their own observations on this theme for a while now (like Barbara Ballard, David Beers, Enrique Ortiz) and although you may say that they are mobile application developers, so they have a vested interest, they also work on mobile web products a lot.

As you point out, there is still massive scope for non-networked applications, and especially 'sometimes-connected' ones. As Tom Hume says, deep integration with the device is not going to be possible with the browser (heck, it's not even possible with the desktop PC, that's why there are new things like Adobe AIR, Goggle Gears etc: to have offline capabilities as well as online) and in my opinion, to achieve exciting mobile learning/creating/collaborating, you will need that.

I take your point, Graham, about the 'rest of us' being empowered by using simpler technologies to build web-based learning and not being excluded by the hardcore developers. But the notion that they "don't want" the world of mobile opened up is rather odd - nobody actually likes writing JavaME, it's a nightmare. Maybe Android will provide a better platform and FlashLite is maturing too, so if someone offered a better solution to produce properly interactive learning on mobiles, I'd gladly take it. The mobile web doesn't do that at this stage at least.

Add to that the disastrously high and non-transparent cost of using the mobile web and its unreliability. When you haven't got a WiFi connection for your handheld device you are really at the mercy of the nasty operators...

I don't find myself agreeing with Donald Clark often, but I think one of his points is a good one. Despite the constraints it shouldn't be too difficult to produce simple, interactive and fun m-learning applications. But there aren't many around, are there?

Wolf.

Could you give us a bit more information about that?. Not doubting your colleague, but what they're describing is not really possible.

To receive an SMS message, the shop would need your colleague's phone number, which it is very unlikely to have, unless they consented in some way. What I suspect is happening is that they are receiving Bluetooth messages ("Bluecasting", which is actually a company) which will be fired indiscriminately at any device in the vicinity with Bluetooth visibility switched on. There are various providers of this sort of service for events, shops etc. For marketing people Bluecasting is clearly very exciting, although it doesn't havea great reputation as you can imagine - it is quite intrusive and since it's not authorized by the user, it can be perceived as very annoying.

Motion-triggering could be involved (as in a sensor checking that there's someone in front of the shop window), but it's probably more the Bluecasting device scanning for open devices. Their range varies, but it's obviously not very long.

Wolf.

I think it would be very useful to have some gentle distinction between formal and informal learning. Sometimes discussions get a bit confusing and needlessly controversial (like here), because some members equate Learning = Schools, when that may not be everybody's focus.

I see what you mean about the education (ie public sector) and industry conflicts, but a complete separation wouldn't be beneficial to the exchange of knowledge on this forum.

Wolf.

Graham,

Here's my chance at last to completely and utterly agree with you! 

Everytime I walked past a stand at BETT that was flogging some obscure new proprietary device, handheld or not, my heart sank. For many suppliers there's clearly more money in kit than in software that would work on a range of (consumer) devices, but it's such a counter-productive and antiquated approach, it's depressing.

There is so much scope in using what the kids have in their homes/pockets. It just needs a bit of imagination - and funding (rather than a huge pot of money for *sigh* hardware. Yes, I know I'm simplifying that particular project, but why not spend some money on what to do with all that kit?

Wolf.

I agree with your assessment in terms of portability, price etc, but then again the education sector was probably the very last thing Apple had on their target audience list for the Air. This is a shiny presentation tool and plane-using corporate creative directors' machine, not a competitor for the OLPC, don't you think?

My main reasons for probably not getting one (although I've been waiting for this to replace my PC laptop - it's going to be the plain old Macbook 13" for me now):

- You can't change/replace the battery.  Needs to go back to Apple for that.
- One USB port, meaning I have to carry a hub with me most of the time. And no ethernet port - believe it or not, I don't have WiFi at home, so that's another ugly adapter plug for me.
- Although I don't really mind not having an optical drive, I find it intriguing that they point out how great the screen is for watching movies. That's digital movies you bought from the iTunes store, presumably.

But then again, there's that beautiful multi-touch trackpad...!!

Wolf.

Oh yes, I like the Chumby too.

If you're a Flash developer, you can really easily build your own 'widgets' and basically hack the thing to bits (in a good way). Should be great fun!

Slightly worrying that they're still not really finished though. They're announcing the 'full' launch for early 2008 - that's a full year after the first proposed launch date as far as I remember. Serious deadline shifting going on there.

Wolf.

There probably won't be a FlashLite 3 release for Windows Mobile at all. Says Bill Perry from Adobe. Here we go again...

W

Michael, since you asked for the Flash Lite 3 developer release, you can get it from Adobe Labs. And it looks like it (kind of) works on many Nokia S60 ED3 FP1 devices. Joy.

Wolf.

Right, now I get it - slight confusion here. The product I meant was FlashAssist from a software house called AntMobile - not "Flash Ant", as I wrongly called it. "Ant" is of course a well known Java build/compile scripting language, but nothing to do with Flash wrappers for mobile devices at all. OSFlash have a few projects which extend the 'ant' language to compile SWFs, but that's something entirely different.

Phew - I hope that clears things up. My mistake for posting a wrong product name and sending you on a wild goose chase.

Wolf.

Not sure what you're pointing at here. OSFlash has some great projects running, but what is 'open ant'?

W

Oh, none yet. We're talking about the launch of an 'alliance' here, it'll be a long time before any real devices hit the market. Q3 next year at the earliest, to be exact. ;-)

W

Michael,

If I understand you correctly, your question about applications to launch Flash directly goes back to the beginning of this thread. There are several 3rd party 'wrapper' applications that let you embed your Flash 7 for PPC file in a .NET (C#) application including installer. That means you just have to tap on the application icon in 'Programs' (or wherever) and it will play that SWF full-screen on your device. You don't need to embed it in HTML and it won't interfere with Flash Lite if installed on the device.

A probably incomplete list of these apps:
- MDM Zinc
- Handsmart Flashpack
- Flash Ant
- Janus

They're all commercial programs (and at times a bit pricey for what they do), but it's great to have your Flash app running seamlessly on the device. Some of them also provide additional scripting to AS to do device-specific tasks.

As for Flash Lite 3, I didn't actually sign up for the developer release back in August, because I don't have a Nokia N95 to test on. I'm sure it runs on other S60 Edition 3 FP3 phones, but they said at the time that the N95 was the only guaranteed device. Rubbish. So I'm holding out for the first 'proper' developer version.

Wolf.

Fun, isn't it? Nokia's (Symbian) lead in handset sales worldwide is big, so it will be interesting to see if Samsung, Motorola and HTC will use the Google OS to catch up. Motorola in particular has been struggling so badly recently, they need to do something.

Whatever is going to happen to Windows Mobile, now that HTC is openly supporting a different OS? They were the main driver of WM into people's pockets for the last few years. Quite apart from the obvious thing that Google will be aiming at a desktop OS soon too, Microsoft must be getting a bit worried.

Good analysis (as usual) here. And Android, the open development platform for the Google mobile OS, looks good already! Quite unlike that farcical iPhone developers offering.

Update: A lightly more skeptical comment at MobHappy. Another good point that I'm always pondering: Why is Google's stuff considered 'open'? It's free, but that doesn't make it open.

Wolf.