One of the goals for my sabbatical is not to reinvent the wheel in regards to mobile apps but to make creating content for the average faculty developer, easier. To take existing technology tools and software and combine, simplify and integrate. To this end, I have taken the findings of my first three weeks of work on thin clients and created a tool called mLearning Experimental 1.
It is a simple and very controlled html editor that hides from the author the technical settings in html and CSS necessary to display a web page readable on both a PC screen or a mobile device screen. As the screen shot shows, I have the same content on two different screens. This meets one of my goals which it to have a tool that allows faculty to create a page once and let the student view it from either a PC or mobile device.
Mobile page Screen Shot larger view
The program I created to accomplish this is almost completed testing. I have a few features I need to add before I can make it available to download. Anyone who would like to test it out shout let me know via email or a comment to this blog.
Next Up:
For this week I am going to move in to thick client projects where I have a campus map application that can be downloaded to smart device. The Microsoft .Net version is one I started earlier and is near completion. I will be porting the same application to both Google Android environments and the Java Mobile environment. With thick client, the entire application is downloaded to the phone so Internet connectivity need not be a requirement.
Food for thought:
I am investigating mobile technology primarily as a secondary source of content for the student. With the current state of cell phone tech (not all cell phones can run thick client apps or do not have access to the Internet), I can not assume all students have the accessed needed to make this the primary delivery mechanism. How long do you think it will take for all cell phones to have Internet access as a part of standard cellular plans? If you have a guess let me know and also go to my web site and take the mobile app survey on the top right corner of the web page.
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