Try, try, try again... success!

Bluetooth and I have had a troubled start. I was able to use built in Bluetooth services for my phone and PC but ran into some problems when I tried to use the Bluetooth serial port communication between two computers.  My hope was to establish a client server communication between two devices much like a student might connect to a on campus service with there cell phone.  I have great optimism that Bluetooth may be the most affordable and most common communication transport for community college students.

Perseverance prevails...

Despite this optimism, the last couple of weeks was making my re-evaluate my Bluetooth goals to the point where I was starting to believe the best thing to do was to leave Bluetooth to a later date and work on some other loose ends with my sabbatical.  but..... I am a stubborn person and my vanity got the best of me and I spend one more morning looking for the "Rosetta Stone" that would provide the missing link in my writing a Bluetooth server in either Visual Basic, Java, C# or PYTHON.  Fortunately, the answer was found and it was a Visual Basic solution (which is the language I am most productive with). The other good news about VB was that I could write my own client device for my PDA to act as the client to communicate with my Bluetooth server.

Classroom Clickers Revised

The one Bluetooth app which seemed to make a lot of sense what the classroom clicker.  Many publishers and content providers have been selling faculty on the benefits of real time class room surveys via class room clickers. Little devices given to each student to capture their understanding of class concepts via games or one minute surveys.  These tools have

 merit but they do cost $ and they get lost, and they have to be handed out and collected..

 What if the student could run a small voting app from their mobile device and send their responses to a Bluetooth server in the front of the room. Bluetooth provides the communication link in this simple client server application. 

I was able to create a BT server (my laptop) and client (my PDA) and create a BT Clicker application.  Screen shots are below and more information on the design can be found on my

 Sabbatical portal (click here). 

BT Server Main Screen 

This screens shows the result of two students sending a response to a question asked by the instructor.

This screen sits on the instructors laptop and displays a running total of student votes. The counters can be reset for other questions to be asked.  

Student BT PDA Clicker 

The student sees something a little different.  I have screen shots of the survey running from a PDA and what would like like from a Smartphone.  What I have created so far only runs on mobile devices with Microsoft Mobile 5.0 or SmartPhone 5.0. The SmartPhone has not been fully tested since the Microsoft Device Emulator software can not emulate Bluetooth and serial communication to another device at the same

 time.  I would need a MS SmartPhone to finish final development and testing. 

BT SmartPhone

The rest of the week is testing...testing...testing....  Trying not to leave a stone unturned.  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone....

Introducing pocketCourse beta

This week I put the finishing touches on the pocketCourse beta.  Since I used MLEX to put together the pages, I also made usability improves on that project also.  I have more written up on pocketCourse along with a screen cast to show how it works. 

pocketCourse underwent a few changes from its original design.  Gone is lesson tabs on video and mp3 and new are tabs for assessment (quizzes and tests) and also a journal tab for students to keep personal notes or a journal/blog for their instructor.  I also did some work on the color scheme and integrated more icons as opposed to text buttons. The user interface is now very clean and I think functional.

Still left to complete are instructions for the Instructors who use it but setting up pocketCourse is primarily just building two xml files and then preparing the html files for lectures, assessments and assignments.  Oh BTW, mp3 and video files can be called from the html and also I integrated the CSS files from MLEX into pocketCourse so there are also some styling options.

The BlueTooth Kiosk maybe a project will be left for now.  I am having difficultly getting two computers with BT devices to consistently communicate in a client server dialog.  The technology here is much less developed for application development than with PDA mobile device programming. 

BlackBerry continues to push for more application development so that it can compete with Apple and Google offerings.  With there new Java tool, I might have a chance to create a BB version of my GCC Mapz program. I left it for dead earlier but I may try to revisit it before the sabbatical ends.

In the mean time, I will be testing and polishing up what I have done so far and perhaps will submit a couple of the projects for presentations at conventions and symposiums on mobile devices and learning.

The economic news continues to be bad for everyone and for Motorola and SonyEricsson who seen to be the most vulnerable to the slowdown. See WSJ story  link for full story.  Mobile device acquisition and new features will be effected by the downturn. 

Catch Up ... (ketchup)

This week has been catch up on documentation and samples. The pocketCourse project code is essentially done so I have been using MLEX (note name change from MLX to MLEX). I have three pocket course lectures done. I need to have completed courses to really test out the concept. I think pocketCourse could have some benefits for home bound students or folks overseas (maybe military).


I am waiting for my new bluetooth usb dongle to arrive from Hong Kong. Great price on eBay but it has to be air mailed from Hong Kong. I think I have proven that a bluetooth kiosk would be easy enough to build and use but with my PDA as the client tester I can not put it though its paces. The new BT dongle on my laptop should expedite the testing.

I don't suspect I will be doing much more on the sabbatical in terms of new development. I need to document and further test what I have done far. I will continue to add to the mobileDot web site and I have been adding some new features to the next version of MLEX. Using the tool for the pocketCourse project has opened my eyes to some new features that should be helpful.

Let me know if you would like to test the MLEX beta.