David Waldorf for TIME
Today is a historic day in many ways. There is the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the 25th anniversary of Tetris and the launch of the Palm Pre Smartphone in the USA.
I am thinking for quite a while now about the potentials that Smartphones have for education. So in honour of the Pre (I can’t wait until they launch it in Europe) lets talk about Smartphones a bit.
Quoting the Time Magazine
Putting a Net-connected computer in everyone’s pocket is expected to be a sensationally lucrative business. The planet pullulates with some 4 billion mobile phones, after all, and Palm says only about 10% of them are smart phones. During the next few years, that number may reach 50%. Morgan Stanley Research even described the migration to Internet-connected mobile devices as “one of the biggest opportunities in the history of the technology industry.”
This is a huge market! And this does not consider that even more mobile phones will be on the planet in a few years.
For China, India or the African countries it is much easier to build up a mobile net than classic landlines. Even today there are much more mobile phones available there than classic phones. So it seems to be logic that people there will sooner or later use those mobile devices to connect themselves to the internet.
Right now creating applications for Smartphones like the iPhone is complicated. You need to learn how to code for this. And for most of us teachers it is nearly impossible to sit down and learn how to code a complex thing like an iPhone application. But the market is huge! There are over 50.000 applications available for download at iTunes and the number is growing. Those applications reach from iFart to vocabulary flashcards.
So what if there would be a Smartphone that allows a teacher who can build a website or blog to write an application with the skills he already has. Well, look at this:
The bigger idea here is that WebOS is designed to simulate the Web itself. In fact, anyone who can build a website can write applications for this platform, which is why Rubinstein expects a flood of Pre apps shortly. “The user environment in WebOS is a website,” Rubinstein says. That’s a powerful hook, especially if you believe that the Web will continue to grow relentlessly.
This can develop into a huge revenue stream for e-teachers. And as we know, new standards are quite fastly set in the IT industry. What has been Sci-Fi some years or even months ago (multi-touch) is today seen as standard.
So if application development is so easy on one Smartphone device it will be maybe even easier tomorrow on others.
The possibilities are endless. I think in a short time you can even visit a virtual classroom on your Smartphone and have your online class.
There are also rumors that there will be a new iPhone, soon. And with the return of Steve Jobs by the end of this month the “battle” might heat up.
Read the entire Time Article over here.
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- The Proof that Language Learning Communities are the most efficient way of learning right now
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