A Canadian company has developed a powerful new technology to bring media-rich online trainging into handheld computers of learners everywhere.
September 27, 2004 (Press Release) --
Handheld computers such as PDAs are saving thousands of lives in underdeveloped areas like Botswana and Uganda. Information beamed to these devices by satellite provides instant access to diagnostic and treatment procedures to doctors working in remote locations where land-based Internet connections don’t exist.
So far their use has been restricted mostly to reference materials. The kind of media-rich presentation features necessary for effective learning – features such as animation, simulation, graphically enhanced scenarios, video and audio – have not been possible given the small screen and limited memory of handhelds. This has been changed by a new generation of PDAs. Devices like the Hewlett-Packard iPaq, the Toshiba GENIOe and the Casio Cassiopeia are more powerful than many desktop computers a few years ago.
Engage Interactive, an eLearning company in Atlantic Canada, has developed a courseware technology that takes advantage of the increased muscle power of PDAs to make media-rich eLearning possible anywhere in the world.
“Since the beginning, the standard slogan for computer-based training has been training anywhere…anytime,” said John Heinstein, VP of Software Development at Engage Interactive. “The wireless delivery of training through handheld computers finally makes this true.”
Creating an engine capable of developing PDA-ready courseware was no small task. “One thing that helped greatly,” said Mr. Heinstein, “was the efficiency of our existing courseware engine. It separates content from presentation. In other words, content components like the actual instruction are separated from components like navigation, menus, bookmarking and other functionality.”
“Rather than create a whole new system for PDA courseware,” said Mr. Heinstein, “we integrated the PDA presentation features into our existing system. We made some changes to the underlying programming and wrote some new utilities. Now, with just a few changes the same training can be served up as both desktop and PDA courseware.”
“This technology is available on higher end PDAs,” said Mr. Heinstein, “which are becoming increasingly more popular as people integrate learning into their workflow. A couple of years ago, the Stanford School of Medicine set a goal to have a PDA in the lab coat pocket of every one of its Medical School students. Since then the use of handheld computers in medicine has developed into a phenomenon called eHealth that integrates learning, reference and a wide variety of medical tools into electronic delivery.”
“We expect our PDA courseware technology to be especially popular outside North America,” said Mr. Heinstein. “According to the market firm IDC, China has become the second largest market in the world for handheld computers. Mark Perkins at iBIZ claims the PDA and handheld market is exploding in Europe. And Latin America already has more wireless Internet subscribers than land-based. The market for small wireless internet devices is expected to grow to $73 billion dollars in 2005.”
So far their use has been restricted mostly to reference materials. The kind of media-rich presentation features necessary for effective learning – features such as animation, simulation, graphically enhanced scenarios, video and audio – have not been possible given the small screen and limited memory of handhelds. This has been changed by a new generation of PDAs. Devices like the Hewlett-Packard iPaq, the Toshiba GENIOe and the Casio Cassiopeia are more powerful than many desktop computers a few years ago.
Engage Interactive, an eLearning company in Atlantic Canada, has developed a courseware technology that takes advantage of the increased muscle power of PDAs to make media-rich eLearning possible anywhere in the world.
“Since the beginning, the standard slogan for computer-based training has been training anywhere…anytime,” said John Heinstein, VP of Software Development at Engage Interactive. “The wireless delivery of training through handheld computers finally makes this true.”
Creating an engine capable of developing PDA-ready courseware was no small task. “One thing that helped greatly,” said Mr. Heinstein, “was the efficiency of our existing courseware engine. It separates content from presentation. In other words, content components like the actual instruction are separated from components like navigation, menus, bookmarking and other functionality.”
“Rather than create a whole new system for PDA courseware,” said Mr. Heinstein, “we integrated the PDA presentation features into our existing system. We made some changes to the underlying programming and wrote some new utilities. Now, with just a few changes the same training can be served up as both desktop and PDA courseware.”
“This technology is available on higher end PDAs,” said Mr. Heinstein, “which are becoming increasingly more popular as people integrate learning into their workflow. A couple of years ago, the Stanford School of Medicine set a goal to have a PDA in the lab coat pocket of every one of its Medical School students. Since then the use of handheld computers in medicine has developed into a phenomenon called eHealth that integrates learning, reference and a wide variety of medical tools into electronic delivery.”
“We expect our PDA courseware technology to be especially popular outside North America,” said Mr. Heinstein. “According to the market firm IDC, China has become the second largest market in the world for handheld computers. Mark Perkins at iBIZ claims the PDA and handheld market is exploding in Europe. And Latin America already has more wireless Internet subscribers than land-based. The market for small wireless internet devices is expected to grow to $73 billion dollars in 2005.”
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