Re: Comments on Device Description Repository Requirements 1.0

Earlier this week I wrote to Rotan Harahan, who suggested our line of
discussion continue here. What I proposed to him follows.
 
As an Internet education veteran and author, and with support from The
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, I am looking at the potential of
mobile phones to deliver open educational resources. (Hewlett has provided
major funding for the MIT Open Courseware and other Web projects creating
and hosting high quality, free academic content on the Web.)
 
Mobile phones are diminishing the digital divide in developing countries for
business enterprises. The same could be happening for learning.
Implementation of devices will affect how much and how well learning
materials are delivered via mobile phones.
 
My question for this group is: will we have to continue to tailor content
into an increasing splintering diversity of handsets, or will we insist on
and make happen a uniform platform for the delivery of all content. Walled
gardens are the former, html was the latter as the Internet spread. Mobile
devices have not been developed around a common content denominator like
html. Must we accept a future where technical and business fiefdoms
determine content configuration, or can we come up with a content platform
to which the fiefdoms must conform to take part in the medium?
 
I suggest that our bottom line challenge is as soon as possible to create
the mobile device as a content neutral receptor for One Web. On my
GoldenSwamp.com blog I have described and illustrated a Mobilists Challenge
for learning content along these lines.
http://goldenswamp.com/2006/04/27/the-mobilist-challenge/
 
I would suggest to this group, that in terms at least of learning content,
there be these three goals:
 
1. Work in the transitional mobile device present toward a One Web future
where content does not have to be separately created for different computer
formats (PC, mobile, etc.)
2. Establish a content common denominator for the transitional present in
which open learning content can be offered on every handset via every
vendor. (Something nonproprietary that functions along the lines of
FlashLite should be used by all, with no walled gardens for academic
content.)
3. Effect a lowest-end standard and capability for immediate delivery of
content to the simplest phones. (Perhaps that is simply to use texting.)
There are millions of potential learners in developing countries (and
neighborhoods) who now own mobile phones and could use technically low-end
delivered tutorials while they await the One Web mobile future.

Judy Breck
http://goldenswamp.com
212-734-1899
330 East 85th Street, Apt. 1B
New York NY 10028

Received on Thursday, 4 May 2006 20:20:40 UTC