Mobile learning will be big. As part of the trend towards ubiquitous computing it will change our lives.
What happens, for example, when you have uninterrupted access to your favorite sources of information, regardless of time, location, device, or even format? One effect will be to enable situational learning. There’s probably no better way to ensure that learning is meaningful than on a need-to-know basis. Arriving at Beijing Airport? Just find and download the lessons you need to walk you through it, preferably on a wireless, hand-held device. That’s mobile will enable.
Already we’ve been developing the concept in lessons that walk you through the airport, for example, or stuff you might need to know on a visit to the Olympics. Thus far, of course, the audio is simply saved onto your iPod, which is great, but just the beginning. In a few months from now, we’ll roll out certain parts of the service in mobile format, including basic account management, lesson review, vocabulary, and even connecting with the community. After that, it’ll get really interesting. Ubiquitous access I think will lead to ubiquitous learning.
One upshot of m-learning (or ubiquitous learning, or ambient learning, or hand-held learning) will be to create radically new ways to conceive of it. With formal learning, we are bound by the needs of institutions. They decide our pathways, offering knowledge in a time and place, not of our choosing, but of theirs. Traditional education has had an almost industrial feel to it - mass production, commoditization, scale economies where possible. Obviously, traditional education has served us very, but now there are some competing paradigms.
I’d like to know your thoughts on mobility. Do you see a need for it? Is it a key part of the way you now use ChinesePod? How? And how would radical mobility alter the way you use ChinesePod?
And while we’re at it, how do you see m-learning affecting things more generally in the future? Just a simple question!
Ken Carroll
Ken,
I see that my prediction that you would be selected as an official provider at the Olympics (by someone) is nearer than I imagined.
I guess this will be done using mobile phones right? It will be interesting to see how it works. I see either handing out cheap phone sets in conjunction with a mobile operator and/or working with the airlines to capture these customers before they get off the planes. The marketing will be as big a challenge as the technical end. I can imagine how happy you are!
In terms of the ubiquitous learning, part of the challenge will be to create categories that are clear in natural language terms. It looks like John has a head start on that with his new category groupings. You will probably need to work even harder on material for newbies. Heh, you’ll probably have to tackle an “extremely quick start guide to pinyin.”
You might also find yourself competing against talking dictionaries, which may be on the market in force by then. Will people want to learn what to say if they have a handy device that can do it all for them?
In fact, for beginners can your device be any more than a sophisticated talking dictionary?
My guess is that this kind of learning works best on top of a preexisting net. In other words, with someone who already knows a bit and needs to know a little more immediately to complete a task. How valuable will your mini lessons be in a situation where someone’s existing cognitive net (say a good grounding in sounds and tones) is inadequate? I don’t know. As you are so fond of saying, we tie new learning to existing learning.
Of course, I’ve been assuming your market is mostly beginners. This may not be the case.
Good luck. And welcome to the learning device business!
Impact of m-learning will be quite big. In Japan, people already use mobile phone as a device of blogging, shopping or listening music, but not as a learning tool yet.
I guess iPhone will be the trigger to promote this idea in the world. I’m really looking forward to see CPod’s m-learning method.
Mobility would be great! Now I still convert some transcripts and vocabulary on my own to use them on my Pda. But I would rarely use a m-learning service that requires an internet connection - because it’s far too expensive, at least in Germany. I only use UMTS in real emergency cases. Of course there are more and more affordable wlan hotspots, but not enough to call it mobility.
For me true mobility has to work offline, too.
Ken, to me mobility is an essential part of my learning and lifestyle, and a reality today. I have Pleco and ubiquitous web access through my smartphone, lucky enough not to get a Blackberry but still with corporate telco contract and a wifi-enabled device. Only reason I carry a separate mp3 player is partly storage (with 20Gb I have access to all ChinesePod-casts though the 2Gb on my phone would do in practice) but more importantly battery life and some ergonomic aspects, the usage value of a dedicated device basically.
And while I do maintain a parallel spreadsheet of all ChinesePod lessons, I figured it’s a lot simpler to go to your website and check lessons, tags, comments, whatever online, very often on this smartphone.
One thing you could do that’s not rocket science is provide a mobile interface to all parts of the website, not just flashcards. The Opera browser does a nice job of rendering your website but a native version suited to small screens would be faster and more usable.
Oh yeah, and as a few of us have been saying now and again, some kind of partnership / integration with Pleco would really be neat. All of this with today’s technology and minimal effort, no nothing like mp3 smart tagging and such like.
Yv
I’ve always found in my studies that I need to work free from any kind of distractions, in a quiet, familiar space — which means that m-learning doesn’t hold a whole lot of appeal for me. On the other hand, I use Pleco as a reference tool (and arguably thus as a learning tool) all the time at work, on the road, wherever.
Ken,
I work in the mobility field, but I have to say, mobile phones and PDA’s still have a big issue with speed of accessing information. When in front of a desk top, finding a restaurant, or a wiki-entry, takes seconds, but on the mobile, it takes 10 minutes or longer. It has nothing to do with the Cellular network or WiFi (I use both 802.11n and UMTS/HSDPA, it’s the cumbersome format of the pages, and the entry methods that is the problem.
To some extent, I feel the same way about the massive Chinesepod database. It’s hard to find relevant words and sentences when you really need them. In your case, I have this problem already on the PC, and it’s even a bigger problem on the iPod. To be able to use words and key sentences on the fly, while walking around in Beijing, you would have to have a smart way of tagging or structuring the volumes of key information
I use one of the oldest and best mobility devices yet devised. It is a small, spiral bound notebook that fits in my breast pocket. I never leave home without it. You can write in it on the fly for later easy retrieval or you can hard wire it by printing out items that you want to reference and then cut and paste into the notebook. When it gets full, you file it and start a new one. I have notebooks that go back years and years. They are reliable, lightweight, and easily portable. I am still waiting to see something new that is equally good. I also use plain white 3×5 cards for temporary notes. You can also date them and file them and they are very cheap. These devices run on nothing more than self discipline…and they are environmentally friendly
To me, mobile learning means OFF the network! I want to be mobile, i.e., I don’t want to have to be where I can connect.
If you’re talking about connected mobile learning, it won’t be available here at an affordable price for years yet, they charge by the kilobyte-or-part-thereof. We can’t even get fast Internet to our homes, or any Internet outside of the major towns.
If we had to be connected all the time, it would be a mobile network service, aimed at rich people and some countries only. Nearly the opposite of what I’m thinking.
Real mobile learning, yeah, great, bring it on. I’m already doing 95% of my learning outside, in a car or train or during a boring seminar, under a shady tree by the water or walking to town or huddled over the PDA during a blackout, and I feel increasingly trapped by computers and desks and flakey networks. Hurry, catch up.
Listening to the daily podcast on my MP3 is the only mobile learning that I do presently.
Even if I were to invest in a bigger unit (that had a screen and more software options), I cannot see how this is much of an advantage over studying at my home computer in the evening. Unless you are a busy executive, on the road all of the time, there’s limited time during the day to take advantage of mobile learning.
Trying to focus on lessons while riding on the subway, in the car etc. is just too distracting. And of course, studying during work hours would jeopardize my career.
And so, unless you can demonstrate exactly how the new mobile technology will benefit me, it is not a high priority for me.
Mobility would be important to me if I travelled a lot, like I used to. Five years or so, ago, before I moved to California, I used to give networking and Linux courses in Australia (among other things) and was frequently travelling to different cities, mostly around the Eastern Seaboard (such as it is). There, having access to the internet from hotels etc was very important.
Today, I mainly travel from my home in Mountain View to my place of work in Mountain View, so it is less of an issue.
On another topic, where can we comment on the Chinese directors listed on the main page? How can John Woo not be there?
For me portability is more important that “always on” because I won’t be able to be always on (cost, coverage, device limitation, etc). Thus Pleco and Podcast are the biggest part of my learning. What I wish is innovation of audio-based material (because I can do other things like driving). I know CPod likes story-based teaching, but can some audio material be focused in building vocabulary? How about some innovation in drilling and repetition? How about repurposing the premium expansion material to audio format? Situational learning won’t be that helpful for me because 99% of the time my situation does not change
More and more things that used to be possible only through a computer connected to the Net are now becoming available “on-the-go”, and this fact alone has fascinated a lot of people and and attracted them to try using mobile e-mails, hand-held IMing, and watching the news on-the-go. But more often than not, after a while of trying, people find it sometimes too ‘complicated’ to keep on using those services all the time and I’ve seen many people switching back to the ‘old-fashioned’ ways.
Of course there are a huge number of people (including myself) who wouldn’t mind some extra trouble to enjoy a new and better technology, but the key to attract the general public seems to be how to make it *simple* and *easy* to access the services or contents. The cost is the second concern.
And I think this is also applied very directly to m-learning, because however good the contents are, if people can still just grab a book and that’s easier, they will stick with the old way.
I think the main reason iPod is attracting more and more people even in Korea, where there are dozens of all these *major* mp3 player makers who keep coming up with new technology and new designs, is because it’s *easy* to use and the process of updating it is quite simple once you learn how to do it.
So I think the key is 1) how to make people attracted to the idea of m-learning, (but there is already a huge demand because almost everyone now has a high-tech mobile phone that can do everything), 2) how to keep them in the market - everyone would love to try a new thing for once, but not everyone sticks to it.
The biggest benefit of using iPod and podcasts is having everything ‘delivered’ onto your hands and not having to worry about the process. So if the same thing is possible with m-learning(like, a single search/click and nothing else to worry about), an immense success is guaranteed!
I’ve been thinking about this very issue lately. At my university, the professors record their lectures and post them online for the part-time students (many of them work and can’t make it for the lectures). Because I’m a staff member I can listen to all of these lectures, and I’ve downloaded them all into my ipod. The other day I listened to a lecture on Gothic fiction while I was shopping in the supermarket. It was great. What an efficient way to learn! (Granted, it’s probably not as good as actually going to the lecture).
I suppose that I’m not as distrustful as you are of ‘institutional learning’, although I can see what you are saying. I think you’re quite right to be excited about this. People have busy lives and they need to be efficient with their time. I was thinking about it. How long will it be until itunes starts selling university lectures? Could that happen? idegrees???
I suppose the obvious downside is that it is difficult to learn on the go. Personally, I need a quiet and comfortable space to absorb and repeat the information to myself. However, I’m finding that I’m increasingly I use my PDA to record information that I need remember. I use a PDA with Pleco, and I take that with me everywhere. And, even though I live in England, I still manage to find Chinese stuff to store up for later (I have some Chinese friends and a few classes so I guess that helps).
Another downside is that people can be shy about their technology. I mean, if I were in a situation where I didn’t know something, I would feel embarrassed pulling out some kind of expensive looking device to help me. In fact, I would rather stumble through with what I already know. I’m actually quite self-conscious of my handheld technology, and I already feel like a complete geek because I own a PDA. I tend to keep it hidden, and I think if I were in China this would be even more the case. Am I alone here? Anyways, interesting post Ken!
My mobile device (a Treo 680) is already an important aspect of my learning strategy. It has cpod podcasts in it, as well as Supermemo flashcards, various dictionaries, character drawing practice, and other miscellaneous tools. I can put the lesson transcripts on there as PDF but I’ve been meaning to make text or HTML versions of the files for easier mobile access. That would be great. ChinesePod could help by providing the data in formats that mobile devices can easily read.
I don’t want to get too carried away though - being at home with a PC and even old fashioned tree-ware books is still unavoidable, and why would I want to? For a start, learning takes concentration, which is often hard to acheive out and about.
As for an always-on, fancy streaming mobile version of ChinesePod, I agree doing it now would be a couple of years too early. Mobile net access tends to be expensive in many countries, it’s not well supported by most devices, and speed-wise it still sucks for most people as well (even EVDO isn’t that great, most people are still stuck on dialup-like GPRS). The future is clear though - in coming years the access to mobile data will improve dramatically.
I see mobile learning taking a variety of forms each for a different purpose. Here are some of these forms.
1. You want more information about a place or thing (you are at the Great Wall and want to learn more, you pick up chopsticks and want to learn more)
2. You want to quickly remind yourself of something you have ALREADY learned by accessing a personal database.
3. You want to be able to do something new. This second can be sub divided as follows:
A. You want to learn how to do “it” and keep that knowledge for a long period of
time.
1. This requires further repetitions of the target material at a later date.
B. You want to learn something for a short period of time so you can accomplish
a specific task.
1. In this case I don’t care really care if I forget the specifics of this
information later. An interesting example of this is an old Star Trek
episode called “The Brain of Spock”.
Can you guys add any more to this? Is language learning a special case that falls outside the above? Where do you see Chinesepod “lessons” falling? Keep in mind that in the case of 3B. Chinesepod will be competing with two other extremely mobile devices at the Olympics- electronic DICTIONARIES and thousands of PEOPLE who have prepared to be of help during this time.
For the Olympics there’s something special being developed, too:
COMPASS 2008 (COMprehensive Public informAtion Services System for the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing)
If you’re interested who develops it, have a look on the “partners” section on the website, among them Fraunhofer Institute and ICT (Chinese Academy of Sciences).
By the way, will your “upcoming” full grammar guide be available before you’re going mobile?
“Chinesepod will be competing with two other extremely mobile devices”
How they compete? It’s completely different and not related. What is better, CPod or a nice curry? Depends, if it goes in the ear I prefer CPod.
But on topic, I can see that “classroom learning” is on the way out. There are too many disadvantages with classroom learning. Inconvenient, stiff, and you are in a group with other people which have no clue what’s going on.
But CPod could do better in quite a few ways. That there is no real structured build up i.e. And I wonder why they don’t teach writing (in a completely separate format though). Wonders me, because writing makes commercial sense, with writing you would HAVE TO sign up and pay.
I think CPod is pretty much the best system on the market right now. But watch out, plenty of copies are coming up, and it’s only q question of time till something better will be there.
Being “out and about” is not necessarily being “on the run”. Sometimes it’s the only way to get the peace and quiet required to concentrate on study.
Leave the TV, the squabbles, the pile of bills to pay, the household chores, the phone, the doorbell, and go sit under a tree somewhere, where nobody can see you and the air smells sweet, and all you have to worry about is your lesson.
Stop on the way to work for leisurely breakfast in a quiet little cafe, and work through a lesson over croissants.
Make a nice cuppa or pour a glass of something nicer, close the door, turn off the lights, and be “out” for a while, in a comfy chair with only the light of your PDA, that’s all you need.
Or just find a quiet spot in the local library, or any public place.
Secondly, there’s a lot that could be done right now, to make the materials available now more easy to use offline on a variety of mobile devices that people are using right now.
Some people are spending part of study time converting files, for example, from PDF to plain text in the appropriate encoding. Others spend much longer trying to make other moveable resources, e.g. audio remixes, vocab data, etc. We already have people using not just PDAs, but also laptops and USB devices to transfer their learning materials around when away from the network and desk. There are current impediments to mobility which would not take much to change. We need to return to structure over appearance to satisfy some of these varying needs.
Doing that kind of stuff would not be very radical or progressive, the blogosphere would hardly notice and it’d have little effect on world education headlines nor increase anyone’s fame, but it would be an opportunity to walk the walk, and it could be done and appreciated right away.
Ken, these days I’ve been in Prague for a business trip, due to some reasons I could not take my laptop with me. Without my computer I felt as ‘naked’: i could not check my emails, write documents, do my job properly and of course be in CPOD. I dont know if someone could consider this as a computer addict. I could only use my iPod where I store some of the lessons I wanted to practice and I printed out the pdf files. I listened to them in the airport and during the flights. On the way back to home a guy sitting by me saw me listening to my iPod and reading one of the lessons, he told me he knows CPOD and had heard about you.
I don’t think classroom training is on the way out. The current classroom training METHODS may be on the way out but not the idea of a group of people getting together for learning. I think that the classroom training of the future will be more interesting and fun. For example, I recently took two university extension courses in Mandarin. At first it was boring. However, when we came to the section on buying things at the market I went out and got hold of some artificial fruits and vegetables and empty packaged food containers and I printed out some Chinese paper money and made Chinese coins out of light cardboard with the image of the coin pasted on and we had loads of fun buying and selling things to each other. When we came to the section on eating in a restaurant I brought chopsticks for everyone and popcorn of different colors representing different foods and we all got a chance to order food and eat it with our chopsticks. When we learned about taxis, and buses, and directions, etcetera, I pieced together a huge map of Beijing and we hung it on the wall and gave each other directions. At first our teacher from Beijing thought I was crazy but after awhile she got into the spirit and everyone really looked forward to coming to class to see what would happen next. In my job I do a lot of training and I follow the same approach. It takes a lot of effort but the rewards are equal to the effort. I think whatever devices are used for learning they should make things as realistic as possible. Yes, I am one of those people who go around the house labeling everything with Chinese characters. You have to walk the walk before you can talk the talk
Ken, in my humble opinion, the iPhone will end the iPod. And by saying that, we’ll see in the future how wireless communication and mobile computing technology and capability is converging even more.
Well, to start with, your cPod user will have this device. They’ll part ways with their laptop and what have you. Instead of cell phone, iPod, Blackberry, and laptop, they’ll carry just one device. And naturally, it will change the way people use cPod. And I’m sure it will change the way CPod is delivered. Your learning assets will soon be available in one place. People don’t have to wait until they get to their laptop, or behind their desk in order to download lessons, access the learning center, and all that. Instead, we’ll sit at the nearest Starbucks, download and “watch” the lesson, study from the lively and rich learning center, send questions or comment, and interact with cPodders instantaneously. All in one sitting and all in one place. Hence, giving a truer sense to “Mandarin on your term.”
If we agree that that’s the future (and it’s already happening), your idea about a “guided-situational” lesson will find it’s coziest home there. The technology is getting so robust it requires equally robust content as well. And with the increasing wireless capability, most surely cPod are more and more portable, or shall we say, mobile.
However, although I agree with one of the comment here that the experience of classroom learning human-to-human spontaneous interaction can never be raplaced by this technology, it is increasingly possible to simulate its effect.
So it’s all wonderful that technology will enable cPod to do even more and that its users will benefit even more too, but I’m afraid, the problem for us who live not in China is still the same: the lack of a Mandarin speaking environment to force us to USE our Mandarin everyday, to make many mistakes, and to continue to make even more correct ones.
Viva cPod!
Yidan the future is already here.
I read today, that my mobile phone provider will offer 1st Feb.The complete internet access including Skype over the 3G phone net for a fixed prise of 149 Skr/month ( 22 UsD or 166 RMB) This will give me in Sweden 350 kBit to1,2 Mbit in all cities and around the major highways, and 350 kbit, cover 50% of the rest of the countryside. I heard that England would offer a similar service. It is called the x-series. It will only take a couple of years before all major cities in the west and probably many cities in China will offer the same.
All you can do on the computer now, you will have on mobile. Nokias N73 can already handle the whole deal. And more will follow.
What can we do with this?
-You tell me Ken.
I am in Sweden from the beginning of April and will get the mobile deal.
I do not have to tell you what it mean for mobile learning. One thing thou, come to my mind. Yidan mention the mobile classroom. How about virtual classrooms, where you can hook up in a group with Skype on the level you are 8 to 10 people and 1 teacher. Talk and discuss the latest pod cast and its contents ‘in Mandarin’ we
podies are all round the world and different classes can go around the clock. It will suite anyone’s timetable, and son wherever, you are located. What I see in Shenzhen. Chinese people are willing to work around the clock to.
Picture myself standing in a supermarket queue in Sweden chatting away in Mandarin. People will not know who is on the other side, so it does not matter
But you can be in a park, in your car or wherever you fancy.
I’m in violent agreement with all of the Plecodict users - I have it on my HP ipaq pda, and it’s an indispensable tool for me, especially when I’m mobile in China. If I hear a key word I don’t know, I can type in the pinyin and most of the time figure out the meaning. If I see a character I don’t recognize, I can write it in and get the meaning right away. When I think the word is an important one to remember, I file it in my flashcards for later drilling. While I do listen to chinesepod lessons on the go, a mobile dictionary and flashcard bank is more critical for me. I wish I could easily integrate and organize my Chinesepod vocabulary list into my Plecodict flashcard bank. I think the combo of contextual e-learning and e-dictionary is a powerful one for the mobile user.
considering that in the US, hot spots are all over, we are always able to access the website through laptops which are now small enouth to carry around all the time…most of the apartment buildings in NYC are wireless now whether old or new…the screens on most cell phones are too small…laptops are much easier
all I know is that today there are around 1 billion television sets in the world, 1 billion people who have access to the internet, and 2 billion people who have mobile phones. I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box, but I can do the math. As can Nokia, Motorola, Apple, and Microsoft. It’s all about mobility - mobile entertainment, mobile edutainment, and mobile education.
Mobility is key for me, and it’s primarily OFFLINE mobility that’s important. I’ll have to note I’m not yet a subscriber, though I’ve set aside the money to do it at some point. The biggest item holding me back is mobility. The only cpod content that is truly mobile is the free content. Premium content requires that I have a connected PC. If my PC is connected, I’m most likely busy with work, not study.
I am also an avid Plecodict user, and this is one of my primary chinese study tools, as I can use it anywhere, and it provides a lot of value with the dictionaries, flashcards, etc. Right now it’s possible to get a cpod vocab list to pleco, but this is a multi-step process with several issues requiring several applications and manual editing. It’s too much work for everyday use.
As far as ONLINE mobility goes, it depends on how it would work. If a browser was involved I would not use it. I have never had good experiences with any mobile browsers, and they’re only used in times of desperation. The connected mobile applications that I tend to use are ones that digest rss feeds or other web data directly for use within the mobile device using their own interfaces. If this was used to download content on the fly that could then be reviewed offline this would provide the best of both worlds. Then in your hypothetical story I land for the Beijing Olympics, download the taxi driver lesson module upon landing, and then I have the content in hand while I’m in the cab, and I don’t need to rely on a flaky GSM connection while in motion
There are a lot of different options for supporting mobility, the starting point I would love to see is direct vocab export to some popular offline study tools - namely Pleco and ZDT, both of which just require a relatively simple reformatting of the existing text export feature. Future options could include a real online/offline application for premium content, use of the ipod notes feature, etc.
Last month you asked about the 30 something males who made up a significant part of your constituency, yet rarely posted - I think I would fall into this category, and I believe many of us would fit the same profile when it comes to mobility requirements.
This is all very well, but as it stands, the only mobile part of ChinesePod is its podcasts. Of course it’s key, and a major step forward, but nothing else is portable, let alone mobile : even the pdf transcripts are, despite the name, the most cumbersome format to read, bundling simplified and traditional (who uses both at the same time I wonder), plain text would be so much simpler. The expansion section clearly requires online access, of course there are workarounds here too but why not design it mobile to begin with, and the website itself has no mobile version (only the forum does).
Yv
AIR FRANCE and Berlitz will offer quick onboard language formation next April.
23 languages will be available.
Is there an opportunity for Chinesepod ?
Air France: propose l’initiation aux langues à bord des vols
(Cercle Finance) - Air France annonce que les passagers voyageant à bord de ses Boeing 777-300 pourront s’initier à compter du mois d’avril aux langues étrangères à partir de leurs écrans individuels, via un programme réalisé en collaboration avec Berlitz Word Traveller.
La compagnie aérienne indique que 23 langues seront disponibles dans le cadre du programme, dont l’anglais, l’espagnol, l’italien, mais aussi l’hindi, le thaï, le danois ou le tagalog (Philippines).
Air France précise que le programme, interactif, est constitué d’un cours donné par un professeur, d’exercices de prononciation, de tests et enfin de jeux qui permettent de mettre en pratique la leçon. A l’issue de chaque cours, une note d’évaluation sera attribuée, indique le groupe.