At the dawn of the
third millennium Ericsson and Nokia announced that there would be 1.000.000.000
mobile telephones in the world by 2002. The world population would be
just over 6.000.000.000.
With the successful
development of Bluetooth, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), GPRS
(General Packet Radio System) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System), the technological structures for wireless telephony and wireless
computing are now firmly in place.
All over Europe
today wireless technologies and applications are replacing wired ones:
e-Commerce is moving to m-Commerce; m-Business is replacing e-Business;
venture capitalists are snapping up WAP application providers as they
appear; the site http://www.ericsson.se/letswap lists WAP applications
for stock exchanges. booking flights the WAP way, instant mortgages
over WAP, banking with WAP.
The list of 3G (third
generation) wireless services is breathtaking, with applications already
developed for refrigerators, business and the home. The move to wirelessness
in telephony and computing is irreversible.
Only in the fields
of training and learning are there no products in development or in
planning.
This project sets
in place the first stage in the creation of a global provision of training
on the wireless internet. It sets in place the first building block
for the next generation of learning: the move from distance learning
(d-Learning) and electronic learning (e-Learning) to mobile learning
(m-Learning).
In the year 2000
e-Learning is the state of the art for distance training.
There is now little
doubt that the World Wide Web is the most successful educational tool
to have appeared in a long time. It combines and integrates text, audio
and video with interaction amongst participants. It can be used on a
global scale and is platform independent. While largely an asynchronous
medium, it can be used also for synchronous events. It is not surprising,
therefore, that trainers, lecturers, distance education providers and
teaching institutions at all levels are increasingly using the Web as
a medium for delivery.
This project will
put in place the first steps of the next generation of Vocational Education
and Training (VET).
Specifically and
practically this project will map the evolution from the wired virtual
learning evnironment of today, to the wireless learning environment
of tomorrow.
