At the recent Scottish Learning Festival one high profile topic was handheld learning. While huge advances are being made in this area, one of the conundrums is that while students find small screen sizes OK, most teachers and educators don’t. Vendors are pushing their wares hard, but often seem to overlook this issue, which may be one reason that most primary and secondary schools give handhelds such a low priority (according to research by BECTA).

So is there a way to bridge this screen size issue? Yes, and the technology is just around the corner. In the next 12-18 months high-end mobile telephones that incorporate mini projectors will start to become available. Texas Instruments already have a DLP Pico-Projector which is about 2x2x1 cm and can project a HVGA image (640 x 240 pixels) onto an A4 (216x280 mm) surface. Korean company SK Telecom say their nano projector can fit inside a mobile phone and can project an image that is 510x510 mm. Speculation is growing that SK may even launch their nano projector mobile before the end of 2007.

What’s exciting is that this is when, not if, technology that we think may have a large impact on the education sector.
www.sktelecom.com/eng/
www.ti.com