Mobile Learning

It seems that Western countries are finally catching on to 2D Barcodes (which can be read with ordinary camera phones to access digital data – for example, point a learner at a URL with learning resources for a real-life context or situation). However, unlike Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China, who all favour the QR-Code symbology, Western countries seem to be deploying applications that use the DataMatrix barcode format.

Yesterday, my colleague Colin published this article on our department’s blog, which highlights a service based in the USA called SmartPox – which is more focussed on pop culture as a market for their DataMatrix tags. And today I received Newsletter #2 from MobileTag, a European company focussing on mainstream channels such as the Yellow Pages and information directories as places to deploy DataMatrix codes.

For Australia to catch up with Japan, however (over 80% of Japanese mobile phones have built-in 2D Barcode readers), we need to get the major mobile phone carriers on board to decide a standard for Australia, and incorporate software seamlessly into Australian handsets. Only then will 2D barcodes really take off as a realistic conduit to use mobile data services, and learning materials.

technorati tags:datamatrix, qrcode, qr-code, 2dbarcode, 2d-barcode, m-learning, mlearning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, cellphone, clcommunity, talo, networkedlearning, ednamobilelearning, edna, mobiletag, smartpox

Blogged with Flock