Abstract
Considered a new concept about a decade ago, mobile learning is now regarded as a natural and, in some circumstances, an essential learning technology. The key factors that made this development possible are the continuously decreasing prices and increasing capabilities of the mobile devices and infrastructure, as well as the growing need to be connected and learn anywhere and anytime.
The great variety of mobile devices leads to various issues, both pedagogical and technical. One of the main technical issues is the need learning content to be made available for different devices, which may be a costly and time consuming process. To address this and other issues, more and more companies are developing learning software are starting to create tools, particularly designed for mobile learning. These tools support publishing learning content in formats, accessible to numerous kinds of mobile devices.
One increasingly popular technology for creating cross-platform content for mobile devices is HTML5, the latest revision of the well-established HTML standard. HTML5 is often used as a shorthand of the term HTML5 stack, which includes two other technologies, except HTML5 itself – CSS3, the latest revision of Cascading Style Sheets, and the programming language JavaScript. The features provided by the HTML5 – placing animations, audio and video, drag and drop, geolocation, etc. – do not require plugins unlike Adobe Flash Player and Silverlight, two commonly used technologies for mobile learning content development. There are two main concerns in using HTML5 for delivery of mobile learning content – the need of HTML5-compliant browser and the need of mobile learning development tools supporting HTML5 (Unrein, 2011). The latest versions of the commonly used web browsers already support most of the HTML5 specification and their new versions, developed on a regular basis, will support it more and more fully. In the last year not only the web browsers has added and improved the HTML5 support, but also the tools for mobile learning content development.
The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a research of the HTML5 support in 30 mobile learning tools, selected by leading mobile learning specialists, including ADL and Gary Woodill. |