PORTABLE PROFESSOR: Distance Learning in Your Pocket

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by decimon, Oct 28, 2005.

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  1. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Military.com
     
  2. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Actually this has been talked about here before... which doesn't mean, mind you, that there's a darned thing wrong with bringing it up again! However, my problem with it now is the same as it was then: The "Portable Professor" name used as a headline in the article linked-to in the thread-starting post is the registered trademark of an entirely different and unrelated educational product; and I don't want people here to think that the coursework described in the linked-to article is the same as the actual "Portable Professor" product line.

    The product linked-to in the thread-starting post is named PocketED.

    The product which actually bears the tradmarked "Portable Professor" name is here.

    It's interesting to note that since the PocketED product was written about in the article linked-to above, it seems not to have materialized as promised; and, in fact, there is virtually no mention of "PocketED" on the CCC web site. Moreover, said word "PocketED" seems, now, to have been removed from the CCC web site altogether... which makes me worry that the program fell on its face and is now dead. I found Google search results which linked to pages that were supposed to have the word "PocketED" on them, but when I actually went to said pages and searched for the word thereon, said word had been removed (CCC distance learning tech support pages, for example... and others).

    CCC's Shawn Mann gave a presentation on PocketED (3.8 MB PDF file) at the CCME in New Orleans in February 2005; and there's a PDF file on the CCC web site that references it... but, other than a few excited mentions of it on other web sites where cool, new educational stuff is written about, that's pretty much it.

    Curious. :confused: Maybe the PockeED product has been re-scheduled for release in 2006 or something. Time will tell. Or maybe if I bothered to actually read the aforementioned 3.8 MB PDF file, I'd learn that that was the plan all along... and so, therefore, it makes perfect sense that there's little or no mention of it on the CCC web site yet... who knows.

    In the meantime, the completely unrelated (despite the linked-to article's having appropriated its trademarked name) "Pocket Professor" series is alive and well and just keeps getting better and better (and has more titles) every time I visit its web site.

    Go figure. :)
     
  3. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: PORTABLE PROFESSOR: Distance Learning in Your Pocket

    Interesting. I took the usually safe route of copying the headline as is.
     
  4. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Re: Re: Re: PORTABLE PROFESSOR: Distance Learning in Your Pocket

    Not a darned thing wrong with that. I mean... who knew, right?

    Anyway, the larger point is that PocketED is a very cool idea. Very cool, indeed. It'll be nice if it ever actually comes to fruition.
     
  5. Shawn A. Mann

    Shawn A. Mann New Member

    Funny thing...I was searching for this old article I wrote: "PORTABLE PROFESSOR: Distance Learning in Your Pocket" and I came across this forum discussing the mobile learning initiative I created so many years ago. I did launch the program with 10 or so courses in 2005. I hand coded each and each contained about 13 hours of video, as well. I would have done it a few years earlier, but I was rocking a monochrome Palm IIIXE (now in my desk drawer) and video compression wasn't where it needed to be. To my knowledge, it was the first ever, fully contained course on a handheld device. This was before smartphones were affordable and ubiquitous. I left that college in 2011, but the program was still running for several years after that. A good number of deployed service members were able to get their degrees while fighting wars because of this program. Yes, I did have to change the name of the program to PocketEd shortly after I realized Portable Professor was in use. Ed was, of course, short for "education" but it was also the name of my boss at the time. I'm kind of surprised nobody reached out to me directly. This was probably a grad class forum or something. Oh well, I post here knowing this board is probably dead, but I do like a complete historic picture. :) If anyone is still creeping around the boards, drop me a line sometime. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaman
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.
  6. JBjunior

    JBjunior Active Member

    This board is still very much alive, at least as much as it has ever been. Cool stuff, glad you were able to accomplish something like that.
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.

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