The authors have not developed or downloaded any software for PDAs. We cannot even say that the results would be pedagogically useful at least to us. In fact, giving our students PDAs in the classroom and then having to police their using them only for activities of our choosing, frightens us. However, the thought of handhelds outside the classroom is intriguing. It also would be interesting to have our students who create multimedia experiment with developing for a platform as small and as limiting as PDAs appear. It would be at least fun to be able to download a book, a documentary, or even a Flash quiz a very mobile device to use outside of a place where we or our students could have a laptop. So, the question is, how difficult would it be to actually do something like download a movie to a PDA?
Pocket PC Flash is a Web site run by Bill Perry that purports to be a primary resrouce for Flash development on a pocket PC platform, http://www.pocketpcflash.net/home.htm. He has a summary article on the Macromedia site, http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mobile/... on getting started with Flash on the Pocket PC.
Nels Johnson in his new book, Windows Media 9 Series by Example, CMP books , has an entire chapter, Chapter 12, on "Producing WM9 content for Handhelds". Windows Media is the platform that Microsoft uses on its operating systems to support media. When you get a Pocket PC of version 2002 or 2003 you will get as part of it, Windows Media support. Johnson's chapter describes excellent details on how to prepare and then download video as an example. Although you have to be a bit experienced in the terminology of multimedia, his instructions appear very easy to follow.
There is a similar step by step article in the November issue of MaximumPC, http://www.maximumpc.com. This is not yet posted on this Web site but may be in a few months. The article is by Logan Decker and is titled, "Turn your pocket PC into a Pocket Movie Theater." Decker gives step by step instructions for a PDA with Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system version 2003. You must have a memory card of atleast 256MB which is not usually what comes with a new PDA.
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