Taking class on your cell phone?

In Japan, there is a university called Cyber University which is the nations only university where there are only online classes. But now they are offering classes on cell phones!

"For classes for personal computers, the lecture downloads play on the monitor as text and images in the middle, and a smaller video of the lecturer shows in the corner, complete with sound.

The cell phone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset's tiny screen, plays just the Power Point images.

In a demonstration Wednesday at a Tokyo hotel, an image of the pyramids popped up on the screen and changed to a text image as a professor's voice played from the handset speakers."

The only class offered on cell phones right now is mysterys of the pyramid??? The campus is owned by a company called Softbank Corp. which is Japan's largest cell phone company. The good thing about the class is that it is offered for free but only for people who are customers of Softbank.

I think this might be a good idea because a lot of people are attached to their cell phones. All they have to do is start their phone and watch the power point presentations of the class. It's probably something that I wouldn't do because I never get cell phone service! But for others who are disabled and can't come to class or maybe don't have a computer they can get to all the time it might be something that is useful.

By Lauren Darmody