Cell Phone Training!

As we've struggled to build a "Best of Breed" Virtual Classroom at TrainingCity one of the challenges we face is providing a viable voice communications solution for virtual students.

We normally use a 1-800 conference bridge to ensure reliable "full duplex", real time, voice communications between the instructor and the students. We've also experimented with a service called "skype". Skype is a free Voice Over IP service that includes a 5 person conference bridge.

Students who use the VoIP solution often comment on how they prefer it because we are not tying up their telephone line for several hours. Many Virtual Students get permission from their supervisors to attend TrainingCity's virtual classes from their home.

Recently we had a student attend a virtual class while sitting at the airport. She used the airports WiFI service to connect to our Virtual Classroom, but was unable to use Skype for the voice portion. She used her cell phone, plugged into a wall charging unit, to provide the voice portion of the class.

This use of the cell phone got my thinking. Could we push the whole virtual class onto a cell phone?

With current cell phone calling plans, and the rise of high speed internet services from carriers such as Sprint and Verizon Wireless, what if we could share all our Virtual Classroom functionality with a cell phone user?

Instead of needing both a laptop and a cell phone, students who are mobile could attend, using the color display screen on their cell phone to view the courseware and streaming video, while also participating on the voice portion.

So far I haven't found a product offering that can accommodate this option. In the meantime, I think we'll start a few tests of cell phone capabilities. I'll let you know how things go in a future post!