Problem with Multi-Video Format M-Learning Applications

Abstract

The browser war is far from over, and the HTML5 <video> tag has not improved video access despite its promises to work without specifying a plug-in. This chapter discusses m-learning with respect to video. It outlines the m-learning paradigm in conjunction with the technical aspects of video display in browsers, when varying media formats are used. The <video> tag used in this work renders videos from two sources with different MIME types. Feeds from the video sources, namely YouTube and UCT Matterhorn, are pulled by a Website that acts as a content aggregator. The content aggregator presents the various user-generated contents and lectures from the two repositories to both lecturers and students as a single source. By leveraging on HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, the application should render uniform video display and gather comments among various students, who use various personal mobile devices. Results show that a uniform display cannot be achieved when developing an application for personal mobile devices.