Filed under: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile landscape, mobile learning market, mobile technology, mobile user experience | Tags: instructional design, m-learning effectiveness, mobile augmented reality, Mobile Learning, mobile technology, mobile user experience
I keep reading and hearing more and more about how location and location based services will be the the next big wave in mobility. Many devices already come equipped with GPS antennas and others are able to approximate the user’s current location through triangulation (measuring distance by calculating signal strength from multiple cell towers or WiFi hot spots). And with companies like Garmin teaming up with Asus to deliver smartphones, you know the industry is getting very serious about leveraging the location of mobile users.
For a moment, let’s put aside the privacy issues associated with using one’s location (there are many issues there, but industry sentiment is moving toward a model where the user determines whether he or she wants to be “found” at a particular moment). Let’s focus on how we can use location in our training and education.
There are already a number of training examples involving learner location and mobile devices. One example that comes to mind is MIT Environmental detectives. There are also a number of tour-like applications for museums and galleries where location is used to inform learners about exhibits, etc. But I think location will be used in new and different ways. For example, we can take an employee’s location and provide him or her with active directions during an orientation period. We could provide an individualized map to each learner to help them find the people and places they need to visit.
We could also use location services to alert a coach to a learner’s location, so the coach could actively engage the learner as they enter a relevant physical space. Think about this scenario: You are a new employee at an auto plant. You are learning a new job and as you come into the space where you will learn your new job, an expert (coach) notices your location and contacts you immediately easing your apprehensive state of mind and providing you with a series of video tips about the job delivered to your mobile device. The coach informs you that you can reach out to her at any point in the process for feedback.
I’m sure you will have other ideas, this is just one scenario that comes to mind for me. Just think about how you may use location as a teacher or trainer in the future. The trends point to a market filled with location aware devices in the next few years.
Filed under: Blogroll, Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile landscape, mobile learning market, mobile technology, mobile user experience, us mobile learning | Tags: instructional design, m-Learning, Mobile, mobile design, Mobile Learning, mobile learning market, mobile learning pedagogy, mobile technology, mobile user experience, us mobile learning
Google and Apple appear to have different outlooks on mobile application development, and those differences will certainly have an impact on how we consume mobile content. According to this BusinessWeek.com article, Two Mobile Software Visions, each company is preparing to leverage their strengths with a distribution model that corresponds with those strengths.
Apple is very strong in the native app market, where it’s App Store is a marketplace for all sorts of applications. Users download the applications to the iPhone and take advantage of that native functionality, storage and performance that comes with being on the device itself.
Google is very strong in the web-based application market and it domintates the search advertising that goes along with it’s web focus. Google is betting that Web-based applications that use the strength of networks and servers will be the future of mobile content consumption.
But both companies overlap in certain places. iPhone applications often link out to external services and resources and Google’s Android applications are native on the Android open source operating system (Google also has an Android market place, much like the Apple App Store). Google plans to push Web-based applications in the months and years to come and Apple will probably continue to push it’s App Store applications. Ultimately, it comes down to money. Apple makes approx 30% on each application it sells from the App Store and Google makes billions of dollars with it’s ad revenue from search and Google Ads.
As mobile consumers, we will have to make choices about how we want to consume our content. In the world of education, much of the content resides on the Web. Most of our Learning Management Systems are web-based and offer limited functionality offline. However, it can be argued that eLearning really got of the starting blocks with CD roms, which are more representative of the native-app model in my opinion. If the evolution of eLearning has been from native pc applications (CDs and disk based) to Web based applications, the question is, will that be the way that mobile learning goes? If so, you might say that Apple is re-hashing the hold model and Google is pushing the new model. BUT, I don’t think it’s that simple.
I think that Apple is leveraging the strengths of an on-device application in an age where connectivity to mobile networks is still spotty in many places, while allowing for connectivity when and where applicable and desired. Apple is also selling the iPhone as a platform and pushing too much to “the cloud” would be somewhat self-defeating. Google is setting itself in a position of strength in the Web-based market because that’s where it’s strengths are and it doesn’t produce hardware, so a physical platform is not attractive to Google.
We will see mobile learning in a variety of forms, some will be native applications and others will be Web applications. If I had to bet though, I would favor the Web-based model because it’s the most natural fit for the current eLearning architecture. Re-purposing your Web-based LMS courses to run on a mobile browser will be an easier transition for companies and learning institutions. There are also more developers with the skill sets required to build mobile Web applications since those skills are in many ways a subset of traditional Web development. More developers along with ease of transition will make the Web-based application the winner in my opinion. Both the iPhone OS and Google’s Android have good Web experiences on their respective mobile devices, so both should continue to be platforms that we will target for mobile learning. Overall, I think most content will be Web-based.
Filed under: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile technology, mobile user experience | Tags: m-Learning, Mobile Learning, mobile learning options increase, mobile technology, mobile user, mobile user experience
Wikipedia launched it’s mobile site officially last week. Here’s an Information Week article discussing the launch.
I’ve been using the beta site for quite awhile and I have to say that the experience on my Motorola Q is pretty good. The only down side for me was the limited content. The beta site didn’t seem to provide access to all content, or at least my searches didn’t always return useful information. But most of the time the site did return good information and I was able to find my answers while mobile. Best of all, the site is formatted for mobile consumption, so the layout, controls and functionality are similar to the desktop version, but easily viewable on a mobile device and the site streamlines some of the links deemed unnecessary when mobile. Give it a try from your mobile device: m.wikipedia.org
Filed under: Blogroll, Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile landscape, mobile learning market, mobile technology, mobile user experience, us mobile learning | Tags: instructional design, m-Learning, Mobile, mobile data usage, Mobile Learning, mobile learning market, mobile technology, mobile user experience, us mobile learning
Recent stats from Juniper, ComScore and others point to the rise in data usage with mobile devices. Most industry leaders have been predicting this shift from voice to data from some time. Basically, this means that more people are using their mobile devices to gain access to the web and do things that they used to do from their PC or in many cases, they are doing things they have never done before because they are accessing the web when they are mobile. The new data was sent to me in an email from Mofuse.
“Worldwide, Juniper predicts there will be 1.7 billion mobile web users by 2013. In the US alone, there are 63 million mobile Web users today. Add a projected growth rate of 60% over the next two years, and well, the mobile web is very, very big.
In May comScore released a study that showed mobile users (in the US) are accessing the Mobile web 35.3% of the time, compared to 37% for voice and 27.7% for SMS.
Just this month, IPG’s Universal McCann and AOL released some compelling new data based on their poll of 1,800 mobile users between October 2008 and March 2009. The data reinforces how smart-phone users are using their devices. Here are some interesting data points:
1 out of every 7 minutes of media consumption takes place via mobile device
19 MM mobile web users access the internet on a weekly basis. This represents about 1/3 of all mobile web users.
73% of all mobile web users search for maps and directions “
The third point about maps and directions is key because that’s one time where you can be sure that the users are mobile.
So how does this impact mobile learning? Well, in a broad way we can see that the more people are using their mobile devices to access the web, the more comfortable they are getting with using those devices to access important information (and sometimes not so important information). We also see that the devices are continuing to advance in capability and features. But beyond that we can take a look at how mobile users are using thier devices. Mobile users are turning to their devices to solve problems, take the maps and directions data as an example. When a mobile user needs to find directions (i.e. solve the problem of being lost or not knowing their next destination), they turn to the trusty device to solve that problem. As users find that they can get that information while mobile, they become more likely to turn to that device for other problems. There is nothing stopping the user from turning to their device to get information to solve a work related problem. Users will start to look to the mobile device for references, coaching, performance support, etc. We just need to make sure there’s something to find when they get there.
Filed under: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile landscape, mobile technology, mobile user experience, us mobile learning | Tags: Augmented Reality, e-learning, m-Learning, m-learning effectiveness, mobile augmented reality, mobile design, mobile device, Mobile Learning, mobile learning pedagogy, mobile technology, mobile user, mobile user experience, us mobile learning
The integration of innovative technology in learning has always been a goal of educators. In the past two decades, we’ve seen advances in learning technology that allow learners to connect to powerful learning systems and sources of information that were previously unavailable. However, most recent technologies have forced the learner to learn through computer-generated reality or “virtual reality”. We have been unable to incorporate the physical world around the learner. But recent advancements are truly allowing learners to get the best of both worlds by mixing the physical world with the virtual world. This combination of the real world with the virtual world is known as “Augmented Reality”.
Wikipedia defines Augmented Reality as:
[Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. The term is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, a employee of Boeing at the time[1].
At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking data, fiducial markers recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.]
The combination of the real physical world and the virtual world offers many possibilities for mobile learning. Students can now use their mobile device as an interface to the virtual world while walking through the real world. A new “Mobile Augmented Reality Browser” called Layar captures the real world through the mobile device’s video capture capability and provides information about the objects through real-time searches and connections to social networks. For a demo, check out this video. Some of the most interesting examples of augmented reality use a camera mounted on an individual’s computer to capture the individual’s movements in the real world. Movements are then mapped to a simulated environment projected on a computer screen. With the use of the camera, learners can travel through and interact with several different aspects of the virtual environment. For example, a learner could walk through a virtual layout of a new building to acclimate themselves to that environment before the building is even built. A learner could also use hand gestures to move objects in the virtual space.
We may first see widespread use of modern augmented reality technology in the gaming world. Microsoft’s Project Natal for the XBox Platform is attempting to remove the controller from game play by capturing the motion of the person playing the game through an innovative camera setup. The motion capture allows the gamer to interact with the virtual world that exists in the game. Gamers will be able to jump on their living room floor at home and watch their character jump in real time on the screen.
This type of technology is not limited to the world of games however. GE recently launched a website to teach customers about its’ efforts in alternative energy. The experience starts when a user simply prints a PDF with a thick-bordered rectangle in the center of the page. The real power of the augmented reality shows when the user holds the printed paper up to the computer’s camera and the web site launches a 3D animation within the printed rectangle. Looking at the computer screen, it appears as though the user is holding the 3D animation in hand. Users can move the paper back and forth to change the perspective of the 3D objects on the screen. This technology is available to learners now. Developers can start by leveraging the Flash Augmented Reality Toolkit (FlART) toolkit. This technology is really exciting for me, as it’s Flash based and therefore available now. This will eventually make it’s way to the mobile environment, possibly in the next version of mobile Flash (currently called Flash-Lite), which is supposed to mimic the current desktop Flash experience as much as possible.
The prospects for the integration of augmented reality with other e-Learning technologies could bring an entirely new paradigm within the e-Learning community. We could begin to see a flood of new augmented reality based-training environments without the learner ever leaving their place of work.
Like many technologies, augmented reality can be layered with other technologies like social networks, global positioning systems and search technologies, to provide an extremely rich interactive experience for a learner without that learner ever needing to type on a keyboard or use a mouse. And mobile touch interfaces like those on the iPhone, Palm Pre, Storm, etc. are in some ways ahead of the game, because users are already used to manipulating objects with their hands. Blending this new augmented reality technology into those interfaces should be fairly seamless for learners. And since people do most of their travel through the real world accompanied by their trusty mobile devices, augmented reality is a natural fit for us while we are traversing the real world.
Augmented reality will certainly be making its’ way to your pocket in many forms. The advancements in augmented reality and other technologies hold prospects for a richer and more meaningful training experience in the months and years to come.
