Filed under: m-Learning
I was reading Chris Dawson’s post on zdnet and it got me thinking. He posted about a new service called eduFire where educators can focus on teaching, and students can sign up for inexpensive courses on a wide variety of topics. The topics at eduFire are only limited by the subjects that people are willing to teach about. Basically, if you want to teach a topic, you teach that topic and you decide how much to charge for that course.
The idea of a mobile learning marketplace is exciting for me. I go back to the concept of what I call the “point of want” which is different than point of need learning. While learning at the point of need is very important and mobile learning can be leveraged very well for point of need learning, point of want learning deals with moments of inactivity, boredom and relaxation. Even though you may be relaxing with friends, you may want to learn how to cook a turkey or the intracacies of hybrid car. These are not topics you need to know at that moment necessarily, but they are topics that interest you and you would take advantage of the opportunity to learn about them when you have a moment.
I think a mobile learning marketplace that offered up inexpensive short courses on topics of interest would do well. People would be willing to pass over $1 or $2 for a bit of information catered to their mobile device and their current mobile status. A short 5-10 min, fairly self-contained learning bite would fulfill the need to feel productive even when you can’t be (or choose not to be), as learning often makes us feel a little better when we finish. As a developer, I would push for a standard look and feel for these objects and build a brand reputation for solid bits of learning while on the go. Certain standards would probably need to be enforced to keep each learning object at the right size and each would have to cover a topic in it’s entirety without the need to send learners out to view a lot of external resources (no constructivist approaches, this would have to be fairly passive from that perspective).
I am just starting to think about the potential of a market like that. Of course, there is an even bigger need for essential learning objects at the point of need, but we shouldn’t forget that learning can be a fun and leisurely activity for some as well.
Filed under: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile landscape, mobile learning market, mobile technology, mobile user experience | Tags: Mobile Learning, instructional design, mobile user experience, mobile technology, m-learning effectiveness, mobile augmented reality
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: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile design, instructional design, mobile user experience, Mobile, mobile technology, us mobile learning, mobile learning market, mobile learning pedagogy
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: Mobile Learning, m-Learning, mobile user experience, mobile user, mobile learning options increase, mobile technology
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
