The question of why (not) eLearning on iPads or tablets? — from upsidelearning.com by Amit Garg

Excerpt:

2012 saw the re-emergence of ‘Mobile learning’ or ‘mLearning’ as “new” (ok, not really new) buzzwords in L&D and Training circles around the world. But largely in the wrong context! Mobile Learning is being loosely attributed to any learning activity that is not location bound, which is very surprising! And even more surprising is, more often than not, it is not even referring to mLearning at all! But to things like, making an LMS available on an USB drive so you can track courses while on a plane! Certainly not mobile learning in my opinion.

I believe ‘real’ mobile learning is much more than just learning on a mobile device. I also believe that ”tablet” learning is neither mobile nor eLearning, but actually occupies a position between mLearning and eLearning. So let me lay out my argument for why I believe this!

 

Also see Amit’s presentation at LT13uk — the full presentation is available here:
http://www.slideshare.net/UpsideLearning/designing-elearning-for-ipads

.

amit-garg-designingelearningforipads-2013

 

 

Embedded ubiquitous learning — from the Upside Learning blog by Abhijit Kadle

Excerpt:

What would ubiquitous learning look like? Well, there isn’t an easy answer to that. It is hard to foresee what will come about personal computing technologies in the next decade. In my eyes, from a learning perspective, there are a few key themes (emphasis DSC):

  1. Discovery and delivery – the ability to use agents that comprehend context, are able to make ‘coherent’ sense of varied data streams to search for information, discover, and provide content – just in time, in the correct context and in the appropriate format.
  2. Machine to Machine communication – While there is no doubt that this will happen, and that the ‘internet of things’ isn’t very far away in the future. One thing I found fascinating is the idea that you could create a ‘learning profile’, an identity that is essentially a digital package of your learning preferences and the contents of your past learning, that can be accessed by machines. This would let the ‘machine’ actually tailor its user interfaces, learning content and the experience itself, and present information in a way that suits the preferences of the human.
  3. Embedded learning – networked learning that is built into every device, every tool, every physical resource humans use; there is no need for specific training; the latest information is available just in time, from authentic sources, judged valuable by network analysis, provided with the right context and assists humans to complete tasks

The mobile learning ecosystem I – 10 important questions  — from upsidelearning.com by Abhijit Kadle

Excerpt:

Mobile technology penetration is racing ahead in the corporate workplace, with the BYOD (bring your own device) movement affecting companies in varied ways. During some time off earlier this month, I’ve been ruminating how a ‘mobile learning ecosystem’ evolves in an organization; here are ten questions I asked. Thought you might find them interesting. This is probably the first in a series of three post, the first in which I pose questions, in the second I try to analyze the components and ‘ecosystem’ in the manner of actor/resource/process, and in the last attempt to draw some conclusions on how L&D may be able to assist the development of such ecosystems.

 

Also, speaking of asking questions about our learning, see:

  • What should be my (our) guiding questions?  — from dangerouslyirrelevant.org by Scott McLeod
    Excerpt:
    I believe that guiding questions are important. As our world changes radically and rapidly, we may not have answers (yet) but we can at least try to ask the right questions. Here are some guiding questions that I’ve been bouncing around for my own work with educators, schools, communities, and policymakers [note that they’re often very different from the questions that most educational reformers, legislators, and the public are asking right now]:

Apple's iTunes U may be leading a global revolution in higher education

 

From DSC:

Apple has been putting together a solid ecosystem of hardware and software that allows for the creation and distribution of content.  “Easy is hard” I like to say and Apple’s done a great job of creating easy-to-use devices and apps. They have a long way to go before iTunes U has all the built-in functionality needed to replace a Blackboard Learn or a Moodle type of CMS/LMS.  But given their solid history of creating highly-usable hardware and software, they could deal a smashing blow to what’s happening in the CMS/LMS world today. 

Plus, with Apple TV, Airplay mirroring, the growth of second screen-based apps, and machine-to-machine communications, Apple is poised to get into this game…big time. If my thoughts re: “Learning from the Living [Class] Room” come to fruition, Apple would be positioned for some serious worldwide impact on lifelong learning; especially when combined with the developments such as the use of MOOCs, AI and HCI-related innovations, learning agents, web-based learner profiles, and potential/upcoming changes to accreditation.

Too far fetched do you think? Hmmm….well considering that online learning has already been proven to be at least as affective as f2f learning — and in some studies has produced even greater learning outcomes/results — I wonder how things will look in mid-2015…? (That is, where is the innovation occurring?)


 Addendum:

  • Connected TV penetration to top 50% by 2017 — from worldscreen.com by Mansha Daswani
    Excerpt:
    SCOTTSDALE: ABI Research forecasts that more than 50 percent of television homes in North America and Western Europe will have Internet-connected TV sets by 2017, up from just 10 percent last year, while Blu-ray player penetration is expected to rise to more than 76 percent from about 25 percent. The report notes that the popularity of connected TV is not limited to developed markets—there have been increasing shipments to China, ABI notes.
    .
  • Advertisers need to pay attention to connected TV [INFOGRAPHIC] — from Mashable.com
    .
  • The future of TV is two screens, one held firmly in your hands — from FastCompany.com by Kit Eaton
    Excerpt:

    The connected TV, sometimes called the smart TV (and even branded as such by Samsung) is a growing phenomenon: TV makers are adding limited apps, Net connectivity, and even streaming media powers to their newer TVs in the hope they’ll persuade you to upgrade your newish LCD for a flatter, smarter unit. They’re desperate to, given how flat this market is. But according to new research from Pew, the future of TV may actually be a little more closely aligned with the notion of a “connected TV viewer,” an important distinction. Pew spoke to over 2,200 U.S. adults a couple of months ago and discovered that 52% of all adult cell phone owners now “incorporate their mobile devices into their television watching experiences.”

 

Top 4 IT takeaways from Tata’s tech guy — from gigaom.com by Barb Darrow

  1. The “should we should go to the cloud” discussion is over — move on
  2. Big data remains big
  3. Social media needs to come in-house
  4. The commercial world needs to tap academic research better

In cloud computing moves, money isn’t everything — from gigaom.com by Barb Darrow

Excerpt:

While saving money is a commonly reason cited for moving IT to the cloud, it is really not the overriding driver at all for most companies, according to new research.

What’s more important than cost savings for companies — at least in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific regions — is the ability to standardize their software and business processes across the company, according to a new survey of 600 large companies by Tata Consultancy Services, the $8 billion IT service provider. In Europe and Latin America, the primary rationale was the ability to ramp systems up and down faster.

According to the survey:

The factors driving companies to launch entirely new applications in the cloud are quite different – to institute new business processes and launch new technology-dependent products and services.

The future for Flash [Kadle]

The future for Flash — from the Upside Learning blog by Abhijit Kadle

From DSC:
Thanks Abhijit for the posting. I appreciate your last few sentences that summarize where we are as of February 2012:

Without a stable and feature-rich HTML5 development environment that matches the depth of Flash, eLearning developers are faced with a dual development approach – develop with full media rich functionality  (easily) using Flash for desktop delivery, and a more technically intensive HTML5 approach for devices. Who knows, in the future maybe workplace learning will ONLY be driven by mobile devices, with desktop based elearning turning into an archaic remnant of a bygone age.

Tagged with:  

Google to Launch TV Service — from Mashable.com by Todd Wasserman

100 million Americans watch online video every day — from sitetrail.com by Anthony West

How to build 50,000 new colleges — from Forbes.com by Michael Horn

Excerpt (with emphasis by DSC):

What this points to is disruption using the technology enabler of online learning. As the article says, “This means that India is not just trying to build thousands of American-style campuses with neat quads. Many of its new schools will be virtual, for-profit, and integrated closely with workplaces. It may, in fact, end up pushing the concept of online education further than any other country. As a result, what India comes up with will not only affect its economic competitiveness in the 21st century. It may become a petri dish for how to build an educational system in the Information Age.”

There is another dynamic pushing India to innovate in and improve online learning in some dramatic ways. According to the article, new schools face shortages of land and instructors. As a result of the first, constructing big campuses to fill the education gap is likely a non-starter. Online learning is critical. As for the second—the system is short roughly 1 million teachers the article says—this means that the country will almost certainly have to push the bounds of today’s online learning systems so that it can scale the impact of great teachers and built robust digital learning systems that embrace adaptive learning and other such advances. Given these pressures, the innovations that emerge from India could be stunning.

 

Educating the Poor in India: Lessons for America — from EducationNext.org by Peter Meyer

 

Tagged with:  

Create Khan Academy style video tutorials with ScreenChomp — from the digital inspiration blog by Amit Agarwal

Some of the products that Amit mentioned in the posting include:

 

 

*  Also see
Drawing on the iPad: 12 touchscreen styluses reviewed
— from Macworld.com

 

Update / addendum on 4-17-2012 from posting w/ same date:

Sal uses a PC with:

Camtasia Recorder ($200)
SmoothDraw3(Free)
Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80)

Prior to that, he used:

ScreenVideoRecorder($20)
Microsoft Paint (Free)

Mac users: In lieu of SmoothDraw, Autodesk Sketchbook Express works (free with a Wacom)

 

Frog Disection app from Punflay

Per Nicola Santiago at Punflay:

  • We develop educational iPhone/iPad apps for kids. Our Frog Dissection app which is being used in many schools was awarded the Mark Twain’s Ethical Science award by PETA and was also selected as the Best Science app by IEAR. We also have a Rat Dissection app in the store.

Side reflection from DSC:

This type of work shows the power of using teams of specialists. One person can’t do it all anymore — we need to face up to this fact and stop thinking that simply providing more professional development is the answer. I realize that using textbooks brings in teams of specialists — but it seems to me that we still think that simply by providing more professional development, our teachers and professors will be able to meet the constantly (and quickly) rising bar. That type of approach has outlived its usefulness and it just won’t cut it anymore; we do our students a major disservice by clinging to that outdated, status-quo-based model.

How can we move to using more teams of specialists to create and deliver our educational materials?

Nice work to the teams at Punflay in India!


 

 

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian