A short rant to kick off with. Once again I crafted a really great posting regarding this one day conference at Rueters HQ, London. And again I was foiled by GNERs WiFi!! Lost my connection just I clicked 'post'. Great - lost the lot. Thanks GNER!
On the other hand, perhaps that's not so bad. The interval has given me some time to reflect on yesterday's event. I enjoyed it enormously. The speakers were interesting and all had something to say; Jay Cross and Fabrizio Cardinalli were stand outs for me.Predictably the technology demonstrations didn't go too smoothly (when do they ever?), but congratulations for attempting to do something so daring in the first place. I do hope they continue to try new things at these events.
But - and here's the rub, it's all so unsatisfactory - not the event or the speakers of course. I mean I have the nagging feeling I have that we've been here before.
Many of the cases we were presented with yesterday were undoubtably of the Sales Support/Training, H&S Compliance, Procedural/Induction variety. All very onnovative and interesting, Giuntti LearnPills in particular. And the move from Text based WAP to richer, colourful flashcards and basic interaction is clearly a step forward; but isn't this trend the sames as the evolution from basic HTML and those grey pages to the Flash/Rich media Web based training we see everywhere?
This all feels very 1998 to me.
For me, eLearning is only now starting to deliver on it's early promise. For the first time US and UK corporations are seeing real and significant performance improvements and returns on investment from their eLearning developments. However the major development for eLearning is not the power or the richness of the media, nor even the complexity of the instructional design. It's the simple fact that relatively recent technologies - wikis, blogs, rss, podcasts and so on - are the tools and technologies that have encouraged mass engagement and participation on the web, bringing people together like never before really is powering the promise of eLearning. I have learned more in the last 12 months from the Personal blogs, wikis and RSS feeds I subscribe to than I any course, courseware or training event I've taken part in. The point was made time and again yesterday that people learn from people.
I think I made an ass of myself for asking a couple of the speakers what the difference was between mobile training and mobile learning - repeatedly. The thing is no-one really answered the question. And conversations I had with other delegates suggested to me that they really wanted to hear how these technologies could support the levels of engagements we now see through Wikis, RSS, Blogs and so on but no-one, apparentl, had anything to say on the subject.
Another question I meant to ask, but didn't (busy dashing for the train!), goes something like this:
"I'm designing a new web platform for the business and in the High Level Architecture I've included an abstraction layer that will deliver the content from the site optimised to any device - smartphone, PDA, desktop. Given the advances on the hardware side of mobile technology, and it's going to take 12 months to realise this project, is it worth the expense and the complexity of design? Should I let the market introduce new, more powerful devices capable of handling my site contents as if it were a desktop?" .
This may sounds like I'm down on the day; I'm not at all! Not agreeing with what is said at conference doesn't make it a bad conference!
But some important points have been, for now glossed over. A short debate from the floor suggested that questions of identity would become, quite soon, require addressing. I guess OpenID is one response to that, but there's another interesting question in there too. If Identity is important in establishing whether or not the information coming from said individual can be trusted, shouldn't we also attempt to confer identity on content too? Authenticity, quality, relevance, provinance? Aren't these important properties to be addressed in delivering content/information/learning to an audience?
I asked that question in an admittedly round about way but I don't think I was understood. Jay makes the point that we're all freerange learners in the uniquitous chicken yard but how do you tell the good grain from the bad grain lying around on the floor?
So, a great event and to pick up on a closing remark from Nigel Paine, no-one is arranging events quite like this right now and Ron is to be congratulated for a great day. I'd really like to see how things develop in the next 12 months though and be here next year.
Filed under: learning, mLearning, mobile, mobile learning, R&D
Comments
Hi Paul,
I thought you asked great questions which helped others as well.
The mobile training versus mobile learning question can be answered in part by the difference between formal and informal learning. I think mobile training is formal learning on a mobile (hopefully the learning occurs from the training!), which is designed to accomplish a specific instructional objective. Mobile Learning on the other hand can support a range of unstructured activities which include interaction with people, searching and more importantly finding information, performance support to help complete tasks - in other words, more of a learner driven activity based on their need, rather than completing a training module somebody else provides.
You also asked about waiting for more powerful devices to handle a website under development. Fortunately, by following web standards for mobiles, websites can work today on internet enabled phones. Simply using CSS renders a mobile friendly version in a browser. Take a look at my website on a mobile as an example. Of course, there are software programming issues to contend with for database driven websites, but these are being overcome every day. Check out mobile ebay and some of the new google and Microsoft live mobile features.
Thanks again for attending, I look forward to carrying on our converstation.