tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55728061400503354212024-03-13T09:44:50.981-07:00mLearning TrendsBusiness blog of Robert Gadd, co-founder of OnPoint Digital in Savannah, Georgia USA. OnPoint is a 10 year old, privately-held ISV developing mobile and online training solutions for enterprise accounts. Visit our web site at www.mlearning.com.Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-8318112485044873912014-05-27T13:19:00.000-07:002014-05-27T13:23:05.275-07:00Back Again + Captivate 8 Review (Summary: WOW!)<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First off, my apologies to all subscribers for being absent for so long in posting anything new to this blog. While my time and focus have never veered away from all things enterprise mobile learning centric, the time to write my thoughts down and share them with subscribers has been in short supply. The advent of our updated corporate web presence in the coming weeks has energized my efforts to write and share so hopefully this will be the first of many new postings in the coming months and quarters. Onward and upward, eh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This inaugural “Generation 2” blog posting comes on the heels of a tectonic shift in the mobile learning authoring tool wars…namely, the availability last week of Adobe <a href="http://thankyou.adobe.com/en/na/products/CP/v3/1106_captivate.html?sdid=KGTFO&skwcid=AL!3085!3!45065388262!b!!g!!+adobe%20+captivate%20how%20to&ef_id=UdMYIwAAAG7vol@-:20140527200856:s" target="_blank">Captivate 8</a> officially unveiled on May 20, 2014 in company <a href="http://www.adobe.com/news-room/pressreleases/201405/052014AdobeCaptivate8.html" target="_blank">press releases</a>. The introduction was also several months ahead of rumors I’d heard from others “in the know” who had alluded to an arrival later this fall. As such things go, I spent many unplanned hours over the recent 3-day holiday weekend here in the US digging into what this new release holds and its significance on the mobile learning community moving forward. Upon initial review, Adobe Captivate 8 is well positioned as a key technology for heralding in a new era of “mobile first” capabilities and attitudes that can accelerate change and ultimately transform a mobile learning landscape that has plodded along for years. It couldn’t come at a better time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the web tangents I followed over the long weekend brought me to a blog posting by Dr. <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/doctorpartridge" target="_blank">Allen Partridge</a>, Senior Technical Evangelist for eLearning Products at Adobe Systems, who recently penned “<a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2014/05/the-mobile-learning-tipping-point.html" target="_blank">The Mobile Learning Tipping Point</a>” on Adobe’s Rapid eLearning/Captivate Blog. Dr. Partridge’s article poses several interesting and provocative thoughts on the “state of the union” of mLearning and his words rallied me to not only to think but also to respond. I happened upon that posting after reviewing a great set of <a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2014/05/adobe-captivate-8-reimagines-responsive-elearning-for-a-multi-device-world.html" target="_blank">video tutorials</a> exploring Cp8 prepared by Dr. Partridge along with Dr. <a href="http://in.linkedin.com/pub/dr-pooja-jaisingh/3/600/68" target="_blank">Pooja Jaisingh</a>, Adobe’s Senior eLearning Evangelist for learning products and I encourage you to check out this informative collection of videos which are certainly worth your time if you are curious about Cp8’s many new features and improvements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a technologist who has been involved in the enterprise mLearning space for 10+ years – spanning features phones at the outset into web access on smartphones on through native apps for handsets, tablets, eReaders and all manner of other intelligent, connected devices – I can assert that interest in mobile learning from the device-enabled masses is truly real and the proverbial tipping point Dr. Partridge refers to is now or well within our immediate reach. Myriad obstacles contributed to the slow pace of market adoption over the years and the widely held view by several pundits and experts that mobile learning might not be a ready for prime time. The four most commonly cited limitations included the “lack of capable smart devices” (reality: smartphones now outsell feature phones, and tablets outsell traditional laptops as well), the “lack of interest” to use mobile devices for anything besides making calls and sending texts/emails (reality: the simple majority of information access over the web now happens via a mobile device), the perceived “lack of security” (reality: enterprise-grade mLearning is actually MORE secure than traditional eLearning), and the “lack of flexible tools and platforms” to package and present mLearning courseware (reality: the mobile experience can actually be as good or even BETTER than an online experience). I have experienced all of these challenges from the front lines of enterprise mobile Ed Tech and while new challenges arise all the time, yesterday’s complaints have largely been squelched and progressive organizations of all sizes have attained fantastic, measurable results mobile learning, performance support and business communications.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And like the world of mobile tech in general, the landscape of enabling tech providing support for mLearning is also evolving at a rapid rate with most passing quarters yielding better tools, templates, and approaches. In one fell swoop, Adobe has significantly “changed the game” from what (until recently) I considered their “sub-standard support” for mobile learning in Captivate 5/6/7 to what’s now clearly an offering that’s running at or certainly with the front of the pack of authoring tools for mobile content.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What’s my one word review of the new Captivate 8? How about “WOW!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The new Cp8 has great features, a simplified user interface for instructional designers, lots of flexibility to build content along with simulations, learning interactions, quizzes and even some simple game-enabled learning elements all through one industry standard and market recognized offering. And Cp8 is competitively priced as well costing less than $20/month via Adobe’s Creative Cloud services. In all honesty, I have complained many times to customers and partners alike about my disappointment in Adobe’s learning products not keeping up with the progressive and innovative feature sets they already offered in their other tools like <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html?promoid=KAUCC" target="_blank">InDesign</a> and <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html?promoid=KAUCF" target="_blank">Dreamweaver</a>. I guess they have finally found a way to get me to shut up and get onboard by actively endorsing their new product and approach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only does Cp8 provide support for a highly customizable set of responsive content templates, a plethora of extended features also make it easy to set “smart positioning” of graphical and text objects, to include support for common haptic responses like swipes, pinches/zooms, to include geo-location support, to add quizzes and interactions that leverage device accelerometers, and to preview your responsive projects across the common online-tablet-handset display metaphors using Adobe’s Edge Inspect offering (based on Adobe Shadow, I’d reason). Our team still needs to dig into the gory technical details on the various Cp8 publication options for output/delivery to LMS platforms as well as native app-focused delivery, bookmarking support between modalities for multi-screen learners, and available support for xAPI statements but overall Cp8 represents a giant leap forward and it will help virtually all their current customers bridge the gap between online and mobile faster, easier and with better results. They are likely to grab converts from other authoring tools as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Cp8, Adobe is clearly advancing what’s possible in our mLearning universe and coaxing the whole industry through that elusive “tipping point” we’ve anticipated for years. Clearly, other mainstream authoring tool vendors must now respond in kind with their own responsive and “mobile first” offerings or concede the field to what’s proving to be a very advanced and practical solution for enterprise mobile content authoring. And I think The Gartner Group should rethink that 10-year adoption landscape Allen referred to in his original posting too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, congrats to Adobe for a job well done – a long, long time in coming but nicely executed in the end. And thanks for inspiring me to get back into the blogosphere as well.</span></div>
Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-76633985227425299712013-01-30T15:46:00.000-08:002013-01-30T15:46:44.490-08:00CellCast App for BlackBerry 10<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh what a difference a few
years makes, eh? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our team has been involved in
mobile learning for enterprise customers for almost a decade now on devices
spanning basic feature phones in the beginning (think old Nokia handsets with
voice only service) through simple smartphone devices (remember Windows
Mobile?) popular four or five years ago. The next few years of the enterprise
mLearning landscape were focused on supporting mobile workers equipped with
nearly ubiquitous BlackBerry smartphones from Research in Motion; sure, there
were some new Apple iPhones out there and Google had just introduced Android
into the market but real companies needed real devices with real security so
most organizations sought to leverage those BlackBerry populations for their
mobile learning needs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What transpired next will
become fodder for many future business case studies as the venerable
RIM/BlackBerry began to lose market share to more sexy iOS and Android-based
alternatives due to what the market perceived as a lack of innovation coming
from the folks in Waterloo. Enterprise
IT organizations started thinking about devices that were fun to use, had more
capable features and better web browsers, and provided extensive app ecosystems
to meet address unique business requirements. Much of the pressure on these
teams to start considering non-RIM hardware was driven at the grassroots level
via the consumer-oriented adoption of Apple iPhones and iPads and Motorola
Droids that began to sweep through the market. When the sales executive up in
the corner office demands she needs her new personal handset or tablet working
with corporate email server and connected to the office Wi-Fi network,
yesterday’s mobile device risks were suddenly evaluated under different light thus
driving a wedge into the restrictive mobile device policies enforced by many IT
security teams. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of these facts was lost
on RIM, their ecosystem or their investors for that matter. Over the past year, RIM (now
<a href="http://us.blackberry.com/press/2013/research-in-motion-changes-its-name-to-blackberry.html" target="_blank">officially renamed BlackBerry</a> in both name and core product) has
transformed the company’s vision and strategy in the mobile computing market to
dramatically transform both their product hardware and the underlying mobile
device software with differentiated, next generation offerings that leverage past strengths as well as support future ones. All this culminated today with the official
launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system and announcement of the first two
of six planned handsets – the touchscreen <a href="http://us.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-z10.html?IID=us:bb:desktop:homepage:Jan2013:hero:bb10-discovermore" target="_blank">BlackBerry Z10</a> and the upcoming QWERTY-based
BlackBerry Q10. These devices are launching globally in the coming weeks/months
and are sure to not just energize the CrackBerry faithful with long-awaited
features but also begin to rebuild their base with new customers who feel the
current crop of mobile offerings leaves them wanting something different and
more secure. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our team has had the good
fortunate to work on project to bring our <a href="http://www.mlearning.com/" target="_blank">CellCast Solution</a> platform for
enterprise mobile learning to the BlackBerry 10 device platform and we
officially launched our new offering in the BlackBerry App World earlier this
month in support of today’s product introduction (along with 70K other
applications). The core functionality of our new BB10 app is virtually
identical feature-wise to all our other native smartphone, tablet and eBook
reader apps in other popular App stores but what sets this new app apart from
its siblings is the “wow factor” users gain from BlackBerry’s new
Cascades-based development environment and interface. The level of what’s
possible has easily changed by an order of magnitude from the current
BlackBerry/BBOS7 operating environment versus this new realm.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bpin6BzvKGk/UQmrvQL1N7I/AAAAAAAAALc/tMKHwEyXfaI/s1600/BB10vBB7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bpin6BzvKGk/UQmrvQL1N7I/AAAAAAAAALc/tMKHwEyXfaI/s400/BB10vBB7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As evidence, the picture
above shows our current BlackBerry 7 CellCast app next to our new BlackBerry 10
CellCast app each configured with the same selection of features and options. The
graphical interface is more engaging and simplified – hallmarks of the new
“less is more” mobile design doctrine my friends like <a href="http://rjacquez.com/our-2013-mantra-for-mlearning-simplify-simplify-simplify-lessons-from-linkedin/" target="_blank">RJ Jacquez</a> (@rjacquez) and <a href="http://mayraixavillar.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Mayra Aixa Villar</a> (@mayraAixaVillar) both espouse. Both apps allow users to access training content, complete
surveys, interact within defined social networks, and actively participate in
game-enabled learning environments and check their status on leader boards –
the BB10 just makes all those formal and informal learning interactions more
enjoyable. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall, the “look and feel” is truly wonderful as you’ll see in the short promo video included below that I produced using another excellent feature found on the BlackBerry 10 that’s not found on
many other smartphone handsets – HDMI video output that can be recorded by an
external video source. Add to that some
other compelling BB10-only features like BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Balance and
the new video-capable BlackBerry Messenger/BBM with cool screen sharing
capabilities to amass even more reasons (beyond control and tight security) why
enterprises are going include BlackBerry 10 solutions in their mobile computing
universes. BlackBerry 10 will definitely improve the mobile learning experience
for all who adopt and use one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwer6bOVwtAMjGrIzFVC9gg5bua-V7o0_Fz1ASQhaiN_PWxdwc_OYvU5iEzCmGYiBZBeJr_DBHEz52nNCRBKQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Finally, my thanks to our
whole team who worked diligently to design, create, test and deploy our next
generation app for all our BlackBerry 10 users, partners and customers – you
make me proud! :)</span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-66679346514046580492012-12-31T08:17:00.001-08:002012-12-31T08:17:50.789-08:00My 2012 Enterprise mLearning Predictions Recap
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As 2012 draws to a close, its time to
evaluate how in focus my lens on the future of enterprise mobile learning
proved to be this past year and how many of my year ago predictions hit their targets.
Back on December 30 2011, I scoped eight predictions ranging from
hardware/software to content types and authoring tools to macro-level mobility trends
our team felt would influence the market for mLearning products and services
for the year and I wasn’t disappointed (or much surprised) about how it all
played out. Here’s the analysis of how it all played out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#1 - Mobile Learning Goes Mainstream</b>. Or
perhaps this is more a case of the classic “frog in boiling water” scenario.
Whatever it is, this one is music to my ears after many years of toiling away
to make mLearning a reality for the enterprise. The acceptance of mobile
learning within the business community probably won’t happen with much fanfare,
it will just happen and be accepted as a “norm” wherein the market no longer
asks “should we offer learning to our employees (or partners or customers) via
mobile device?” and will simply state “we need to offer learning to our workers
via their omnipresent mobiles!” The reasons will be plentiful but largely
driven by better/cheaper/more ubiquitous technologies and everyone’s acceptance
of the fact we all use our phones (tablets, et al) to improve both personal and
business communications and to be more productive.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5eurlh7GV2g/UOG388Rst3I/AAAAAAAAAKs/IeBhjjrXkU4/s1600/Target-Middle.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5eurlh7GV2g/UOG388Rst3I/AAAAAAAAAKs/IeBhjjrXkU4/s1600/Target-Middle.png" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>On Target But...</b> Overall interest in enterprise mobile learning definitely
accelerated in 2012 with various surveys reporting that more than a simple
majority of Learning and Development teams are committed to identifying ways to
implement mobile learning for their workers and perhaps even customers as soon
as practical in their organizations. We’ve certainly witnessed much of the
inertia being driven at the grass roots level from executives, sales pros and
other mobile-equipped employees sporting their own smartphones and tablets
rather than in response to strategies being developed by the training
department. For enterprise mobile learning to be considered a “bullseye” and
truly mainstream, the level of adoption will needs to be measured in wide scale
usage not just varying levels of investigation, pilots and strategy
development. All that said, our company
witnessed large scale enterprise deployments in 2012 from several early adopter
customers and partners who are now being rewarded for their progressive
thinking and are now gaining “first mover advantage” over their peers and
competitors. And wherein a typical mLearning deployment was measured in 100s of
mobile workers back in 2008 through 2010 and in the 1000s of mobile workers as
recently as this past year, the target and committed audience for several active
programs is expanding to 25K, 50K and more mobile workers for several planned
initiatives we are supporting moving into 2013 – that’s something I’ll
categorize as mainstream for sure for a lucky few! </span></span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Prediction
#2 - Access Points Diversify</b>. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>There will be more types of devices
and ways to connect with our mobile learning world in 2012. And I am not just
talking about the classic iOS vs. Android vs. other argument but the fact that
different classes of hardware will start to get into our learning mix too. By
next December, the average corporate learner will likely have a capable
smartphone and their desktop/laptop PLUS a media tablet and/or eBook reader and
perhaps even a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>smart TV<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>back at home that is web-connected and
runs apps. The ability to move seamlessly from one device experience to another
will be critical with complete synchronization of our learning progress,
status, achievements, etc. no matter where or when we choose/need to learn.</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cr-4aLGL5Ts/UOG39gyHvrI/AAAAAAAAALA/bBd_wNgm_SE/s1600/Target-On-n-Off.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cr-4aLGL5Ts/UOG39gyHvrI/AAAAAAAAALA/bBd_wNgm_SE/s1600/Target-On-n-Off.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>A Hit
& A Miss</b>. The first part of this prediction was “spot on” – enterprise
workers are better equipped on the mobile front at the end of 2012 than they’ve
ever been. A simple majority of all workers are now sporting data-driven
smartphones versus the simple feature phones that have dominated the landscape
into 2012. And highly capable tablets and eBook readers now occupy prime real
estate in many of our briefcases and messenger bags and likely sit atop
everyone else’s tech toy wish list. This recent post suggests more tablets were
received/activated on Christmas Day than smartphones fueled by our sustained
interest in gadgets to help inform, entertain and hopefully educate us in times
of need. I admit the level interest in smart TVs did not materialize in 2012 as
I had expected it might for a variety of reasons and without capable
intelligent displays in our living rooms learning won’t begin to happen there.
I ponder how this would have played out if Apple had ventured into the
television market as many analysts expected them to 2012 and that opportunity
remains for 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#3 - Mobile Web vs. Mobile App Debate Intensifies</b>. Is enterprise mobile learning best delivered via native mobile
apps or using mobile web apps? I agree the technologies to create, deploy and
manage HTML5-based mobile web apps will greatly improve in 2012 but I don't
feel they will mature to the point they can replace all native apps – at least
in most of the primary enterprise use cases for learning that’s managed and
tracked. The many advantages of mobile web apps – like cross platform OS
support for iOS, Android and others – will still be mitigated in key areas like
security, off-line storage, sync updates, access to device features like cameras
(although this is improving in the spec) plus critical infosec concerns like
SSO support when disconnected and remote wipe capabilities that just don’t work
in mobile web apps yet. We do sense that mobile web apps will start to take
their rightful place when looking to support an organization’s external
learners (e.g., partners, customers) where ease of install/access are paramount
and the required features can be limited to what’s essential instead of
everything that’s required by IT, security and management. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We also think hybrid apps that mix the
best of native apps and mobile web apps will have a bigger impact on enterprise
mobile learning thoroughout 2012 than just pure mobile web apps for that same
market.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NMleSCJwiqw/UOG38QPgKdI/AAAAAAAAAKo/Uy3ZyIJn5jc/s1600/Target-Bullseye.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NMleSCJwiqw/UOG38QPgKdI/AAAAAAAAAKo/Uy3ZyIJn5jc/s1600/Target-Bullseye.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Bullseye</b>.
The use of native apps continued to dominate the enterprise mobile learning
landscape in our experience throughout 2012. Interest in the mobile web app
approach remains strong with many organizations especially from those wading
into the mobile learning pool for the first time (from both the customer and
vendor perspective). True, mobile web app access methods are cheaper to design
and deliver in multi-device mobile environments but the feature set still remains
limited with respect to things like access to core device features (camera,
accelerometer), device security, offline access and experience customization. I
agree the HTML5 tools used for mobile development are improving with each and
every quarter but it will take a year or more for these capabilities to begin
to match the native experience. Finally, given we can deliver mobile learning
to our customers using either approach – as we have native app frameworks for
every major device and content can also be accessed via any web kit-enabled
mobile browser – our actual access stats suggest the majority of mobile
learners prefer the native app route and will take the time to download,
install and configure an app to gain a better overall learning experience. And learning vendors (e.g., Brainshark, Plateau/SF/SAP,
Saba, Skillsoft) who suggest the mobile web app approach is superior to the
native app approach have simply not made the necessary investments required in
building the right teams and selecting the proper tools and methods that meet contemporary
mobile learner and more general business app mobility expectations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Prediction
#4 - Flash Falters, HTML5 and ePUBs Gain in Popularity</b>. 2012 will be a pivotal year in the way enterprises must think
about designing, producing, delivering and managing their content strategies,
and mobility strategies will alter many of our current tool kit and business
process choices. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Adobe’s
move to stop developing<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Flash
Player<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>plug-ins for mobile
web browsers set a BIG BALL in motion that quelled the desire for many
Instructional Designers to use pure Flash or popular rapid development tools
outputting Flash-based content as their unified content delivery
strategy. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Part of this
shift was driven by the fact that Flash-based content actually didn’t
perform/behave well on most Flash-enabled handsets and tablets especially when
the content was local rather than on a server. Much has been said and written
about the next wave of HTML5-based authoring tools or updates that will
transform yesterday’s authoring tools into tomorrow’s more flexible and
functional authoring systems and I suspect we’ll have nice working versions of
the top five offerings able to create content that’s both desktop and mobile
device friendly by mid year with commercial ready offerings from Adobe,
Articulate and a host of others.</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>I also
think many teams will begin to rethink their content creation and delivery
options resulting in new ways to chuck up or package content that’s friendly to
both online and mobile consumption scenarios. One trend is to move away from
monolithic, structured 20 to 30 minute courses that worked fine online via a PC
towards the notion of shorter, standalone learning objects that can be more
easily discovered, accessed and consumed at the time of need from any
device/app. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Another
counter-balanced trend gaining momentum will be the use of eBook style delivery
formats that make it easier to produce and manage long-form content that is far
more feature rich than static PDF files. Growing interest in the ePUB content
formats, especially media-friendly ePUB-3s, will allow learners to gain more
from and interact better with the content packages themselves and enable cool
functionality like highlighting, like better indexing/threading and both
personal and shared note taking all with the same level of access control and
tracking that’s generally only found today with an online eLearning
course. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> </i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMbMLcqGLdo/UOG39PhUcTI/AAAAAAAAAK0/adZ8eaFEPgY/s1600/Target-NearMiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMbMLcqGLdo/UOG39PhUcTI/AAAAAAAAAK0/adZ8eaFEPgY/s1600/Target-NearMiss.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Near
Bullseye.</b> 2012 will be remembered as the year the current shifted on Adobe Flash
as the preferred training content and rich media delivery format. Steve Jobs’
2010 insistence that his company’s devices would rely on more “open standards”
based on HTML5 and CSS over the then ubiquitous Flash standard proved both
powerful and prophetic resulting in a slow but steady transition away the well
established but dated comfort zone our industry had grown accustomed to.
Learning tool makers are finally starting to step in to fill the void created
by this seismic shift and 2012 witnessed acceptable (albeit inaugural) levels
of mobile-centric capabilities coming from several leading and formally
Flash-centric stalwarts like Adobe, Articulate, Harbinger, iSpring and others.
Early mobile-focused tool innovators like dominKnow and Rapid Intake (now part
of Callidus) also benefited from their HTML5 first mover advantages and real
world experience making their respective core offerings more flexible and
powerful in the mobile realm. Every vendor currently stuck with Flash-only content
delivery methods is extolling the virtue of their “soon to be released” HTML5
(or other mobile friendly) offerings to stay relevant in the face of all these
new choices. And many of these product refreshes are working to include other
mobile-optimized extensions like the Tin Can/Experience API that will make
mobile tracking easier to manage and manage. Finally, I really like what’s
happened on the ePUB front though there’s still a lack of nice tools for
creating cross-platform/device compatible eBook-style deliverables. I’d love to
see some nice innovation in this area in 2013 knowing this new world
content/media packaging movement represents a truly fresh and interactive way
to rethink a plethora of mobile content use cases.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#5 - Gamification Accelerates mLearning Adoption</b>.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> Once everyone
has the right devices and organizations accept the mandate to provide training,
performance support and business communications via mobile, what will compel
learners to participate and keep them engaged when there are so many
distractions like<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Facebook,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Twitter,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Farmville<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and mobile shopping? Gamification
seems to be a likely answer to that question. Not that companies need to even
create “games” per se; rather, the trend will be towards<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>gamifying<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>our standard formal learning actions
and informal social interactions through the addition of point systems,
achievement leveling/scaling, overall leader boards, badging systems and
tangible reward/incentives. Increased awareness of who’s ahead and how can
others beat them to the finish line will drive learner engagement and overall
organizational behavior and mobile access to these learning materials and
communities makes it easier to participate and stay connected whenever the mood
suits us.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gjt-epEsRHA/UOG3-Loq1WI/AAAAAAAAALI/ZBkogB1WkxE/s1600/Target-OutsideRing.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gjt-epEsRHA/UOG3-Loq1WI/AAAAAAAAALI/ZBkogB1WkxE/s1600/Target-OutsideRing.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>On Target But...</b>
The word “gamification” definitely entered the lexicon of many training teams in
2012 although what is means/represents is still in question and misunderstood
by many and debate of its merits will continue well into 2013. For the
uninitiated, gamification as it relates to learning is the practice of applying
game mechanics and dynamics – commonly things like points, badges and leader
boards (and so much more) – to non-gaming activities or learning interactions
to drive engagement and accelerate business outcomes. As a vendor who offers a
fully integrated “gamification engine” that ties directly to an online and
mobile LMS platform, I can comfortably say two things: (1) gamification is
NEVER going to marginalize nor replace the efforts of real game designers and
the highly polished, immersive and effective environments they deliver (nor was
it ever meant to), and (2) gamification IS making a real difference in driving
learning engagement, improving product/service knowledge levels and increasing
organization performance when applied to the proper learning interactions and
situations. We’ve seen training completion and knowledge retention rates in
game-enabled learning environments increase anywhere from 200% to more than
900% meaning more people are actively engaged and better prepared to perform
their jobs. True, not all organizations are ready to take a leap at adding
gamified learning practices into their mix but they certainly should be open to
checking out what’s possible/practical without dismissing it outright for
reasons various pundits assume but generally can’t confirm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#6 - Fewer but More Capable Tablets</b>. I
suspect the annual Consumer Electronics Show (“CES”) event in Las Vegas next
week will have far fewer tech OEMs wading into the tablet pool as compared with
January 2011. Apple’s iPad will continue to be the market leader in 2012 though
a collection of tablet devices based on Android (in older<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Honeycomb<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>to newer<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Ice Cream Sandwich<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>flavors), Microsoft<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Windows 8<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and possibly even RIM’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>PlayBook<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>2.0 OS will continue to eat away at Apple’s
market share as organizations seek to take advantage of the tablets for media
consumption, user-generated content creation and in situ selling supported.
Interest in using tablets for business purposes comes across business sectors<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/12/npd-small-businesses-looking-to-buy-tablets-with-ipad-in-the-lead.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss">large
and small alike</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>too and we see the
broader trend of tablets replacing laptops in many instances and even becoming
shared devices in certain use cases (e.g., retail sales, in field tech trucks,
departmental loaners) but requiring enterprise level controls and security
too.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMbMLcqGLdo/UOG39PhUcTI/AAAAAAAAAK0/adZ8eaFEPgY/s1600/Target-NearMiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMbMLcqGLdo/UOG39PhUcTI/AAAAAAAAAK0/adZ8eaFEPgY/s1600/Target-NearMiss.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Near
Bullseye</b>. There’s a large and growing chorus that tablets are the first and
only viable way to deliver highly functional mobile experiences – from sales
tools to performance support to line of business applications to learning – to
our on-the-go enterprise workers. Having spent eight plus years developing
mobile learning solutions for the enterprise, I would tend to disagree with
that statement but will concede that tablets have captured our attentions and
are driving new and renewed interest in enterprise mobility solutions spanning
a wide array of business use cases. Part of this trend is less about the tablet
being a better form factor than a smartphone but more about the tablet being a
more practical and cost effective alternative to a standard issue laptop.
Companies across industries and geographies alike are replacing last generation
PCs with next generation tablets for myriad reasons including being instant on,
always connected and often just more fun to use and interact with. As
predicted, the number and variety of tablets introduced throughout 2012 was
smaller than seen in 2011 and serious market leadership was relegated to a
select number of tier one vendors including Apple, Samsung, Google/Motorola and
Amazon fighting to stay a few steps ahead of tier two competitors like RIM,
Microsoft, Lenovo, Barnes & Noble. Despite the fragmentation at all levels,
the lion’s share of tablet adoption for mobile learning within the enterprise
was concentrated on Apple’s various iPad offerings especially when firms were
looking to equip their sales teams and executives. I think Apple will continue to be the
majority player for the next year although their overall market share will
continue to erode to the benefit of various Android-based alternatives.
Microsoft had a tough go of trying to convince the market that their Windows 8
and RT/Surface-based tablets were the right enterprise alternative to the iPad
as evidenced here. And being the low
cost provider in this sector hasn’t proved to make much of a difference in what
an enterprise will purchase for their mobile workers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#7 - Cool Mobile Tech Sparks Learning Innovations</b>. The latest mobile devices support a wide array of new features
that will ignite some nifty innovations in the learning space throughout 2012.
As people and companies replace their older<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>BlackBerries,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>iPhones<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and Android devices, their new
equipment will sport cool<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>next-gen<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>functions like dual core processors
making big media and big data easier to manage on our smaller devices. We will
benefit from faster data speeds using LTE (“long term evolution”) or true 4G
radios enabling quicker access to high value content as well as video access to
our experts and web conferencing access to scheduled ILT events. And more
advanced operating systems combined with embedded chips will provide support
for new forms of proximity computing using Near Field Communication (“NFC”)
thus allowing new kinds of location-based services for learning. I feel the
positive effects of the aforementioned evolutions will be more pronounced than
similar advances in areas like augmented reality that will remain costly to
design, produce and manage.</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OAsfS_Izofk/UOG36KXQZ_I/AAAAAAAAAKg/p6Tqvfsk7Og/s1600/Target-BigMiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OAsfS_Izofk/UOG36KXQZ_I/AAAAAAAAAKg/p6Tqvfsk7Og/s1600/Target-BigMiss.png" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Target Missed</b>. It’s true that better and faster devices were everywhere this year but
I think most of these delivered innovation promises failed to have much effect
on driving the learning side of the market. And while I am pleased to have
LTE-enhanced handsets and tablets at my beck and call, the learning experience
hasn’t really improved appreciably because I had a faster connection. The
promise of NFC, location-based services and augmented reality-based use cases
were not attained either nor did they seem to be compelling enough for our
customers to demand these sorts of services – at least not yet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>Prediction
#8 - Market Consolidations Continue/Accelerate</b>. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The big will
continue to eat the small as larger vendors seek to increase their market
appeal to both customers and investors. According to Bersin and Associates,
2011 already saw several of the tier one Talent Management vendors actively
engaged in expanding their market reach and the portfolio offerings through
strategic acquisitions and mergers and these moves make the resulting companies
far more attractive acquisitions to the larger enterprise software whales that
rule their respective oceans. SAP’s planned takeover of SuccessFactors and
Oracle’s move on RightNow (approved this week) all are harbingers of more
market consolidation as larger companies look to flesh out their cloud, mobile
and social strategies.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5eurlh7GV2g/UOG388Rst3I/AAAAAAAAAKs/IeBhjjrXkU4/s1600/Target-Middle.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="166" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5eurlh7GV2g/UOG388Rst3I/AAAAAAAAAKs/IeBhjjrXkU4/s200/Target-Middle.png" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>On Target</b>. The big continued to eat the
small throughout 2012 in an effort to protect market share while bolstering
their portfolios with innovative product and service offerings at all ends of
the business spectrum. Tier Ones like Oracle captured Tier Twos like Taleo to
strengthen cloud and talent appeals alike. IBM consumed Kenexa right after they
had acquired LCMS vendor Outstart who had previously bought Hot Lava for their
mobile learning offering – a food chain process that will be repeated time and
again. Several of the LMS/TM players like Saba, Cornerstone on Demand and
Callidus Cloud each gobbled up smaller and flexible innovators across a variety
of disciplines to beef up their product suites and help tell a better story to both
customers and investors. I suspect even more of the same in 2013 especially
with the looming uncertainty the financial and general business markets and the
effects these constraints will have on R&D budgets and resulting lack of
innovation coming from hobbled teams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So, that’s
a wrap for 2012. Stand by for my 2013 predictions in the next few days as we
look into what the future hold for enterprise mobile learning. And thanks for reading this and sharing it with
others too! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Robert ;)</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-48616572763117646452012-05-25T13:53:00.005-07:002012-05-25T13:56:12.297-07:00Trail Ride to Float Mobile Learning Symposium<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F4OIgH910jo/T7_wzEE0WnI/AAAAAAAAAJo/X-9mty4U8G8/s1600/trailView.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F4OIgH910jo/T7_wzEE0WnI/AAAAAAAAAJo/X-9mty4U8G8/s200/trailView.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">We are about thirty days out from the<a href="http://floatlearning.com/symposium/" target="_blank"> Float Mobile LearningSymposium</a> and I am getting excited! I’m ready to pack my saddle bags, mount the
proverbial horse and head up the cattle trail to Chicago for this year’s event
to be held at startup incubator<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.1871.com/">1871</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and
in conjunction with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://techweek.com/conference/">TechWeek 2012 Conference</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in Chicago. This year’s Float
Symposium builds on momentum gained from last year’s inaugural event held down
the trail in Peoria, IL (Float’s outpost/HQ) and is sure to please.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Why am I excited? That’s easy, Tex! It is all about the
people – from those putting it together to those hosting the venue and everyone
speaking but, more importantly, those attending. This event may be boutique in
size compared with mega learning events but everyone in the crowd are likely
“twin sons (and daughters) from different mothers” who each think about mobile
with every action, reaction and breath they take. Sure, there will be sessions
and speeches along the way, but the real opportunity is in the connections you
make with peers who are excited to share their experiences – both good and bad
– with others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 7.75pt; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">If you know about the event, you’re likely part of the “minority
crowd” of real mobile practitioners rather than the “majority crowd” still
sitting on the fence and not out there riding the mobile rodeo bull. My
advice -- strap in, listen for the bell, and hold on for eight seconds as best
you can! When you fall (and you will at some point), know the distance down
isn’t too far and just make sure you get out of the way! Mobile is
something to experience, not just talk about, and the best way to learn from
others is to share your own practical lessons with them so we can build on what’s
proven possible, practical and productive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 7.75pt; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">For my part, I’m pleased to be delivering a session on<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><strong><i>Enterprise Security for Mobile
Learning</i></strong>, an often overlooked and misunderstood topic for
individuals and teams tasked with the creation, delivery and management of
mobile learning that live within the confines of an information security
department’s strict policies and expectations. The introduction of mobile
devices across nearly every aspect of our business lives has introduced a wide
array of technical, operational and managerial challenges every organization
must understand and find ways to address. Every organization approaches
security in their own way and the variables differ across industries and use
cases. A combination of IT policies like BYOD, varied use of mobile
devices/operating systems, the selection of native apps/mobile web, the need
for online versus offline content delivery, to issue of track or not to track,
and even exempt/non-exempt employee work rules can all coalesce to make security
something many teams think of last and, before they realize it, their projects
can be in real jeopardy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 7.75pt; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">My primary goal is to share experiences on security with everyone
at the Symposium seeking to plan, implement or manage an upcoming mobile
learning initiative, and arm them with tips and tricks to get their IT, infosec
and management teams comfortable with the fact mobile is here, it’s real and it
really can be secure. My other goal is to connect with other rodeo riders (and
clowns) like me and learn as much from their time in the saddle as I have mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Yippee, ki-yah!</span></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-16912102545532935162012-04-15T11:30:00.001-07:002012-04-15T11:30:55.746-07:00"This Week in mLearning" Podcast: Week #2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HTQPG7zHEls/T4sO2ujsNsI/AAAAAAAAAJg/hV_wXn3lor8/s1600/Podcast-Graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HTQPG7zHEls/T4sO2ujsNsI/AAAAAAAAAJg/hV_wXn3lor8/s320/Podcast-Graphic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We've put the finishing touches on our second weekly podcast detailing all the happenings in the mobile learning field for the week of April 9, 2012 and you can listen to <a href="http://rjacquez.com/" target="_blank">RJ Jacquez</a> and I talk about the week that was by clicking the link <a href="http://rjacquez.com/this-week-in-mlearning-podcast-native-apps-vs-mobile-web-episode-2/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The central theme for this week's episode was a discussion of the use of "Mobile App vs. Mobile Web" for creating and delivery mobile learning but we also covered a variety of other topics including announcements like Google's new </span><a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/111626127367496192147/posts" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Project Glass</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> initiative, ADL's <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/adlnet.gov/future-learning-experience-project/project-updates/whatisprojecttincan" target="_blank">Project Tin Can</a> preview and recent rumblings from </span><a href="http://www.adobe.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Adobe</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> as to what we can expect in the upcoming Creative Suite 6/CS6 in foundational products like <i>Photoshop</i>, <i>Dreamweaver</i> and <i>Flash</i> and how these new features will help push the boundaries of possibility for mobile learning content creation and deployment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While we're still trying to gain our footing in terms of pace and approach, the first couple of podcasts have been well received and we're appreciative of the comments and suggestions being offered by early listeners. RJ continues to perform double duty by recording a second weekly podcast in Spanish with </span><a href="http://www.scoop.it/t/my-posts-on-elearning-trends-tools-and-resources" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Mayra Aixa Villar</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that is bringing benefit and knowledge to a whole other market...I only wish I had paid attention enough in high school Spanish class so I could at least listen to each episode much less participate in any substantive way. I know their episode "dos" will be posted by Monday, April 16th so watch (and listen) for that!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, RJ is working to gain approval from </span><a href="http://www.apple.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Apple</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to release the weekly recordings to a broader audience via the <i>iTunes App Store</i> and we'll let everyone know when that's a reality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>#TWmLearning App of the Week</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This week's choice for App of the Week is <i><a href="http://snapguide.com/" target="_blank">Snapguide</a></i>, which bills itself as "the easiest way to make and share good looking guides". This free App for iOS devices is quite cleaver and an excellent example of how compelling user generated content can be built on-the-fly using only an iPhone or iPad and easily shared with a broader audience. Everything is KISS elegent here including and sign-up and friending process.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks in advance for listening and please share any comments or ideas with me below so I can pass them on to my fellow podcast collaborators too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Robert ;?)</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-32700574370067640732012-04-03T15:16:00.001-07:002012-04-03T15:21:04.807-07:00New Podcast - "This Week in mLearning"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm pleased to share details about a new social venture I'm supporting with my friend and colleague, <a href="http://rjacquez.com/" target="_blank">RJ Jacquez</a>; namely, a weekly podcast titled <i><a href="http://soundcloud.com/rjacquez/this-week-in-mlearning-episode" target="_blank">This Week in mLearning</a></i>. We've already recorded and published our first episode and I welcome the readers of this blog to subscribe to this series where we hope to share leading news stories and happenings across the world of mobile devices and apps in general and Training and Development initiatives in particular. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those who don't know him (and you should), RJ is an "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">Über</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">" bright and insightful T-n-D professional, an avid blogger, a budding author, an app designer and one of the recognized talents in our growing industry. He worked as Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe for several years before striking out on his own last December (see bio below). He now focuses much of his energy and passion in the area of mobility/mLearning recognizing how important the tools, technologies and processes our industry is now developing will be to everyone's ability to learn and prosper now and in all the years to come. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For my part, I serve as RJ's sidekick, technical jack-of-all-trades and resident humorist as best I can -- an Andy Richter to his Conan O'Brien if you will -- and will also help mold the conversation based on the practical implementations and experiences I've gained from working with my team here at OnPoint. Most of my experiences in mLearning have been gained through the school of "hard knocks" delivering commercial mobile learning solutions well beyond simply planning or consulting on same for a series of very progressive customers who have thrown caution to the wind and jumped into the deep end of the pool sometime long before these technologies or practices were ready; armed with those experiences, I hope to bring a unique spin to the conversation each week. We are planning to present relevant news and tips about all things mobile, and also plan to have a variety of guests joining us from time to time to share their real world experiences and talk about new tools and methods too. It should prove to be fun, engaging and hopefully beneficial to all who invest their time to listen. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VGyFhyCw5l0/T3tyPXUC4TI/AAAAAAAAAJY/i2-HDXXO97c/s1600/Conan-Andy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VGyFhyCw5l0/T3tyPXUC4TI/AAAAAAAAAJY/i2-HDXXO97c/s320/Conan-Andy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RJ is also doing "double duty" by recording a podcast each week in Spanish too with </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1;"><a href="http://www.scoop.it/t/my-posts-on-elearning-trends-tools-and-resources" target="_blank">Mayra Aixa Villar</a>, another avid mLearning </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">aficionado, blogger and tweeter who hails from Argentina! My Espanol is too rusty to get much from their conversations but I'll reason they will be just as interesting and compelling as anything I can contribute to.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can connect to and subscribe to the podcast series via the following link:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://rjacquez.com/introducing-a-new-podcast-this-week-in-mlearning-episode-1-the-new-ipad-and-mobile-learning/" target="_blank">This Week in mLearning</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, here's RJ's bio to learn more about him. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #555555; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;">My name is RJ Jacquez and I am a Former Adobe Senior Evangelist. I spent 6 years at Adobe Evangelizing existing products and launching new ones. I'm currently writing an eBook on what I learned and why companies need Passionate Evangelist in today' Social Media world. I'm honored to be among great company in the following lists and articles: 1) Top 25 Most Influential Bloggers in Technical Communications (http://bit.ly/a8ooZC) 2) Top 20 most influential tweeters in eLearning, training and HR (http://bit.ly/vScfc0). 3) I was also mentioned in this article on Why Every Company Needs a Robert Scoble (infographic) for my work as an Adobe Evangelist (http://bit.ly/v0IMHs). Please follow me on Twitter @rjacquez</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-82785094718904451472012-03-08T11:08:00.001-08:002012-03-10T05:07:00.428-08:00In Praise of “The New iPad 4G HD 3”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DvrdEsDs-og/T1kB_nkJV7I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/MqqBlHzgD70/s1600/iPad-New.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DvrdEsDs-og/T1kB_nkJV7I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/MqqBlHzgD70/s400/iPad-New.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yesterday was a banner day in the tech biz as <a href="http://www.apple.com/" target="_blank">Apple</a> unveiled their third generation tablet device to an eager audience and overall market. Apple’s much admired/discussed ability to keep mum on new products and features notwithstanding, the actual device they’ve released is largely a reflection of what the market and consumers hoped for and expected and includes the following key features:</span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">High-rez retina display (2048x1536 with 3.1 million pixels)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Faster A5X processor & quad core graphics support</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Standard Wi-Fi and optional 4G/LTE high-speed modem</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Improved cameras (front & back) with image stabilization</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Content capture at true 1080p HD</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Bluetooth 4.0</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Voice recognition supporting dictation (but not “Siri”)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">High capacity battery</span></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This list of core features and the many other minor additions – all at the same price as the previous iPad 2 – make “The New iPad” the most capable and well-equipped mobile device ever marketed albeit bearing a cumbersome name. My colleague RJ Jacquez (<a href="http://rjacquez.com/" target="_blank">@rjacquez</a>) quipped on Twitter it should be called the “iPad 4G HD 3” which actually seems as good or likely as Apple’s “The New iPad” but I’m sure we’ll all settle in to just referring to it as our iPad.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VXaVhu8U_Rg/T1kBZrpPRMI/AAAAAAAAAJA/o6Mx_KXhjUE/s1600/RJ-Tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="75" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VXaVhu8U_Rg/T1kBZrpPRMI/AAAAAAAAAJA/o6Mx_KXhjUE/s400/RJ-Tweet.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whatever they call it, I – like millions of others – probably spent a frustrating few hours hitting the refresh button on the Apple Store web site until I was able to then access then painfully move through the process of ordering up several units for our team of developers. When it was all over, I’d spent the better part of an afternoon monitoring the launch event, chatting with colleagues about what we thought/liked/disappointed us, and committing my cash to having the latest and greatest. And it remains astounding these products can go from “doesn’t actually exist” to being built and packaged and shipped across the planet and into our hands in less than nine days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The New iPad - What It Is and What It Isn’t<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where consensus of opinion proved correct on things like the awesome display, the faster network access, the cameras and even the price points, the fringes of the rumor mill got it wrong on several of their prognostications including enhanced haptic/tactile response and a smaller, 7-inch iPad model amongst others. Having Siri would have been a nice too although time will tell how and if we’re able to leverage the voice recognition technologies through available iOS APIs in order to add a new dimension to enterprise mobile learning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Will this latest iteration of the iPad prove to be as revolutionary as the original iPad or the iPad2 on the learning industry? Or does it really matter?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Frankly, I’m not sure the technical specs are the real story here. The true and tangible benefit to the market is Apple has again raised the ante for all tech OEMs to create better, faster and more innovative mobile devices that can continue to capture the hearts and minds of not only the faithful fan boys like me but also enlist the masses to get into the adoption curve as well. This morning I was happy and surprised to learn that several non-tech geeks I know – friends, family, neighbors – were also hitting Apple’s web store and call centers ordering their own iPad “3”s so they could start taking advantage of the many new features manifest in these “post PC era” computing wonders.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also know my iPad2 will quickly find a home with others around our offices – probably replacing the iPad1s that had previously trickled down to others when the iPad2s shipped last spring. And unlike most mobile handsets we’ve bought and used over the years, it seems no iPad around here – of any generation – ever lies dormant on a shelf in favor of the latest “shiny object” we might acquire. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall, this means the base of devices is growing wide and deep, and that fact alone will accelerate demand and adoption for enterprise mobile learning for organizations of all sizes. Despite the Apple bias of this post, this is actually good news for ALL tablet devices given the things we can do with them as a general class – be they iOS or Android or PlayBook QNX or Windows 8-based – is changing the way we work, relax and learn. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so yesterday was a very good day for enterprise mobile learning. And March 16<span style="font-size: x-small;">th </span>– the day the UPS or Fedex guy starts delivering all “The New iPad 4G HD” devices to the homes, offices and retail stores out there – will be yet another. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-15616568148631536962011-12-30T13:00:00.000-08:002011-12-30T13:00:57.006-08:00Enterprise mLearning Predictions for 2012<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Here on the last day of the year, I offer my predications for the big and shaping trends we’ll see in the enterprise mobile learning space for 2012.<span> </span>As in the past, this year’s list includes predictions across a gamut of new technologies, consumer/buyer trends plus a few anticipated <i>seismic shifts</i> in the world of business that should collectively reshape the landscape for the adoption and accelerated growth of mobile learning for businesses.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">So, in no certain order, here are my predictions…</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">1. <b>Mobile Learning Goes Mainstream</b>. Or perhaps this is more a case of the classic “frog in boiling water” scenario. Whatever it is, this one is music to my ears after many years of toiling away to make mLearning a reality for the enterprise. The acceptance of mobile learning within the business community probably won’t happen with much fanfare, it will just happen and be accepted as a “norm” wherein the market no longer asks “should we offer learning to our employees (or partners or customers) via mobile device?” and will simply state “we need to offer learning to our workers via their omnipresent mobiles!” The reasons will be plentiful but largely driven by better/cheaper/more ubiquitous technologies and everyone’s acceptance of the fact we all use our phones (tablets, et al) to improve both personal and business communications and to be more productive. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">2. <b>Access Points Diversify</b>.<span> </span>There will be more types of devices and ways to connect with our mobile learning world in 2012. And I am not just talking about the classic iOS vs. Android vs. other argument but the fact that different classes of hardware will start to get into our learning mix too. By next December, the average corporate learner will likely have a capable smartphone and their desktop/laptop PLUS a media tablet and/or eBook reader and perhaps even a <i>smart TV</i> back at home that is web-connected and runs apps. The ability to move seamlessly from one device experience to another will be critical with complete synchronization of our learning progress, status, achievements, etc. no matter where or when we choose/need to learn.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">3. <b>Mobile Web vs. Mobile App Debate Intensifies</b>. Is enterprise mobile learning best delivered via native mobile apps or using mobile web apps? I agree the technologies to create, deploy and manage HTML5-based mobile web apps will greatly improve in 2012 but I don't feel they will mature to the point they can replace all native apps – at least in most of the primary enterprise use cases for learning that’s managed and tracked. The many advantages of mobile web apps – like cross platform OS support for iOS, Android and others – will still be mitigated in key areas like security, off-line storage, sync updates, access to device features like cameras (although this is improving in the spec) plus critical infosec concerns like SSO support when disconnected and remote wipe capabilities that just don’t work in mobile web apps yet. We do sense that mobile web apps will start to take their rightful place when looking to support an organization’s external learners (e.g., partners, customers) where ease of install/access are paramount and the required features can be limited to what’s essential instead of everything that’s required by IT, security and management.<span> </span>We also think hybrid apps that mix the best of native apps and mobile web apps will have a bigger impact on enterprise mobile learning thoroughout 2012 than just pure mobile web apps for that same market.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">4. <b>Flash Falters, HTML5 & ePUBs Gain in Popularity</b>. 2012 will be a pivotal year in the way enterprises must think about designing, producing, delivering and managing their content strategies, and mobility strategies will alter many of our current tool kit and business process choices.<span> </span>Adobe’s move to stop developing <i>Flash Player</i> plug-ins for mobile web browsers set a BIG BALL in motion that quelled the desire for many Instructional Designers to use pure Flash or popular rapid development tools outputting Flash-based content as their unified content delivery strategy.<span> </span>Part of this shift was driven by the fact that Flash-based content actually didn’t perform/behave well on most Flash-enabled handsets and tablets especially when the content was local rather than on a server. Much has been said and written about the next wave of HTML5-based authoring tools or updates that will transform yesterday’s authoring tools into tomorrow’s more flexible and functional authoring systems and I suspect we’ll have nice working versions of the top five offerings able to create content that’s both desktop and mobile device friendly by mid year with commercial ready offerings from Adobe, Articulate and a host of others. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">I also think many teams will begin to rethink their content creation and delivery options resulting in new ways to chuck up or package content that’s friendly to both online and mobile consumption scenarios. One trend is to move away from monolithic, structured 20 to 30 minute courses that worked fine online via a PC towards the notion of shorter, standalone learning objects that can be more easily discovered, accessed and consumed at the time of need from any device/app.<span> </span>Another counter-balanced trend gaining momentum will be the use of eBook style delivery formats that make it easier to produce and manage long-form content that is far more feature rich than static PDF files. Growing interest in the ePUB content formats, especially media-friendly ePUB-3s, will allow learners to gain more from and interact better with the content packages themselves and enable cool functionality like highlighting, like better indexing/threading and both personal and shared note taking all with the same level of access control and tracking that’s generally only found today with an online eLearning course.<span> </span><span> </span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">5. <b>Gamification Accelerates mLearning Adoption</b>. <span> </span>Once everyone has the right devices and organizations accept the mandate to provide training, performance support and business communications via mobile, what will compel learners to participate and keep them engaged when there are so many distractions like <i>Facebook</i>, <i>Twitter</i>, <i>Farmville</i> and mobile shopping? Gamification seems to be a likely answer to that question. Not that companies need to even create “games” per se; rather, the trend will be towards <i>gamifying</i> our standard formal learning actions and informal social interactions through the addition of point systems, achievement leveling/scaling, overall leader boards, badging systems and tangible reward/incentives. Increased awareness of who’s ahead and how can others beat them to the finish line will drive learner engagement and overall organizational behavior and mobile access to these learning materials and communities makes it easier to participate and stay connected whenever the mood suits us.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">6. <b>Fewer but More Capable Tablets</b>. I suspect the annual Consumer Electronics Show (“CES”) event in Las Vegas next week will have far fewer tech OEMs wading into the tablet pool as compared with January 2011. Apple’s iPad will continue to be the market leader in 2012 though a collection of tablet devices based on Android (in older <i>Honeycomb</i> to newer <i>Ice Cream Sandwich</i> flavors), Microsoft <i>Windows 8</i> and possibly even RIM’s <i>PlayBook</i> 2.0 OS will continue to eat away at Apple’s market share as organizations seek to take advantage of the tablets for media consumption, user-generated content creation and in situ selling supported. Interest in using tablets for business purposes comes across business sectors <a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/12/npd-small-businesses-looking-to-buy-tablets-with-ipad-in-the-lead.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss" target="_blank">large and small alike</a> too and we see the broader trend of tablets replacing laptops in many instances and even becoming shared devices in certain use cases (e.g., retail sales, in field tech trucks, departmental loaners) but requiring enterprise level controls and security too.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">7. <b>Cool Mobile Tech Sparks Learning Innovations</b>. The latest mobile devices support a wide array of new features that will ignite some nifty innovations in the learning space throughout 2012. As people and companies replace their older <i>BlackBerries</i>, <i>iPhones</i> and Android devices, their new equipment will sport cool <i>next-gen</i> functions like dual core processors making big media and big data easier to manage on our smaller devices. We will benefit from faster data speeds using LTE (“long term evolution”) or true 4G radios enabling quicker access to high value content as well as video access to our experts and web conferencing access to scheduled ILT events. And more advanced operating systems combined with embedded chips will provide support for new forms of proximity computing using Near Field Communication (“NFC”) thus allowing new kinds of location-based services for learning. I feel the positive effects of the aforementioned evolutions will be more pronounced than similar advances in areas like augmented reality that will remain costly to design, produce and manage. <span> </span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">8. <b>Market Consolidations Continue/Accelerate</b>.<span> </span>The big will continue to eat the small as larger vendors seek to increase their market appeal to both customers and investors. According to Bersin & Associates, 2011 already saw several of the tier one Talent Management vendors actively engaged in expanding their market reach and the portfolio offerings through strategic acquisitions and mergers and these moves make the resulting companies far more attractive acquisitions to the larger enterprise software whales that rule their respective oceans. SAP’s planned takeover of SuccessFactors and Oracle’s move on RightNow (approved this week) all are harbingers of more market consolidation as larger companies look to flesh out their cloud, mobile and social strategies.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span> </div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="color: windowtext;">Summary</span></i></b><span style="color: windowtext;">. That is what I see in my crystal ball. It should prove to be an interesting year for all of us involved in the training & development and technology spaces and I, for one, look forward to seeing how these cited advances and many others we can’t foresee today will influence how we all interact and learn.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Happy New Year 2012!</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-40488536312717822202011-12-28T13:05:00.000-08:002011-12-29T13:01:53.340-08:00Enterprise Mobile Learning 2011 - Year in Review<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">a.k.a. How On Target Were My 2011 Predictions?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">It’s time once again to take stock of what happened in enterprise mobile learning and see if any of my 2011 predictions hit their intended targets. One year ago today, I offered nine predictions running the gamut of hardware, software, industry players and general market movements based on trends we were experiencing in the commercial mobile learning marketplace; here’s my analysis of where these predictions landed twelve months later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>Prediction #1 - mLearning Engagements Expand.</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> If 2010 was the year of the pilot, 2011 will be the year of the deployment. As I stated in the previous post assessing my 2010 predictions, the size and complexity of mobile learning projects/programs will continue to expand across all geographical and line-of-business boundaries. I think case studies from enterprise organizations on the leading edge will abound by year’s end for successful mobile learning initiatives by thus providing the “I want to do what they did!” examples the industry has waited for over the past many years. Case studies featuring accelerated ROI with tens of thousands of learners (or more!) using different types of devices in multitudes of languages across diverse geographies are sure to drive awareness in mobile learning and generate interest from organizations of all sizes seeking to achieve their own successes and become more innovative in the way the train and support their ever-mobile learning communities.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QG-ZLsPrEWA/Tvt1HmPELDI/AAAAAAAAAHM/VX7SMpZ1G3E/s1600/Target-OutsideRing.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QG-ZLsPrEWA/Tvt1HmPELDI/AAAAAAAAAHM/VX7SMpZ1G3E/s200/Target-OutsideRing.png" width="200" /></a><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f;"> </span></i><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f;"> </span></i></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: green;">On the Target – But Barely</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. 2011 proved to be another year more focused on the pilot project rather than the production deployment for enterprise mobile learning solutions. True, most of our partners and customers who launched mLearning initiatives in 2009 and after all seemed to be ramping up their efforts to include other divisions and geographies but pilots remained “the norm” for newer accounts. There are certainly fewer obstacles holding back broader enterprise deployments of mobile learning solutions but an array of challenges remain including limited budgets, limited experience, the scarcity of flexible AND AVAILABLE authoring tools (see #5 below) and general macro-economic concerns every company is harboring. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 0.5in;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Prediction #2. Device Diversity is the “New Normal”</span></i></b><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">. After years of BlackBerry dominance in the pockets and purses of enterprise personnel, iOS (Apple) and Android-based mobile phones and tablet devices will supplant RIM-supplied smartphones as the primary desired (and likely used) smart devices for mobile learning – at least in North America. This shift will be driven by a combination of factors including learner (and executive) demand, IT acceptance and infosec approval plus a movement towards the adoption of “bring your own device” use policies within the enterprise...</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f;"> </span></i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kopfmTOBxHw/Tvt1enOdRtI/AAAAAAAAAHc/4768xoBclfA/s1600/Target-Bullseye.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kopfmTOBxHw/Tvt1enOdRtI/AAAAAAAAAHc/4768xoBclfA/s200/Target-Bullseye.png" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">Bullseye!</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> This one was spot-on and even I was amazed how quickly the omnipresent BlackBerry wireless handset, the standard issue weapon of choice for mobile enterprise workers, started to lose its’ place inside every corporate pocket and purse. Not only did we witness many IT organizations allowing non-BlackBerry devices like iOS and Android handsets onto their networks, several historical “BB only shops” moved to cut the venerable BlackBerry totally out of their long-term device strategies. The BYOD movement certainly gained momentum in 2011 across a simple majority of enterprise organizations we work with too. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Finally, the trend towards “single user with multiple devices” really started to resonate with mobile learners wherever the option was available for that learner to access training on whatever device they happened to be carrying, be it corporate provided or personally owned, and enablement of the notion they could switch between their handset, tablet, eBook reader or desktop/laptop to seamlessly continue a training interaction whenever the mood struck them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 9pt;"></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f;"> </span></i></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>Prediction #3. Mobile Apps Become Essential to Enterprise mLearning</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. As stated in our previous <a href="http://mlearningtrends.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-mlearning-year-in-review.html"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">post</b></a>, the mobile learning “app” has proved its superiority over less compelling mobile web-delivered training materials. True, mobile apps are harder to create and to support but the value derived from an installed app proves far more beneficial and powerful for the typical enterprise customer, especially those looking to support their own defined workforces versus a broad general audience… </i></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> <br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">Near Bullseye</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;">. I still think the Mobile App is </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: maroon;">King</span></i></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> in the enterprise mobile learning space although the drum thumps of HTML5-based mobile web apps can be heard faintly in the distance. We still contend there’s no real comparison between a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">native</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">app</i> and any <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">web app</i> equivalent especially as it relates to core functionality that IT teams really care about like security, encryption, remote wipe ability, off-line access, support for device features (cameras, recorders), data synchronization, content tracking, and the overall playback experience. We should know – we offer a mobile web app and virtually no one opts to use it when the native app is also available given the lack of content types and features supported today. </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: green;"></span></b></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: windowtext;">HTML5 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">web apps</i> might be ideal for consumer-centric marketing efforts, mobile games and some social tools but these experiences are one-dimensional compared with the full-on, multi-functional mLearning experiences mixing formal and informal interactions, performance tools, ready access to information and experts, gaming systems and more. We’ll certainly see the features and functionality of HTML5 maturing through 2012 along with access to better and faster networks (LTE, 4G, Wi-Max) but, for now, we still feel the best customer/user/learner experience happens via a native but customizable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">app</i> framework. After all, would you rather check your email, Twitter or Facebook on your smartphone using your device’s native email/twitter/FB app or launch your mobile web browser to stay connected? Vendors (and consultants) touting the “myriad benefits” of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mobile web</i> over the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mobile app</i> are everywhere but most are latecomers playing mobile catch up and haven’t spent the requisite time needed to learn and master the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">native app</i> IDEs that are central to success today. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
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<b><i>Prediction #4. Pad/Tablet Use Explodes</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">! The emerging pad/tablet market will gain further momentum and an increasing number of enterprise organizations will start to support/provide the larger form factored devices to their field sales, technical and professional staff. Given the fact these devices slot into our device lineup somewhere between the typical smartphone and a laptop in terms of size and capabilities, many organizations will start to drop the laptop and supply BOTH a tablet and a smartphone for every mobile worker/learner – and don’t be surprised if these are supplied by different vendors too like having a BlackBerry (or similar) handheld AND an iPad (or similar) tablet. </i></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> <br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">Bullseye #2!</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> The adoption of tablets, initiated by Apple’s iPad but closely followed by several others, proved to be a true driver for enterprise mobility in general and mobile learning is a real beneficiary of this trend. We witnessed more than two dozen companies who had purchased 200+ tablets for their workforce because it was cool rather than with a plan in mind – this situation drove ample opportunity given employee training and workforce development are universally needed and desired by every organization and tablets are viewed by many as the first practical mobile device to overcome the plethora of perceived limitations in mLearning (e.g., tiny screens, static content, awkward user experience, others). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;">The other interesting tablet trend we experienced in 2011 centered on heterogeneous versus homogenous device selection criteria; either the customer wanted their mobile learning accessible on any tablet (iPad, Android Xoom, RIM PlayBook, Kindle Fire, whatever!) or they locked down their choice to just one platform (iPad only, Android only, PlayBook only) based on a combination of factors including support for existing content and sometimes just price. Wherein more deals were “iPad only” in the first half of the year, an increasing number of mLearning programs went non-iPad in the latter half of 2011. As tablets get ever more popular, and people start bringing their own to work in their briefcase or satchel, we think this form factor will be the key ingredient to driving mobile learning adoption and leverage into the enterprise. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: windowtext;"></span> <span style="color: windowtext;"> </span> <span style="color: windowtext;"> </span> <span style="color: windowtext;"> </span> <br />
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<b style="color: #444444;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Prediction #5. Authoring Tools Will Evolve. </span></i></b><i style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Flash will still not be supported on iOS devices in 2011 but this fact will matter far less over time. Apple’s insistence on never wanting to support Flash content on iOS devices will drive innovation across the authoring tool market that is sure to benefit everyone in the Training & Development field. I feel the time is just around the corner than “Publish to HTML5” options appear within the leading content authoring tools making it easier to design, generate and support compelling interactions and animations without needing a Flash Player on-board the device. On balance, the downside to this means we will actually need more tools to create content that spans all the mobile devices we are targeting for training delivery given most older enterprise mobile devices support neither Flash nor HTML5 due to their very dated browsers. If we lived in a world where everyone had brand new (and updated) devices, mobile learning would be easy but they don’t so it isn’t. </span></i> </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gB9x4-KPnPI/Tvt2Epafn3I/AAAAAAAAAIA/i-TEEbWh7Nc/s1600/Target-NearMiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gB9x4-KPnPI/Tvt2Epafn3I/AAAAAAAAAIA/i-TEEbWh7Nc/s200/Target-NearMiss.png" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span> <style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: green;">Near Bullseye.</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> The prediction was right but the market timing lagged a bit as the leading authoring tool vendors accepted the fact Flash content wasn’t going to rule the mobile learning market the same way it did the online learning space but the practical reality was it harder for these established vendors to design and ship their next generation, mobile-friendly alternatives to their waiting customers than I thought. As 2011 draws to a close, Articulate’s new <a href="http://www.articulate.com/storyline/" target="_blank">Storyline</a> offering is about to be released but without the promised “Publish to HTML5” option in its inaugural flavor. <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5-updated/19226" target="_blank">Adobe’s Q4 announcement</a> that it planned to stop developing Flash Player plug-ins for future mobile web browsers was huge and then they directed they were redirecting their own focus towards adding HTML5 output options in Adobe <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html" target="_blank">Captivate</a> and their other popular learning market tools also took many by surprise especially given the timing; they essentially burned their ships with these announcements given the needed tools to support their new notions were far from commercially available.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Other capable suppliers have jumped into the void left open for now including some nice offerings like dominKnow’s <a href="http://www.dominknow.com/" target="_blank">Claro</a> package, Rapid Intake’s <a href="http://www.rapidintake.com/products/mobile/mobile-learning-studio/" target="_blank">mLearning Studio</a>, Impatica’s <a href="http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/775/impatica-for-powerpoint-version-5-to-launch-at-devlearn-2011" target="_blank">Impaticafor PowerPoint</a> version 5, Brainshark’s <a href="https://www.slideshark.com/default.aspx" target="_blank">Slideshark</a> (iPad only), Xyleme <a href="http://www.xyleme.com/product/pastiche" target="_blank">Pastiche</a>, edCetra <a href="http://www.edcetratraining.com/page.aspx" target="_blank">Anan</a>, and a few more. All that said, it is worth noting that HTML5 content is not a 100% solution either given most of the HTML5-based outputs we're testing don’t run on every mobile device – the older the device the less likely it will run – and the content itself isn’t scalable in the same way Flash content always has been meaning certain handsets with super high resolution displays -- like the latest Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- will render courses optimized for last year’s Samsung Nexus One with a huge border around that content. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;">Prediction #6. Private Social Networks Win Over Public</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;">. It was no surprise to many of us that Facebook was the most heavily trafficked web site in 2010 and displaced Google for the first time in many years. There’s no denying the power and reach of social networking in the technology space but we remain convinced that PUBLIC SOCIAL sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube all have diminished value as part of an enterprise learning community when compared with the various PRIVATE SOCIAL sites and applications now available. We strongly agree having anytime/anywhere access to our business social network can provide great value, that having tools to share information like pictures and videos and podcasts generated by users instead of business functions can bridge learning divides, and that weaving informal into formal makes us all better equipped and informed. We believe that public sites like Facebook and Twitter (amongst others) will not end up becoming the hubs where the learning organization wants their community to gather and share insights due to the lack of security, privacy, oversight and control that are relevant today and even more essential tomorrow. As such, most business-centric social interactions must to seamlessly integrated into the enterprise learning environment and at every mobile access point too.</span></i> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0tTyrmyEtPA/Tvt2OEG51sI/AAAAAAAAAIM/bcPi0P07_vE/s1600/Target-BigMiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0tTyrmyEtPA/Tvt2OEG51sI/AAAAAAAAAIM/bcPi0P07_vE/s200/Target-BigMiss.png" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: green;">Target Missed!</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> I missed this one completely…perhaps planting the arrow in my foot instead of the target given public social networks like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter still reign supreme over virtually all private social networks. That said, the trend towards enterprise social collaboration is still one to watch and will probably become something of a reality in the coming year as companies like Yammer and Jive Software (who delivered one of the <a href="http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/12/13/3592924/jive-software-ipo-raises-161-million.html" target="_blank">most successful tech IPOs of 2011</a>) have proven that enterprises want to build and manage their own internal and proprietary social networks and that security is key to marshalling our intellectual assets as they ricochet around our social circles. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: windowtext;">Google’s new Google+ offering aims to start making inroads into enterprise social interactions as well and the message layer social functions of Microsoft’s SharePoint platform are perhaps the only mobile friendly features of that platform ready to work on today’s most popular mobile handsets and tablets. Suffice it to say, mobile and social are becoming intertwined so this prediction may just need another year. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;">Prediction #7. Market Consolidations Will Occur</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;">. Some form of consolidation will come to the mobile device/handset sector as a few of the key but descending players –namely Nokia, Microsoft, HP and RIM – aligning themselves together to try and overcome the momentum of the two ascending players – namely Apple and Google. We wouldn't be shocked to find Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 OS appearing on upcoming Nokia handsets or tablet devices, or RIM getting acquired by Microsoft or another tech titan like IBM Global Services in a deal akin to HP acquiring Palm in 2010.</span></i></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KGcs8qFsgsQ/Tvt2X90aIwI/AAAAAAAAAIY/LLnCr9g3GkI/s1600/Target-Bullseye.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KGcs8qFsgsQ/Tvt2X90aIwI/AAAAAAAAAIY/LLnCr9g3GkI/s200/Target-Bullseye.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">Bullseye #3</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;">. As crazy as I thought this prediction was last year, it proved to be center-of-the-target with several large transactions and events occurring throughout the year. Indeed, Nokia not only decided to ship <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-and-microsoft-enter-strategic-alliance-on-windows-phone-b/" target="_blank">Nokia handsets with Microsoft’s Windows Phone</a> mobile OS they actually killed off their own Symbian OS in the process; talk about burning your ships on the shore! RIM was beleaguered throughout 2011 with tepid market perceptions about its aging handset line and its not-ready-for-prime-time PlayBook tablet resulting in their stock being off 75% from historical highs and even rumors of a possible buyout in the future. Google surprised everyone by <a href="http://investor.google.com/releases/2011/0815.html" target="_blank">buying Motorola Mobility</a> for $12.5B in 2011 and plans to jump square into the hardware game to better control the Android experience. We can all trust there will be more market consolidation next year across both markets and industries as mobility becomes a central tenant in every overall IT strategy. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;">Prediction #8. Here Come the Experts!</span></i></b><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 10pt;"> The growth of mobile learning in 2011 will beget a slew of newly-minted mobile learning and mobile content experts, boutique consultancies, mobile development shops and “me too” vendors all claiming they possess the knowledge, expertise and experience we all need to make us successful in mobile; take most such claims with a grain of salt…</span></i><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">Middle Ring</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;">. A few popped up but not as many as I predicted. That said, every vendor and consultant is now a tablet-carrying, smartphone talking resource and where there’s money to be made, there’s plenty of shingles to get hung out. Content shops are definitely getting into the game and offering expertise in the design and delivery of content and games for tablets like the Apple iPad. The web sites of virtually every top tier LMS/Talent Management provider now touts their mobile capabilities and makes sure their customers (and investors!) know they’re in position to take advantage of any mobility opportunities that come their way. I also find it interesting the concept of mobile now gets injected into the conversation as early and often as possible in industry announcements and press releases. For example, the byline of press release detailing SAP’s recent <a href="http://mobileenterprise.edgl.com/news/SAP-Takes-Another-Mobile-Step,-Acquires-SuccessFactors-for-$3-4B77118" target="_blank">acquisition of SuccessFactors</a> clearly states the importance of mobile in their decision to acquire (and pay handsomely for) SFSF’s cloud and mobile-centric offerings but the actual depth of that mobile offering is weak in comparison to other available solution sets. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<b><i>Prediction #9. New Features and New Possibilities</i></b>. <i>One of the greatest joys and challenges of being in the mobility space is keeping up with the constant pace of change and innovation. In our experience, learners within and teams supporting enterprise mobile learning environments are all interested in finding ways to derive the benefit of new features and functionality offered on better and faster devices. Our own development roadmap is expanding with the many possibilities afforded through upcoming advances like (a) geo-location, (b) near field communications (“NFC”) that may help contextualize learning at a specific location or assist in the bi-directional exchange of pertinent data, (c) augmented reality delivering just-in-time learning opportunities via interactive overlays, (d) the use of gaming scenarios integrated within a structured mobile learning experience, and (e) tighter integration between learning and a devices universal in-box function. And along the way we plan continue to innovate and iterate on “mil-spec” mobile security, authentication/single sign-on, cross-platform integration tools, and interface customization features that will benefit all our customers and partners.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f;"></span></i><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: green;">A Hit and a Miss – for Now.</span></b><span style="color: windowtext;"> We start each calendar quarter with some solid ideas of what we’re going to be working on as a development team – or at least what we planned to work on – but the real world tends to bend your arrows as they leave the bow (so to speak). My predictions about working on near field/NFC and augmented reality/AR functionality certainly got sidetracked for a variety of reasons (lack of devices in the first case and lack of market interest associated with payment in the second) but that didn’t matter and those missions remain on the long-term road map. What did we fill our time doing? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;">We actually scored direct center hits on several fronts with these efforts:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><ul style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li><span style="color: windowtext;"></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">We succeeded in our efforts to make our entire platform more enterprise IT friendly with enhanced security functionality, single sign-on integration and more sophisticated APIs to tie our tools into other 3<sup>rd</sup> party platforms (e.g., LMS and TM platforms, CRM, ERP, SFA platforms too).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Our quest to support the universal inbox concept matured far beyond our vision for it with the outcome of a extensive scripting library we developed that makes it much easier for our customers to integrate whatever learning tasks they’ve defined with not only the learner’s inbox but provides pipes that connect to other 3<sup>rd</sup> party applications as well.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span><span style="color: windowtext;">We added device-specific Mobile Apps to support several new tablets including Android 4/Ice Cream Sandwich, Cisco Cius, Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook eReaders, and RIM’s PlayBook.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext;">We’ve now added a new gamification layer to our enterprise mobile learning platform – think support for badges, leader boards, rewards/incentives, levels, etc. and these are available to learners whenever they are online or mobile. While all of these advances are great in and of themselves, the most demand we’re experiencing is coming from the interest in using these new gamification features.</span></span></li>
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"></span><span style="color: windowtext;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="color: #cc0000;">Conclusion</b>. All tallied, not a bad showing on my 2011 predictions. It is safe to assume that 2012 will prove to be an even more interesting, challenging and rewarding year for everyone involved in enterprise mobile learning.<span style="color: windowtext;"> Thanks for reading this far down the page and in advance for sharing with others as you feel appropriate!</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: windowtext;">All the best to everyone in 2012. And watch for my new predictions later this week too!</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: windowtext;">Robert :?)</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> <br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-79215782313849274862011-03-27T18:16:00.000-07:002011-03-27T18:27:11.682-07:00New mLearning Authoring Tools – Wave #2<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="comment-body"><span style="color: black;">Another month, another trip to Orlando it seems and last week had me attending two different shows down near the Mouse House; Learning Solutions 2011 and CTIA Wireless 2011. This first post will focus on LS2011 and I’ll post again on CTIA tomorrow.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="comment-body"><span style="color: black;">The Learning Solutions 2011 Event. The <a href="http://www.elearningguild.com/">eLearning Guild’s</a> LS2011 event was well attended and features 50+ vendors and more than 1300 participants from the training and development industry. The Guild continues to put on a great show although the focus on mobile learning at this show is somewhat muted given their upcoming <a href="http://www.elearningguild.com/mLearnCon/content/1603/">mLearnCon</a> event in San Jose is being held in less than 3 months; the next show will certainly be “all mobile all the time” and a better bet for both the experienced and the curious as it relates to enterprise mobile learning. That said, interest in the various products and sessions and “morning buzz” gatherings that related to mobile all seemed well attended and topical.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I was able to spend time with several different vendors who are all preparing to deliver their own mobile learning offers into the marketplace in the coming months. Much of the need and innovation behind these new products is in direct response to the growing market perception that mobile learning either has or will hit the “tipping point” this year for enterprise adoption and the fact every organization is now faced with questions about how they’ll deliver on this potential and the various expectations being promoted by scores of training departments, sales teams, engineering groups and senior managers waving iPads and Android tablets. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="comment-body"><span style="color: black;">Of the <a href="http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/content/1794/learning-solutions-conference-2011-exhibitors">45+ vendors exhibiting</a> at LS2011, about a dozen had some form of mobile messaging clearly on display and there were certainly a few standouts as follows:</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="comment-body"><span style="color: black;"><b>Claro</b> from dominKnow. Luke Hickey and team over the <a href="http://www.dominknow.com/">dominKnow</a> took center stage in the LS2011 exhibits area to herald the launch of their next generation authoring platform called <a href="http://www.dominknow.com/products/claro_2710.cfm">Claro</a>. The new web-based HTML5 authoring package looks and performs quite well and delivers an impressive array of authoring features that can produce exceptionally nice looking mobile content for the various web kit-based mobile devices and tablets including Apple’s iPad and the full range of Android-based tablets. Published modules are packaged as SCORM objects and deployed with nominal hiccups for local/disconnected playback via an installed CellCast application on our test iPhones, iPads and Android devices. We now plan to take the next few steps down the technical integration front to make it easy to publish and deploy a Claro-generated course directly into our CellCast Manager/mLMS platform with “one click” simplicity. Contact them directly to sign up for the official beta of Claro too! </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="comment-body"><span style="color: black;"><b>Storyline</b> from <a href="http://www.articulate.com/">Articulate</a>. I actually got to check out the new Storyline application from Articulate running in pre-beta form this past week and it is impressive and promising on many fronts. Whereas I expected Articulate to simply add some sort of option to "publish to HTML5" to their already popular Presenter add-in to PowerPoint, they actually decided to go a whole new direction and build an application from scratch that looks/functions in much the same way as PowerPoint but the created content is then published in tablet-friendly deliverables. There were plenty of tools to create interactions (ala Engage-style functionality) as well as define animations and path-based motions which all rendered well in the final outputs. And, of course, you can import existing PPT/PPTX presentations right into the new app and manipulate all the sides while still leveraging most of the defined interactions (e.g., slide to slide hyperlinks). For a pre-beta application, it seemed generally polished and stable too meaning it will be great addition to many ID tool kits in the future for those targeting deliverables to high resolution iOS and Android screens -- not sure this will work on many if any BlackBerry devices though. Articulate expects to issue a select number of public beta invitations sometime in the latter part of Q2 and we’re hoping to participate and provide active feedback for these new tools as they prepare to come to market. See a screen shot of the application on display from the show below.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2OQB0B9hrrU/TY_ftRf8yAI/AAAAAAAAAGU/434A48Lm9Tg/s1600/Articulate-Storyline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2OQB0B9hrrU/TY_ftRf8yAI/AAAAAAAAAGU/434A48Lm9Tg/s400/Articulate-Storyline.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>mLearning Studio</b> from Rapid Intake. As detailed in a recent post, <a href="http://www.rapidintake.com/">Rapid Intake’</a>s new mLearning Studio tools are preparing to hit the market and will enable IDs to publish their content as either Flash or HTML5 packages. <a href="http://www.rapidintake.com/products/mobile/mobile-learning-studio/">Check it out here</a>.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Questionmark Mobile App</b>s from Questionmark. <a href="http://www.questionmark.com/">Questionmark</a> was highlighting ways to publish their standard assessments into mobile friendly formats and SCORM packages that can be delivered to and accessed via mobile apps. OnPoint plans to run these offerings through their paces in the coming weeks to see how it all works and performs. <a href="http://www.questionmark.com/us/perception/delivery-auto-sense.aspx">Check it out here</a>.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>OnQue</b> from Impatica. Mike Doyle and the <a href="http://www.impatica.com/">Impatica</a> team continue to advance their efforts to produce some great tools that can help publish mobile friendly virtual learning environments to tablet devices like the iPad. Their latest offering renders content that includes a video stream, a slide deck, notes and other learning resources using a consolidated time line metaphor all using HTML5. <a href="http://www.impatica.com/products/imponcue/index.html">Check it out here</a>. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b><a href="http://www.simwriter.com/">Simwriter</a></b> from <a href="http://www.nexlearn.com/">NexLearn</a>. Finally, I had a chance to see one of NexLearn’s simulations – normally a Flash-based deliverable – running on an Apple iPad tablet using a new new delivery format they are working on. We are already in discussions about how to package, deliver and manage these simulations for disconnected on-device playback and hope to have a way to support them in the coming weeks.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I suspect there will be three times as many interesting and compelling offer announcements across a full range of products and services in the coming months culminating with activities surrounding the mLearnCon event in late June. These are interesting times indeed! </span></span></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-89105230666504748552011-01-31T12:36:00.000-08:002011-01-31T12:36:01.405-08:00New mLearning Authoring Offerings - Wave #1<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As detailed in my list of mobile learning <a href="http://mlearningtrends.blogspot.com/2011/01/enterprise-mlearning-predictions-for.html">predictions for 2011</a>, a collection of smart and savvy authoring tool vendors offering solutions for online training delivery will start to introduce specialized tools that will enable some form of single sourcing that outputs mobile-friendly content with little or nominal effort over and above what's already been invested to create online courseware and training materials. It took no longer than the end of January for new product announcements to be made by two of the leading authoring tool vendors who are now offering both Flash and HTML5 course publication output options to instructional designers using their respective applications. Let's take a quick look at both companies and their respective offerings:<br />
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Rapid Intake's <i>mLearning Studio</i>. Garin Hess and his team over at <a href="http://www.rapidintake.com/">Rapid Intake</a> have announced a new suite of tools called <i>mLearning Studio</i> that will allow content authors to output SCORM-conformant courseware along with included assessments as either web-friendly Flash courseware or mobile-friendly HTML5 packages with the click of a button. I got to play around with some early content samples and found their mobile packaging to be clean, flexible and very well structured for playback on compatible mobile devices based on Apple's iOS or on Android-based mobiles or tablets. We are still experimenting to determine if the produced content can be easily managed when downloaded and secured to a mobile device for offline playback using the app-based approach but online delivery works quite nicely with gesture-based navigation, nice media support and engaging assessment capabilities. Moreover, we really like what we see in their "version 1.0" effort here and look forward to seeing where they can take it all when supporting legacy mobile devices like the ever popular BlackBerry in the enterprise as well as newer smartphones like those based on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS that don't fully support the HTML5 spec as of yet. Rapid Intake is considering releasing their mobility options as both a standalone mlearning authoring tool as well as via an extension to their core Unison offering. You can learn more about the upcoming release of <i>mLearning Studio</i> in a video featured on their web site <a href="http://www.rapidintake.com/products/mobile/mobile-learning-studio/">here</a>.<br />
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Harbinger Group's <i>Raptivity</i>. <a href="http://raptivity.com/"><i>Raptivity</i></a> is a well regarded "rapid interactivity builder" application used by many companies to "add some spice" to their online learning courses through the delivery of interactive exercises. To facilitate wider mobile delivery of these interactions, Vikas Joshi and his team over at <a href="http://www.harbinger-systems.com/">Harbinger</a> have added new functionality that allows IDs to output defined interactions as either Flash or HTML5 packages that can then be assigned and taken via online or offline delivery. No word yet as to whether the mobile-friendly <i>Raptivity</i> interactions can also be embedded into a Rapid Intake <i>mLearning Studio</i>-based mobile course but given these two companies have interacted fully in the past, its logical to think they will at some point. You can learn more about the new mobile-friendly <i>Raptivity</i> offering <a href="http://www.raptivity-presenter.com/products-tour.html">here</a>.<br />
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We are excited every time new tools are introduced and these two organizations are leading the way in 2011 by delivering viable options for mobile learning content creation and delivery where there's much to gain and not much at all IDs need to learn to make the jump from online to mobile for their learning communities.</div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-29225300397037480332011-01-07T11:48:00.000-08:002011-01-07T11:48:49.058-08:00mLearning Tech A’plenty Released at CES 2011<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TSdr0wQkxLI/AAAAAAAAAGM/jksuyN-4flk/s1600/cesweb_headerlogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TSdr0wQkxLI/AAAAAAAAAGM/jksuyN-4flk/s1600/cesweb_headerlogo.png" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is the first week in January and the annual <a href="http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp">International CES</a> (“Consumer Electronics Show”) is in full swing out in Las Vegas – just as if Santa Claus came twice within a two-week period for gadget freaks and tech nerds alike. This year’s event is as big as ever with 100K+ attendees roaming through 2,700 vendor booths across multiple sites. In the midst of all the new 3D TVs, streaming home entertainment, futuristic toys and smart appliances, the primary market focus of this year’s show seems to be on mobility with smartphones, tablets and apps taking center stage in many of the main keynotes and featured front-and-center in larger vendor booths. And many of these advances drive the potential and increase the affordances of mobile learning and performance support across the enterprise. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Better Devices.</b> It is starting to feel like the smartphone is finally going to start replacing the feature phone inside every knowledge worker’s pocket or purse; I’m not saying my mom is going to replace her Jitterbug anytime soon but she’s a grandmother not an enterprise employee. For those of us with the means and the desire, the choices are plentiful and reasonable in most markets and the up-trending <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/business/26634/">Bring Your Own Device</a> movement is starting to influence IT departments to allow newer Apple <i>iOS</i>, Google <i>Android</i> and Microsoft <i>Windows Phone7</i> devices to coexist on the highly restricted/locked down networks IT has operated in the past. As security and control issues for enterprise-grade mlearning solutions are mitigated to infosec’s satisfaction, <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/business/26634/">BYOD</a> policies can actually save organization tremendous amounts of money every year. CES showcased a myriad of <i>Android</i> smartphones and tablet devices for consumers from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Erickson, Dell and many others plus specialized offerings from <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6789/ps7290/ps11156/data_sheet_c78-609507.html">Cisco Systems</a> on the enterprise end of the spectrum to Vizio on the consumer end; that said, most every contemporary Android device can install/run an “app” and that brings an opportunity for learning closer to any worker in the time of need.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tablets devices are all the rage at CES as vendors from across the world all seek to cash in on Apple’s success with their <i>iPad</i>. Tablets ranging in size from pocket minis to full-sized and dockable slates are featured everywhere with many supporting the newer <i>Android</i> <i>3.0/Honeycomb</i> OS, <i>Windows 7/Phone 7</i> and even some Linux variations. Tablets from the “tier one players” will obviously have an impact on the market and the fact that many of them run <i>Flash</i> content makes them ultra-appealing for mobile learning situations. The real question is whether the application ecosystems that surround each of these new devices can overcome the market lead Apple’s current (and future) generation <i>iPads</i> already enjoy. I suspect we’ll see Apple conceding some nominal but measurable market share to the new <i>crème of the crop</i> and this will drive most enterprise organizations to need to support multiple tablets in much the same way they support multiple smartphones for their enterprise mobile learning initiatives. I anticipate seeing projects with lots of iPads alongside several Android tabs and a smattering of BlackBerry <i>PlayBooks</i> all coexisting in one learning deployment. Thus, great things are coming along with increased complexity for content creation, management and distribution since the cool Flash content won't play across the range of devices an enterprise must manage for their mobile learning programs.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Way Faster Networks</b>. To me, the more significant advances introduced at CES 2011 were the formal introductions from the leading carriers of their much anticipated “4G”, high-speed networks. All four of the major US wireless carriers (<a href="http://www.att.com/network/?wtSlotClick=1-004P16%21CIHPM01V39M-1-1&rel=nofollow">ATT</a>, <a href="http://network4g.verizonwireless.com/#/4g-network-verizon-wireless">Verizon Wireless</a>, <a href="http://t-mobile-coverage.t-mobile.com/?WT.ac=0928HOM04">T-Mobile</a> and <a href="http://shop.sprint.com/en/solutions/mobile_broadband/mobile_broadband_4G.shtml?id12=BHP_SmallBusinessTab_Link_MobileBroadband_Sprint4G">Sprint</a>) plus several others announced support for next-gen device communications resulting in faster access speeds. These faster networks drive the need/desire for more capable smartphones and tablet devices that can leverage the network benefits. What’s needed are better applications to serve as the third leg of the new “technology stool” and enterprise mobile learning represents one of the real world examples that can take advantage of these faster networks, better devices and richer learning experiences anytime and anywhere. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In summary, this year’s show seems bigger and more impressive than many in recent years and I believe many of the products and services introduced this week will play a critical role in the adoption and proliferation of enterprise mobile learning here and abroad. And the gadget geek in me really looks forward to getting a new device (or four!) in the coming weeks and months as we push the future of tech into the future of learning.</div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-86863633366746480312011-01-05T07:44:00.000-08:002011-01-06T04:31:30.002-08:00GeoLearning Acquired by SumTotal: The mLearning Impact?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TSSQ0PdbViI/AAAAAAAAAGI/BUQ9tfi9Yvo/s1600/sumtgeo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TSSQ0PdbViI/AAAAAAAAAGI/BUQ9tfi9Yvo/s1600/sumtgeo.gif" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The enterprise learning market witnessed another big consolidation event today as <a href="http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/">SumTotal Systems</a> announced it acquired <a href="http://www.geolearning.com/">GeoLearning</a> thus further positioning SumTotal as the largest platform provider for LMS and talent management solutions in the industry. <a href="http://bit.ly/ggO7XE">According to leading analyst Josh Bersin</a>, the combined entity will grow SumTotal's "total market share to 12.5% ... (and) makes SumTotal approximately 50% larger than the #2 LMS player (Saba), clearly establishing their leadership in the market." Interesting news indeed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, what does this move mean to the enterprise mobile learning market? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From my perspective, both companies have worked on "baking and serving up" a mobile learning strategy to one extent or another but both have placed a higher priority on building out their talent management suites rather than their mobility solutions -- for good reason too as that's where the money has been in recent years as mobile has been taking shape. SumTotal's <a href="http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/toolbook-elearning-content.html">ToolBook </a>authoring tool, now in version 10.x, is a well crafted desktop-based application that we've used many times in the past to help design and produce mobile learning content that can be packaged for delivery with many different enterprise mobile learning platforms including our own, <a href="http://intuition.com/getdoc/4efeb12e-bf50-4b19-a1ef-29781291fcb8/Rubicon---Mobile-Learning.aspx">Intuition</a>'s and others. There are also nice hooks in place to allow mobile-ready courses to be accessed by mlearners via the SumTotal LMS using a mobile web browser but SumTotal has yet to take the leap from basic "mobile web" delivery into the more sophisticated and polished "mobile app" methods.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">GeoLearning, on the other hand, has made solid strides in recent months with their <i>GeoMaestro Mobility Solution</i> to design and develop their own mobile apps (for <a href="http://www.geolearning.com/products/geomaestro/mobile.aspx">iPhone, iPad, Android and WebOS/Palm</a>-based devices) and provide a continuum of mobile authoring, delivery and reporting via their GeoMaestro suite to the benefit of their customers now considering mobile learning for the first time (and who isn't?). I certainly applaud their efforts to get into the pool but I can state with conviction that any "version 1.0" effort only represents the first steps on a long journey as we move into the highly complex arena of mobility with its vastly different technologies and delivery models when compared with delivering online content in the enterprise LMS space. In short, "getting a course on a phone" is relatively easy while the 250+ other things the enterprise is now concerned with represent the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the learning experience is fully functional, appropriate, customizable, secure and fully scalable. But actually getting a version 1.0 out the door IS an important start! Geo's new "client-side" tools/apps may represent a key ingredient for SumTotal's push into the enterprise mobile learning market but, unfortunately, the official press release doesn't mention mobile in any shape or fashion. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">SumTotal would be well served to take a quick and hard look at the GeoLearning tools and figure out how they can start to leverage them under the bigger umbrella this consolidation represents as it will serve their combined customer base well. And the increased visibility and adoption of mobile learning across the broader market is good news for everyone in the enterprise mLearning space as more and more companies seek solutions that can meet their current and future requirements. </span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-40156424954356516972011-01-02T06:24:00.000-08:002011-01-03T13:19:48.549-08:00Enterprise mLearning Predictions for 2011<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is time once again to ponder the research, extrapolate on recent experience, and attempt to read the tea leaves so we can predict the future of enterprise mobile learning in 2011. After such an exciting and rewarding 2010, my predictions for the coming year seem broader and more varied given the fast changing dynamics of the marketplace and accelerated adoption of mobile learning by organizations of all sizes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">1. mLearning Engagements Expand.</span></b><span style="color: black;"> If 2010 was the year of the pilot, then 2011 will be the year of the deployment. As I stated in the previous post assessing my 2010 predictions, the size and complexity of mobile learning projects/programs will continue to expand across all geographical and line-of-business boundaries. I think case studies from enterprise organizations on the leading edge will abound by year’s end for successful mobile learning initiatives by thus providing the “I want to do what they did!” examples the industry has waited for over the past many years. Case studies featuring accelerated ROI with tens of thousands of learners (or more!) using different types of devices in multitudes of languages across diverse geographies are sure to drive awareness in mobile learning and generate interest from organizations of all sizes seeking to achieve their own successes and become more innovative in the way the train and support their ever-mobile learning communities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">2. Device Diversity is the “New Normal”</span></b><span style="color: black;">. After years of <i>BlackBerry</i> dominance in the pockets and purses of enterprise personnel, <i>iOS</i> (Apple) and <i>Android</i>-based mobile phones and tablet devices will supplant RIM-supplied smartphones as the primary desired (and likely used) smart devices for mobile learning – at least in North America. This shift will be driven by a combination of factors including learner (and executive) demand, IT acceptance and infosec approval plus a movement towards the adoption of “bring your own device” use policies within the enterprise. Sure, companies may still provided workers with an old <i>BlackBerry</i> (on a 2-year contract), but increasingly more people will opt to use their own <i>iPhones/iPads</i> or <i>Android</i> handsets or tablets once their devices can be secured and supported within their organizations. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">3. Mobile Apps Become Essential to Enterprise mLearning</span></b><span style="color: black;">. As stated in our previous <a href="http://mlearningtrends.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-mlearning-year-in-review.html"><b><u>post</u></b></a>, the mobile learning “app” has proved its superiority over less compelling mobile web-delivered training materials. True, mobile apps are harder to create and to support but the value derived from an installed app proves far more beneficial and powerful for the typical enterprise customer, especially those looking to support their own defined workforces versus a broad general audience. I will agree that accessing mobile learning content via a device’s embedded web browser can be an effective and useful delivery modality (and is improving every year) but the overall experience is generally watered down and less effective and engaging. Conversely, mobile learning apps provides better and more varied content, are FAR more secure, work anywhere the learner needs to learn and can integrate better into the way learners think about and use their mobile devices. Remember, there’s a reason we all use an app on our smartphones to access email, check our calendar, search our contacts and watch media clips instead of trying to log into a server somewhere to accomplish those same tasks. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">4. Pad/Tablet Use Explodes</span></b><span style="color: black;">! The emerging pad/tablet market will gain further momentum and an increasing number of enterprise organizations will start to support/provide the larger form factored devices to their field sales, technical and professional staff. Given the fact these devices slot into our device lineup somewhere between the typical smartphone and a laptop in terms of size and capabilities, many organizations will start to drop the laptop and supply BOTH a tablet and a smartphone for every mobile worker/learner – and don’t be surprised if these are supplied by different vendors too like having a <i>BlackBerry</i> (or similar) handheld AND an <i>iPad</i> (or similar) tablet. The challenge for T&D and IT departments becomes how they will support the use of multiple devices for each worker with issues ranging from “single sourcing” content production (write once/deploy anywhere) to content distribution to security to cross-platform tracking and synchronization (think: completion of an assignment on a learner’s BB device must then be reflected on their <i>iPad</i> device ASAHP). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">I speculate RIM’s first generation <i>PlayBook</i> tablet will also ship to mixed fanfare for enterprise mobile learning customers due to the lack of available applications supporting off-grid learning. After almost 18 months, RIM’s <i>AppWorld</i> site has only grown to around 15K “apps” for <i>BlackBerry</i> wireless handhelds and none of these current apps work on the upcoming PlayBook tablet meaning a whole new series of apps must be written – the classic “chicken & egg” problem. Meanwhile, next generation <i>iPads</i> and <i>Android</i> 3.x devices – each with tens of thousands of available apps – will help fuel continued adoption of Apple and Google-designed tablets in the learning space. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">5. Authoring Tools Will Evolve. </span></b><span style="color: black;">Flash will still not be supported on <i>iOS</i> devices in 2011 but this fact will matter far less over time. Apple’s insistence on never wanting to support <i>Flash</i> content on <i>iOS</i> devices will drive innovation across the authoring tool market that is sure to benefit everyone in the Training & Development field. I feel the time is just around the corner than “Publish to HTML5” options appear within the leading content authoring tools making it easier to design, generate and support compelling interactions and animations without needing a <i>Flash Player</i> on-board the device. On balance, the downside to this means we will actually need more tools to create content that spans all the mobile devices we are targeting for training delivery given most older enterprise mobile devices support neither <i>Flash</i> nor HTML5 due to their very dated browsers. If we lived in a world where everyone had brand new (and updated) devices, mobile learning would be easy but they don’t so it isn’t. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">6. Private Social Networks Win Over Public</span></b><span style="color: black;">. It was no surprise to many of us that <i>Facebook</i> was the most heavily trafficked web site in 2010 and displaced Google for the first time in many years. There’s no denying the power and reach of social networking in the technology space but we remain convinced that PUBLIC SOCIAL sites like <i>Facebook</i>, <i>Linkedin</i>, <i>Twitter</i>, <i>Flickr</i> and <i>YouTube</i> all have diminished value as part of an enterprise learning community when compared with the various PRIVATE SOCIAL sites and applications now available. We strongly agree having anytime/anywhere access to our business social network can provide great value, that having tools to share information like pictures and videos and podcasts generated by users instead of business functions can bridge learning divides, and that weaving informal into formal makes us all better equipped and informed. We believe that public sites like <i>Facebook</i> and <i>Twitter</i> (amongst others) will not end up becoming the hubs where the learning organization wants their community to gather and share insights due to the lack of security, privacy, oversight and control that are relevant today and even more essential tomorrow. As such, most business-centric social interactions must to seamlessly integrated into the enterprise learning environment and at every mobile access point too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">7. Market Consolidations Will Occur</span></b><span style="color: black;">. Some form of consolidation will come to the mobile device/handset sector as a few of the key but descending players –namely Nokia, Microsoft, HP and RIM – aligning themselves together to try and overcome the momentum of the two ascending players – namely Apple and Google. We wouldn't be shocked to find Microsoft’s new <i>Windows Phone 7</i> OS appearing on upcoming Nokia handsets or tablet devices, or RIM getting acquired by Microsoft or another tech titan like IBM Global Services in a deal akin to HP acquiring Palm in 2010.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">8. Here Come the Experts!</span></b><span style="color: black;"> The growth of mobile learning in 2011 will beget a slew of newly-minted mobile learning and mobile content experts, boutique consultancies, mobile development shops and “me too” vendors all claiming they possess the knowledge, expertise and experience we all need to make us successful in mobile; take most such claims with a grain of salt. The stark reality is the practice of mobile learning is vastly different than what online learning has been to this industry for 15+ years and just owning a few <i>iPhones</i> or <i>Android</i> tablets or RIM <i>PlayBooks</i> and surfing the web for a few days doesn’t yield any tangible experience when looking to help someone plan, structure, build, deploy, support and integrate a new mobility strategy into an overall enterprise learning program. Expertise using just one authoring tool, or design method, or supporting one kind of mobile device translates poorly for replicating an inaugural success into different work environments. Whenever you're encountering/considering tools from mobile vendors, remember the adage anything labeled "version 1.0" is probably more akin to "version 0.82 (beta)" and the proven iteration you'd bet your business on is probably "version 2.0" or higher. Buyer, beware!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">9. New Features and New Possibilities</span></b><span style="color: black;">. One of the greatest joys and challenges of being in the mobility space is keeping up with the constant pace of change and innovation. In our experience, learners within and teams supporting enterprise mobile learning environments are all interested in finding ways to derive the benefit of new features and functionality offered on better and faster devices. Our own development roadmap is expanding with the many possibilities afforded through upcoming advances like (a) geo-location, (b) near field communications (“NFC”) that may help contextualize learning at a specific location or assist in the bi-directional exchange of pertinent data, (c) augmented reality delivering just-in-time learning opportunities via interactive overlays, (d) the use of gaming scenarios integrated within a structured mobile learning experience, and (e) tighter integration between learning and a devices universal in-box function. And along the way we plan continue to innovate and iterate on “mil-spec” mobile security, authentication/single sign-on, cross-platform integration tools, and interface customization features that will benefit all our customers and partners.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">So now it’s time to sit back and watch it all play out for the next twelve months. We look forward to the many opportunities to will come our way this coming year and to overcoming the myriad challenges that pop up in our path as we help make mobile learning a positive reality and measurable benefit for all the customers, vendors and institutions out there looking to leverage mobile learning in 2011. </span></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-54732065930251567072010-12-27T11:34:00.000-08:002010-12-28T13:21:07.025-08:002010: mLearning Year in Review<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
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</style> <span style="font-size: small;"><b>A.K.A. How our January 2010 Predictions Played Out!</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">As we reach the first anniversary of this blog’s introduction, we thought we’d take stock and figure out how things are going by revisiting our list of predictions for enterprise mobile learning in 2010. On balance, it was an interesting year and there were far more expected outcomes than there were actual surprises. That said, the degree with which some of our <a href="http://mlearningtrends.blogspot.com/2010/01/my-mlearning-predictions-for-2010.html">past predictions</a> came to pass proved quite varied whereas some truths were validated akin to a “base hit” in the game of baseball whereas others were “doubles” or “triples” and even a “home run” and “strikeout” or two! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">So here are the predictions from 12 months ago and </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">the tally (score) for "runs batted in" -- or at least attempted -- during the 2010 mLearning season:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Traditional "e"-learning vendors will all jump into the "m"-learning and social networking spaces with "first generation" offerings they believe will address the mobile requirements of their customers and prospects; these early efforts will prove largely ineffective as evidenced by their many iterative and incremental updates, retries and course corrections</i>.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Double”)</span></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. Indeed, many traditional eLearning vendors ventured into the market though not in the volume or with the fanfare we had postulated twelve months ago. In fact, each of the “Four Horsemen” who rule the enterprise – namely <a href="http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/">SumTotal</a>, <a href="http://www.saba.com/">Saba</a>, <a href="http://www.plateau.com/">Plateau</a> & <a href="http://www.geolearning.com/index.aspx">Geolearning</a> – gave it a go in some way although no one outside their immediate customers or PR agencies seemed to notice. Several more of the Tier 2/Tier 3 LMS vendors also “tossed their hat in the ring” (or towards it anyway) announcing some way of publishing content so it could appear via a mobile browser on the </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">iPhones</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">, </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">iPads</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Android</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> device trying to capture a few of their most “loyal fans” in learning land.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">---------------</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br />
</span></span></div><ol start="2" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Rather than getting easier, the mlearning landscape will actually grow wider/deeper and far more complex as enterprises are forced to include/support several disparate mobile devices and changing end user demands; this scenario will drive further demand for enterprise-grade content authoring and delivery platforms for mobile learning.</i></span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Triple”)</span></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. From our own experience, enterprise mLearning engagements were more complex and multi-faceted given the fact the average deployment was bigger, more varied in terms of content and devices supported, and customer/partner expectations were far higher. As predicted, the methods and tools needed for mobile content authoring and delivery also matured a generation or two over the “season” and a few new use cases for mobile learning appeared too. Along the way, OnPoint was asked by one of our wireless carrier customers to provide the first enterprise mobile authoring environment supporting completely separate staging/QA and production servers but allowing for content syncing to a single, secure mobile application instance on one device – a feat tantamount to hitting one over Fenway’s Green Monster but soon realized after some cleaver programming.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">--------------</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> </span></span></div><ol start="3" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Mobile learning will meld with social networking on every learner's mobile device making the two technologies a fully integrated experience; support for these two technologies will be an essential part of every mlearning vendor's core offerings.</i></span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Single”)</span></b><span style="color: black;">. Mobile Learning and Social Networking each attained much higher hype levels across the Training & Development during the 2010 “season” and both concepts were featured topics in articles and conference sessions alike. While 2010 was certainly the year that <i>Facebook</i> assumed its place atop the infotech mantel and the social context of just about everything training action was contemplated, the ways and means to leverage the popular and very PUBLIC social networking and social media applications like <i>Facebook</i>, <i>Twitter</i>, <i>Linkedin</i>, <i>YouTube</i> and others seemed less than adequate for more security conscious enterprise organizations. OnPoint stepped up to plate here – to satiate pent-up demand in some and spark new interest in others – by introducing an integrated set of social features that blend “formal with informal” with support for PRIVATE mobile discussion forums, access to blogs and wikis, and support for mobile captured/user-generated content. Admittedly, most customers are still trying to wrap their minds around the myriad possibilities for mobile/social but many of the emerging use cases are proving to be both fascinating and rewarding. </span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><ol start="4" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Tablet-based content delivery of mlearning will win our "hearts & minds" over netbook-based content delivery thanks largely to the arrival of Apple's much rumored "iSlate" tablet offering. Others vendors will quickly follow/respond.</span></i></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Grand Slam Homer”)</span></b><span style="color: black;">. The industry finally witnessed the arrival of Apple’s highly anticipated tablet onto the field in Q1 and upon shipment somewhere around “opening day”, the appropriately named “<i>iPad</i>” set a standard by defining a new device category and capturing 95% of that market with 14+ million units sold in less than nine months. Reaction from Apple’s competition has predictable at the marketing level (“Yeah, we’ve got one of those too!”) but generally tepid on the delivery front (“Coming soon!” or “Wait until you see the next version!”). </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">From a content perspective, these new tablets take smartphone-oriented mobile learning and give it a better user experience plus they enable new and compelling long-form content types like readable PDFs as well as far more flexible ePUBs/eBook-style documents. From an enterprise developer’s point of view, the <i>iPad</i> proved easy to support as we quickly re-factored our <i>CellCast</i> Widget for the <i>iPhone</i> to support new user interface standards/suggestions and it all just worked! We have been pleasantly surprised at the way this new device not only captured the hearts and minds of the business and learning communities with the many new affordances it brings but also in the way organizations have simply gone and purchased 50 or 250 or even 500<i> iPads</i> for execs or field workers without any plan as to how they’ll use them (or communicate with or secure them); in short, the <i>iPad</i> is busting down IT’s door and forcing enterprise organizations to support mobile devices beyond just the <i>BlackBerry</i>. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">The <i>iPad</i> isn’t the only game in town though as Android-based devices like Samsung’s popular <i>Galaxy Tab</i> and RIM’s upcoming <i>PlayBook</i> provide alternatives that fill in some of the <i>iPad</i>’s perceived gaps (e.g., lack of <i>Flash</i> support). There will certainly be 30+ tablet devices to choose from by mid 2011 and all will help to grow the market and a select few will actually succeed as products. The recent release of our <i>CellCast Widget for Android Tablets</i> has been well received by customers especially with the inclusion of a new <i>Flash Player</i> template we produced that transforms Articulate <i>Presenter</i> content into something that sizes and plays well on Android mobiles. And while the upcoming RIM <i>PlayBook</i> shows potential for mobile learning delivery, we’re disappointed that the many years of development work needed to produce our <i>BlackBerry</i> apps yielded nothing as be began to build new <i>Playbook</i> apps. Sometimes the “fresh sheet of paper approach” is a good thing but here it proved quite frustrating given the fact our moves to support <i>iOS</i> and Android-based tablets didn’t require us to start from scratch resulting in a “swing and miss” the first time at bat.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
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</div><ol start="5" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The acceptance and adoption of "cloud computing" resources for mobile learning will become commonplace as IT budgets remain strained and the complexity of mobile authoring and delivery continues to increase - especially in larger, more complex environments.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Triple”)</span></b><span style="color: black;">. This one plays on the current trend and seems to be gaining slow but steady momentum to claim the pennant. Our experience in 2010 found ALL of our new customers and partners went “hosted” instead of installing enterprise (“behind the firewall”). Given OnPoint’s hosting center is SAS70/Type II certified and we’ve proven we can keep an organization’s data safe and highly available, the many concerns IT/InfoSec harbored in past seasons no longer seem to be causing rain delays. More significantly, our growing hosted customer base now includes financial services, pharma/healthcare, government and many of the world’s leading carriers and tech OEMs who are now confident to outsource their mlearning services “into our cloud” even though they often support 1,000s to 100K+ servers of their own. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">---------------- </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="6" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Mobile learners will begin to expect (and demand!) the ability to seamlessly manage and synchronize assignment access, delivery, review and completion between their desktop PC and their mobile device(s).</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: maroon;">Not Validated ("Pop Fly Single" – but Caught!)</span></b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">.</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The impact here is yet to be measured or realized due to the fact that most enterprise organizations haven’t implemented let alone identified their mobile learning strategies yet. As such, the need to seamlessly manage the interaction between mobile and online learning delivery is only something that’s perceived as a challenge (or necessity) to the early adopter crowd and requires their mobile learning efforts to be fully integrated with their backend LMS platform; those select few enterprise customers entering large scale deployments are realizing the gains from true anytime, anywhere learning.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">----------------- </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="7" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Mobile learning projects delivered in established and emerging global markets will outnumber those delivered in North America (USA/Canada) due to greater interest, faster uptake and willingness to leverage mlearning on both basic feature phones as well as advanced smartphones.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: maroon;">Not Validated ("Strikeout")</span></b><span style="color: black;">. Time has proven us wrong on this prediction as it relates to OnPoint’s direct and channel business efforts around the world. Up until 2010, the market for smartphones globally – especially those addressable for enterprise mobile learning efforts – seemed to be maturing much faster outside of North America with carrier interest and prospecting activity levels in Asia Pac, South America and EMEA leading the interest shown here. Sure, we had interest from enterprise training teams wishing to do their inaugural mobile learning pilots coming in from everywhere but the projects that seemed to go faster and grow larger were mostly here in North America and spanned industries as well as devices. We attribute these outcomes to two facts: (1) North American carriers were selling (and subsidizing) more smartphones and tablets devices as logical replacements to their subscribers’ aging feature phones and (2) the lack of any measurable interest in Nokia/<i>Symbian</i>-based devices across North American meant the “app craze” focused on those devices made on “this side of the pond” (e.g., Apple <i>iOS</i>, <i>Android</i>, <i>BlackBerry</i>, <i>Windows Mo/Pho</i>).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><br />
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</div><ol start="8" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">In the smartphone realm, mobile web-delivered content will prove to be a less compelling mlearning experience as compared to mobile application-delivered.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Home Run”)</span></b><span style="color: black;">. The mobile learning “app” has won the day in the race for mobile device content delivery over the less interesting mobile web for a variety of reasons and we feel we’re qualified to weigh in with our opinion here given we’re one of a select few vendors who actually provides support for content delivery in either method through one unified platform. Indeed, mobile apps are harder to create and to support but the value derived from an installed app proves far more beneficial and powerful for the typical enterprise customer, especially those looking to support their own defined users rather than their more macro vendor/customer/partner ecosystems. True, accessing mobile learning content via a device’s embedded web browser is an effective and useful delivery modality but the experience is generally watered down to what works at the lowest common denominator level. Conversely, the mobile app experience provides better and more varied content, is FAR more secure, works anywhere the learner needs it (including when there’s no communications signal) and can integrate better into the way learners think about and use their mobile devices. In our opinion, those vendors touting the virtues of the mobile web over the mobile app have yet to figure out how to build and support mobile apps especially in multi-device deployment scenarios so buyer beware. We agree the mobile web experience is improving and so are our own offerings in the corner of the field – we just don’t think the mobile web experience can “hit against” the mobile app experience and win the game.</span></span><br />
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</div><ol start="9" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Security will become a MUCH bigger issue for mlearning deployments and all vendors will need to step up their game to ensure content/IP protection and integrity while making access easier.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: green;">Validated ("Home Run")</span></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. This is played out to have just about as big an impact on mobile learning as the app-based tablet did (above). Securing not only the content and the whole end-to-end experience for the mobile learner became a mission critical dynamic for virtually every enterprise mobile learning engagement this year and rightly so. The very nature of a mobile device – meaning it travels everywhere with the learner in their pocket or purse – means anything staged for delivery at the moment of need is also living far outside the physical confines of the enterprise security gates imposed by the organization. Whereas an online course accessed via a portal can be launched most any time too, that same sensitive or proprietary content never finds itself in a position to be casually viewed by a learner late into the evening at a party pr by an unintended audience if their device was accidently misplaced, stolen or even innocently shared (e.g., “Yeah, check out this new product we’re selling next month!”). Security proved to be a primary development and delivery focus throughout 2010 – both on device and on the server – and we can confidently state the mobile learning experience is now actually MORE secure than the desktop learning experience much to the pleasure and comfort of the IT department.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">-------------------- </span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="10" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The arrival of Adobe's Flash Player v10.1 for (most) smartphones will prove far less significant of an event due to the fact content navigation and onscreen interactions will prove difficult on most of the currently deployed enterprise smartphones. </span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in 0.1pt 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated (“Triple”)</span></b><span style="color: black;">. The hype surrounding mobile <i>Flash</i> reached fever pitch in 2010 although little tangible effect was felt on the field of play. The controversy swirling around the lack of <i>Flash</i> support on the new <i>iPad</i> and the existing <i>iPhone/iPod touch</i> devices certainly drove greater awareness of the classic mobile learning content paradox – that Flash content created for the desktop doesn’t work on most smartphones. Those just arriving at the mlearning party in 2010 for the first time seemed to find this situation especially annoying given the fact these new tablet devices had such nice screens and Internet services all ready to be tapped. And much of the promise of Adobe’s <i>Flasher Player v10.1</i> seemed to fall short of the mark as Android was really the only mobile device OS to ship with a fully functional version of that player in 2010. RIM stated in late 2009 their support was likely to appear in BBOS6 but that didn’t happen. Microsoft focused its energies on ways to leverage its own <i>Silverlight</i> support within the new <i>Windows Phone 7 </i>environment before it adds <i>Flash Player</i> support. And Apple’s public feud with Adobe promoting the coming HTML5 specification over <i>Flash</i> on all <i>iOS</i> devices was much covered too. (NOTE: The lack of <i>Symbian</i>-based smartphones in the North American market meant that while <i>Flash</i> content on Nokia devices was possible, it just wasn’t happening much).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">In those cases where <i>Flash</i> content actually is supported on a mobile device, not all learning content proved to be appropriate or work as expected. In our experience, sending a single “SWF” file provided strong results but attempting to push out (or access over-the-air) a <i>Flash</i>-based learning module on a device didn’t impress many learners (or content authors) without some basic rethinking of the content produced. The full gamut of popular rapid development tools likes Articulate <i>Presenter</i>, Adobe <i>Captivate</i>, Techsmith <i>Camtasia Studio</i> and many others produce content as multi-file/multi-folder outputs that tend to run sluggishly on even the most advanced mobile devices and currently offer no alternative mobile-friendly templates with skins/buttons optimized for the mobile learning experience. As stated above, we needed to create our own specialized templates that bridge the gap between publishing for the online world and the mobile world and found solid success supporting environments with newer <i>Android</i> devices.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">-------------------- </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="11" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">By year end, HTML5 will make rich media playback on mobile devices more practical and compelling too making Flash-based content on mobile less of a need.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: maroon;">Not Validated ("Stikeout")</span></b><span style="color: black;">. Here’s another prediction that didn't play out as we thought it would. Indeed, HTML5 does hold great long-term promise but the specification is still very much a work in progress (due to be ratified in 2013) and only a reasonable few (read: newer, more expensive) mobile devices fully support the spec as written in today’s program. Adobe was the first to add (relent) HTML5 publication support to their <i>Creative Suite 5</i> offiering and other tool vendors are starting to follow suit like Trivantis with the latest <i>Lectora Publisher</i> but don’t expect those tools to output learning content that works on the legacy smartphone devices you have across your enterprise. We expect more tools will provide publication to HTML5 support in the coming weeks and months of 2011. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">------------------- </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><ol start="12" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The first several "sizable" enterprise mlearning projects using Apple iPhones and Android-based smartphones will be delivered into the marketplace as mitigated security concerns make way for a superior on-device experience versus today's standard corporate-centric BlackBerry, WinMo and Symbian (Nokia) interfaces.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: green;">Validated ("Triple")</span></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. This surely happened and several of our largest enterprise pilots and subsequent deployments were based on either </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">iOS</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> devices, </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Android</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> devices or some combination of both. In fact, many cases where existing customers mandated </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">BlackBerry</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">-only deployments relented and started allowing </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">iOS</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Android</i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">-based devices into their mix. The current is moving strong and deep towards multi-device environments now that security and content transcoding (“write once/deploy anywhere”) tasks have been largely mitigated or eliminated altogether. And the trend towards “bring your own device” is also driving the multi-device mobile learning culture as workers are allowed to select and use whatever device they prefer at work to suit their tastes and carrier preferences.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">------------------- </span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br />
</span></span></div><ol start="13" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: windowtext; margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Augmented reality applications for mobile learning will begin to appear but because solution development is expensive, technically challenging, and device dependent, AR will capture more headlines than actual budgets.</span></i></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: green;">Validated ("Triple")</span></b><span style="color: black;">. We continue to read a lot about it but haven’t witnessed any practical use cases deployed out in a production learning environment for training-centric Augmented Reality. Maybe next year.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Well, that’s how the game played out in our minds for 2010. Keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post containing predictions for 2011 already shaping up to be a tournament kind of year with lots of new technologies, companies and services stepping to the plate. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Batter up!!</b> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-49305145681982967502010-11-23T04:03:00.000-08:002010-11-23T08:20:27.771-08:00CellCast Takes Top Honors at DemoFest 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TOuoIMzO-fI/AAAAAAAAAF8/eupIYSWBY0o/s1600/DemoFest-Cluster.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TOuoIMzO-fI/AAAAAAAAAF8/eupIYSWBY0o/s320/DemoFest-Cluster.png" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're pleased to officially announce two awards for OnPoint's <i>CellCast Solution</i> gained from our recent participation in <a href="http://www.elearningguild.com/surveys/?sid=159&selection=doc.1865">DemoFest 2010</a> held in conjunction with The eLearning Guild's annual <a href="http://www.elearningguild.com/DevLearn/content/1674/home">DevLearn 2010 Conference</a> in San Francisco. The awards were given in support of our entry titled "<i>mLearning: Learning on the Go</i>" in the Sales Training category that OnPoint jointly submitted for consideration with CellCast customer <a href="http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/index.html">Verizon Wireless</a>. Our winning entry in the Sales Training category also was recognized as "Best in Show - Vendor" for the entire event. </span><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The annual DemoFest contest is a “people’s choice” style competition where participants vote for the courses or applications they consider the most innovative solutions or approaches to various e-Learning challenges. Participants see a wide variety of demonstrations and have a chance to talk to the designers and developers about the tools, technologies, and processes they used to meet their project’s goals and objectives.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OnPoint worked with Verizon Wireless on a project designed to provide their outbound sales teams with greater and easier access to regular sales practices, production/solution previews, and updated business communications; the solution utilized OnPoint’s CellCast® mobile learning platform to make that content available via a variety of company-issued smartphones. By making content available beyond the standard classroom or desktop-delivered experience, Verizon Wireless was able to provide enhanced access to just-in-time training in a shortened time frame via the customized mobile application on users’ smartphones, including Android ®, BlackBerry® wireless handhelds and Windows Mobile ® devices. The end-to-end mobile solution provided by OnPoint compliments Verizon Wireless’ existing enterprise LMS platform and extends their blended learning environment to their ever-mobile sales professionals. Key objectives of the project included the ability to create and deliver a broad array of content types to a variety of mobile device platforms, along with full integration between OnPoint’s CellCast platform and Verizon Wireless’ enterprise LMS—all while meeting strict security guidelines mandated by Verizon’s IT and Learning/Development management teams.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And while it is certainly wonderful to gain recognition for our efforts and technologies from the learning community at large, the real "icing on the cake" was the fact we won and share this recognition in conjunction with the outstanding team we've worked with at Verizon Wireless. Without the commitment and forward-looking vision of great customers, our efforts to create great tools or technologies would have a hard time finding tangible meaning or purpose. VZW helped us "up our game" considerably on so many fronts and helped to "raise the bar" on what's possible -- <i><b>and soon to be expected</b></i> -- in enterprise mobile learning!!</div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And final kudos to the entire OnPoint Digital team of designers, developers, engagement managers, sales and marketing staff for their daily contributions that make this sort of recognition something we can all share.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here's a link to the official press release containing all the details: </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/e7Q8Bo">http://bit.ly/e7Q8Bo</a>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-6176235876684786972010-10-31T07:18:00.000-07:002010-10-31T07:18:23.120-07:00mLearning Feature Sets: Possibilities Wide & Deep<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It has certainly been a "month of Sundays" since I last posted to this blog and I offer apologies for not sharing more throughout what has proved to be a very busy and productive summer and fall season. I thought it would be good to offer a series of new posts around some of the messaging we'll be sharing with the gathered mobile learning community at <a href="http://www.elearningguild.com/DevLearn/content/1674/home">DevLearn 2010</a> in San Francisco, California which starts later this week. To kick off this series of updated posts, we thought we'd start out with an overview of the wide and varied feature sets we've witnessed our customers and partners addressing in the so called "mobile learning space." As discussed recently with <a href="http://www.mlearnopedia.com/">Judy Brown</a>, ADL's mobile learning expert and industry Mobile Maven, the concepts underlying mobile learning run wide and deep. In our experience, enterprise customers serving the exact same markets will often select and apply vastly different feature sets to achieve their own stated mlearning goals and objectives.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The Feature Sets - A Range of Possibility</b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The variety of available mobile devices enables a myriad of potential uses for the preparation, delivery and tracking of learning for mobile workers; and the more capable the mobile device, the wider the array of possible content delivery methods. As shown in Figure 1 below, we classify these possibilities into the five different classes of learning content and focus much of our R&D efforts into how we can help our customers and partners to leverage each type to broaden the learning experiences for their targeted mobile audiences.</span></span></div><style>
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TM14kNeQWHI/AAAAAAAAAF4/mw2-eufAgJQ/s1600/mLearning-Feature-Sets.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TM14kNeQWHI/AAAAAAAAAF4/mw2-eufAgJQ/s400/mLearning-Feature-Sets.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><b>Figure 1</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span>1. Basic Communications</span></i></b><span>.<span> </span>Basic voice and messaging communications represent the primary reason and easiest cost justification for enterprise mobile device purchases.<span> </span>For most organizations, the ability to contact a person either through a phone call, an email or a text message remains the principal use case for equipping a manager, salesperson or field technician with a company-supplied device. Everyone knows how to use their issued device without much (or any) training and these devices facilitate the completion of typical knowledge worker tasks just about anywhere.<span> </span>And as highlighted in previous posts to this blog, the basic communications features found on virtually every phone can be used to distribute a variety of mobile learning content types that enable anytime/anywhere learning for enterprise workers. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span>2. Training Delivery</span></i></b><span><b>.</b><span> </span>Indeed, knowledge workers can learn new things and acquire new skills leveraging properly designed and formatted content on a supported mobile device.<span> </span>Common learning experiences include learning a new skill, refreshing a recent training or reclaiming forgotten knowledge.<span> </span>Just like desktop learning methods, the variety of content types possible in the mobile realm – especially with more capable smartphone devices – are broad and varied and include videos, podcasts, mobile versions of traditional “page turner” courseware/modules, animated slide presentations and more.<span> </span>All required and optional assignments can be accompanied by integrated tests/quizzes/surveys to measure learner assimilation or opinions. Most mobile learning content tends to be packaged in shorter, bite-sized deliverables for easier and more frequent consumption. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span>3. Information Access</span></i></b><span><b>.</b><span> </span>In many cases, learning while mobile may not be about assigned content at all and be much more about providing just-in-time access to a variety of on-demand resources and reference materials which can be read and mined for relevant information at the time of need. Examples of on-demand content span access to appropriate (and compatible) web sites and RSS feeds, mobile-friendly publications in traditional Adobe Acrobat/<i>PDF</i> format and long-form materials in more contemporary <i>eBook</i> and <i>ePub</i> formats.<span> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span>4. Social Networking</span></i></b><span><b>.</b><span> </span>Sometimes the best way to learn is for a learner to connect directly with an actual expert or an entire extended learning community.<span> </span>The growing popularity and acceptance of social networking in support of enterprise learning is driving organizations to identify and implement effective ways to build and manage these communities to harvest institutional knowledge and extend the reach of the best ideas and people out to others wherever they are and whenever they need it. The real trick is to harness the power and potential of the popular social network methods and sites (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yammer) but channel all relevant social interactions into a private monitored and managed network that properly vets and leverages organizational value.<span> </span>Mobile devices -- especially smartphones – are well suited to package, deliver and manage these social interactions as part of the overall fabric of a blended learning environment.<span> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><b><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>5. Content Creation</span></i></span></b><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Book"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. Finally, easy-to-use features are available on both basic feature phones and advanced smartphones that can enable an organization’s content consumers to actually become content creators using their own mobile devices. User-generated content can be authored in many different formats using recorded voice for audio podcasts such as a customer testimonial, camera snapshots for visual imagery of a competitor’s product capture “in the wild” or a short video of a subject matter expert detailing a practical process or procedure they’ve mastered that can benefit others across their learning community.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Book"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As you can see, there are many possibilities and potential feature sets to leverage across any organization seeking to broaden the range of mobile learning services and solutions they wish to deliver to their target audience. Thankfully, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to which of these feature sets work best or should be implemented first -- each team just needs to pick what's right for them and addresses their own objectives.</span></span><span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Book"; font-size: 10pt;"><span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-11011800808894747542010-06-13T07:37:00.000-07:002010-06-13T08:04:46.832-07:00CellCast mSCORM Player Announced<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're pleased to announce the availability of the <i style="color: blue;">CellCast mSCORM Player</i>, the latest extension to our <i>CellCast Solution </i>platform for enterprise mobile learning delivery. This new functionality allows mobile workers to access learning content deployed as standard SCORM v1.2 and v2004 SCORM packages (as generated by a variety of 3rd party authoring tools) and allows for full content playback and tracking in both online AND offline settings. We launch with support added to most of our core <i><b>CellCast Widgets</b></i> including all Android-based devices, Apple iPhones, iPad and iPod touch media players, BlackBerry devices (running BBOS 4.5 and higher) and smartphones running Windows Mobile v6.1 and v6.5. We also expect to add support for Symbian/S60 later this summer.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TBTt-d0a2bI/AAAAAAAAAFo/NtPrdLGGwzQ/s1600/mSCORM-Players.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/TBTt-d0a2bI/AAAAAAAAAFo/NtPrdLGGwzQ/s400/mSCORM-Players.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We have to admit we weren't the first ISV to jump onto the "SCORM + Mobile" bandwagon; after all, the very nature of the current SCORM v1.2 and SCORM v2004 specifications suggest a mobile learner needs to be "online" whenever they launch a SCORM assignment to ensure connection between their mobile device and the content source/server running a SCORM API. Given OnPoint's dual strategy of supporting content consumption via mobile web AND native app (preferred!!) delivery models, the priority to add "SCORM support" slipped several times due to the technical complexities imposed by the web browsers of most mobile devices. But our larger enterprise customers and prospects kept begging the question: "What's the deal with SCORM on mobile?" so we set off in earnest to devise a workable strategy. Deep thought and hard work yielded an elegant cross-platform solution in the form of a new mobile content player that met all of our requirements and integrated nicely with our core platform and tools. And for those select mobile devices that support Flash-based content, playback of mobile SCOs produced with tools like Articulate Presenter and Engage now works as well although the experience <i style="color: #cc0000;">isn't ideal just yet </i>due to the screen size limitations on most mobile devices plus memory allocation issues and slower-than-desktop processing speeds which hamper rendering. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Special thanks goes out to Mike Palmer, our resident SCORM guru and the architect of our innovative <i style="color: blue;">CellCast mSCORM Player</i>, who discovered a viable way to design a cross platform player that overcomes the myriad security restrictions virtually all mobile browsers impose on the operating environment of smartphone devices. Once perfected, Mike's player was integrated into all of other <b><i>CellCast Widgets</i></b> in a matter of a few days expanding our range of mobile SCORM support quickly and easily. Our efforts along the way have also been greatly assisted by Jason Haag and <a href="http://www.judybrown.com/">Judy Brown</a> over at <a href="http://www.adlnet.gov/">Advanced Distributed Learning ("ADL") </a>who offered insights and advice as to where SCORM + Mobile is today and listened to our list of aspirations for where we hope it evolves in the future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Click the link below to view a short 3-minute demonstration of the new <i style="color: blue;">CellCast mSCORM Player</i> on a Windows Mobile device; the clip was prepared by Mr. Palmer from "down under" in New Zealand who delights us with his Kiwi accent.</span><br />
<a href="http://content.mlearning.com/assets/c33/mSCORM-WinMo-Demo/mSCORM-Player-WinMo-v3.html"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO</span></a>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-83471554494838837562010-06-11T10:03:00.000-07:002010-06-11T10:03:37.982-07:00Growth Accelerates CellCast Solution Innovations<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're pleased to report the adoption and use of mobile learning by enterprise customers has been accelerating throughout first half of 2010 -- yeah!!; And as with any measurable change in market direction, this new-found momentum comes with advantages and challenges alike. The bigger the customer and/or engagement, the more revenue that deal can contribute and the easier it is for us to expand operations and assemble an even stronger team. But the bigger the enterprise, the more apt these customers are to want (<b><span style="color: red;">even demand</span></b>) more sophisticated features and service offerings to ensure their mobile initiatives are scalable, secure and standards-based. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As a result, our design and development teams have spent the first half of the year improving our core applications, device experiences and the underlying platform our customer and partners need to make mobile learning a reality for their own employees and customers. And somehow we've completed three years worth of effort in a six month time frame (once again!) to stay ahead of current demands and stated requirements. The tangible results are myriad and amazing. A high level summary of what comprises makes our <i>CellCast Solution</i> version 3.x offering would include:</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b> </b></i></span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Improved Delivery Methods</b></i> </span></li>
<li><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Advanced Mobile + Social Features</span></i></b></li>
<li><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Highly Scalable Architecture</span></i></b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>New Content Authoring Capabilities</b></i> <i><b>(incl Flash) </b></i></span></li>
<li><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Support for Learning Standards (SCORM)</span></i></b></li>
<li><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Enhanced Enterprise Security Features</span></i></b><br />
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<li><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Expanded Localization/Language Support</span></i></b></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the days leading up to the <a href="http://www.mlearncon.com/">mLearnCon<i><b> </b></i>Conference</a> in San Diego, California (held mid-June 2010) and the weeks to follow, we plan to provide more detailed background and previews on each of these advances and highlight why we're proud and our customers/partners are happy with all these positive results. For now, here's a short summary of what our blog follows can look forward to learning about in future posts.<i><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Improved Delivery Methods</b></i>. One of the true value propositions of the <i>CellCast Solution</i> platform is the broad reach achieved from basic feature phones on one extreme to advanced smartphone devices on the other. CellCast can deliver 18 different kinds of mobile learning content ensuring there are reliable and cost effective ways to reach virtually everyone in an organization's extended ecosystem in one way or another (likely several) from just one integrated platform. Authors use "write once/publish to many" methods and tools to create content for delivery via text messaging, voice, mobile web or native app, and can leverage support for every major mobile device used in business. Our next blog post will highlight some of the new CellCast Widget improvements and devices we now support.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Advanced Mobile + Social Features</b></i>. Not doubt about it, social content and informal learning are playing a larger role in enterprise education and the blended learning experience. To assist customers wishing to leverage these market trends, CellCast now provides an array of both Social Media ("SoMe") and Social Networking ("SoNe") features that promote the creation and distribution of user-generated content as well as providing AND MANAGING access to internal/private social networks (e.g., blogs/microblogs/wikis) and external/public social networks and feeds the establishment of managed private networks (e.g., Twitter, Yammer, Jive, RSS feeds). Access is permission-based and easily controlled/monitored as well as measurable to ensure proper use and conduct using company-owned devices and personnel respectively.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Highly Scalable Architecture</b></i>. Mobile learning pilots may may only span a limited audience but enterprise deployments can likely expand to thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of mobile learners. Our updated <i>CellCast Solution</i> platform now scales to meet these ever-increasing demands using the industry's most efficient methods for content compression, distribution and synchronization.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>New Authoring Capabilities & Functionality</b></i>. It seems that every engagement we undertake includes 80% "situations we've seen and mastered" and the other 20% seems to be the "here's something that's never been attempted before - can you do it?" sort of situation. As such, our customers and partners have helped to continue to push the envelope in the ways and means that mobile learning content is designed and delivered. Recent experiences with HTML5, branching logic in PowerPoints, Flash-based mobile content (today only on Froyo-based Android and newer Windows Mobile devices), even conversions of desktop bound content created in tools like Articulate Presenter/Engage/Quizmaker, Adobe Captivate and Dreamweaver and Trivantis Lectora Publisher have helped shape the way we deal with new and existing content and make it as mobile friendly as possible. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Support for Learning Standards (SCORM)</b></i>. The bigger the customer/engagement, the more sensitive they are about support for training industry standards too. Take SCORM for example; what we thought impractical a few recent months has now proven to be both possible and even compelling! Our new <i>CellCast Widgets</i> now provide full SCO-level tracking and reporting for SCORM v1.2 and 2004 content packages played on mobile devices in <b>BOTH <span style="color: lime;">online </span>AND <span style="color: lime;">offline </span></b>modes using our new <i>CellCast mSCORM Player</i>. Its simply fascinating to witness a SCORM package built for the desktop/online delivery running on a BlackBerry, iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile device even while on an airplane or out of wireless coverage areas. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Enhanced Enterprise Security Features</b></i>. The requirements for ensuring the security and integrity of enterprise content has become a common theme in recent months as business accelerates its adoption and use of mobile learning. CellCast now provides enhanced end-to-end security features covering every supported mobile device and the myriad of available security options now includes content encryption features (even on iPhones and Android devices) as well as other IT-friendly services like federated authentication/single sign-on integration, remote device wipe capabilities, and even time-based access restrictions.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 115%;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Expanded Localization/Language Support</b></i>. The farther the CellCast Solution travels (via multinational customers and global partners/resellers), the greater the need to provide support for languages and localization. User-facing interfaces are now available in 12 different languages (including character-based like Russian, Japanese, traditional and simplified Chinese) both via the mobile web and within the CellCast Widget; sorry, we can't help with the automatic conversion of your content though - that's your responsibility! </span><br />
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You can see we've been busy. And we look forward to showcasing many of the features in the coming days in support of the mLearnCon Conference and over the summer. Its an exciting and interesting time to be in the mobile learning business indeed!</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-47279310768575224292010-05-03T09:12:00.000-07:002010-05-03T15:20:25.160-07:00mLearning Featured at WES 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977mo6V_tI/AAAAAAAAAEw/k-a1CRjsclc/s1600/wes-2010-blackberry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977mo6V_tI/AAAAAAAAAEw/k-a1CRjsclc/s320/wes-2010-blackberry.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Our team just returned from a full week down in Orlando, Florida participating in Research in Motion’s 2010 <a href="http://www.attendwes.com/">Worldwide Enterprise Summit</a> (“<a href="http://www.attendwes.com/">WES</a>”) Conference which proved once again to be a spectacular event and learning experience for all in attendance. Plenty of attention was paid to the fields of mobile Learning and mobilized content delivery to the ubiquitous BlackBerry – or as RIM refers to it – the “preferred smartphone for business” and this year’s event once again set the gold standard for “Best Conference Experience/Value” in what’s been an otherwise tepid tradeshow circuit these past few years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Participation at WES is open to anyone interested in “The World of BlackBerry” though this year’s attendees (6,000+ and up 20% from 2009!) tend to fit one of four profiles including: (1) business or IT teams from larger enterprise accounts, (2) technical or channel resources from global carriers/wireless providers, (3) application developers and enterprise solution architects, or (4) market analysts, bloggers and techno freaks interested in experiencing what’s hot in BlackBerry. Virtually everyone we encountered throughout the four-day conference seemed to have either a mission to learn or a budget to invest (many had both!) and opportunities abounded! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Who’s not in attendance at WES? Thankfully, RIM’s international event wasn’t filled with casual tire kickers or non-practitioners just wasting time or trolling for free giveaways. In fact, more than half the attendees flew in from outside North America (with heavy participation from Europe and Asia Pacific) and they were there to really gain some advantage after enduring 10 to 20-hour flights!</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sessions of Interest</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While there were no huge (unanticipated) product announcements from RIM, the highlights of the show included two new BlackBerry devices (the CDMA <a href="http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=3906">BlackBerry Bold 9650</a> and the <a href="http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=3886">BlackBerry Pearl 3G/9100</a>) that are both highly polished and ultra fast. And we’ll all soon put that speed to good use as RIM announced the upcoming availability of their BBOS version 6.0 platform coming sometime in Q3 2010. BBOS6 will provide a raft of new (and some long overdue) enhancements to the interface and web browsing experience and also serve to support new features like Flash Player 10.1 also slated for delivery later this year. For mobile learning developers and users alike, these advances and the new devices that will run them will help to ensure the BlackBerry remains a leading device in the smartphone arsenal for mobile learning delivery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The discipline of Mobile Learning was spotlighted in several of the main sessions including a well attended session titled “<a href="https://www.wesconference.net/2010/scheduler/profile.do?SESSION_ID=2472&form=searchform&ts=1272902327609">WB-11 Developing and Distributing Media-Rich Content for Mobile Workers</a>” in which I was a featured panelist along with Keith O’Loughlin from <a href="http://www.intuition.com/">Intuition</a>. <a href="http://www.chalk.com/">Chalk Media</a>, formally a direct competitor and now a subsidiary of RIM, also presented a few sessions on mobile content creation and delivery to both general audiences and channel partners and a short series of Chalk Pushcasts were deployed to WES attendees via their BlackBerry smartphones helping to make syndicated content delivery a front-of-mind experience for all interested parties.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Solutions Showcase</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The official Exhibit Hall for WES 2010 was the Solutions Showcase area and a <a href="http://www.attendwes.com/sponsors">record number of sponsors</a> signed up this year and manned their “popsicle stands” to meet interested parties from the RIM ecosystem. The OnPoint team was able to meet and talk with a great number of current customers, partners and prospects and demonstrate why mobile learning in general and our <a href="http://www.mlearning.com/">CellCast Solution</a> in particular are gaining in market acceptance and popularity. We were especially pleased with the interest from MVNOs/carriers and VARs we visited with and their expressed commitment to begin leveraging mobile learning to train their own employees and partners: interest seemed to come equally from North America, LATAM, EMEA and APAC alike as the global market heats up from mLearning. We look forward to the opportunities that mature in the coming weeks and months from our active participation in the Solutions Showcase. Martin Brown, our MD from Sydney, Australia, was certainly glad to made the trip over too!</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977UNNmVjI/AAAAAAAAAEg/EbIHjqbM3Y4/s1600/WES-Showcase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977UNNmVjI/AAAAAAAAAEg/EbIHjqbM3Y4/s320/WES-Showcase.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977X0VXVeI/AAAAAAAAAEo/5qybAnlwiFs/s1600/WES-Martin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S977X0VXVeI/AAAAAAAAAEo/5qybAnlwiFs/s320/WES-Martin.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Exceptional Value & Production Quality</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even though RIM brought in US$10M or more from the sponsorships and paid registrations from the 6K attendees, they spared NO expense making the event special and inspiring for everyone. Everything from the keynotes to the sessions to the exhibition hall to the catered meals (breakfast, lunch, snacks and evening entertainment) was top notch and greatly appreciated. Speaking of the keynotes and sessions, there were 4 full days of scheduled presentations from RIM’s top brass, technical leadership, top customers and strategic partners. Evening entertainment included on Tuesday included British song siren Joss Stone as well as Will.i.am from the Blackeyed Peas and a few others with plenty of fun and games and drinks to lubricate conversation. And no lack of bootleg video and audio recordings from the BlackBerry device virtually everyone was carrying with them 24x7. Not to be outdone, a few of the tier one carriers sponsored their own on or off-site shindigs too – we got to attend the ATT Private Party at the Hard Rock Café which featured San Fran band Train singing their popular catalog for the 300 lucky invitees.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Final Analysis</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The 2010 event was my third WES as an attendee but our first as a company/sponsor and we were certainly not disappointed. The crowds were bigger and seemed more interested in finding ways to leverage their current investment in RIM/BlackBerry and smartphones in general for improved business communications and training. With the continuing flood of new technologies and fully capable devices, the months and years ahead all bode well for mobile learning to finally take flight and soar in the enterprise.</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-32794271910418001662010-04-30T10:33:00.000-07:002010-05-01T03:20:19.081-07:00CellCast Solution Wins Gold Brandon Hall Award!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S9sTlNnCJjI/AAAAAAAAAEY/TzVkyilSQIk/s1600/Gold-2009_200pixel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S9sTlNnCJjI/AAAAAAAAAEY/TzVkyilSQIk/s320/Gold-2009_200pixel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We were pleased to learn yesterday that OnPoint's <i><b>CellCast Solution</b></i> won the Gold Award from <a href="http://www.brandon-hall.com/">Brandon Hall</a> for 2009 in the "<b>Best Advance in Technology for Mobile Learning Authoring</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">" category. Congratulations to our entire team for all their continuing efforts and outstanding achievements and kudos to all of the other winners across every competed category; we all work/exist in an industry where innovation is alive and well! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://www.brandon-hall.com/awards/award_winners/lta2009_winners.shtml">HERE </a>to see the entire list of 2009 Excellence in Learning Technology winners and their awarded prizes.</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-235990335462411982010-04-14T09:14:00.000-07:002010-04-14T12:12:16.757-07:00Dissecting Saba's New "Anywhere" Product for Mobile Learning<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I happened upon a tweet last week while trolling my <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter </a>in-box that heralded a product announcement from <a href="http://www.saba.com/">Saba</a> for their new "<a href="http://www.saba.com/products/learning/details.htm#anywhere">Saba Anywhere</a>" offering which they described as follows: "</span><strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">Saba Anywhere is a mobile platform that lets people take their learning on the go.</span>" </strong><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The press release continues with details on how flexible, capable and secure the new offering is so I read on with great interest. Instinctively, I reasoned another one of the "Big 10" LMS/Talent Management platform players was finally joining the <i><b>mLearning</b></i> <i><b>party </b></i>introducing their own well conceived and highly polished solution for the creation, packaging, delivery and tracking on mobile-friendly content to on-the-go workers via their omnipresent smartphone devices. If you're thinking this announcement/product branding meant the same thing, a little further investigation would prove you wrong too! The marketing post outlines the following:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S8XgWRQv5nI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/Tf6esiFvdjE/s1600/Saba-Anywhere-Blurb.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S8XgWRQv5nI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/Tf6esiFvdjE/s400/Saba-Anywhere-Blurb.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At first blush, this all sounds great! But peeling back the onion a bit reveals the plain fact the supported mobile device all this "mobile-accessible" content is delivered to and consumed on is a standard Windows-based laptop or desktop computer. <b style="color: red;">Thump</b>!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Okay, that's interesting news on a few levels but the likelihood today's typical enterprise mobile employee/executive traveling around for business doesn't have an enterprise smartphone in their pocket/purse <i><b>in addition</b></i> to their enterprise laptop computer taking up space and adding heft in their briefcase is increasingly slim-to-none. Furthermore, a recent <a href="http://www3.ipass.com/about/news-room/mobile-workforce-report/employee-device-preference/">Mobile Workforce Report</a> conducted by <a href="http://www3.ipass.com/">iPass</a> on "Employee Device Preference" revealed that 63% of respondents preferred to whip out their smartphone for work-related tasks versus cranking up their laptop computer to conduct those same biz chores. If booting my laptop takes me 2+ minutes and acquiring a suitable wireless signal takes another 1-2 minutes in some appropriate <i>hot spot</i>, by the time I'm finally ready to get down to learning something I may have already missed the window of opportunity. Contrast that experience/hardship to using your at-the-ready smartphone that enables true "<i><b>Anywhere</b></i>" and anytime learning and we begin to question the potential of this strategy. Not to mention that smartphone-based learning can happen whether I'm seated patiently in a lobby waiting to see a customer/prospect, or standing in a queue ordering lunch or smashed into a commuter train heading home after a long day -- try opening your laptop and taking your course in those environments! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Agreed, the desktop/laptop course experience is richer (more Flashy) today versus the mobile experience and considered by many to be easier to view and consume compared to some mobile content, but true engagement and learning are not only possible but highly achievable on the current crop of next generation mobile devices like the BlackBerry, Apple iPhone/iPod touch and iPad, Google Android and Windows Mobile smartphones that now proliferate across the enterprise. Yesterday's desktop/laptop-optimized content may need to be rethought and re-factored as well but the set of available tools and methods to accomplish these tasks improves daily...the rate of change is accelerating like nothing I've witnessed before and the mobile device (READ: smartphone) will soon be the dominate platform for content delivery (and training delivery) globally. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Much of what the Saba team gleaned in designing and bringing their new <i><b>Anywhere </b></i>offer to market can likely serve as foundational knowledge for the next anticipated step in their evolution towards true mobile learning. They can even re-purpose their adopted product tag line too when that time comes ("...<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Complete your training anywhere, anytime, regardless of network connectivity.</i></span>").</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-87919259292220219112010-04-06T08:52:00.000-07:002010-04-06T08:52:43.199-07:00CellCast Widget for iPad - The Video!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S7tYMUHEikI/AAAAAAAAAEI/L5pod150eCU/s1600/iPad-Image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S7tYMUHEikI/AAAAAAAAAEI/L5pod150eCU/s320/iPad-Image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I took the opportunity to do a live screen capture of our new CellCast Widget for Apple iPad today to better illustrate the key features and functionality we've included in our first release supporting Apple's revolutionary new tablet device. This presentation, captured using <a href="http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiamac/"><b>Camtasia for Mac</b></a> and converted to an MP4/Flash format for easier web viewing, demonstrates a series of the core features that allow our customers and partners to plan, create, deploy and track a variety of learning content and performance support materials to their mobile workforce using the widest array of mobile devices possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the video, we demonstrate how a combination of iPad-compatible M4V videos, MP3 podcasts, animated PowerPoint presentations and other mobile friendly web content are pushed down to a secure learning framework and enriched with tracked assessments, targeted messaging/notifications and mobile-accessible social networking platforms. All user interactions including who/what/when/where/how long are fully tracked and managed in a centralized database which can also be fully integrated with an organization's Learning Management System or Sales Force Automation system as needed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you've already got an iPad and you're interested in evaluating the new Widget yourself, please drop me a line at rgadd @ onpointlearning.com and we'll set you up with a demo account to play with all the new features and functionality.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://content.mlearning.com/assets/c51/ipad-demo/index.html">CLICK HERE</a> to launch the demonstration video.</span><br />
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</span>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-72945589293275045972010-04-03T13:39:00.000-07:002010-04-03T13:53:39.819-07:00CellCast Widget for iPad Released!<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's officially iPad Launch Day and we're pleased to announce our <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cellcast-widget-for-ipad/id364726881?mt=8">CellCast Widget for iPad</a> was included in the inaugural 1,000 applications shipped in support of Apple's revolutionary new tablet computing device. Better yet, we're the only sanctioned iPad application listed whenever a iTunes user searches on "mobile learning" or "m-learning" in the iTune App Store -- a situation that's certainly going to change in the coming days though as others jump on board the new device train.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S7enPcBUuuI/AAAAAAAAAEA/xV-wYnEDqMk/s1600/CellCast-Apps-iTunes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S7enPcBUuuI/AAAAAAAAAEA/xV-wYnEDqMk/s400/CellCast-Apps-iTunes.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I just spent the week over in Texas previewing our new iPad application (along with the rest of our CellCast Solution platform) to several different partners, customers and prospects who all anticipate the positive market reaction the iPad will have on the mlearning market. Everyone concurs these iPad devices should slot into the mobile learning device market quite nicely and, as one of the mobile device market analysts stated earlier this week, should only cannibalize market share from Apple's existing iPod touch media player while replacing those sales with higher price/higher margin iPad sales!</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
If you're lucky enough to already have your new iPad, we invite you to go to the App Store and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cellcast-widget-for-ipad/id364726881?mt=8">download a free copy of our Widget</a> and try it out. Send me an email to rgadd @onpointlearning.com and I'll even setup a private account for you and assign several more content examples for you to play around with too.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In my next post, I'll provide a guided video walk through of our iPad application and the many features we're excited about. </div></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5572806140050335421.post-7003574007690431392010-03-26T17:22:00.000-07:002010-03-26T17:33:21.074-07:00Publishing our CellCast Widget for iPad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61I8aymzpI/AAAAAAAAADQ/-B884s_a-MI/s1600/iPad_apps_hero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61I8aymzpI/AAAAAAAAADQ/-B884s_a-MI/s400/iPad_apps_hero.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The rush has been on this week as our development team worked to design a new version of our CellCast Widget specifically for Apple's upcoming and much anticipated iPad tablet device. And while we've had a CellCast Widget for iPhone and iPod touch devices for about a year a half, the new iPad platform drove some interesting changes and helped us evolve our offering for this next generation mobile learning device.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad back in late January, he stated that existing Apple iPhone apps and games would work fine on the new platform and, generally speaking, he was correct. In fact, we only had to modify a select number of functions and application calls to ensure our standard widget would work on the new devices when they shipped. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However, to really take advantage of some new features and a vastly improved 1024x768 display, we decided a full rewrite was in order so we've spent much of the last 2 weeks re-factoring our original iPhone code base to create a new iPad-specific version of CellCast. Apple provided a strong "call to action" about a week ago with an email to all developers stating we had until Saturday, March 27th to submit our iPad applications -- developed using the latest Xcode v3.2 beta 5 development environment -- and that if things checked out, our application would be included as part of the official iTunes App Store offering for iPad on April 3rd, the official launch day! Keep in mind we're developing something and checking everything using only Apple's simulator (not a real device) so our first chance to see it working for real will also be on/after launch day! We have a high level of confidence it will work/run without issue given Apple's Xcode simulators are very strong and have always been quite representative of the way our apps actually perform in real life. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, attached below are the first public glimpses of our CellCast Widget for iPad which will hopefully ship next Saturday with the first round of devices to hit the street. We are excited about how our partners and customers will use their new iPad devices to delivery on-the-go training to their enterprise workers too! Thanks to our friends at <a href="http://www.50lessons.com/">50 Lessons</a> and <a href="http://www.elementk.com/">Element K</a> for use of their awesome mobile-friendly content from our <a href="http://content.mlearning.com/">CellCast Mobile Library</a> that was included in the demo submission to Apple.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Never a dull day in the world of mobile learning!</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figure 1 (below) - Main Interface with menu block and customer-specific branding</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figure 2 - Assignment Listing on left with selection detail in main area.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NLsuH6sI/AAAAAAAAADg/cgLoHIUT9BI/s1600/CellCast-Widget-iPad-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NLsuH6sI/AAAAAAAAADg/cgLoHIUT9BI/s400/CellCast-Widget-iPad-02.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figure 3 - High Resolution M4V video playback of assignment selection.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figure 4 - Course module (developed in Dreamweaver) with Javascipt interactions.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NZlurbsI/AAAAAAAAADw/TdwXYVUDBA8/s1600/CellCast-Widget-iPad-04a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NZlurbsI/AAAAAAAAADw/TdwXYVUDBA8/s400/CellCast-Widget-iPad-04a.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figure 5 - Post content assessment using CellCast testing engine.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NeTvyyQI/AAAAAAAAAD4/5M55orsQo8I/s1600/CellCast-Widget-iPad-05a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9WwRmOHZKHA/S61NeTvyyQI/AAAAAAAAAD4/5M55orsQo8I/s400/CellCast-Widget-iPad-05a.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div>Robert Gaddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024414277100035629noreply@blogger.com0