Not much to say – make the time to watch the videos. They are filled with fascinating insights about the design of the user experience, from the very people who are at the forefront of UX. They’re fairly long videos at times.

The three that I really liked were:

NYC IxDA – Tap is the New Click – Dan Saffer from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

UX Week 2008 | Rachel Hinman | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

The use of mobiles and other related digital media as an alternative source of information is increasingly gaining ground in the learning environment. This is compounded by the fact that a large number of organizations and institutions are opting for new modes of learning as part of training and development. I have always believed that mLearning will be the future of eLearning and have also written about it here.

This is in line with the recently released Ambient Insight Report which forecasts US market for mobile learning products and services to be growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.7%. The Horizon Report 2010 on Mobile Computing also points out some interesting trends that will alter the way we live and learn. You can read more about it here.And, if I go by the enthusiasm seen at the mLearnCon, mlearning surely is buzzing in corporate circles at the moment.

At Upside Learning, we constantly strive to develop new solutions in tune with the technology and market demand, which helps us deliver the best and the latest to our clients. Hence, in response to the rising requirements, our innovation team has been taping onto the latest trends and developing new applications across various platforms such as Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian etc. Our mobile audio-video podcasts, mobile quiz games, and m-learning nuggets, both as web and native apps, are being used successfully by clients across the globe.

Pune Layar - The first crowd-sourced Layar for an Indian city – was developed by us. We have also developed a mobile version of UpsideLMS and are working on more complex, richer and diverse mobile learning applications that run across platforms and devices. These include content creation and applications for tablet computers like the Apple iPad, learning games etc.

We see exciting times for mlearning ahead. Anything interesting that you have come across? Or maybe something you would like to see? Leave your comments below.

We advocate the need of openness at Adobe especially for their Flash runtimes. Adobe has some great development tools like Flash Builder, Flash CS5 which target the runtimes – Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Although Adobe has a range of open-source projects they haven’t yet fully “opened” both the Flash runtimes.

Adobe has released SWF specifications till its version 10. And that kicked off some of open-source Flash player implementations like Lightspark and Gnash. The pace of development, however, is really very slow. Lightspark, which has just released its latest version few days back, looks promising with its OpenGL based rendering. Also there are implementations like Frash and Smokescreen that are attempting to run Flash content on unsupported devices like iPhones and iPads.

Last month Adobe also announced next release of open-source Flex SDK, code named Hero. Among others, the main targeted feature is the support for multi-screen development, which is in line with their ongoing open-screen initiative. However, the development is tightly coupled with the unreleased Flash runtimes, and hence builds would not be available to open-source community till the latest runtimes are officially released.

In my opinion, by making the runtime development open-source, Adobe can concentrate on development tools as well as can focus on drafting innovative features to be supported by runtimes. The open-source community on the other hand can try and tackle the ways to implement runtimes to be supported on various computing devices and architectures.

The eLearning developer community will anyways benefit from open-source developments around Flash. Traditionally eLearning courses are one of major consumers of Flash platform, mainly because of ubiquitous Flash runtimes. But the community has been in major chaos as Apple denied deploying apps developed using Flash IDE. The developers have been checking other ways to offer/deploy learning content on the devices not supporting Flash. I think that would change if Flash runtimes were open-source and available for such devices, at least partially implemented.

In a tablet form-factor and using an unspecified variant of Linux (that some have said might be Android), the cost should remain low while offering a wide range of functionality. The device is said to be support video conferencing, viewing a wide selection of video and image files, word processing, de/compressing files, printing with CUPS, full Internet browsing with Javascript and Flash, wireless communications, and remote device management. That’s a lot of features for a device that’s intended to sell for as low as 35 USD.

The technical specification is still not clearly known at this time, but from looking at the pictures and the video (embedded below) it seems it’ll have a 7” color touch screen, 2 gigs of storage, WiFi, Ethernet, and very minimal power consumption (meaning a long battery life, something very necessary in India).

This is just a prototype and there’s a long way to go before the product is available to students. The Indian government wants to put the tablet into production by 2011, but hasn’t yet found partners to build it. I’ll be watching and would love to get my hands on one of these devices when they’re out in the market.

While going through the session list, I noticed one session on SCORM Implementation Strategies for Mobile. Being a hard-core techie and a follower of mobile SCORM, it caught my interest.

Covering some interesting use cases, common technical challenges and the best practices, it is a great resource for anyone who wants to implement SCORM for mobile devices.

You can view the slideshare presentation below:

The session mainly covers:

• Notable Use Cases where SCORM has been implemented for mobile devices
  You will find information on -
  1. Number of devices supported. You can get more information about how to implement SCORM for blackberry here.
  2. Some technical details regarding development
  3. Support available for SCORM 1.2 and/or SCORM 2004
  4. Current active clients
  5. Features available in each implementation
• Common Technical Challenges
  It provides information on technical challenges like small screen, multiple OS support etc.
• General Best Practices
  You will learn about the best practices like creating prototype, identifying target devices support, deciding native or web app, SCORM considerations etc. For additional information, you may also like to read IPhone human interface guidelines and things to consider before implementing SCORM.

The presentation sure is a great help and I would highly recommend you run through this before attempting SCORM implementation for mobile devices.

1. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark & Richard E. Mayer
2. Making Sense of Online Learning : A Guide for Beginners and the Truly Skepticalby Patti Shank & Amy Sitze
3. The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Proven Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning edited by Patti Shank
4. The E-Learning Handbook: Past Promises, Present Challenges by Saul Carliner & Patti Shank
5. Designing Successful e-Learning by Michael Allen
6. Evidence-Based Training Methods by Ruth Clark
7. Preparing Instructional Objectives : A Critical Tool in the Development of Effective Instruction by Robert F. Mager
8. Instructional Design Strategies and Tactics by Cynthia B. Leshin, Joellyn Pollock, and Charles M. Reigeluth
9. ISD: From the Ground Up : A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional Design by Chuck Hodell
10. The Art of Facilitation by Dale Hunter and Anne Bailey and Bill Taylor
11. The Systematic Design of Instruction by Walter Dick, Lou Carey, James O. Carey
12. Instructional Design by Tillman J. Ragan & Patricia L. Smith
13. eLearning by Design by William Horton
14. Graphics for Learning: Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing, and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials by Ruth C. Clark and Chopeta Lyons
15. Guide to eLearning by Micheal Allen
16. Creative Training Techniques Handbook: Tips, Tactics, and How-To’s for Delivering Effective Training by Robert Pike
17. Made to Stick by the Heath brothers
18. Designing Effective Instruction by Gary R. Morrison, Steven M. Ross, and Jerrold E. Kemp
19. The Principles of Instructional Design by Gagne et al
20. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning by Ruth C. Clark, Richard E. Mayer
21. Train for Results by Catherine Mattiske
22. First Principles of Instruction by M David Merrill

The App Inventor comes loaded with many blocks for creating UI elements, programming blocks, storage blocks, social blocks, media blocks etc, these blocks can be arranged in to logical sequence by drag and drop to develop an application.

The video below shows how easy it is to built an Android app using this tool –

Some organizations/universities have had the opportunity to use it as a part of the private beta program and here’s a video of a professor and student from The University of San Francisco sharing their experience of using App–

You can fill up this form to get access to App Inventor in the coming weeks.

The App Inventor has some basic and advanced tutorials that will help users start creating Android apps. The tutorials list have “Quiz Me”,“MakeQuiz, and TakeQuiz” tutorials which show how to develop the quiz apps. App Inventor can be used for developing mLearning, quiz apps, mini learning games etc. It also has social media blocks for connecting to services like Twitter .

I think allowing just about anyone to built Android app without programming knowledge will boost the number of apps available for Android.. This would help the domain as now SMEs would be able to develop the Android apps themselves without the help of a developer/programmer. With the cost of experimenting with new designs and timelines to develop an app being reduced we should see some significant progress on mlearning apps development.

To begin with the App Inventor is available only for the Android platform (understandable). It would be interesting to see if it supports other mobile platforms to in future – that potentially can be a big help to development of cross platform apps.And it would be interesting to see if Apple releases a similar tool to ease out the development for iOS devices. I doubt.

The key points I had mentioned earlier were

In terms of the functionality, I had mentioned the key ones as:

Surprisingly, I could not find many new things that have come up, which are needed from an LMS by a training company. This is definitely surprising and thought-provoking as training companies are eventually serving customers who are looking to eLearning for some of their training needs. In the last one year much has happened in the learning domain but the requirements from an LMS by a training company haven’t changed much.

It could be because training companies continue to focus on the limited area of skills they provide training on and not much has changed last year in the way that is done.

However for an SMB I believe there are some definite changes. While I did not summarize a similar post for SMBs a year back,  I can list a few important ones which are more relevant (and needed) now than were earlier:

Social Learning / Informal Learning components. Though the awareness was increasing rapidly at that time LMS solutions were not completely ready with this as an offering. However a good number of LMS systems (the post has a link to CLO magazine article listing five such LMS systems) available now incorporate social and informal learning in the base LMS feature set in some form or the other, SMBs are now able to use (and now demand) this important component.

Looking at the Top 10 LMS/LCMS Trends and Forecasts – two points which I found relevant to this post (in terms of what an SMB or a training company needs from an LMS) were point no. 4, and point no. 5.

• Point no. 4 – Easier UI, front end, what the end user sees: Well, this is a moving target and will always remain relevant. With Web 1.0 leading in to Web 2.0 and at the edge of leading in to Web 3.0 LMS systems need to find continually innovative and intuitive user interfaces to keep up with how the end user really wants to see things on an LMS.
• Point no. 5 – Wizards, Graphs and Administration side: I think, in a way, its linked to the point no. 4. LMS systems should recognize Administrators as power users too (similar to a learner) and the system should have an easy to use UI along with strong capabilities on MIS reporting.

While referring to the same post, although not as a new feature required by SMBs and Training Companies, Point no. 6 is extremely relevant. In overall terms, SMBs and Training Companies are looking for an LMS that has been designed with them in mind and not a system that has been designed as an LMS and then can be modified to meet their needs. In some case the option to ‘change’ may not be feasible or available (as Craig mentions – ‘big dogs’) and in some others it may not be viable (commercially).

Today, SMBs and Training Companies look for an LMS that deliver best value specifically for SMBs and Training Companies. This is a factor of the features set mentioned along with a level of flexibility available at the system level, company level and more importantly in the pricing of the LMS.