M-Learning via the iPhone 2 – some approaches and technologies

In M-Learning via the iPhone 1, I started to investigate the characteristics of mobile learning by going back to basics, specifically looking at the technological and conceptual foundations of this domain: training, instruction, education and learning. Today, I’m going to begin in earnest by telling you a story about a book - a wholly remarkable book in fact, that was first conceived nearly forty years ago.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. And Remember…

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the most successful book every written. A handy electronic reference book, its chief selling points are the words 'Don't Panic' written in large friendly letters on the cover, and that it’s cheaper than its closest competitor, the Encyclopedia Galactica. The Guide’s reporters travel the length and breadth of the Milky Way, drinking heavily, going to lots of parties and generally having a great time. Their experiences, which include everything from how to mix the greatest cocktail in the galaxy to life on Earth (“mostly harmless”) is then passed on via the SubEtha net to every copy of the Guide, giving people the opportunity to misinterpret the inaccurate copy. Much of the guide's content is plagiarized from the back of cereal packets, and some of it is just made up. Its most useful advice concerns towels.

Now I’m not going to labor the point about blogging (without the wild parties, sad to say), Wikipedia, and the SubEtha / world wide web “net” but here’s a description of the Guide itself:

…A device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had… a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON’T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters. …The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (pp.26-27)

Sound familiar? Of course it does.

Man seeks Nokia charger for his retro cell phone

That was 30 years ago. Back in the future, we can say that the we live at a time where the socio-cultural, economic and technical foundations exist to change the way that we acquire learning and knowledge in as profound a way as the introduction of printing in Western Europe in the 15th Century. We can now potentially carry our knowledge with us without “several inconveniently large buildings” to carry it around in. The current generation of portable digital devices (including smart phones, PDAs, and media players) is that they can support a digitally-mediated, connected learning environment, providing a convenience of instant access to a range of people and resources, as well as the ability to process data in a way that wasn’t possible even five years ago.

Next time: The altogether more prosaic task of describing the characteristics of E-Learning as I understand them, and a context for M-Learning.

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References:

Adams, D. (1979) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (pp.26-27) London: Pan Paperbacks

“Don’t Panic” image Courtesy British Broadcasting Corporation

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M-Learning via the iPhone 1 – some approaches and technologies

In my last blog post, I discussed how I had resigned myself to the fact that the Adobe Flash Player will never be deployed on the iPhone†.

However, that is not much use if you, as an e-learning professional, have an audience for knowledge- and content delivery via mobile devices including the iPhone. In this series of articles, I will discuss approaches to delivering training via PDAs like the iPhone based on applications and functionality already available on that device. Let’s see what happens after that.

Let’s set the context. There are a growing number of extensions to the well-established core term ‘E-Learning’ including this list of candidates (compiled in 2008 by CramerSweeney):

• C-Learning - learning via collaboration with co-workers and associates
• M-Learning - learning via a portable digital media device
• V-Learning - learning inside a virtual world (such as Second Life)
• G-Learning - learning via computer games

The latest term I have discovered is Ubiquitous Learning, or U-Learning, first discussed by Gary Woodill in his excellent Workplace Learning Today column, who encountered the term in the title of a Masters dissertation called The dawn of uLearning: near-future directions for 21st century educators). Can we now take this trend to its logical conclusion and define

• T-Learning - learning via reading educational books, academic and other Textual material
  
• S-Learning - learning via lecturers & teachers Speaking
• W-Learning - learning via the medium of pen, paper, and taking Written notes

[Image courtesy Flickr user tryingtimes]

‘X’ is one of the cooler letters – let’s have X-Learning. I’ll send a Mars Bar to the person who contributes the best definition of X-Learning.

Or should we stop. Now. Please.

In my view, each of these descriptors implies that the alphabetti-spaghetti of C- G- M- V-Learning activities are discrete verticals or silos, standing alone and untouched by their siblings.

Of course this is not the case: if anything, we can say that each of these terms describes a learning channel that relies on or emphasizes one modality of learning, but doesn’t - I would assert can’t – occlude other learning modalities.

So whither M-Learning among this cacophony of uppercase modifiers? Does what we commonly call ‘M-Learning’ deserve to be treated as a domain in it’s own right? Can we discover if there are any unique characteristics that differentiate learning via mobile technologies?

I think we need to take a step back. First of all, what is learning? I would assert that learning is

The acquisition of new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The progress of this acquisition over time tends to follow learning curves. Learning is a Constructivist activity.

Harold Stolovitch puts it succinctly in his 2002 text Telling Ain’t Training when he says that “learning is change, adaptation” (p.18). According to the author, we use training, instruction and education as strategies to enable people to learn.

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†Probably.

Apple has a habit of denying that they are developing a range of devices and technologies. Right up to the moment that Apple announce their newest gizmo / solution / partnership. Until 2009 this typically occurred at an Apple Expo event with Steve Jobs uttering the famous phrase “One more thing…” as the latest object of geeky desire walks up the aisle of the technological Chapel O’ Love.

Next time: What is E-Learning (Slight Return)

Coming up: What is M-Learning?

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References:

Publish Post

Nalder, J. (2008). The dawn of uLearning: near-future directions for 21st century educators. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. [Internet] Available from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12398804/The-dawn-of-uLearning-Jonathan-Nalder-Masters-thesis Accessed 18th February 2009

Stolovitch, H. (2002) Telling Ain't Training. ASTD Press.

Sweeney, J. (2008) Let's Talk Terminology CramerSweeney Training Blog [Internet] Available from: http://www.cramersweeney.com/cs_id/trainingblog/ Accessed 17th February 2009

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No Flash on the iPhone? I’m cool with that.

Everyone wants Flash on the iPhone.

Today I had a moment of clarity. I realized there will never be the facility to view Flash-based content on my iPhone. Probably. And you know what? I’m cool with that.

I have been an Apple 3G iPhone owner and user since the model was released here in Ireland in mid-2008. Since I have had the device, I’ve come to rely on it to manage my e-mail accounts, utilize my time, play music, video, take notes (text and audio), and generally be more productive .

I’ve Twittered, Quittered, Facebooked, YouTubed and blogged.

But for me, the inability to deliver Flash-based interactive e-learning applications on the device has been a significant source of frustration for me for all the time I have used my iPhone.

Oh, the potential that’s there, I said. What a waste, I lamented. Learning “on-the-go” – real just-in-time information-transfer just-out-of-reach, I railed, much like Lear on the heath. All that content, ready to be refactored into a dinky miniaturized format for all my learners: not to be, alas and alack.

More than anything else, my frustration was based upon a positive reading of a very ambiguous statement by Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, who, when discussing the difficulties in bringing Adobe's most well distributed product to the iPhone said:

It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating… The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.*

The implication of this - and other - public utterances by the Adobe Powers That Be is that Apple and Adobe are “collaborating” on developing a Flash player for the iPhone. Logical conclusion: it’s just a matter of time before Flash appears in the iTunes App Store, ready to go.

Not on the jPhone as a Flash movie anytime soon

However, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs' comments on the popular platform, it won’t be on the iPhone any time soon.

According to Wired, Steve Jobs considers that Flash is “too slow” for the iPhone, and Flash Lite is too limited. Don’t forget that the iPhone OS is a tightly-curated closed platform: Apple call the shots. As Nullriver found out in August 2008 for example, the proprietors have no qualms about pulling iPhone Apps that they deem to extend the functionality of their hardware and software beyond what they (Apple) can control.

Wired again:

Flash does have a reputation for slow performance compared to the other popular web-embeddable language, Java. Traditionally, the best flash presentations are those coded by experts with a keen awareness of its limits—Apple wisely fears iPhones being hammered by the Internet's inexhaustible supply of badly-constructed Flash garbage.

There is a convergence of historical, cultural and practical considerations to be accounted for:

1. After many years closely working with Apple (when the Mac was the graphics & DTP creatives’ / digital media producers’ computer of choice), Adobe Systems grew initially on Apple’s support of Postscript, and later of programs like PhotoShop, Illustrator and Premiere. It can be said that Adobe is taking that relationship for granted. Adobe did not update its Mac software for more than a year after Apple switched to Intel processors in 2007. This must have hit Apple’s revenue pretty hard, as potential users stuck to their PowerPC Macs until they could acquire the compatible Adobe software
2. Traditionally, Flash has performed badly on Macs. Add to that the aforementioned “badly-constructed Flash garbage.”
3. The iPhone is not a powerful computer: it is a Web-enabled Portable Digital Assistant (PDA). I would suggest that in many consumers’ minds that to be able to surf the internet in a full-featured Safari browser on the iPhone means that it’s a “real” computer. Apple surely want to manage users’ expectations.
4. Apple is very aware of these issues. The company went as far as to include a clause in their iPhone developers' Terms of Service agreement (.PDF) that prohibits Flash from appearing on the iPhone:

   No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

The outcome of these (and other) factors is that Safari for iPhone is unable to display a significant portion of the content on the internet. Flash games aren't supported, videos can't be streamed from popular television and movie sites like Hulu and the BBC iPlayer, and websites that use Flash to render content or navigation won't work on the iPhone.

Next time: Implications for m-learning. Will mobile e-learning suffer as a result of this scenario?

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References:

*Source: Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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