Over the last two DevLearn conferences, the big buzz has been around Mobile Learning. While the thinking around this was far more mature this time around, a lot of the initial conversations still seemed to be around porting existing elearning courses onto mobile devices. Of course, the presence of pioneers such as Neil Lasher, Judy Brown, Ellen Wagner and others has helped clear the air around mobile learning a bit. I think at the recent conference, it was pretty clear that mobile learning isn't exactly 'elearning on the move'. Nor is mobile learning all about the iPhone, though the images on this post might make it seem like that. To confess, I've gotten interested about learning on the go ever since I got an iPod - and that's not even a mobile phone! In that, you might already realise that there are several different degrees of mobility. The heterogeneous nature of the mobile ecosystem today brings a bunch of challenges with it:Varying form-factors of devices - screen sizes vary across several mobile devices.Varying platforms that bring the challenge of compatibility across devices. Droids, iPhones, Blackberry phones and Symbian phones are as different from each other as chalk and cheese. Varying degrees of internet connectivity; from 4G connectivity in the USA, to absolutely limited connectivity in Africa and most of Asia.Varying platform capabilities - not everyone has an iPhone or a Droid. In fact my curent phone is so worn out that I can't even see the keypad.These challenges aside, mobile learning is a storm that's coming especially with feature phones and smartphones becoming a common phenomenon across a lot of the modern workforce. I'm by no means an expert in this space - just a commentator. I have however, been observing a bunch of patterns with mobile learning that could become the norm for how this practice evolves in the enterprise. In today's blogpost (which I anticipate could be a tad long), I want to outline some of these patterns and invite discussion on what you think the future of this space could look like.Learning AppsHaving an iPod has opened me up to the world of mobile apps and I've been looking for learning applications like a hungry cat. My device has several applications that will teach you something or another. For example I use an application called Presenter Pro that's a free download from Rexi Media. The app is a little pocketbook of wisdom on making better presentations and has examples, exercises and quizzes that'll keep you engaged. In a similar manner I've got an application on my iPod that's all about Delhi and is helping my wife plan a trip at the end of this year. An app about Yoga poses has become my anytime, anywhere yoga instructor in a pocket. Apps are starting to get so ubiquitous that it's led Clive Shepherd to ask if they're the future of elearning. I personally think apps have a long way to go on that front, because not everyone has a smartphone. Even if they did, an app based strategy is risky and costly given the development skills your team will need and the number of platforms that dot this space. Apps definitely have some place in your learning strategy of the future, but I guess it'll always tricky if you put all your eggs in this basket.Books and DocumentsMy Kindle has revolutionised the way I read, and the availability of reading applications for Kindle books on PCs, Macs and mobile phones has made my learning extremely flexible. In fact the reading experience on the Kindle is so social that it gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts about what I'm reading, with my social network - anytime, anywhere.  Then again, the notion of bookclubs becomes far more interesting with Kindles. You can have upto six separate devices connected to one Amazon account. Which means that the books, bookmarks, notes and highlights also sync across the devices. This has interesting implications for learning in the enterprise. Devices like Copia seem to be built for enterprise book communities from the ground up. Also, the ubiqutous nature of formats such as PDF makes portability almost a non-issue across devices - that makes iBooks my favourite application on the iPod. In fact, online applications like Project Rome make PDF a far more interactive format than what we've known it to be. Is this a low cost entry point to provide low-cost, high-quality mobile learning to our workforce?Podcasting and Portable MediaAt DevLearn, I had the pleasure of meeting Inge De Waard, who has really pushed the envelope of elearning by taking mobile learning to South America. Now who would think that continents with limited connectivity options could support the high-quality, video based learning that Inge's team created for medical professionals in this location? As you may be able to glean from the slides here, the idea is quite simple. The health care workers all have iPhones, because these are significantly more convenient to carry around than laptops. The videos come from a freely published podcast on the iTunes store. To get around the cost of 3G connectivity, the institute of tropical medicine have gone ahead and provided these health workers with Airport Express wireless routers that they can use with their home broadband connections. That allows them to download the videos on their iPhones and access them on the move. For a health worker on the road, the big challenge is to have the ability to keep charging their device - video takes a lot out of your phone. So these guys have solar chargers for their phones - now that is clever! Given how effective video can be for showing demonstrations, introducing scenarios and short educational lessons, this is something that could be another low-cost, yet effective way to get learning onto the mobile. Don't know how to create a podcast? Here's a tutorial.Social Media on the MoveMy favourite use of mobile phones is to ensure that people stay engaged and connected with each other to learn socially. A lot of public internet applications already have feature phone and smartphone interfaces. I'm talking about applications like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. This apart, enterprise social software like Jive and Yammer have full fledged interfaces on the major smartphone platforms. The advantage of mobile connectivity for social learning is that it really starts to make learning an anytime, anywhere process. For enterprise social software, this takes away a huge barrier to participation - people can get answers to their questions, see interesting information emerge and co-create knowledge on the go. The key for success in my opinion, is to ensure that you pick social software that already provides mobile access. That reduces your deployment time in a big way and you can focus on the people angle of social media instead.Game Based LearningI was greatly influenced by Byron Reeves' keynote at DevLearn 2010. Byron mentioned the power of games in creating engagement and driving learning and Richard Culatta followed up with a pretty outstanding lightning talk on 9 reasons why you should throw out your online courses and start using games instead. While I think Richard's perhaps a bit too radical, I really liked his arguments - particularly how games encourage mastery by immersing individuals in a performance context. I think all games teach something or the other. For example the game you see in the photo above (Trainyard) is a great way to learn about analytical thinking and problem solving. It gives you the safety to fail until you succeed and in fact you get the see the consequence of every decision you make. There isn't always just one way to solve a problem, which is pretty cool because it encourages individual thinking. I could keep going about why Trainyard's so cool, but I think you should learn from an expert instead. The gaming pattern is an interesting one to use for learning on the go, though I think heterogenous environments could make it quite expensive. Having said this, I think there are inexpensive ways of engaging people. Alternate reality games like the Zombie Apocalypse and Dr. StrangeLearn should be quite simple to port to a mobile web format that is cross platform, yet engaging.Performance SupportOne of the highlights of DevLearn 2010's Demofest was Neil Lasher's Phone2Learn. While I couldn't attend the demo myself, I know from the crowd I saw around Neil, that this was one of the stars of the show. The concept is quite interesting. Neil has gotten mobile learning back to the basics -- all mobile phones carry voice and Neil wants to leverage that basic capability. He's propagating the idea of a learning conversation and the concept of "Just-too-late" learning. Often we realise the need to learn only after we start working on something and don't know how to finish it. This is the "Oh Sh*t!" moment that drives a lot of modern day learning. What if you could pick up the phone and just ask someone how to solve your problem at this point? Neil's system facilitates this learning conversation by harnessing the latest in voice technology. In Neil's words, "The most natural way to learn. Ask for what you need and have someone explain it to you as and when you need it and at a pace you can absorb."While it remains to be seen how popular the concept of learning conversations becomes, it seems evident to me that this has a lot of value in environments that include innumerable small transactions. Performance support definitely has it's place in the workplace -- Neil's concept is a creative example of extending this approach to mobile devices. The Mobile WebIn April this year, Paul Clothier wrote a very interesting article about Mobile Learning on the iPhone. Paul mentioned how easy it can be to create a mobile formatted website using simple tools like iWebKit. At DevLearn, Judy Brown showcased a mobile learning primer from ADL, which is what you see on image above. This is nothing but a simple website formatted for mobile access using iWebKit. For teams that have limited budgets and are looking to provide short, bite-sized chunks of learning over a mobile, this could be a good way to optimise for the form factor of the devices. What's more, this pattern could be cross platform and is unlikely to require a huge chunk of change to port across devices. Nice, huh? Those are the patterns for mobile learning that I see from my experience. What other patterns have you been seeing? Do you have some revolutionary ideas to facilitate learning on the go? Let me know by commenting on this blogpost. That'll go a long way in making this article complete!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

"We're dropping use of the word 'training.' Replacing it with learning? Training materials? Training materials? We don't need any stinking training materials Training is a turn off! Learning is what I go for. Training is what you do to me. Learning is what I do for myself I hope "training" is discontinued on an ongoing bases - requirements change. More sunset laws for training programs. What we did yesterday/last year differs from now and tomorrow."Those are some of the comments I heard on a recent lrnchat. It seems to me that training is fast becoming a taboo word. In several other conversations, I've often people quite agitated very mention of the word. I agree that a lot of training that we've seen is not just ineffective, but an absolute waste of time. That said, bad training doesn't mean that training is bad; just like a few bad cars don't make all cars bad. Now, if you follow this blog you'll know that I'm of the view that training isn't a solution for all learning problems. On the other hand, I still believe that training does have a place in the corporate world. In fact training will continue to hold it's place for a long time to come. I write this post in defense of training and to make my case for the fact that it is not a bad word. We're beating up on an old definition of trainingA lot of the criticism for training seems to stem from a very outdated understanding of what training really is. We seem to beat up on the 'sage on stage' mode of training. Frankly, most serious training practitioners adopt more of a 'guide by the side' approach. To tell the truth, some of the best training I've seen in the recent past, involves a lot more meaningful interactivity than elearning page turners. And when I talk about interactivity, I'm talking about modeling real world tasks. Now, I don't believe you can use classroom training to make sea changes in behaviour. At the same time, I can tell you that effective classroom training can raise as much awareness as some of the high quality elearning you'll see across the world. I request practitioners of technology enabled learning to research modern training methods before criticising a mode of teaching that most of us don't practise anymore.Training can be an extremely Social processAt ThoughtWorks University, we've stretched training to being a very social process. In fact, we use technology quite liberally, we sprinkle in elearning for the purposes that it makes sense. We rely on communities of practice and social learning to stretch beyond the best practice education that elearning provides. Through a blend of technology and SME led facilitation, we've simulated a workscape that lets individuals learn while at work and creating real value for the organisation. I call ThoughtWorks University a training program -- it embodies what a modern induction experience should look like. The fact is that we've evolved training to be what it can be in today's world. If there are some programs that aren't evolving, we need to help them change. The slow pace of change however, doesn't make the world of 'training' ineffective.Don't Underestimate the value of Presentation SkillsThere's no saying how valuable great presentation skills are. I write about this almost untiringly, because this is a skill that excellent trainers bring with them. When driving change, elearning and technology enabled media helps a lot, but nothing works like person-to-person contact. Short, 30-45 minute training sessions, powered by excellent presentation skills can be an excellent, low cost, yet interactive approach to build awareness. A traveling roadshow of select, highly skilled presenters can be significantly cheaper and more effective than a multi-million dollar multimedia extravaganza which may not have a huge shelf life. Think about it, your trainers are not ready to be extinct yet!The role of trainers is changing. As Jane Bozarth once famously said, "Trainers won't be replaced by technology, they'll be replaced by trainers who are willing to use technology." That's all that's likely to happen. On that note, I request that we hold back our criticism for training and realise that it has a small, yet important place in corporate learning strategy. That's my only defense for what looks like a dying competence - I hope you see my point. Do let me know what you think, by commenting on this blogpost. One way or another, I'd like to hear your views.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

This morning, after my successful iPad purchase (yeah!), I'm attending Judy Brown's session on mobile learning best practices. Judy's an absolute goddess in this neck of the woods, so I'm hoping to learn heaps from her, so without further ado, I'm going to start liveblogging and letting you know what I think I'm learning. Technology is changing rapidly and it's a whole new world today, says Judy. The US seems to be a little behind Japan in terms of technology, but they're definitely up there in learning innovation. Judy is speaking about her stint with Asian Development Plan with UNESCO. The folks there were asked to come up with their mobile learning plans with some of them not having electricity! In contrast, in the west people carry Blackberrys and iPhones. In Asia and Africa at least this is starting to be about just supporting life as usual.Mobile penetration is quite heavy, given the show of hands of the group here. 26.5% people engaged in mLearning, 40% exploring. 51% report a positive ROI! Ambient Insight reports that mobile learning is here and is a ripe technology (across seven categories of learning). eLearning is actually coming down a fair bit. Venture capitalists are investing heavily in this market as well, because mobile technologies have really unlimited reach while desktop technologies have lmited reach. We're moving to the second generation of mobile learning with cloud based, 4G connectivity. Eric Schmidt describes the mobile ecosystem as a confluence of computing power, connectivity and cloud computing and proclaims a new focus for the industry - putting mobile first. EBay and Southwest have gone ahead and changed direction significantly given their mobile strategy. We only use 23% of what's on a web page - the rest is noise. Mobile cuts that flab out in a big way. We're creating heaps of information today - is our curriculum adding to the information flab? Judy's now going through several slides very quickly.The key is that social, local and mobile are all converging. HTML5 is a key innovation at this time that can potentially help portability of interactive apps across platforms. We have interesting stats in place about mobile penetration (source Tomi Ahonen):5.2 billion subscribers>625m access internet only through mobile4.2 billion people use text messagingPeople look at their devices every 6.5 minutes on an averageThere are more people with mobile phones than with toothbrushesRay Kurzweil says "Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge." The UK has done a lot of projects in mLearning focussing on new age devices though. Learners say that it made learning more interesting and made them learn in a wider range of places. They say they can learn in a wider range of times. Teachers say that they're able to tailor their learning experiences to their learning in a big way. Judy recommends the w3c mobile site as a great place to learn.Tips to get startedBegin with the user: What are they already doing with mobile? Several students own cell phones. Smartphones have grewat penetration. People are using these for media creation - video and stills.Start with the end in mind: What do you want to accomplish? Are you trying to help increase sales? Will this be performance support? Will this connect communities? Will this help with reference materials? If you're doing something just for fun, it's not meaningful. The 5 moments of learning needs are when people want to learn for the first time, when wanting to learn more, when trying to remember, when things change, when something goes wrong. Which moment are you catering to? What nuggets will people take away from other learning experiences that people need immediate access to? This could be the driver for mobile. This is not just elearning on the mobile. Judy recommends mobile for stolen moments of productivity. The US Army believes that perishable knowledge should not be taught in the schoolhouse, but instead be made accessible. Judy also recommends that we think outside the course.Plan for Success: What will success look like for you? Many companies can't share what they're doing, but Judy has a great case study from Merrill Lynch's mobile program - GoLearn. They've discovered that going mobile makes things 45% faster. 100% of their audience want more of this kind of stuff and 99% of the audience believe that the format supports learning in a big way. The problem was that they didn't plan for this success and were not able to deal with the deluge of demand that followed. Remember Capabilities: What is not available to people on the desktop or laptop? It's important to design for the form factor and capabilties of the new devices than just porting an old way of designing to the mobile platform. GPS, multi-touch, voice, cameras, video recording - these are all new capabilties and they need to feed into the design decisions. Think about content creation, basic communications, training delivery, social networking, on-demand information access.Think Differently: Judy showed us a commercial course on language. The cool aspect of this course is a nifty little twitter button which the user can press and that brings up a twitter stream that shows the word or phrase you're learning about in the context of people's live tweets! What a cool way of understanding how to construct sentences in a new language? A tweet that Judy is showing us tells a story of how easy it is to deploy to mobile app stores (3 days on Android, 5 days on apple's app store) as against 112 days to go to print! Judy is also showing the app for the Obama campaign that we also participated in. How awesome! There's a hair dressing curriculum on mobile - I personally find that interesting; do I want someone to read a course on mobile and then cut my hair?Think small: Bitesized, nuggets, micro-learning, small screens. Remember mLearning is about different platforms!Consider spacing effect: It's now affordable. We know that repetition is key to retention. We know that learning that happens over a period of time is naturally aligned to the way we pick up our skills. She is showing how based upon a woman's delivery date, she can send text messages to number and get information over time that makes sense at the time that expecting mothers need this. Information in context, trumps instruction out of context. In Neil Lasher's case it can just be a simple phone call. Will Thalheimer has heaps of research in support of the spacing effect.Consider tools: What do you need? An app? Or are you going to deploy just for the browser? Or are you going to invest in cross platform development? There are products that act more like platform connecting to your LMS and act as players for your mobile device. This is an example of develop once, deploy many times. There's a nice mlearning guide at ADL that should work across all devices - this is an example of making a mobile website that just works across several devices. ePub is a great format to publish to mobile devices. Judy is showing a crisis response related project that she built in 3 hours, that works across several devices.Test, test, test: Judy puts a lot of stress on testing, though with the caveat that emulators are the same thing as actual devices.Plan for distribution and ongoing support: Make it known, market it, make it visible. Does your IT helpdesk know how to support this?Looking ahead: Judy recommends that we look ahead at emerging technologies like augmented reality, QR codes, augmented reality and interactive story telling (ARIS). And contrary to popular belief this may not be a huge cost to create.Don't try to boil the ocean: Judy also says that we shouldn't bite off more than we can chew. We need to start with doable projects. I would add that we need to start small, think big, release quickly and iterate!Important considerationsJudy recommends that we think of the following seriously:SecurityIT partnershipPoliciesOwnershipAssessmentUnion and time issuesConnectivityBandwidth costsIndustry changesUser expectationsResources that Judy recommendsmLearncon - coming up in June this yearhttp://adlmobile.wikispaces.comhttp://mlearnopedia.comhttp://cc.mlearnopedia.comhttp://www.ambientinsight.com/Reports/MobileLearning.aspxIn addition, Judy does a weekly newsletter every Monday morning that you may want to subscribe to. This in my opinion is a great catalogue of the state of the art in this space.© Sumeet Moghe

(This is a rehash of a co-authored blogpost with my colleague Gayathri Sekar)Our story begins in ThoughtWorks Pune, somewhere in October. We’d recently decided to hire a journalist to mine stories from the ground. She’d try to translate ThoughtWorkers’ voices into words and if necessary write their stories for them. Fortunately or unfortunately, we got to a point where we asked ourselves whether this would be an authentic way of communicating in the office. As it turned out, we agreed it wouldn’t be. Our problems still remained - we had a fantastic oral, storytelling culture, but when it came to writing about our work or experiences, we didn’t think much of what we do.It was then that we had an epiphany. How about we used the same money that we’d use to hire a journalist, to instead engage ThoughtWorkers in writing about their work lives? Not only would the communication be far more authentic, we also stood a good chance of shaping a culture where people could write freely without the fear of being judged or considering their experiences to be "not much to write home about".Belief: Every ThoughtWorker has something to write home about. You never know how useful your experiences could be to your colleagues or to other people.With that belief in mind, we set out planning a blogging campaign. I'd had done a course on Gamification with Prof Kevin Werbach of UPenn. We decided that we’ll run a contest in the office - inspired by a similar comtest that our marketing team had organised. We wanted to adhere to a few key principles though. WWe wanted to keep the entry barrier low, the feedback loops tight and the sense of achievement high. After all, those are the characteristics of any good game. In our contest, it didn’t matter where you posted your article, as long as ThoughtWorkers could see it. Every contribution got you points and every audience reaction to your contribution got you points as well. Of course, the more the effort behind your post, and the greater the value to ThoughtWorks or ThoughtWorkers, the more points you got. So, posts with videos and posts that went on to ThoughtWorks Insights would get a bagful of points. Just like that, we set things up and waited for the deluge to begin.Learning: Keep things simple. Lower entry barriers, build in feedback and give everyone a sense of achievement.Our idea, while popular with our general manager Chirag Doshi and a few others in the office, did find some skepticism. We almost ran into some rough weather with the name "Pune Blogging Competition". After all, our inspiration was a set of well managed, centrally run contests and ours was the cheap, local imitation. The fear was that we may undermine the notion of a blogging competition. We got some suggestions telling us to change the name to anything but "Blogging Competition". The skeptics also felt that we won’t be able to generate much good content. At the end of the day, how much can such a volunteer army do? We have to confess, we were a bit stung by those views. We did believe in the potential of our idea though, so we set aside the criticism and stuck to our plans.Learning: Don’t underestimate the value of a ground up, organic initiative. ThoughtWorkers in particular will surprise and amaze you.Our contest began sluggishly to be honest. There were rumours of people gaming our gamification and the entries, though regular, weren’t quite the deluge we were expecting. This is when Chirag reaffirmed what we were thinking - our contest needed to be one where everyone wins. With help from a few colleagues, we designed our first goodie - a limited edition, ThoughtWorks blogging t-shirt. We floated the rumour of a goodie for every participant. The idea was an immediate hit - the deluge hit us! Even as we got ourselves to cope with the massive number of entries, folks from the marketing team reached out to use our design for her own team. Game on, we said!Learning: Winning isn’t everything, so the rewards shouldn’t be for winners alone.As we read through the entries for the contest, we realised that points and rewards apart, our game needed a layer of communication and feedback. We instituted a leaderboard that we’d update daily and a weekly roundup that’d summarise the posts from the week. The idea was to keep the sense of progress in the game and build that tight feedback loop we wanted, while also ensuring that no entry falls by the wayside because of a lack of attention. It’s interesting how far a little discussion on our internal social network reaches. We’d receive responses to our weekly roundup from people who were not even in Pune. The leaderboard on the other hand, kept getting people excited about their own performance in the contest. The number of points they got was not just an indication of how popular their post was with their audience, but also how well they’d promoted it. It was a contest yes, but with a great sense of camaraderie to go with it.Learning: People like feedback and a sense of progress. Finding a way to showcase contributions goes a long way.When you institutionalise a platform, there'll be its haters, regardless of how good at is. And sometimes that meme of how bad a platform is, goes around. Our internal social network isn't unusual and receives its own share of criticism. As an organisation some of us have almost built a false narrative that we can’t drive engaging initiatives using the platform. That criticism has seen a number of parallel platforms emerge (since we're a company of techies after all), which incidentally have a very poor footfall for a company our size. Some platforms die a natural death while others live on as long as certain individuals have the drive to manage them. For our purpose, the corporate social network provided a great, low-entry-barrier platform for first time bloggers. The email integrations ensured that the bloggers had an opportunity to publicise their posts to a wide audience as well. Our leaderboards and roundups too, got the biggest possible audience. The platform didn’t suck as bad as people said it did.Learning: Platforms don’t matter as much as we think they do. Focus on communicating well and the platform will do its job in the background.Just to spice up the contest a bit we went ahead and added our own easter eggs to the contest. Apart from promising a hoodie as a goodie for the month of December, we announced that the 31st blogger of the month stands to win the limited edition t-shirt from the previous month. We can’t remember the last time there were so many blogposts on New Year’s eve. Some posts came through just a few minutes before the clock ticked over - when even we, the organisers were in a holiday mood! Similarly this month we have three surprise gifts in addition to the sling bag we’ve promised. In 23 days, January’s given us 34 entries to the blogging contest, making it our most productive month thus far. All in all, to this day, the Pune Blogging Competition has generated 106 entries which is more than a blog a day!The cool side effect has been the participation of first time bloggers, who were keen to pen down their learnings and were not feel shy about sharing them with their peers and co-workers. In fact, the reach went beyond ThoughtWorks itseld. People posted on their personal blog and showed the confidence to share their experiences with the outside world. We now also have a physical blogging wall in the Pune office, where people’s posts go up with their photographs and a scannable QR code.Learning: People like surprises and sometimes just the regular set of incentives may not be enough. A small push goes a long way.What we'd like to leave people with, is a blogging culture that is innate and not driven purely by incentives. The big visible wall in the office will provide the information radiator for this change. Our aim was to kickstart a culture where firstly ThoughtWorkers won't be fearful of writing, and once they’d write they won't be fearful to share. We still have some way to go on that journey, but we hope that by the end of 2015 we can build a blogging culture that Pune’s proud of. In the interim we’re hoping to graduate from individual achievements to team based and then office based achievements. That of course will be with a new group of curators in charge. In addition, we’ve set up a Pune Writers' Peer Group  - a bunch of bloggers in Pune who’re happy to review the writing of new authors just in case they need feedback or a set of friendly eyes to look over their content.Learning: It’s not enough to start an experiment. We want to try making change that lasts.As curators of the Pune Blogging contest, we’ve enjoyed the experience thoroughly. We’ve read a lot, written a lot, developed strong friendships and been part of an initiative we can look back at with great fondness. It’s been a great ride and with just about a week to go, we hope we’ll end on a high as well. Thanks to everyone who played along!© Sumeet Moghe

This month's Big Question question is Workplace Learning in 10 years?A very pertinent question to ask in such times, as we hear of more and more failure rates in formal and push learning. Most of our generation have learned this way, and some like me have always found such learning boring from the very beginning. My parents, would force me to learn the way the other 'good' kids learned, and I would resist and prefer to stay in my own dreamworld, that I found more fascinating than my study books. Fortunately for me, every year before the final exam my mom would hound me into preparing for the exams and I would come out scoring reasonably well. Now I can owe my 'decent' job to all the 'push' I got from my parents. But given a chance, I would not like to go back to studying the way I did in school, though I owe my 'formal' degrees to the 'formal' learning I received. But I did have some pretty good teachers. My Geography teacher had a unique style compared to the other teachers in my school. She would ask us to close our text books, and teach us sitting on the desk like she was telling us a story. She would bring us pictures of the Aurora Borialis, and various phenomena, pictures of the different kind of jungles, videos of the equatorial forests, etc. and make her lessons much more interesting. I still remember a lot of Geography owing to her style. I even remember the Agents of Denudation project in my 10th grade, on which I worked very hard to get information from various sources. The whole process was simply made more interesting for me as I had to find and discover the information myself, and this process helped me retain the information in the long term.This is pretty much the reality for me. When I started work, I joined an elearning company. This is where I was exposed to elearning, and also where I learned about instructional design, but this was purely on the job and with no formal training. Again, the process of discovery got me more interested in the subject. Overtime, I learned more and more about instructional design from the Internet, on my job, connecting with my peers and learning from their experiences, forums, etc. So even though I have a degree in Science and have studied programming in college, I learned instructional designing out of sheer interest and am here writing my views on the big question of the month. Since we do not have formal degrees and PhD courses in the field of instructional designing in India yet, I'm sure all of my peers in India would have learned pretty much the same way. All this is enough proof of how 'informal' and 'pull' learning work well and you have a 'motivated' learner out there who learns better because of his interest. Such a trend is already prevalent in these times, and is obviously driving towards a form of learning that is slowly but certainly, moving away from traditional learning consisting of learning blocks of course, module, lesson structures.The Road Ahead...My predictions for the road ahead would be in the lines of what we all are talking about in the form of Ask and thou shall receive, seek and thou shall find. That's precisely what futuristic learning is going to be like irrespective of the time frame. In my view, the discriminating features of workplace learning for the times to come would be:Learner-centric—All forms of learning will keep in mind the needs of the learner as the greatest priority.Relevant—The focus will be to provide to the point and no-nonsense information. Long texty content will be passe. Unlearn-relearn—It will be vital to unlearn several things of what worked in the past, and relearn them to understand their significance as of today. Thus, learners will have to be open-minded.Reference hybrids—Lots of task-oriented reference material will be created and available to learners in the form of demos, quick-reference materials, advanced tool tips, task-focused documentation, wikis, blogs, etc. These materials will be the reusable entities available for creating presentation/training material on the fly.Knowledge bases—Due to the extensive amount of learning materials that will be created the knowledge bases will grow in size. This will call for efficient knowledge management systems to organize and index the information, and also provide very efficient search capabilities. For example, I can imagine search spanning across wikis, forums, blogs all at once and giving the learner, the seeker of the information, exactly what he wants, irrespective of the source.Idea management tools—The top management of organizations will reach out to employees via Idea Management tools, throw open questions about business problems that they need solutions to, and give employees at all levels an opportunity to share ideas that will help do business better, create new standards, coin best practices, design innovative solutions for using the products better and coming up with better ideas for creating innovative products. As a result employees will feel motivated and appreciated for their contribution and eventually be valuable to the organization.Social/Professional networking—Learning will be greatly augmented depending on an individuals ability to reach out and network with people of the same community, trigger interesting discussions, and come to a consensus at the end. Collaborative learning—The willingness to share what you have learned with the community, and being open to getting their suggestions, feedback and ideas will be critical. Wikis, forums, blogs will be the different medium, and they will be well integrated to drive collaborative learning. This will promote learning across hierarchies and learning will not be limited only to certain roles.Brainstorming—Brainstorming on topics with peers and colleagues will supplement learning and aid the mental process of learning. Eventually, learners will achieve higher levels of cognition in their field of expertise and be able to graduate to levels of professional consultants .Gadget independent—Learning will move towards achieving gadget/medium independence and formats will come about that will be compatible in all kinds of systems. Windows versus Mac users will not have the same compatibility issues.Simple, usable and intuitive interfaces—All the new gadgets and networking tools will be designed for greater usability, simplicity and be intuitive to use. For example, we never had to learn how to use Google or Orkut. Just because the interfaces are intuitive people just 'learned' to use them and love them.Scenario-based—Learning will be more focused on real life scenarios replicating the tasks that the learner will perform in their jobs. Simulations, decision-tree learning modules, learning games, etc. will be some examples of such learning.Multi-faceted—It will become imperative to learn about the job you do from different perspectives. If you're a coder you will not only need learn the internal functionality of the product but also get a perspective of the customers point of view and the problems a customer faces while using the product. The requirement for knowledge will be more holistic and the learner will be in a position to add value to their job.Learning outcomes—Organizations will get 'real' by encouraging their training initiatives based on the observed learning outcomes. They will measure the performance of learners and evaluate the training initiatives. There will certainly be a reality check to ensure that their money is getting invested in the right directions. Having said all the above, one needs to realize that this will be a global trend but at all times there will be variations based on specifics:You may not be able to share top secret, confidential, proprietary information this way.We have to see how 'open' the times become with 'open' source, cloud computing etc.Your organization may have their own quirks about doing things the way the world is doing them.You may still have the typical digital immigrant species driving your organization, and it maybe difficult to bring about change all of a sudden as after all your audience does matter.Knowing how these factors will influence learning trends maybe another discussion altogether.

Tony Karrer is organizing a session on elearning on May 21st between 9 AM to noon pacific time. He is looking for people to present examples of practical solutions to common problems to leading edge solutions. Some example areas that he quotes:Self-Paced CoursesPerformance Support ToolsMobile LearningCollaborative LearningSocial / Network Learning3D LearningGamesToolkitsInteresting ToolsIf you are interested, please send me an email (akarrer@techempower.com) with:A brief descriptionA couple of example screen shotsHe is expecting to have more examples than we can show and discuss in the 3 hours and will try to choose a variety of different examples that represent effective patterns.

We are extremely excited to be bringing you Tanner Gers, a US Paralympic Gold Medalist, to come onto the show and discuss the great sport of Beep Baseball. After losing control of his car in an auto accident, Tanner lost his sight at age 21. The biggest tragedy in Tanner’s life, wasn’t losing his sight. It was not living life, and taking every day by the horns, like he does today. Tanner is currently trying to get Beep Baseball into the Paralympics. In the podcast, he discusses the steps he is taking to bring the competitive sport of Beep Baseball to the international spot light. He goes in-depth about what the sport did for him and the reminder it gave him that he still has plenty of value in this world.You can find the podcast here as well! Here is a video that shows the sport of Beep Baseball...If you want to learn more about how you can help spread the word of Beep Baseball please visit nbba.org.

Hello podcast listeners! I am happy to be launching our 5th podcast to all of you! We had Matt Mescall the APE teacher for Maryland school for the blind come in and have a talk with us about the importance of individualized programming and staying active outside of a school setting. Matthew is a 2011 graduate of New York State College at Brockport where he was awarded the APAC’s (Adapted Physical Activity Council) National Most Outstanding Undergraduate of the Year.  Matthew has worked as a specialist for various sport and fitness programs for children who are blind or visually impaired throughout the country including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and Alaska and one is Moscow Russia.  He is also a board member for his local AER (Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired) DC/MD Chapter and is one of the co-founders of a division on "Physical Activity and Recreation" within the international organization. Matthew presented at various state and international AER  conferences on sport opportunities and modifications for children with visual impairments.  Matthew was the POSB (Principals of Schools for the Blind) 2015 Outstanding Teacher of Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired.You can find the podcast here as well! Let me know any thoughts you have about upcoming podcast topics or if there is an event/product that you would like to be mentioned in the podcast!Until next time!!Scott McNamara, APE Man!

Good Day Everyone! I am so happy that the podcast is still thriving and continuing to grow. For this podcast we were lucky enough to have on a professor who focuses his research and teachings on APE from Old Dominion University, Dr. Haegele. This interview runs a little differently than some of our past podcasts. We have a longer interview that will be out soon but we were in the midst of some great conversations that didn't quite flow with the rest of the interview. So we decided to give you this quick 8 minute podcast on using Facebook as a teacher and I talk a little bit more about myself. The other portion of the podcast with Dr. Haegele dwells of the topics of working with para educators and how someone ends up choosing a PhD in adapted physical education. We will be getting that you soon as well!Continue reaching out to us and we hope to continue to grow! Until next time!

Hello podcasters and welcome back for another episode of What's New in APE! For this episode we had two special episodes with Dr. Haegele from Old Dominion University. For this episode we discussed Dr. Haegele's path to getting his PhD. We also discuss in-depth how to work best with your para educator. In the interview we also discuss some funding opportunities for Adapted Physical Education students at the Master's level and at the PhD level at Old Dominion University. To learn more about the Mater's and PhD APE program please email Dr. Haegele @ jhaegele@odu.edu

Camp Abilities has been mentioned on this blog and in my podcast several times. For the last few years I have had the pleasure of being apart of the sports camp for children with Visual Impairments in Michigan.This last week, the original Camp Abilities was spotlighted on Real Sports on HBO. So far it has been a major success for getting the word out to parents and other organizations about the importance Camp Abilities has for children with Visual Impairments. Please go to my website Camp Abilities Michigan to find our information or any of the other camp's information. I am thrilled to share with you a product from the hard work of Dr. Lauren Lieberman and countless other people that make Camp Abilities work.

People who suffer food allergies have to be extremely careful about what they eat, sadly we hear all too often about someone suffering an extreme allergic reaction having eaten something while they are out, and not realising it contains an ingredient to which they are extremely allergic. Some five thousand people need treatment in hospital for severe allergic reactions each year in the UK, and some cases are fatal - causing an average of 10 deaths annually. Experts say the majority of these deaths and visits to hospital are avoidable, and some are a result of people being given incorrect information about ingredients. Labelling rules from European Directives ensure that all consumers are given comprehensive ingredient listing information, making it easier for people with food allergies to identify ingredients they need to avoid. In December 2014 the rules were amended, building on current allergen labelling provisions for pre-packed foods, introducing a new requirement for allergen information to be provided for foods sold non-packed or pre-packed for direct sale. It is now a legal requirement for caterers and restaurant owners to display information on 14 allergens, including rare allergies such as mustard seeds and Lupin or face fines of up to £5,000. There is a three year transition period to allow businesses to make the necessary changes to their processes and labelling designs in order to meet the provisions laid out in the legislation. Although these new EU rules are implemented to protect the general public their directive is causing much concern within the hospitality industry, with worries around curbing chef’s creativity and innovation, together with concerns over the cost implication of training an extensive workforce. Anyone working in the food and beverage industry whether they be in a kitchen of a hotel, serving sandwiches in a café, working on a market stall selling home-made produce or providing school meals in a canteen, will need to be fully trained to understand the new legislation. The hospitality and tourism sector employs 7% of the working population, or one in every 14 jobs. The latest figures show there were 181,500 individual business sites operating across the hospitality and tourism sector. The sector is predominately made up of small businesses; almost half (46 %) employing less than five people, and it is these small businesses that are often hit hardest by legislative changes due to administrative and cost implications. Hospitality and Tourism has always employed a high proportion of part time workers - nearly half of the workforce is employed on a part time basis (48 percent).  People traditionally filling these roles are largely transient and employers are likely to experience significant labour turnover and skills gaps. The sector also continues to rely on a high percentage of migrant workers (22%), often bringing language barriers. With such a diverse and transient workforce keeping up to date with important legal compliance training poses a continual challenge and expense. More and more businesses are now recognising the benefits of using e-learning to fill this training need. Employers can purchase courses such as the Food Allergies and Intolerance 2014 Online Course and enrol their staff immediately. The training can be taken at anytime, anywhere as long as the employee has access to a pc or mobile device with internet connection. Sources: Food Standards Agency. European Academy of Allergy www.peoplefirst.co.uk BBC Health

Virtual reality is an online environment that we can immerse ourselves in, exploring and interacting with the world it creates. Most people think of computer gaming when you talk about virtual reality (VR), but things are changing. Many industries are now using VR as a means of up-skilling employees in ways that not so long ago we would have thought impossible. VR doesn’t just provide a 3d training environment, it gives the user a real life experience which includes sound, vision, touch and motion. According to a report last year by MarketsandMarkets, the VR market is expected to reach more than 25 million users by 2018 so it’s far from being a new market or something that only a few have experienced. The growth in VR caused Facebook to sit up and take notice and resulted in them last year buying Oculus VR for $2 billion, due to its virtual reality headset, even though it was a relatively new company. So what are Google doing about VR? Well you might be confused by the VR related headline, ‘Google brings cardboard to the classroom’ and wondering why the classroom needs cardboard. Although I’m sure building models out of breakfast cereal boxes is still popular with kids in schools, in fact Google is actually taking virtual reality into the classroom. A year on from the launch of the cardboard DIY virtual reality headset, looking very like the old View-Master, if you can remember that far back, they are now available in a whole range of materials. What Google has done is to make virtual reality accessible to everyone with prices starting at around £13 or $20 for a Cardboard kit which gives you everything you need, with the exception of the iPhone or Android device, and accommodates smart phones with a screen size up to 6". For some time now I have been watching the wearable technology space for a meaningful move into education, however it hasn’t really happened, mainly I think because of price, but the inexpensive Google Cardboard has a lot of potential to make significant changes to education. Google is leading the way, as one would expect them to be, by launching Expeditions, which is a kit made up of a Cardboard and the phone to use in it, along with a tablet for the teacher. The teachers tablet and students’ phones synchronise and the teacher can take the students on a virtual trip to any place in the world. Where schools, universities and private training providers are using VR it has had an amazing impact on students’ learning experience. Watch the video below to see how children are using Google Cardboard. Examples of practice in industry and further and higher education tend still very much to be centred around engineering and health care, but I don’t think it will be long before we see more VR being used across other industries and in a larger proportion of educational establishments. Author: Carolyn Lewis, Managing Director, Elearning Marketplace and learning technology consultant. Sources: http://www.idgconnect.com/blog-abstract/9976/google-i-o-2015-some-cool-stuff-dull-overall http://www.digitaltrends.com/wearables/google-expeditions-announcement/ http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/9140.aspx http://www.forbes.com/sites/ptc/2014/08/27/could-virtual-reality-be-the-next-big-thing-in-education/

2015 Learning and Development Snapshot: 40% leave a job because of poor or no training Private sector learning and development headcount has increased in the last year Public sector learning and development headcount has decreased in the last year Learning and development training budgets have increased in the public sector and decreased in the private sector 65% of those surveyed in the CIPD L&D research said that internal coaching will grow in the next 2 years 59% of those surveyed in the CIPD L&D research said that the use of e-learning will grow in the next 2 years 19% of those surveyed in the CIPD L&D research said that instructor led training will grow in the next 2 years 52% of those surveyed in the ADP Workforce View in 2014/15 research said that talent gaps are a big threat to their organisation 48% of those surveyed in the ADP Workforce View in 2014/15 research said that cuts to training are a big threat to their organisation Of the 39% of surveyed respondents in the ADP Workforce View in 2014/15 who said that they would require training in the future, 48% said it is in the use of technology and new devices, 32% said it is in the use of social media and 20% said it will be to improve their numeracy skills IBM found that e-learning resulted in users learning nearly 5 times more without increasing time spent training In the ADP Workforce View in 2014/15 Report 61% of respondents said that in the next year they would be increasing their use of mobile technology, 30% said they would be replacing the core HR system and 40% said they would be moving their present HR system to a SAAS (software as a service) solution. In the ADP Workforce View in 2014/15 Report 45% of respondents said in 2013 that technology has changed their role and in 2014 this number went up to 72%. The Open University found that e-learning consumes 90% less energy than traditional courses The London Fire Brigade introduced blended learning, which improved the quality and consistency of training, and now saves them £700,000 per year.

Both the desire to provide learners with an engaging programme of learning and staff enthusiastic to embrace change and innovation are valuable ingredients in your strategic approach to blended learning. But success is rarely long term and organisational wide without some preliminary steps. The best foundations for successful planning and implementation of a blended learning strategy, whether the blend’s face to face element is in the classroom or workplace, are based on a knowledge and understanding of the opportunities available and where the opportunities can lead. Many people talk about the strategy being the first step in the process of implementing a blended learning model, but prior to a strategy come your business objectives. In reality you can only define your objectives and create a strategy if you have the appropriate knowledge and experience to draw on. Management understandably can struggle with identifying the organisation’s aim, if they don’t know what it is they are aiming for, and if there is an aim it can be challenging knowing how to achieve it. A strategy drawn up with this lack of knowledge and understanding is always woolly with a lack of clarity, preventing staff from identifying exactly what the organisation and they are aiming to achieve. If you’re starting your blended learning journey I would recommend a two stage approach. The first stage sets out how you will identify appropriate business’s objectives and the path to achievement of those objectives. The second stage is a meaningful strategy with action plans that can be embraced and implemented by staff. The familiar saying ‘put the need before the technology’, in other words don’t come across an aspect of technology and think I must use it somewhere in delivery, is generally correct. However, when a need is identified knowledge of what solutions are available is required. Sometimes you become aware of a solution that will enhance a process that doesn’t actually address a particular need. So although a good mantra for staff to encourage them to focus on the learner and organisational needs, don’t close your mind to opportunities that make enhancements you haven’t thought of. A common mistake made by employers is that they decide on one aspect of the infrastructure to deliver a blended model, which meets the requirement of one or two applications they have decided upon. They then find out a little later down the line that they have invested time and money into something that doesn’t work with the solution for the next step in their strategy. This has resulted in a lot of solutions being thrown out and a new approach adopted, which can be hugely costly. Let’s consider the factors that can have a significant influence over the success of writing, implementing and developing an effective blended learning strategy: Demonstrating to staff a blended model in action so they understand what the organisation and staff are working towards. It may well not be the perfect blended model for your provision, but discussions on how your organisation would do things similarly or differently with a real model as reference can make all the difference to staff engagement. Having an understanding of where the organisation is heading is critical to success as too are your staff, so you need them on board. Finding an example of a blended model in action, and not just the demonstration of a learning management system (LMS), isn’t always easy. A good option is to get all delivery staff to undertake a third party blended learning course themselves, but this may be difficult due to financial or time constraints. An alternative way to achieve this is to enrol the member of staff who is going to be leading your development in this area onto a blended learning course. On completion that person then develops a short blended learning course for all staff.If your organisation is a member of a network then find out if other members are prepared to offer a demonstration and pass on their experience of other points such as the pedagogical implications for staff. 2.  Having a good understanding of a range of technology solutions in use for delivery of blended learning, including hardware, software, cloud services and applications. Start with the learners needs: ensure content is engaging and user friendly and meets learning objectives. Don’t make decisions before you have formed the bigger picture: For example, don’t decide on the online portal for content access until you know what type of content you want to provide to your learners and how they will access it. With your requirements in mind learn from others as to what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them. These are likely to include free and paid for solutions; don’t dismiss the free options as some of the best content creation tools are free. Sources of information can be found at relevant conferences, blogs, e-newsletters, networking, webinars, workshops and peer support forums. A good option is to post questions on a relevant social media channel or group asking members to contribute suggestions for good practise and recommended applications. The other good source of advice are websites that have a focus on offering information and advice on technology for education such as the Centre for Performance and Learning Technologies and Edudemic. With your requirements in mind learn from others as to what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them. These are likely to include free and paid for solutions; don’t dismiss the free options as some of the best content creation tools are free.Sources of information can be found at relevant conferences, blogs, e-newsletters, networking, webinars, workshops and peer support forums. A good option is to post questions on a relevant social media channel or group asking members to contribute suggestions for good practise and recommended applications. The other good source of advice are websites that have a focus on offering information and advice on technology for education such as the Centre for Performance and Learning Technologies and Edudemic. 3. Sharing your research with all staff who will be involved in implementing a blended learning strategy.  Get them to have a play with solutions that you have identified and collect their feedback. Getting staff to share experiences and ideas with colleagues is a good way of getting them engaged in developing new skills, and planning and developing their blended programmes of learning, which will be required to move the organisation forward with a strategy. Having the opportunity to ‘have-a-go’ without fear of failure is empowering. It’s amazing how many staff disengaged in the whole idea of blended learning get inspired to provide their learners with the same positive experience they have had. When it comes to applications that provide the mechanism for delivery, such as an LMS or webinars for live delivery of training, there are many free versions of cloud based services and applications that will give you a good idea of how different types of solutions work. So spend some time evaluating them as to whether they will be appropriate for your provision now and in the future. Set some target dates for trying out a selection of content creation applications. You can ask staff to identify a paper based learning resource and then choose one of the applications under discussion to develop an online enhanced version of that resource. If a team uses a selection of applications, gives feedbacks and shares the resource with colleagues a lot of useful information can be collated as to what you will take forwards as an organisation. It may seem a significant investment of time just to get to the point of being able to confidently identify the medium and long term blended learning goals for your organisation, however it is time well spent. You’re staff are more likely to be engaged in the journey to meet your objectives, and will have the confidence to continually evaluate their own and the organisation’s progress. On-going evaluation and development of your strategy is important as the blended learning model is never complete it continues to evolve. With everyone contributing to on-going developments and objectives it ensures that your strategy accurately reflects an achievable vision for the future.

Mindfulness is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon, supported by more and more rigorous scientific research, and driven in part by a desire to find new ways to help solve the challenges that threaten our health. Last week a landmark British report from Mindful Nation UK laid out recommendations for the provision of mindfulness across many public policy areas. The World Health Organisation has warned that mental ill-health will be the biggest burden of disease in developed countries by 2030. Staggering figures show one in five employees is likely to be affected by depression at some point in their lives. Already, mindfulness training has been shown to reduce the risk of relapse of recurrent depression by one third. In a two-year clinical trial, led by researchers from Oxford University, people already taking antidepressants were assigned to a Mindfulness based Cogitative Therapy programme with a view to reducing or stopping their medication, or were asked to continue antidepressants alone. With support from their GP and therapist, around 70% of the mindfulness group were able to stop taking antidepressants. But what is Mindfulness? According to Reachout:  Mindfulness is about training yourself to pay attention in a specific way. When a person is Mindful they: Focus on the present moment Try not to think about anything that went on in the past or that might be coming up in the future Purposefully concentrate on what’s happening around them Try not to be judgmental about anything they notice, or label things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ There is more and more evidence that the practice of Mindfulness can be effectively transferred to the workplace particularly with regard to training. High profile businesses such as Google and Toyota have already introduced the concept of Mindfulness to their workforce. An engaged workforce is a productive workforce and implementing Mindfulness practices can help employees to be fully engaged with their work, increasing their focus and decreasing their stress levels. Some of the obvious benefits include: Less stress and anxiety in the workplace means less absenteeism. According to CIPD & Simply Health Absence Management Report 2015 31% of employers have seen an increase in so-called ‘presenteeism’ in the last 12 months. This is largely a result of   more and more businesses seeing employees working long hours as the norm. Focusing the mind and increasing concentration is shown to boost productivity. A relaxed workforce are far better prepared to be able to cope with stresses of the working day. Can prevent burnout and prevent job satisfaction Interestingly, Steve Jobs placed huge importance on meditation following his time travelling in India. He was a pioneer of "mind technology" the use of Zen mindfulness meditation to reduce his stress, gain more clarity, and enhance his creativity. In Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography of Jobs, he quotes the computer genius as saying: "If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before." As a result of the increased demand and access to online learning there is a wealth of learning material on Mindfulness available at a touch of a button. We asked Libby Seery from Renaissance Life Therapies her views and she told us: "The market for self-help literature that teaches you how to deal with depression or navigate the trials of life in a more adaptive way is massive. Using rich web-technologies such as videos, podcasts and interactive forums and quizzes we can now turn a "passive" learning experience into an actively engaging one. Thanks to technologies like Skype we can also now include the one element that is sorely missing from self-help: on demand personalized support". So as more and more businesses recognise the workload and time pressures of their team could they work smarter by commissioning Mindfulness training for their staff? If you’re interested in undertaking a course in Mindfulness then take a look at this online Mindfulness course. Sources: Guardian Renaissance Life Therapies Reachout.com HR Magazine Action on Depression Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography of Jobs

It’s that time of year when we scratch our heads and think what on earth am I going to buy Granny or Aunty Sue or young Johnny for Christmas this year? Trawling round the shops desperately looking for that perfect gift can be timely and frustrating so this year why not be inspired and buy them something that they will really appreciate? Did you know that online learning is rapidly increasing in popularity with hundreds of thousands of people now learning online? Some great reasons to choose the gift of e-learning this Christmas: E-learning covers a wealth of subjects from photography and languages; yoga and mindfulness to computer skills and web design amongst the many choices there will be a course to suit everyone; The learner can choose to learn at a time and place suitable to them, all they need is a mobile device and access to the internet. Being able to access the learning at a time and place to suit is very welcome; With people living longer they have more time in retirement and many are looking to learn a new skill, so perhaps now’s the time to become fluent in French for all those retirement holidays; Giving young people additional skills will open up opportunities for the future - if you know a budding entrepreneur why not give them a course on web design to help them get a foot on the ladder; Whilst many people think about trying something new how many actually have the confidence to go ahead, by buying an online course in the subject they are interested in you may just get them to give it a go; Challenging the mind has significant health benefits helping to prolong the quality of life and fight the onset of illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. E-learning could be just the present needed for older loved ones; E-learning is fun, many courses are very interactive and colourful and include interactive quizzes and games; The gift of learning is something which lasts a lifetime unlike may Christmas gifts which are forgotten by the time the decorations are dismantled. So why not choose an inspirational gift this year and make it a Christmas to remember with an e-learning course. Click on the image below to look at some of the great courses on offer and take advantage of our Christmas Offers.

A little bit of forethought goes a long way.

Gary Woodill and Adam Bockler evaluate mobile learning’s adoption during travels to MobiLearnAsia, CSTD’s Conference & Trade Show in Toronto, and DevLearn in Las Vegas.

Dan Pfeiffer walks through how to set up the Tin Can iOS library for your project, and instructs you on how to retrieve statements.

Float's Dan Pfeiffer discusses how to create statements with our Tin Can SDK demo.

We see whether our predictions came true for mobile learning in 2012.

Float announces that RabbleBrowser, a collaborative Web browser for the iPad, is now available in five languages: English, French, Spanish, Japanese and Italian.

Float looks ahead at the coming year in mobile.