Mobile Learning Jam Reflections

Last week in San Jose I was pleased to participate at DevLearn in the Mobile Learning Jam. Thanks to Jay Cross for taking this picture and posting it on Flickr.

For two days plus there were 15 sessions -- in addition to 9 regular conference sessions -- all about mobile learning. At times the noise and commotion in the hall area made it difficult to hear and the afternoon sun caused some attendees to get out their sunglasses inside, but there was considerable interest. The questions and comments from the attendees was awesome. All in all it was very tiring, but lots of fun!

I was involved in 7 sessions plus 3 breakfast byte discussions. One of the sponsors, OnPoint Digital created a mobile app for the Mobile Learning Jam materials. If you have a mobile device and want to take a look at the app and all the presentations on your mobile, go to http://mlj.mlearning.com and self-register. You will receive an email with instructions specific to your device.

Several attendees also requested that the slides be posted online so that they can share them with their co-workers, so I have posted PDFs of the following sessions:

• Overview of Mobile Learning – Who is Doing What?
• Getting Started with Mobile Learning Planning Session with Austin Winters, Microsoft
• Mobile Learning in Government and Military - Mark Friedman and Jason Haag
• Discussion of Mobile Learning Standards, or Lack Thereof with Mark Friedman and Jason Haag
• Tools for Mobile Learning Examined
• Mobile Learning Examples Examined
• Future Directions in Mobile Learning: A Look at New Technologies and Potential

There is also a document with lots of resources available here.

Thanks to The eLearning Guild for their support, the sponsors Intuition and OnPoint Digital, the other presenters and to the attendees. You were all great!

Commercial Mobile Learning Content Examined

I have been looking at some commercial mobile training modules recently and have found some excellent examples -- as well as some lessons learned.

The first one is Presenter Pro for the iPhone ($.99 in the iTunes store). The content includes presentation skills techniques with supporting graphics, audio, and video; hundreds of quick tips accessible by shaking the device; a checklist feature to capture and email any content for later review; notes capability; practice exercises; and knowledge check quizzes.

There is a lot of information and it is organized for quick retrieval. Overall the UI is quite good, however when arriving at the end of the knowledge check, there is only a previous and next. The next does not work, so the user needs to assume that they have finished and need to go back to the main menu. How much nicer it would have been if QA has caught that and added text either with the score or some text like congratulations you have completed the knowledge check, press here to return to the main menu. In addition, a nice feature would be to offer to return to the applicable content for review when missing a question rather than just saying sorry, try again.

Understanding Photoshop Quick Fixes ($1.99 in the iTunes Store) includes three modules plus an introduction and help section. Each of the modules has videos, tips and a quiz. Favorites and a search feature are included, plus an included recent Twitter feed from @rhedpixel. The quiz feature is quite nice with the results, as well as a link to the video for missed questions. Unlike Presenter Pro, there is no easy access overview of the content, but there is the search feature. The videos are well done. By submitting your email address you receive a link with the examples from the video. These are only available on a computer -- not an iPod or iPhone and must be downloaded separately for each module.

Thanks to an email from Dr. Davide Terranova fom Italy, I checked out his new site medicalearning. Currently there are four care and management modules featured for asthma, diabetes, hypertension and influenza virus H1-N1. The modules use Flash Lite and are available for a large number of phones (and even larger following the recent Adobe announcement of upcoming partnerships and availability of the Flash player on mobile devices.) The catalog, store and clean user interface are quite nice. Check it out.