eLearning Roadtrip

Mobile Learning and the Internet of Things

Several friends have teased me about my various tweets regarding the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, saying that I've sounded as if I were still working at Adobe. Ironically, it's only been since leaving Adobe that I can again focus on all of the technologies that are most likely to determine where learning - and elearning- are headed. One of those areas happens to be mobility: ubiquitous mobility, the mobile web, and mobile learning. So I have been watching the news about Adobe and so many other contributors to the mobile industry with much interest.

I have been following developments in mobility since right around 1992. General Magic's personal intelligent communicator operating system had just been released, while Apple Computer had just introduced the Newton. Anne Derryberry's team at Informania, Inc. demonstrated the potential for personal hand-held communications devices for learning and performance support at an ISPI conference that spring. It was the first time I had considered the possibly of situating learning at the point of need, moving from the desktop to devices that we would be able to carry around with us wherever we went.  

Shortly thereafter, my interest in mobility waned for a variety of technical issues (e.g. the handwriting recognition on the Newton was a bit primitive, the power of the devices were limited, transmission networks were still being built). Apple got cranky with General Magic, things got tied up in lawsuits. PICs became PDAs, mobile phones started to work better. But then the Internet got really interesting. Technologies like Flash and Dreamweaver started showing people the possibilities for creating rich engaging Web experiences on the Internet. Lots of excitement, lots of energy, lots of risk-taking.

After the dot.com bubble burst, all that innovation and excitement came to a grinding halt. Nobody was buying much of anything. Smart companies cut back on sales and marketing and started investing in whatever they thought their next big thing was going to be when the economy turned around. This was right around the time that Macromedia started the research and development to make Flash ubiquitous. Not just on computers but also on mobile phones, and game consoles and screens of all kinds.

So here it is, years later. Have the post-dot-com investment paid off? Last week seemed to be a big week for Adobe at GSMA. It was great to see all the announcements about the Open Screen Project, and the next version of Flash Lite, and the new partnerships with Palm and Nokia. Also great to know that there are 1 billion mobile devices that are Flash-enabled.  Not so great to Apple and Adobe continue their stand-off, so no Flash on iPhones in the immediate future.  But of course the iPhone has completely changed the debate - and that's a whole other blogpost...

But what was probably the most interesting of all for me was  connecting the dots between some mobile learning ideas related to the diffusion of innovation, and my recent fascination with the Internet of Things. The illustration above comes from a report from the International Telecommunication Union entitled Ubiquitous Network Communities: Their Impact on the Telecommunications Industry, April 2005. It show how over time telecommunications power has continued to get smaller and cheaper. The illustration makes the point that over time the computing power of mainframes have passed on to PCs. We are well on the way to seeing mobile phones and smart phones become our uber-computing tools of choice. Can "Smart Things" really be that far behind?

What seems clear is that we are just now reaching a point where elearning and distance learning, - where PCs are used to connect student to learning - are now part of the core mission of our schools and colleges and universities.  If you refer to the illustration - that means that we are just about 1/4 of the way up the "shrinking devices adoption curve". It is just now that after 5 years of active pursuit of a mobile learning agenda in the US that one can see signs of growth (although mobile learning today has as much to do with video, games and podcasts as it does with mobile telephony). Which means that if we wanted to put some numbers to that time dimension in the picture we may be looking at 6 years before the Internet of Things gets anywhere near mainstream adoption.

It does raise an interesting question - If we continue to have a hard time creating engaging computer based learning experiences after 15 years... and mobile learning is still an early adoption phenomenon after 7 years,  what is it going to take to enable the adoption of smart networked objects? Beyond that, what will it take to preapre us for teaching and learning in a completely distributed, mobilized and networked environment??

Learning and the Internet of Things

The more I see regarding developments in the world of interactive networked technologies, the more I am convinced that the future of learning is inextricably tied to the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things has been discussed in computing circles for years. It refers to the wireless, self-configuring network that can be established between and among objects of all kinds using wireless technologies including WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID and GPS. It parallels the current network of addressable web pages while also including addressable inanimate objects that could be anything from your home's refrigerator to the shoes on your feet .

Perhaps the easiest way to think of the Internet of Things is as an increasingly smart network that links objects with other objects (including personal, portable computing devices carried by people just like you and me.).

It is a different model than building a “smart” Internet using the Semantic Web.  The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined. That makes it possible for the Web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines for finding and using web content. The Semantic Web is being built using existing naming protocols, such as URI, as well as smart, more meaningful metadata. In the Semantic Web, objects themselves do not converse, but now be referred to by other agents, such as servers acting on behalf of human owners.

The Internet of Things is based on the idea that any object can be tagged and tracked as easily as we now think of tagging (digital information) objects. One tagged, objects can searched for, charged for, managed, indexed and distributed.  Another way to think about this is that the Internet of Things depends on the addressability of each object or item in the network.

The implications of the Internet of Things are huge. "If all cans, books, shoes or parts of cars are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on our planet will undergo a transformation. Things like running out of stock or wasted products will no longer exist as we will know exactly what is being consumed on the other side of the globe. Theft will be a thing of the past as we will know where a product is at all times. The same applies to parcels lost in the post.”  

These all seem like such futuristic ways of thinking about the world. Until one realizes that the Internet of Things may be here right now. Almost.

Rob Salkowitz recently suggested that the Internet of Things is ready to take off. “The enabling technologies -- RFID, ubiquitous wireless and GPRS networks, Bluetooth, and other short-range transmission channels -- have become so cheap, small, and mundane as to be nearly invisible. Appliances increasingly integrate wireless connections, IP addresses, and Web interfaces as part of their basic design. GPS services are becoming standard on mobile devices.”

Further, he noted that the storage and processing capabilities needed to churn through the data generated by all this “smart stuff” have become commodities that any business can rent from utility providers like Amazon Web Services LLC . 

I wonder how many learning professionals have The Internet of Things on his or her own radar. The more I see what is happening in the healthcare, inventory and logistics worlds the more I am convinced that smarter tools and better services are going to have a significant impact on the ALL industries as we know them.  I predict that the learning industries are going to be shocked at the speed with which the Internet of Things is going to be upon us. Not just on content publishing and distribution for digital assets and devices of all kinds, but for things like location based performance support services that activate at the point of need, a true learning and performance support personalization, and enterprise systems that help realize the strategic power of information and technology on people and performance.

eLearning 2, Redux

Shortly after posting my rant how eLearning 2.0 makes me edgy, I received an encouraging email from a friend, a very distinguished industry luminary. (Yes, it's true, some of we old-fashioned, old-school types still use email to stay in touch.)  It pleased me to know that my friend understood precisely the kind of disquiet I was experiencing:

"Defining “Learning 2.0” is like nailing Jello to the wall", my friend remarked.  "In many ways it’s just like “rapid e-Learning” in that everyone has their own interpretation of what is meant by the phrase."

 "The problem with numbering evolutions of eLearning is that, like movie sequels, the subsequent    iterations start to look pale in comparison to the original.  All the same characters, just a slightly    modified settings and progressively crappier storylines.  Remember Rambo IV?  Probably not.  But       that’s my point."

Just this past week Rob Chapman raised the ire of elearning practitioners in the UK with his article, The eLearning Diet: Not recommended for long term results. He revisited many of the various reasons why elearning is insufficient, including that tired old self-evident truth that we learn better from teachers, and that, at the end of the day, elearning is just another fad. Clive Shepherd responded with a spirited rejoiner, in which he explained why Mr. Chapman was just simply wrong about the 30 year fad that is today's global elearning industry. (And yes, I DO tend to feel that anyone who is still flogging these same old discredited reasons about why elearning isn't as good as face-to-face is hard to take very seriously. To quote Tony Karrer, "Well said, Clive!!")

Nevertheless, as I read Clive's comments, I was struck by the following comment:

    "If e-learning is a fad then here's what we are going to be doing without when the fashion changes:

• web conferencing
• e-assessment
• collaborative distance learning
• social networking
• wikis
• blogging and micro-blogging
• podcasting
• games and simulations
• forums
• instant messaging
• and the whole World Wide Web!   (Clive on eLearning)

It was nice to see someone suggesting that elearning as we know it today really is this much of a social media phenomenon, becuase I think many would contend that today's elearning continues to revolve around the online course. Per recent US Department of Education and Sloan Consortium reports, it seems fair to suggest that the current state of enterprise and higher education elearning today depends more heavily on online courseware that Clive's list would suggest. But then I was also reminded of promotional materials I recently saw for a January 2009 Bersin Associates report that seemed to infer that elearning adoption is fallng because elearning was becoming less formal and informal learning was on the rise.

Perhaps this means that the day is finally almost here when we can look foward to becoming less enamored with what learning looks like and instead will focus more on its outcomes and results.

Doing eLearning 2.0 unto others

When I hear people getting excited about eLearning 2.0 I confess that it takes some effort not to roll my eyes. I know that eye-rolling marks me as cynical - ostensibly even about eLearning 2.0 itself - and that's not the case at all. After all, what is there NOT to like about making any learning experience more interactive, relevant and engaging? I like the so-called 2.0 technologies (if by that one is referring to micro-blogging, deli.cio.us/Delicious, blogging, IM-ing, wiki-ing and so on....okay, so I'm not such a fan of digging. I wasn't a fan of cameras on cell phones, either. Give me time). I like RIAs a lot, and have great hopes for their use in learning. I'm interested in facilitating interaction and maximizing engagement in learning. It's nice to see the panoply of choices available for connecting with information and each other.

But it's also nice knowing that this interactive, networked "engagement layer" rests on top of a solid foundation of digital assets built with Web 1.0 technologies: portable document format - PDF, HTML, SWF, JPEG. Representational media that has been captured the results of creative expression in a digital form, making it easy to share, distribute, store, download. Digital assets that need to be tracked and managed.

It's also good to think about emerging enterprise and commercial infratructure that make it easier to extend really good digital experiences - such as streaming mobile video - just about everywhere, and making it both personalized and secure.

And I'm really going to be interested in seeing where 3D takes us. Not just as it relates to virtual worlds. The more I see everyone going wild for the Wii, the more I am impressed with the 3D modeling that has been used to develop the sensor technologies that help us drive Mario Kart and exercise with Wii Fit.

I wonder if others who weathered elearning melt-downs of the dot.com get that same tingling "spider sense" that I do, when we all try boil down an evolving morphing segment of an industry landscape into a single buzzword - such as "eLearning 2.0"

Case in point - Overdrive Interactive, an interactive media marketing company, has produced a really interesting diagram highlighting social media that they think you should know about. This diagram lists 14 different categories of social media: photo-sharing, reviews and travel, wikis search sites, podcasts, video sharing sites, blogging, microblogging, texting, life-logging, bookmarking, networking. Many different urls for many different companies providing social media services. Some very interesting ways to extend opportunities to participate, connect, follow. Especially when it's used in combination with other media that provides great depth of content, great degrees of security, appropriate representation, better distribution and the like

I wonder if the real questions are more about the variety, composition and management of the mix of technology experiences to be marshaled when facilitating learning and performance support rather than worrying about the categories of the tools that we use.