I tend to look at mobile learning in two distinct contexts – first as a tool to meet a learning need, second as a learning content delivery platform. While these two contexts are implicitly linked, it helps to look at them separately to understand how mobile technology can actually benefit learning. When I think about mobile learning, I like to refer to Dr. Conrad Gottfredson’s Five Moments of Learning Needs: • When Learning for the First Time. If we were to use mobile learning to meet these learning needs, we’d find that it fits best into the last three. MORE >>

I've been looking at options for creating and delivering content to mobile devices (phones, tablets etc). There are a number of possibilities: via a website, formatted for mobile viewing. Easy to deploy to multiple device platforms. Can take full advantage of the mobile device's capabilities. Difficult to deploy across multiple platforms. Mobileas a downloadable pdf. as an ebook. as a native app. There are plus and minus points for each of the options. Here they are as I see them at the moment. Much depends on where you're starting from (eg. Advantages. MORE >>

For all of you out there wanting to push your government into setting up a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform gathering knowledge from all your national universities, take a look at the approach of UK’s open university on planning a MOOC platform, it looks very promising. Now, as in a dream come true I am researching right at the center of that same institution and … even bigger news: they are starting up their own MOOC platform, the so called FutureLearn ! This mobility is enabled in part by telecommunications, more specifically mobile devices. MORE >>

As a prelude to a small webinar I’ll be doing next week (though it also serves to tee up the free Best of mLearnCon   webinar I’ll be doing for the eLearning Guild next week as well, here’re some deliberately provocative thoughts on mobile: According to Tomi Ahonen , mobile is the fastest growing industry ever. I want to suggest that the notion of a digital platform that supports us ubiquitously will be the inroad to recognize that the formal learning is not, and cannot, be separate from the work. You have to make some distinctions about the platform. MORE >>

I’m happy to report that the eLearning Guild has just released this year’s mobile learning research  report I authored for them (after doing the same last year). Combining my summary of the ‘state of the industry’ with the results of surveys of the Guild’s membership, it’s a snapshot of the state of mobile learning. In the report, I make two points: “What’s clear is that it is time to move beyond the initial experimental stages and start thinking of mobile as a platform for organizational performance. mobile strategy MORE >>