In my last post on eLearning Outsourcing, I mentioned the various advantages of eLearning outsourcing. Most people get the benefits part pretty easily however, identifying whom to outsource to is not as easy. When meeting prospects, I often face this objection – “We have tried outsourcing in the past but have had a real bad experience and (hence) we are not willing to take the risk again“. What they fail to understand is that, in most of the cases, the problem lies much beneath – improper vendor selection.
Some months back I had posted (based on a research report by ValueNotes) about eLearning outsourcing to India doing well and looking to grow handsomely in next 3-4 years. With over 100 clients in 12 countries, Upside Learning has been offering offshore based eLearning outsourcing development services and solutions for 6 years. Last year we were recognized as an emerging leader in training outsourcing. There are many benefits that eLearning outsourcing offers and we feel in this business environment it is important that your firm considers outsourcing as an option – especially if it has never done so. In this and next few posts I intend to cover why to outsource; how to find a vendor; some best practices etc.
Learning Technologies 2010 was a great learning experience. Listening to some good speakers and sharing thoughts & ideas with some equally brilliant attendees was delightful. Earlier I posted my recap of the event (day 1, day 2) mentioning the strong and definite trend towards social, informal, and collaborative learning. While the event is over, the discussions and learning continues in the blogosphere.
Sushil Kokate | February 18th, 2010
On Feb 15, 2010, at Mobile World Congress 2010, Adobe announced Adobe AIR for mobile devices, a consistent runtime for standalone applications which is an outcome of Adobe initiated Open-Screen project. As quoted by Adobe, the Open-Screen project has grown to around 70 ecosystem partners world-wide, which means many devices would be made capable of supporting the outcomes of this Adobe initiative. To begin with it will be available on Android in 2010. Adobe also unveiled Flash player 10.1 beta to developers and content providers at the same event.
After having a great first day at the Learning Technologies 2010 I was looking forward to an exciting second day. 
Apart from the sessions at the conference that I recap below, there was an opportunity to interact with practitioners from the domain. Discussing their current concerns around learning and development gives us a glimpse into their world and that’s valuable.
Here’s a summary of the sessions I attended on Day 2:
Learning is fast turning Social, Informal, & Mobile.
That’s the message I’ve been hearing loud & clear from Learning Technologies 2010. While what’s being said in most of the sessions isn’t entirely new to us, it does reaffirm the direction in which things are going. The level of participation in these areas was clearly visible at the event which is a good sign. Adoption, after all, will happen only when L&D professionals start making some sense of it in first place.
Here are some highlights from the Day 1 sessions I attended:
The Horizon 2010 report has been published and is available for download. It’s definitely worth a read; lots of interesting trends that will affect the way we live and learn.
I found it interesting that the report points to mobile computing and open content as being on the near-term horizon, within the next 12 months. To follow after on the horizon are electronic books and augmented reality.
Wikipedia defines mobile learning as “Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies”.
In other words, mLearning decreases limitation of learning location with the mobility of general portable devices1.
Simply put, mobile learning is the acquisition or modification of any knowledge and skill through using mobile technology, anywhere, anytime and results in the modification of behavior2.
We are happy to share that Upside Learning has again won global recognition
from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Red Herring.
We have been included as a Winner in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2009 Program for the second year running. This program ranks the top 500 public and private technology companies with the fastest annual revenue growth rates in Asia Pacific over the past three years. It includes companies based in Australia, China (Hong Kong), India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Participating companies come from diverse industry sectors like software, electronics, biotech and pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and green technology.
As we knock on 2010’s doors, it’s a good time to look at what we did on this blog in 2009. We started this blog in March 2009 and in its 10 month existence has more than a 100 posts. The blog now has about 500 subscribers and has received more than 53000 page views and more than 200 comments.
