1. Do Serious Games Work? Results from Three Studies
Some studies help
answer some of the questions now surrounding serious games-or games whose primary purpose is something other than entertainment, such as military training, education, physical therapy-and determine the relationship between the use of video games and learning as measured on standardized tests. More research is needed, but these findings provide some answers to both skeptics and supporters.
A Google search on ‘Apple iPad’ throws up an excess of 30 million results!
Clearly the Apple iPad has drawn much applause and an equal amount of criticism in the last few weeks. 
At Upside Learning we’ve been thinking about ways the Apple iPad can be useful for eLearning – especially in the workplace. You can’t disagree that the iPad looks very cool. Some people (as their tweets suggested in last few weeks) would buy it just to have one in spite of not needing one. However there are quite a few things about the iPad that suck (here are 8 that gizmodo listed).
I think the iPad in its current form – sans Flash, multitasking, & camera – has very limited uses in workplace learning.
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.
1. CopperLicht – fast WebGL JavaScript 3D Engine
CopperLicht is a JavaScript 3D engine for creating games and 3d applications in the webbrowser. It uses the WebGL canvas supported by modern browsers and is able to render hardware accelerated 3d graphics without any plugins.
2. Google Buzz
Google has announced Buzz a new social media service that would be integrated within Gmail. Using Buzz you can connect to the other social media services like Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google reader. More information on how we might use it in elearning can be found in this post on our blog.
1. ELIPS Studio 3
ELIPS Studio 3 is a cross-platform mobile application SDK based on Adobe’s Flex Builder. Now software developers and creative designers can quickly develop for rich, connected or non-connected applications for mobile devices and deploy them on any mobile platforms they want. ELIPS Studio 3 is based on native compilation. It will automatically generate, optimize and package your Flex applications as native code for industry-leading platforms, including iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.
1. HipLogic
HipLogic is a new real-time, web-based platform intended as an alternative user interface for some mobile phones. This free download currently delivers applications like Facebook, news, and Twitter to both Windows Mobile and Symbian devices with plans to offer an Android version of their software sometime in the future.
I have great respect for Apple as an organization particularly because I use an iPhone and I think the iPhone has definitely become one of those game-changers in the smartphone world and by a large margin.
I was looking forward to the Apple iPad even more so as we have been doing good stuff on mobile learning and putting up applications and tools on iPhone as pilots and on a trial basis. The iPad was supposed to be better and bigger than the iPhone, closer to a computer and much more than just a phone.
1. Printliminator
The Printliminator is a bookmarklet with some simple tools you can use to makes websites print better. One click to activate, and then click to remove elements from the page, remove graphics, and apply better print styling.
2. Apple’s Tablet Interface
The design of interaction is often restricted by the user interface paradigms in current use. There is speculation that the Apple Tablet (if there is one) will push the envelope of UI design. This links to a post in Gizmodo – worth a read. Haptics and touch technology are already transforming the user experience, couple that with a sophisticated UI and it offers learning interaction designers new avenues to explore.
During the course of a routine trawl of my news-feeds I stumbled on something interesting that I found relevant to my current research into mobile learning.
This particular post was from ReadWriteWeb and writes about a new type of iPhone application called PowerOne that in the post says ‘…wants to solve the “there’s not an App for that” problem that many professionals experience when they try to use their iPhones at work.’ I see mobile learning taking many forms, perhaps this is one of them.
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.
