As I see it, this brings up lots of questions. First, it seems Adobe is continuing development on the Flash plug-in and AIR runtime. So while they may have abandoned the mobile plug-in space, they may  have something as a replacement up their sleeves, which should be interesting.  Second, will the gradual movement towards web-browsing with mobile devices signal the end of the road for Flash as a platform? Will Adobe come out with something that is geared towards HTML5 authoring that completely replaces Flash for web animation and interaction.

What will a web without Flash look like? And what happens to the hundreds of casual game companies with games like ‘Farmville’ that are Flash based. The same goes for companies developing other media using Flash. Is this the beginning of a mass-migration of content, authoring environments and other tools to the HTML5 standard? Only time will tell, and we’ll be watching closely.

Every now and again, I’m blown away by the imaginative apps I see in the iOS App Store, as did this one: Ghost Guitar.

The app utilizes the iPhone or iPad 2’s front-facing camera to track your hands. You strum with your right hand and fret chords with the left. Quite a simple mechanic that has been exceedingly well-implemented. The use of augmented reality as an interface has mostly been gimmicky. Having tried out so many AR applications, as a user and developer, the use of AR in this app makes sense and is surprisingly usable. Perhaps the only other AR based apps that have made equal sense are the augmented reality browsers. The tracking works from a few feet away and is quite a technical accomplishment. Augmented reality will eventually allow a unique way to control our increasingly digital world, how will ‘Workplace Learning’ take advantage of this?

The age of the ‘mobile application’ is well and truly here. While at this time, there is a profusion of platforms and application stores; there will no doubt be a shakeout and only a few survivors will remain. Development platforms are getting easier to use and with unified development platforms possible with HTML5 and the frameworks of the future. Developing and deploying such applications will become much easier, perhaps a time will come when you and I are able to create and distribute applications.

An obvious implication is that rather than the courseware focus that instructional designers have; perhaps instructional authors will have to design and deliver learning experiences through applications in the future. Eventually, one must speculate that there will be an application to learn ‘anything’ one chose? Will these applications simply be content delivery mechanisms, or much more? The value of simulations and games does not diminish on a smart-phone, they are still effective learning tools. Perhaps their nature will change to provide more just-in-time support rather than long-transfer learning. Additionally, technologies such as augmented reality and virtuality will provide opportunities to change the way we interact with computing technology; as an instructional designer, how will I leverage those? When given a bit of thought, it is evident that the design of learning experiences will require an entirely new approach and demand different skills from the ones instructional designers employ.

We advocate the need of openness at Adobe especially for their Flash runtimes. Adobe has some great development tools like Flash Builder, Flash CS5 which target the runtimes – Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Although Adobe has a range of open-source projects they haven’t yet fully “opened” both the Flash runtimes.

Adobe has released SWF specifications till its version 10. And that kicked off some of open-source Flash player implementations like Lightspark and Gnash. The pace of development, however, is really very slow. Lightspark, which has just released its latest version few days back, looks promising with its OpenGL based rendering. Also there are implementations like Frash and Smokescreen that are attempting to run Flash content on unsupported devices like iPhones and iPads.

Last month Adobe also announced next release of open-source Flex SDK, code named Hero. Among others, the main targeted feature is the support for multi-screen development, which is in line with their ongoing open-screen initiative. However, the development is tightly coupled with the unreleased Flash runtimes, and hence builds would not be available to open-source community till the latest runtimes are officially released.

In my opinion, by making the runtime development open-source, Adobe can concentrate on development tools as well as can focus on drafting innovative features to be supported by runtimes. The open-source community on the other hand can try and tackle the ways to implement runtimes to be supported on various computing devices and architectures.

The eLearning developer community will anyways benefit from open-source developments around Flash. Traditionally eLearning courses are one of major consumers of Flash platform, mainly because of ubiquitous Flash runtimes. But the community has been in major chaos as Apple denied deploying apps developed using Flash IDE. The developers have been checking other ways to offer/deploy learning content on the devices not supporting Flash. I think that would change if Flash runtimes were open-source and available for such devices, at least partially implemented.

Having mentioned Web 3.0 often in the past, I continue my research into it. Last evening, this particular slide share presentation about Web 3.0 and beyond popped into my inbox. Steve Wheeler at the University of Plymouth put it together.

Interesting to see that in the world of Web 3.0 , eLearning will actually transform from a content delivery and tracking mechanism. The rapid development of ontologies and taxonomies, the emergence of artificial intelligence allowing digital agents and assistance, and powerful mobile computing will probably mean the death of the LMS as we know it.

On the other hand, the proportion of content consumers to creators, which is currently heavily skewed towards consumption will even out with increasing number of creators. While it may seem unlikely at this time, I can envisage a future where ‘courseware’ as we know it won’t really exist. Instead, intelligent agents will gather and aggregate information from repositories and present those appropriately at the time of need.

It was also nice to see that some of the technologies that we’ve been experimenting with – like Augmented Reality and Virtuality – feature in the presentation. Take a look, great infographics and clear presentation.

While the promise is real and it feels like we are at the cusp of m-learning explosion I do see some challenges that are holding back widespread adoption of m-learning. Most important of them is the lack of operating system standards. Most organizations need to think several times when it comes to which devices to target – unless they plan to gift iPhones or Blackberrys to their workforce. There is no doubt everyone is looking at HTML 5 to bridge the difference between devices but is yet to become a workable platform. Even as Apple and Adobe continue to fight over the ‘control’ of the web we hope the dust settles on this in the next 6-12 months. Till then we probably will do with videos for mobiles, apps for specific devices or simple html courses.

I am hoping to get greater insights into m-learning development and adoption in enterprises at the mLearnCon in San Diego next week. It would also be a great opportunity to meet in person with some of our blog readers.

If you are also attending the mLearnCon do reach out at amitgarg@upsidelearning.com or tweet @gargamit100 and we can chat. See you there.

My answer was simple – it hasn’t.

Human learning hasn’t fundamentally changed over the last fifty years. Our ability to learn is something honed over several hundred millennia, it’s what set us apart from the primates in the first place. Our ability to store and transfer extra-genetic information has pretty much remained the same, bound by language itself, and simply because of biological boundaries imposed by our physiology. We can only ‘learn’ in ‘this’ way and ’so’ much. While you hold that thought, it’s good to think that the technology is on the cusp of providing an ‘infinite’ amount of information. While we use personal computing devices currently (the PC, laptop, phone, media player, game consoles, etc.), research into neural interface devices is progressing at a rapid, perhaps even alarming rate.

It’s only a matter of time before we accept technology based artificial implants as being a natural way to enhance our biologically limited perception and cognition. While I won’t debate the ethics of this, which is another matter altogether, what we’re seeing is a revolution in the way humans view computing and just as importantly computing views humans; this shift is truly and fundamentally life-changing. So if the human brain will take thousands of years to evolve physiologically to match the demands of ‘infinite’ information, it’s only natural that an intelligent humans seeks to address that by the use of technology in some form or the other.

We’ve always used technology to escape the bounds of human physiological limits. Take writing itself as a technology, because your voice can only travel so far, the wheel which fundamentally changed transport because humans legs could only go so far, and so on. Each major technological step has supplemented humans potential, it could not have been otherwise. However efficient and adopted in a variety of ways, these technologies supplanted human physical capabilities, and not the perception-cognition complex itself. The much-touted ‘cloud’ computing paradigm coupled with mobile devices and the huge information source that is the internet is technology that can change that.

The evolution and growth of the internet and personal computing devices is a massive technology shift, because I feel at some point eventually, it will like I mentioned before, supplement the human perception-cognition complex. It’s already done that to some extent – see how often in the day we run to Google for little bits of information that are necessary to perform tasks ranging from the mundane to the highly creative, synthetic activities. Computing is invading our lives in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. We are scheming of an internet of things, want wearable computing , and synthetic but highly believe computing experiences; we expect much from what is rudimentary technology yet.

What that could ultimately mean is that there is no need to learn whatsoever. Imagine a world where each individual digitally narrates their activities and experiences, perhaps automatically, and where that captured experience can be shared freely by whosoever wishes. For a learning designer like myself, that’s the ULTIMATE solution, technology that enables the sharing of experience itself. Better than any simulation or temporal/spatial presentation of content ever. Yes, perhaps its futuristic; and may even sound scary considering the gamut of human emotion.

Such technology promises to fundamentally change human civilization, just like writing or the invention of the wheel did. But learning itself ? that’s hardly changing, we are only adding and co-opting tools and media to assist learning at a phenomenal rate.

Their technology claims to “translate natural body motion into seamless 3D movement onscreen”.

The technology is claimed to be ground-breaking; you can judge from yourself; take a look at the videos.

Their product data sheet is an interesting read in itself – http://www.omekinteractive.com/docs/shadow_datasheet.pdf It’s quite evident that they’re trying to be platform agnostic and open, which is very different from Microsoft. (while I’ve still not seen any specifications for using Natal yet) It’s also interesting that Omek seems to be closer to market than Natal. This space of gestural interfaces just got more interesting.

Given some cursory thought, it’s evident there are HUGE implications for human learning when the semantic web comes of age.

The concept seems simple enough, walk into an iProf study zone, buy the device, subscribe to various content options, and download those using the high-speed connectivity available at the study zone. At this point of time, iProf is sourcing educational content from Brilliant Tutorials for the IIT JEE exam. One can buy the iProf device from an iStudy Zone, and download the IIT JEE content subscription at a quick speed with high speed broadband connectivity at an iStudy Zone. After content is downloaded onto the device, it can be accessed locally, since it’s now stored on the device itself. No need for always-on connectivity. Moreover, it seems the devices have video conferencing capabilities, if that’s really the case, then synchronous and collaborative learning activities are also a distinct possibility; however those would require internet connectivity.

I brought this up because some things strike me about this product/service.

1. The leap beyond computers as learning devices – I’ve always thought that India would would make a great technological leap and adopt mobile technology in a big way, skipping the personal computer paradigm along the way. This is perhaps the first device that’s mobile and specifically purposed around learning. There’s a huge market for such devices and relevant content in the academic space in India. The great value placed on education means that parents and students will spend substantial sums of money to stay afloat in the competition. Services that combine content and devices with the ability to render it are fairly unique. In my ideal world, I’d want either one to be free; either the content subsidizes the device. Just like mobile telecom service providers will take a hit on the price of the hardware if you commit to a contract. Or the other way round, where I pay for the device and I expect the content to be free.

I also like to contrast it to Apple’s iPad, while they aren’t on the same plan, it makes for an interesting comparison. More on that some other time.

2. The subscription model for learning content - I am quite sure it will work very well in India, like I mentioned we love to spend money on all things that might give our students a competitive edge. Not competition against another nation or to upset the world order, but simply to do better than the rest, at least academically. It’s very interesting that iProf is tying up with multiple content providers, it’ll be interesting to see if they’re able to source quality content and provide it at a reasonable price.

3. The device itself -  Android powered, it could possibly be hacked to support a whole lot of other learning tools – free, cheap learning tools. Imagine Moodle running on this, or the several thousand applications that the Android marketplace displays. While I dont really know the hardware specifications for the device yet, its running Android provides a unique hackable hardware learning platform. My mind is swimming with the possibilities such a hacked/rooted version of the tablet device could offer.

The success of such a product will finally depend on a whole lot of factors, let’s see what comes out of it.  I’m going to go check out the device and the service over the next couple of weeks. Will post pictures or video of the device in action if possible.

2. AR App Development: Metaio Releases Unifeye Mobile SDK
This new augmented reality development framework is offering developers a chance to experiment with feature tracking, 3D animation rendering and real-time interaction. A probable competitor for Layar, we’re keeping an eye on whether we can deploy learning applications using this

3. Dotsopt
A portable blog posting system where blogs called Dots can be altered by anyone who interacts with them. Dots are instant blogs, and can contain anything (text, pictures, video, media, embeds) Dots are wiki-like, but their creator has to approve all edits, assuring each dot evolves along a consistent point-of-view. Dots can be connected to quotes, paragraphs of text in the news and are distributed globally into all related articles. Dots can be voted on and carry a usefulness rating

4. Meego
Nokia and Intel have just announced the creation of MeeGo, a new Linux-based operating system designed for portable devices including netbooks and smartphones as well as other non-desktop platforms like connected TVs and vehicles. The new OS is a combination of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin, both Linux-based computing environments.

5. Learning Styles Wither Away
“We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base…” This extract from the report says it all.

6. BlackBerry’s Webkit Based Browser
This week at MWC BlackBerry managed to bust out one surprise – a demo of the company’s new WebKit-based BlackBerry browser. The early build shown off on-screen looks pretty solid, rendering Amazon.com quickly and scoring a full 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when BlackBerry users will actually be able to get their hands on this.

I think the iPad in its current form – sans Flash, multitasking, & camera – has very limited uses in workplace learning. You could probably use it for education but it’s just not meant for workplace learning. My colleagues had earlier posted about the immediate disappointment we had with the Apple iPad and seven ways in which you could try and use it for workplace learning. In this post I am trying to identify who does the iPad compete with and whom is it really meant for?

Let’s start by looking at this promotional video from Apple.

I am sick of the mention of ‘incredible’ & ‘amazing’ in this video but that’s how Steve Jobs & Co. usually refers to their products. Just to try and balance that out here’s a post by Donald Clark on why the iPad is an ergonomic disaster. Hope that balances the different points of view on the iPad.

Ok back to our discussion. So who does the iPad compete with?

Kindle (+ other eBook readers)? Most definitely!
The iPad has an advantage here. It looks sleek and (seems to) deliver a better reading experience. And for the price it comes it does much more than what a Kindle does. Quite expectedly, the ebook reader war has already begun. This post on ireaderreview.com (which is inclined towards Kindle generally) has a good analysis on why the iPad would be successful only with people who want a device they’ll read on occasionally. I think iPad can affect others too. Amazon has already had a tiff with Macmillan and if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, the iPad would win hands down. The only problem I see is the large power-draining LCD screen on the iPad which would make the battery look small. With its full-color multi touch screen it would be great for reading textbooks too. Kids would love it for it would make their school bags some much lighter.

MP3 Players? Just too bulky for it
While the iPad may have an impact over the music industry, it don’t think it would affect the mp3 players market at all. If you just have to listen to music the iPod Nano had great size advantages over the iPod Touch and that explains why iPad won’t impact mp3 players. I can’t imagine being on a treadmill at the gym with an iPad in my hands.

Gaming Devices? Casual Gaming – Yes. Serious Gaming – No.
The iPad will be able to carry forward the gaming experience from the iPhone and make it better with larger screen and multi touch. However, lacking the power of the gaming consoles or the pleasures of the joystick, the iPad will be a weak contender in the dedicated gaming devices market. However, it’d be a great device for casual gamers and could well bring a lot of non-gamers into gaming thus in turn readying some of them for serious gaming in the longer term. It could be a great device for multi player games and I am sure app developers are already on the job developing games to take advantage of its capabilities.

Other Tablets? Surely!
There is a whole line-up of tablets coming your way in 2010. However, I think iPad is without doubt the sexiest of them and the experience on iPad will probably be the best. Apple has this thing about their products. Also the iPad will be well supported by the app developer community and companies partaking in the Gold Rush – as predicted in the above promotional video! Will the iPad be the most successful tablet? Only time will tell. Remember the ‘iPad Killer’ from Google is about to come and it will probably have multitasking.

Netbooks? No. It can’t!
The netbooks can do much more than an iPad. Here is a list of 10 such things that netbooks do better. Some of these are related to the absence of Flash and Camera on the iPad. A camera is probably something we may actually see on the iPad in the future but Flash is a tough battle between Apple and Adobe. Adobe thinks the iPad is a broken link and Apple thinks Flash is buggy. I personally agree with Adobe as without Flash even if browsing the web on iPad is be a great experience (yet to be confirmed), the web itself is incomplete without Flash content. Even if Flash is buggy it seems to be working well for the time being. There is a big debate if HTML 5 would kill Flash. Probably yes it will. But that’s some years down the line – 5 or 10 – who knows.

Laptops? Yes. But not for the serious users
When the iPad can’t compete with the netbooks, it certainly can’t compete with the laptops either. As I watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPad sitting on a couch, I couldn’t help thinking this could be a good replacement product for the leisure laptop users. It’s light to be carried around. It’s packaged brilliantly to generate interest in people who ‘fear’ tech. It is just too closed for the professionals. I don’t think the iPad could kill the laptop but it could certainly be your mom’s next laptop.

The Tech Crunch article goes on to say that “…for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing” and I completely agree with that. The iPad lets you listen to music, watch movies, browse the web, check emails, browse photo albums, read newspapers, read ebooks, & navigate streets using 3G & GPS.

So who is the iPad really for?
I think it will work for the following sets of people:
- Leisure Laptop Users: provides better experience than the laptop for leisure activities and also has most other laptop capabilities.
- School children: a wonderful device for the education sector with textbooks having animated & interactive content. Wi-fi access can help with collaboration, student monitoring, tracking, and personalized teacher support.
- Young Gadget Lovers: No real need, but just a cool device to be seen with. They will find movies, music, games, browsing, & online chatting all very cool to do on this device.

Personally, I’d be keen to own one just for fun IF it gets Flash; but I’m not throwing away my laptop just yet.

What does it mean for elearning (or should I say mlearning) industry?
Flash is the favorite delivery platform (development tool) for eLearning courses due to its huge install-base and ability to produce engaging content. However, that’s not the case with mlearning. Mobile device platforms are diversified – from screen sizes to the operating-systems driving the devices. Due to this (and some other reasons like processor capability, device features, etc), not all devices support Flash – neither within the web-browser nor outside of it. So if you do some mlearning development the solution would most probably limit its access to the targeted device only. However the advent of AIR for mobile provides an alternative here:

- It opens up possibilities of porting same solution across all supporting devices with some minor tweaks (like changing routines for accessing some device specific features).
- Mobile developers won’t need to learn specialized code each time to port their solutions on different devices
- You can use existing Flash development skills to provide engaging elearning apps for handheld devices.
- You can even implement SCORM LMS tracking methods within the apps itself
- You can develop eLearning content that can run on desktops, laptops, netbooks, and smartphones.

Apart from AIR app, the same code and assets in any AIR app can further be used to deliver a mobile browser version using Flash Player 10.1. Note that all the major smartphones (except iPhone) will support Flash, including Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm’s webOS, and Windows Mobile. It will now also be available on LiMo devices, an independent and open smartphone platform with a Linux-based operating system at its core.

Checkout the video demonstrating some Adobe AIR apps on Motorola Droid –

And here’s a video demonstrating Flash running on Dell Mini 5 through mobile browser –

Apple’s decision of excluding Flash on their devices has resulted in some disappointment within our team and many others around the world. Nonetheless, Adobe has already announced a workaround using the packager for iPhone. So a solution developed for other devices, can possibly be ported for the iPhone using this packager. I assume the same packager would be made capable to publish apps for iPad too as the iPad uses the same underlying technology as iPhone.

At some point one would justify Apple’s standoff against Flash on their handheld devices, and advocate open-web culture of HTML5 or alike. The reality, however, is that the new HTML5-enabled web will take many years to become a standard. In the meantime the world wants to deliver and access content across all devices and that’s where Adobe is pitching. Their goal is to have every platform supporting native Flash and AIR (including iPhone).

As an eLearning developer, we will certainly benefit from the Adobe Flash runtime, AIR and Flash player 10.1 made available for handheld devices.