It’s time for me to formally announce that the site for my forthcoming mobile learning book, Designing mLearning, is now live and ready to visit. On it, you’ll find the ‘about the book’ info, the gracious endorsements from some truly great and kind people, and more.

I’ll be speaking about the ideas quite a bit in the coming months.   I’ll be talking mobile at Online Educa in Berlin tomorrow, as well as presenting with my ITA colleagues on the future of organizational learning the day after.   I’ll be presenting a mobile design workshop at TechKnowledge in February, and more events are on the agenda (the Australasian Talent Conference in May in Sydney, and the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference in August in Wisconsin).

There will be an ebook, or so I’ve been promised (you have to admit that anything else would be, well, just crazy!). More info as it comes, but you can already pre-order the book through Amazon!   So, get going!

I hope to see you at one of the upcoming events, and if you get the book, I welcome your feedback.   I will have the first chapter available for download as soon as I can get it from the publisher.

And just a reminder, I still haven’t found a better guide to designing learning games than my previous book: Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games. And I do keep track.

This is the extended abstract for the presentation I’m leaving today to give in Berlin at Online Educa on mobile learning on Dec 2.

Increasingly, workers are mobile.   When we look not only at field-deployed individuals, but also those who occasionally must travel to meetings, make site-visits, are away at conferences and workshops, or even are commuting, the number of mobile workers can be considered from half to most of the workforce. When we consider how many have a mobile device of some sort, and that these devices are increasingly powerful, we have a big opportunity to have a business impact.

To examine the opportunities, we must first consider the range of activities mobile can support. Let us be clear, mobile learning is not about courses on a phone, at least in large measure.   There are circumstances where this makes sense, but it is not the main opportunity on tap. First and foremost, mobile is about quick access; just-in-time, just enough. The prescient Zen of Palm documented how desktop computers are accessed not that many times a day, but for long periods, whereas mobile devices are the reverse, accessed many times for short periods. This suggests a different model of use.

Think: how does your mobile device make you smarter? If you are typical, you may use it to keep information you want to look up, like contact details or your calendar. You may also use it to capture data: a note, a photo or video, or a voice memo.   You may calculate something like the tip due the waitstaff or how to split the bill. And, of course, you may reach out to someone like a friend or colleague through voice or text.   These are what I call the Four C’s of mobile: Content, Capture, Compute, and Communicate. This maps much more closely to performance support than formal learning, and indeed mobile likely plays more of a role in performance support and social/informal learning, the companions for formal learning.

It is useful to view computation conceptually as a complement to our cognitive systems. Our brains are really good at pattern matching and executive decision-making, but really bad at remembering rote information and completing complex calculations. Over our history, we have developed many physical and cognitive tools to augment our capabilities.   Computers, in a sense, are the ultimate cognitive adjunct, with limitations due more to our imaginations (and pocketbooks) than to the technology.   When we have mobile computational capabilities, we are now able to augment our thinking wherever and whenever we are. We can respond in the moment, not with a delay.   This makes us both more effective and more efficient.

Which brings us to the business impact of mobile tools. We can augment performance in ways that can address barriers that have arisen in the past. We should, indeed, start with those situations where there have been performance barriers.   Where, with a small bit of support, could we get sizable improvements?   And realize that small improvements, when aggregated, can mean big returns.   For example, cutting down on one extra visit to get information on an unanticipated problem, when multiplied by a lot of calls for a sizable workforce, becomes a substantial savings.   That could come from accessing a job aid, a colleague, or even sharing a picture of the situation. Similarly, sales would likely increase if a quick calculation could show the immediate cost versus benefit relationship, and orders could be placed immediately.   More importantly, employees could be made productive earlier if specific information on a client or situation is scaffolded to support the novice practitioner.

Optimizing performance is a marginal game, but margins are the difference between success and failure.

Let us not forget, however, to also consider how mobile tools can augment learning as well as performance.   Those same Four C’s can be applied to extending and enriching the learning experience just as they can support in-the-moment performance. The activities that support fostering retention and transfer, our learning goals, can have mobile support. For example, you can reactivate knowledge by delivering content, or having learners apply their knowledge to problems and challenges at times other than a learning event. You can have learners capture data from the field and bring back to the discussion. And, of course, learners can discuss and collaborate with one another.

The key to business impact from mobile devices is to think performance; what small tweaks will change our key business metrics in big ways.   While mobile does provide transformative opportunities, the near-term impact will come from optimizing current opportunities for performance support and social communication and collaboration, with resulting aggregate outcomes that provide tangible return on investment.

In the context of having my own book on mobile learning in press, I’m well-primed to review Gary Woodill’s The Mobile Learning Edge: Tools and Technologies for Developing Your Teams. It could be awkward as well, as I could be considered to be a competitor, with no vested interest in helping.   So, accept the potential for bias, but I feel, fortunately, this is not a problem.

For context, the time is clearly right for mobile learning, what with the increasing prevalence of mobile devices, particularly smartphones, the increasing availability of tools, and an increasingly mobile workforce. As a consequence, there is a clear opportunity to provide guidance.

Gary Woodill’s book, as you might imagine for a senior analyst (his title at Brandon Hall Research), is exhaustively researched.   The book is full of quotes about mobile learning, has a variety of examples, and points to a suite of sources of information.   It is also, not surprisingly, well-written, with a business focus.

Which raises the question of the audience.   This book is clearly written for managers and executives who either are considering a mobile strategy for their employees or as a business.   While covering more prosaic issues like development tools and design approaches, with guest chapters on business and content strategy, this is clearly aimed higher in the organization.

And this brings up the differences between our two books.   When Gary found out we were both doing mobile books (for different publishers), he astutely reached out, and we discussed our approaches and recognized we were shooting for different audiences.   Compared to Gary’s focus, I am instead mostly addressing those who will be charged with executing the actual design.   Yes, his book addresses design, and yes, mine addresses strategy, but they have relatively different emphases. For example, his book has a much greater span of the history of mobile devices, while I’ve tried to focus on the relevant recent past. He also has a current snapshot of tools, while I’ve tried to write in a way that isn’t constrained by changes in the environment.

Overall, I think the books complement each other well. I think if you’re contemplating a mobile business plan, his is the way to go.   If you’re looking for guidance in how to take advantage of mobile to empower your employees, I’ve designed mine to be the one you should choose.   Mine is for people who are thinking about, want to, or have to do mobile.  Gary’s is for those who have to decide about it. To put it another way, Gary’s is the one that should be in the research library and on the executive shelf, and hopefully mine is the one that should be on the shelf of the designer and manager.

This is a very good book; readable, valuable, and interesting.   If you’re interested in mobile, you should definitely give it a look.

In looking for a title for my forthcoming book on mobile learning, Aaron Silvers took one of the key principles, augmenting performance, and, combining it with a neat complement to my previous book, Engaging Learning, came up with Augmenting Learning.   I liked it very much, as it elegantly captured several meanings I’m keen on, and I like the principle of having a title that works in a couple of ways.

Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t like it. Worse, the eminent Allison Rossett thought augmenting wasn’t a good word. C’est la vie.

So, what is the title?   Well, to hit the marketing goals of being clear to the audience, yet keeping with something I can live with (you do not want to know what other suggestions were floated), we’ve ended up with

Designing mLearning: Tapping Into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performance

I like the part before the colon, and the publishers like the part afterward.   At least the shorthand title will be Designing mLearning, which I can definitely get behind.   And I am excited about the book; I think there are a lot of useful ways to think about mLearning in it (in my completely objective and totally unbiased opinion ;).

Just briefly, however, I want to go into why I thought Augmenting Learning would be a good title.   First, it captures the notion that mLearning is not about providing a full learning experience, it’s about supporting a full learning experience: with additional resources, access to learning resources (calendar, content, etc), and a stretched out learning experience.   That is, complementing whatever formal learning resources you bring to bear with mobile-accessible components.

Moreover, it’s about augmenting formal learning with informal learning.   Performance support, personal, and social learning are all ways in which mobile delivers unique advantages. Whichever of the 4 C’s of mobile learning you bring to bear, you are increasing the ability to perform, both in the moment and overall. Of course, slow learning is a goal I’d be supportive of as well.

Regardless, all the above fall under the rubric ‘designing mlearning’ as well as ‘augmenting learning’, and it passes the sniff test with people more concerned with commercial viability than conceptual elegance. And, if I really do want to have an impact, I have to care about the former as well as the latter.   The book does accomplish the goal of providing pragmatic advice, but in a way commensurate with the goal of providing conceptual clarity, and I can live with that.

The discussion on ITFORUM this week has been deeply about mobile learning (if you’re into mlearning, it’s worth checking in!). Based upon this week’s guest’s question about experience with devices, I opined in ways that should be familiar:

Coming out with a book on mobile learning (mostly organizationally focused), and with kids of my own, I’ve naturally thought about what I think the role of mobile devices could/should be in schools:

I like what Elliot Soloway said many years ago, that a laptop was the wrong form factor for a kid. He used PDAs, but it was more for content creation than consumption.   I actually think we want separate devices; a PDA form-factor for field work, and a tablet for in-class content creation.     I think a PDA sized device for data capture (audio and video for instance) is more plausible than a tablet, and vice versa for serious content consumption and creation.

I think Kindle’s and Nooks are great text consumption devices, but I’m thinking we want more even in the consumption mode: audio, videos, and animation for instance, but I really think the real opportunity is interactivity, and a monochrome screen just isn’t going to cut it.   Yes, the dedicated readers are better for reading, but I want a more general purpose device: simulations/games, for example.

Then there’s content creation. I want kids writing, diagramming, drawing, editing video and audio, and more.   That more would be actual model building.   I think that makes sense for a device bigger than a PDA, e.g. tablet-sized.

And I think the touchscreen approach is right for for much of what I’d like kids to do. Works for me, too ;). (Ok, a keyboard’s good for text entry, so maybe that’s ‘available’).

Those are conceptual arguments, here’s my pragmatic situation.   I never bought an e-reader; I’ve liked print just fine.   I did not intend to get an iPad; I’m ‘frugal’ (read: cheap), and I don’t spend money typically until I understand the full value proposition. However, between the announcement of the iPad and it’s actual availability, I realized that it had significant roles separate from my iPhone (which I already had).   And those were content creation, not consumption (tho’ I’ve now taken advantage of those, too).   I haven’t traveled with a laptop since I got my iPad, and am seriously glad I spent the money.

[Slight alteration] I’ve also blogged about how not allowing cross-platform development tools (read: Scratch, perhaps a HyperCard or clone) really is a bad move on Apple’s part for the education community.   Their recent loosening of the rules gives some hope, but the lack of ability to import code is still a problem. Maybe HTML 5 will give us a browser-delivery environment.

It’s not that new, but still I think puts a slightly different spin on the situation than my last post. I welcome any thoughts you have!

At the end of a conversation the other day, the topic turned to technologies in schools.   I was asked what I thought about the iPad in schools, and as I thought it through, I saw both pluses and minuses.

Let me, of course, make this generic to tablets and PDAs. And not smartphones, as there are problems with phones in schools that I don’t want to get into.   Having a wifi PDA (e.g. iPod Touch) is good enough for the issues at hand.

Now, many years ago Elliott Soloway decided that the form-factor of a laptop was not appropriate for kids, and created what ended up being the GoKnow suite of PDA apps.   Back then he was working on Palm devices and then Windows PDAs.   I think he had that right.

However, now that there are tablets, I think they have advantages for schools too.   They’re not too big (by and large), and are better for both content consumption and creation than laptops or even netbooks (though an additional keyboard might be handy).

As I thought more about it, I’d like the tablet in class (and maybe at home), but I’d like a PDA when kids hit the road.   Elliot had sensor-equipped PDAs being used to collect river pH measurements. There a host of reasons to get kids out gathering data and working on projects, including problem-based and service-learning type projects.   Having the devices available for accessing answers to questions when on field trips or taking notes also makes sense.

You can have these as separate devices, synching them into a common database, but I was reminded of an early proposal for a processor ‘block’ that could plug into a variety of devices, and your files would remain on the ‘block’.   You could do it with a U3 system, I suppose, but I really want that processor with it for consistency of OS, etc.   For example, running an OS (WebOS, iOS, Android, etc) on a PDA (w/ camera, etc), and then the PDA could be plugged into a tablet and the tablet would take over as the I/O channel.   Some may not get it, but I think it’s preferable to having to sync two devices.

This, I think, would provide the portability for field moves with screen real estate for creation and communication.   Of course the device would be equipped with a camera, microphone, wifi, bluetooth, etc, and a suite of software, but I really think that one platform isn’t enough, and two is too many, and a PDA is too small for creation and consumption and a tablet too small for fieldwork, so what you want is a hybrid hardware platform. Could there be a happy medium, perhaps, but I’m not sold.   What do you think?