Meeker Report Can Help Your Mobile Learning Strategy

If you are still fighting with...sorry...encouraging your peers or your company's senior executives to embrace mobile learning, then more ammunition just arrived.  The Annual Meeker Report is here and it is filled with all the technology trends you need to support just about any eLearning strategy you can imagine. And that's all I'll say about it so you can just jump right in and see for yourself.  Tell me what you think! See you at mLearnCon.KPCB Internet Trends 2012

Cell Phone is 5th Most Ubiquitous Possession

I was trolling through G+ (I know, I know, who actually hangs out there, right?) and saw this post from noted Futurist and Senior Maverick at WIRED Magazine, Kevin Kelly. In the first paragraph he writes this...

The most ubiquitous technological possession on earth is the steel blade. Second is the cotton T-shirt. Nearly every forest person will have at least these two. Next is an aluminum pot and then a plastic bottle. After that it is a cell phone. Even the most remote farmer or lowliest street sweeper will pay for a cheap phone. These are not the most profound technologies - they would be television and antibiotics -- but the most common among humans.

I was a little stunned that the cell phone beat out pants, but maybe having pants puts me into another minority group.

I do trust Kevin Kelly's data and I assume this data is probably explained more deeply in his latest book, What Technology Wants! 


But even if the cell phone only hit the top ten, or top twenty even, that would still be a remarkable thing.  And something we as training and development professionals should not take lightly.  Yes, we are annoyed by walking and texting pedestrians, and scared by driving and texting teenagers, and struggling to adjust the social norms around these devices.  But one thing is certain, and that is your learners have cell phones, period! Embrace this knowledge and use them to your advantage.  Resistance is futile!

Make the best of this situation and commit to learning about how cell phones will work in your school, or corporate enterprise.  And learn how people are using them.  Use-cases matter...maybe even more than the technology.

Get all the information you need about mobile devices and learning at mLearnCon.  It's your future! Don't be left behind.

Putting the Dance in Your mLearnCon Attendance

The mLearnCon event is 3 weeks away.  If you are designing learning experiences in any way, you've got to take mobile devices seriously.  This is not a fad that will just go away if you keep demanding that your students check their devices at the door.  mLearning is something of a buzzword these days, but no matter what you call it mobile devices are everywhere and in everyone's hands...most with more than one mobile device.  Mobile is how we live our lives, it's how we access a global world of knowledge, and it's how business gets done.  

Ignoring mobile devices in training and education is as bad as being an entrepreneur and ignoring money.  

mLearnCon is in it's third year and continues to grow.  The most influential mobile training development experts will be there to answer all of your questions.  Since this is a niche conference you won't feel lost in the crowd.  It's hyper focused on one thing...MOBILE! 

If You're New to mLearning

If you are just getting started with mobile learning then mLearnCon is the place for you.  You could spend days, even weeks, searching the internet, reading reports (Mobile Report), and consuming other content in effort to get your mind around mobile.  But in the end you'd still have questions and you'd still lack the confidence to move forward.  Do your homework and then register for mLearnCon.  You'll want to sign up for a pre-conference workshop as well.  It's well worth the extra expense.  

Once you've registered you should start creating your strategy for attendance.  What? You don't create a conference strategy when you go to conferences? Well, If you are one those boondogglers, that's cool too. There's plenty of golfing near San Jose.  If you're serious about your conference attendance, then you really should be planning your attendance.  And this doesn't need to take long.  And it's NOT all about choosing which session to attend.

Step One

Step back and take a look at your current environment.  Define the context of your current job.  If you are a manager then you'll be thinking about your long term strategies and which projects are currently in progress or in the pipeline headed your way.  You should also understand your enterprise environment and your IT departments strategy.  You do not want to run off to a conference and find a beautiful hammer only to come home and discover there are no nails.  

If you are a designer or developer, these issues are important to you as well but you'll also want make a quick list of what tools you use, how you use them, and what you think you might be missing.  You've no doubt already encountered projects where you thought a mobile solution could be useful as part of the overall solution.  If your company has settled on a certain development tool then whether you like it or not, you should find a pre-conference workshop on that tool and a few sessions to help you hone those skills.  Remember, learning more about your tools is valuable. REALLY valuable in today's marketplace.  If you get the opportunity to learn more about your craft, do not squander it.

Step Two

Now that you have a solid picture of your own personal current environment, you should craft a few questions.  The questions you craft now will be what you use to refresh yourself when you've gone off track...and you will go off track.  The excitement of seeing colleagues, friends, keynote presentations, expo hall booths, etc., will no doubt begin to overwhelm you.  A short list of questions crafted BEFORE the event will act as your compas to get you back on track.  You don't need to define specifics on how these questions will get answered just yet...trust that the event and a little serendipity will offer the moments of enlightenment.  But if you don't have those questions on your mind you could very well miss the opportunities to gain the knowledge you need.

Step Three

NOW you're fully prepared to handle the detail work of reviewing the specifics about the event and how you will allocate your time.  This is when you'll engage with the conference mobile app.  If you don't have it then just use the web site. Review all of the sessions the first time by quickly scanning for the ones you think might answer your questions.  Don't think about it too much, just do a quick pass and see if anything jumps out at you.  Then do it again but look a little more closely, this time eliminating the ones that you are CERTAIN you will not need to attend.  Then do ANOTHER scan, this time dig a little deeper into the ones that are still remaining.

Make sure you have at least 2 or 3 selected in each time block.  Once you get to the event things happen fast and you don't have a lot of time for decision making.  You may find that one of your questions has been answered on day 1, and so that means a day 2 session is no longer necessary.  Having multiple sessions selected makes it easy to know exactly which one will fill in the gap.  It's no fun making decisions 5mins before sessions start, because you'll be frustrated going into what ever session you chose and every little thing will begin to annoy you.  I've experienced this many times and have heard the same from others.  Some times in those situations you get lucky and you wander into an amazing session...that's the serendipity that often occurs.  But the opposite can also occur and your state of mind going into a session that isn't working for you, is critical.  You don't want to be "that guy/gal" that starts nitpicking a well intentioned speaker because you were rolling the dice on their session.

Step Four

The greatest of plans often change in an instant.  This is where you need to put the DANCE in your attendance. Going with the flow works well if you are prepared to make adjustments without much thinking. The pre-planning takes most of the work out of decision making and allows you to feel more relaxed about the decisions you make.  When when need to adjust, it shouldn't be a big ordeal.  Just consult your session list first for alternatives.  If things have completely shifted and your session selections are no longer useful then refer to your questions and the quick environmental scan you did in in Step 1 and 2.  Because if things change THAT much on site, you will most definitely be flustered, so having your original image of the big picture will help you adjust and focus more quickly.  Remember, don't panic! Breathe. Dance.

The pre-planning may seem extreme, but I'm hoping you'll do something to prepare yourself for mLearnCon.  You cannot prepare for the changes in training and development without understanding mobile.  It's complicated.  It's different. It requires a new mindset around what training is and what it WILL be.  Moving your Powerpoint slides to mobile delivery services is NOT the solution.  Commit to being better than that.  Your learners deserve it and so do you.

Pinterest is Popular! Do We Need Learnist?

This will be a short post. If you haven't heard, there is a very cool new website called Pinterest.com that is all the rage with the ladies. The power of Pinterest is in its user interface design and the idea that images are the media content of choice. If you are just now hearing about it I would encourage you to check it out before reading on.

So today, I'm relaxing during my son's basketball practice, and catching up on my stories in my ZITE iPad app. After the first few stories I see this story titled Learnist is like Pinterest for Learning. Seriously?

I don't even need to look at Learnist to make my point and ask you this question. Why can we not use Pinterest as a learning tool? Why do we need to copy what's popular and then spin it as "...for learning"?

This probably wouldn't bother me so much if this was the first time this has happened. Sadly, this is amazingly common in the Internet world. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe what we really need is Loogle? Ya know, it's like google for learning!

Instructional Design and Storytelling, or Instructional Design IN Storytelling

I am a big fan of storytelling.  I'm also a big fan of movies.  I'm also a big fan of video.  Okay, so I'm not going to list all the different media types.  I do love them all.  Put into the hands of experts media can impact human beings in profound ways.

As we craft "instructionally sound" learning experiences aren't we really just acting as authors, and puppet masters, in the telling of a good story?  Even if we do sort of ruin the story with a multiple choice test at the end?

Before embarking on my own journey as an educational technologist I was a television news and commercial producer.  I often reflect on news production as a fabulous model for creating a training delivery channel.  The only problem is that as an instructional designer I would spend 6 weeks to 6 months crafting the story and in broadcast news we would tell many compelling stories every day crafting them a few hours before they were broadcast, or "delivered". I see very little difference between what "we" do and what other related creative industries do.  Well, let me clarify.  I see many differences, but I struggle to understand why we are so different.

Watch this short 5min video of Ken Burns talking about his craft.  Think about it and reflect on the work you do.



So, what did you hear? In 5 mins, what did you learn and what will you remember?

For me, it's that storytelling is manipulation.  This stuck with me because of my prior knowledge. My experience in TV/Video journalism makes this one statement ring true above all the others he made.  Pictures, words, music, interviews, animations, etc., can all be used to make the viewer feel, how YOU want them too.

The storyteller is the puppet master.  He manipulates what you see, and what you don't see. He is defining your experience. He decides ahead of time how you will feel, and what you will believe after experiencing the story.

The instructional designer is also the puppet master.  He manipulates what you see, and what you don't see.  He is defining your experience.  He decides ahead of time what...um...

...objectives will be tested for in the multiple choice quiz at the end.

I've heard from many thought leaders in the industry that videos are not educational, they are not instructionally sound, etc, etc.  I've never argued with them as being wrong, but something in my gut told me there is way more to this story.  It used to be that video was expensive, but that's not the case any more.  Some would say it's a valid media element but only if the instructional objectives require it as the best media choice. Anyone remember the Hannafin & Peck media selection guide?

I think the real discussion to be had is around the idea of storytelling.  The delivery medium we choose to tell that story is a different argument.  I don't see what we do as instructional designers as being all that different from what great story tellers do, yet we never talk about telling a great learning story.  We never talk about the art and craft of great storytellers as being influential on the work we do.

People laugh at the idea of comic books as an effective learning medium, but I would argue that instead of looking that comic book itself, the artwork, and the physical format, we should instead be studying the craft of telling a story in the comic form and understanding why it's compelling to so many.  That doesn't mean we should all go out and start hiring comic artists and creating printed comic books as learning manuals...although the thought is compelling.  I am simply saying that the authors, the puppet masters, of those stories have a unique perspective into the art of engaging readers through the craft of storytelling.  They have something to teach us.

The same goes for the theater, the opera, the movies, the novel, the song, and the campfire.  Why can't the elements of instructional design be embedded into a story?  Maybe they are already and we just don't use the same lexicon to describe the structure.  They say theme, we say objectives.  They say chapters, we say modules.  They say character development, we say scaffolding and laddering. Are the goals of storytellers really THAT different from instructional designers? At the very least instructional designers could certainly only get better at what they did if only they studied and applied some of the techniques used by master storytellers.

The organization of content into a compelling engaging story is exactly what we do...except for the compelling engaging story part.

What stories can you tell in your eLearning?