9-top-learning-technology-media-links-weekly-digest-22 Need to quench your thirst for the latest in learning, technology and media links further? You can dig into our previous lists here

1. From Classroom To Online, Think “Transform” not “Transfer” Converting an existing classroom course to an online format can be a tricky, time-consuming undertaking. There are some aspects of the classroom program which are most successful and some which fail. Read on to learn some specific re-design tips that work.
2. Globalizing E-learning For International Audiences Research shows that learners learn best in their native language and familiar cultural context, by respecting local languages and cultures at every level. In today’s flat world, it is imperative that learning professionals modify the business process and design all courses as if they were going global. Learn about the processes involved in globalizing.
3. Game-Based Learning: Hype Vs. Reality It’s a known fact that computer and video games have the potential to make significant learning impact. However its potential is currently not being realized – at least not at a meaningful scale. Know if game-based learning is a hype or reality, or both.
4. 4 Ways Mobile Tech Is Improving Education With Internet in the palm of our hands, educators are looking at mobile as the next big tool for schools. Here are 4 ways in which mobile devices are helping improve education.
5. Web vs. Native Mobile App? Forrester Says Do Both Research firm Forrester takes a deeper look at the mobile Web versus application debate. And here’s a rather startling conclusion: there is no debate at all. So what is the future of the mobile Internet? Are native applications going to be the dominant form of digital interaction? Will new and developing browser technologies like HTML5 make the mobile Web preferable to apps? Know it all here.
6. Augmented Reality and Web 3.0 After Web 2.0 there have been speculations about Web 3.0 and what it would be. Furthermore, what about Web 3.0 and Augmented Reality? What potential does it hold? Read it all here.
7. QR Code Classroom Implementation Guide QR Codes in the Classroom are valuable for mainly 3 reasons. Read further to explore these reasons.
8. Smartphones Remaking the Way Men Work and Live Smartphones are remaking the lives of their male users, according to a new survey from Spike TV. The study found that men are unabashedly in love with their smartphones, a borderline addictive relationship that has empowered and also distracted men in both small and profound ways.
9. Apps In Emerging Markets: One Size Doesn’t Fit All The massive growth in mobile usage in Latin America is opening up a lucrative new market for developers. But simply rehashing an app built for another region won’t cut the mustard, according to BlueVia.

The post 9 Top Learning, Technology & Media Links: Weekly Digest –22 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Which of these technology changes will impact training the most?

I think mobile applications are the game changer for training.
Let me explain why I think that way.

Why Mobile?

We now produce more information than ever, the shelf life of knowledge and skills is reducing, and the new generation workforce thinks about information storage and access very differently – after all they have had a whole decade of interaction with web  1.0 + 2.0. With the availability of just-in-time access to information through mobile computing devices (including tablets) the notion of knowledge (sometimes a.k.a. information) and its use gets separated. For me, it shifts the focus from ‘Training’ to ‘Performance Support’.

In my interactions with various business owners & training managers I’ve found a performance support initiative gets the management nod more easily as compared to a training initiative. Evidently, the management believes the advantage of a performance support initiative is immediate, and promises better ROI. This is where a strategy that includes mobile fits in very well. It’s a fantastic always carried on the person, and is now as powerful as a PC/Mac from just a couple of years ago. It can be adapted to become your performance support agent at work.

Why Apps?

Mobile apps are big business. It’s projected that apps will become a bigger market than CDs by 2012. It is only natural for it to exert an influence on the learning & training market as well. Mashable reports that 1 in 4 adults in US now use mobile apps. Today there are hundreds of apps for education available on the Apple Appstore – here’s a big list of iPhone apps for education.

Apps are a great medium for delivering quality learning content as they:

–  Provide a smooth consistent user experience
–  Load only data as compared to a web site or web app that loads UI too
–  Can reach targeted audience in a secure manner
–  Allow creation of a dedicated channel for access and retrieval (pull) of    information/knowledge just when needed
–  Allow networking, collaboration and user generated content easier by being available at the point of creative impulse (as Tomi Ahonen puts it)
–  Can store user specific information and act as a personal learning agent (at least to some extent)

Examples of Workplace Learning (Performance Support) Apps

Apps that help the workforce perform better or safer are already out in the market. Soon we will see more custom apps hitting the Appstore/Market. These would be tailored to suit a particular audience and will have particular objectives. Here are some examples available on the Appstore:

HVAC Toolkit Ultimate – load calculation, duct sizer, etc for onsite plumbers.

Foreman’s Mate – a utility for the workers in construction industry.

Electrician’s Helper takes the hassle out of looking us electrical codes and doing complex calculations for installations.

Earlier I had written about healthcare industry being at the forefront of the mobile learning innovation and that post contains with some good examples too.

Where will Apps Fit in Training?

I think apps will eventually create a unique position in the training methods of corporates. Given the unique advantages, they may soon become trusted assistants of every employee in the workplace. They will eventually replace a lot of varied tools, manuals, charts, technical support, calculators, and the like, perhaps making the mobile computing and communication device the only tool one needs.

When you have apps to support almost everything your workforce does, you need to take a serious relook at your whole training strategy.

I see a whole new world of training coming around with mobile apps as the agents of change.

Do you agree?

The post Will Mobile Apps Change Training Forever? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

You’ll certainly want to ask some questions before investing a rapid prototyping tool for mobile applications. Every tool has its own features – weaknesses and strengths.  Explore these fully before making the (not large) investment.

• Is the tool easy-to-use? Or does it have a steep learning curve? Would users need training, and of what sort before becoming proficient with the tool?
  Can it be adapted across a variety of design projects?
• Are there reusable bits, like common controls, widgets, stencils, templates?
• What sort of output does it give? Can you share that output easily? How can comments and changes be logged in the design?
• Are there any collaboration features?
• What about the cost? Is it a one-time purchase or a yearly license requiring renewal? Is it a single user license or multi-user?

While answering these questions can definitely point you in the direction of the right tool, you’ll want to involve all stakeholders in the discussion and decisions on the final purchase. While the design team will be the primary users, it’ll need support from all quarters to be up and functioning smoothly. Be clear in setting expectations, both from the prototyping process and the prototype itself. You don’t want to get into an endless cycle of changes to the prototype. As you go along some way with using the tool and have built some prototypes consciously reuse component to reduce the time spent on prototyping. Know where you are going with the prototype – that it’s a prototype and not the actual solution. You may find that some of the expectations on fidelity are unnecessary.

Don’t include imaginary elements and controls in your prototype that may be impossible to recreate on the actual target mobile platform. An example – the use of multitouch, when the device touch capabilities do not offer support for it. While this may seem really obvious, speak to developers before prototyping; better still, involve them, their developer’s view will offer insight that might just lead to a more realistic prototype.

Prototypes are reviewed by multiple stakeholders, be clear about what review is expected, and what is acceptable and what is not. Try to get stakeholders doing reviews to be objective rather than subjective. It’s easy to say ‘I don’t like the text style for the title’, difficult to say ‘why and offer an alternative’.

Lastly, a prototype doesn’t really need to include every bell and whistle the application might possibly have. Keep in mind you don’t have to prototype everything.

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Here’s a link to some interesting tools you might consider using when prototyping for the iPhone or iPod Touch – http://www.henkwijnholds.com/sketching-prototyping-tools-iphone-apps/sketching/

The post Rapid Prototyping For Mobile Learning Applications – III first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

When considering prototyping, think of the aspects of the applications that you’d typically want to model. To my mind there are three:

1. Visual – how the application will look –an application’s look and feel is important, and is the one aspect that clients and stakeholders notice. This can also be a drawback as attention is focused around the visual design of the app, and the functional and content aspects may get side-tracked. In the initial iterations of the design cycle, the fidelity need not be pixel perfect. The prototype need only show a sense of proportion and layout. Refine the visual aspect with each successive iteration – graphics, branding and style.
2. Functional – how the application will behave – determine if you need static screens, or will the prototype be interactive and respond to user activity. It makes sense to start iterations with static screens and add interactions that model functions in subsequent iterations. Adding interaction helps trying out the usability of the prototype amongst the designers and members of the target group.
3. Content – what content will it render – content displayed in a prototype often draws debate. Using dummy text and graphic indicators (squigglies?) instead of actual content can prevent this debate in the initial iterations. However, as the prototype refines over iterations, gradually change the dummy with real content. Start with larger elements like Titles, control labels, and then gradually add more and more detail with subsequent iterations. It can be quite hard to evaluate a design without real content in it.

The quickest way to start prototyping is to simply use paper and pen/pencil. Sketching is something everyone can do, and while it’s low fidelity you don’t really need to be experienced with prototyping tools or have lots of experience to use it effectively. This is THE tool to use early in the design process.  Paper prototyping is especially apt to use when brainstorming or creating quick mock-ups to share with stakeholders. Paper prototypes are perhaps at the lowest on the range of prototype fidelity, they are static and don’t truly represent content.

There are various tools on the market that can be leveraged for rapid prototyping, the one that comes to mind right away is Visio for Windows or OmniGraffle for the Mac. Using tools like this improves fidelity substantially – leading to medium level fidelity. You can create wireframe using these tools that are quite refined. Using the tools is time consuming but that is compensated by the fidelity of the output. Medium fidelity prototyping is ideal for modeling interaction, simply by linking screens created using the tools together; while this is not a great representation of functionality, it works when strapped for time. (As we almost always are). Medium fidelity prototypes also give more than an inkling of what the user experience will be like, and if it needs to be modified to the optimum.

High-fidelity prototypes are the most realistic in the way they model the visual, functional and content aspects of the mobile application. Earlier creating high-fidelity simulations involved programming, today there are tools that allow users to drag and drop widgets, controls and rendering schemes into a functional prototype. These can simulate the functions of the final product, right down to the feature and database interaction. High-fidelity prototypes are useful when high visual and functional fidelity is necessary. Unfortunately, very little of the prototype contains code that can be used for the development of the actual application.

There is no single correct approach to rapid prototyping mobile applications. At Upside, we like to start with pen/paper sketches, and then move on to higher fidelity prototypes. It also depends to some extent on the complexity of the application and how much fidelity the stakeholders require for clarity. Sometimes, clients aren’t interested much in the visual aspects of an application but are more concerned about functionality and content. At times, the clients are very interested in the visual aspects as it includes corporate branding and content; these clients tend to ignore the functional aspect of the application. Simply, choose your prototyping method with care; it will certainly affect the outcome of your design and development efforts.

In my next post in this series, I’ll cover briefly what to consider when choosing a tool and will provide some tips to help your rapid prototyping efforts for mobile applications.

The post Rapid Prototyping For Mobile Learning Applications – II first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

As learning designers being able to model the learning experience is very important, and creating a prototype is ideal to test out basic design ideas. This was easy when we made eLearning, the limited range of interactions and content presentation allowed for prototypes to be modeled quite easily. Mobile applications include myriad ways to present features, offer a variety of interaction types and combinations of those, making it very different.

What we needed was ‘something’ that let us model the features and functions of a mobile application. A prototype that could be created quickly and would let us discover various application states and problems that may result because of the way we design the application. Some considerations before jumping into ‘rapid prototyping’ an application:

1. What part of your application really needs prototyping? – We tend to use prototyping when we want to model new features or functionality, are trying out a new design approach, or new technology. Basically, prototype when you feel the user experience is going to differ or depart significantly from those that your applications typically offer.
2. How much to prototype? – We use the pareto principle when considering ‘how much’ to prototype. We ensure to prototype the 20% features/functions that will be used 80% of the time. This does not mean that ignore the remaining 80%, but the focus is well defined.
3. Iterate repeatedly but finitely – it’s almost impossible to get a prototype with an acceptable user experience in the first step. At the outset, we like to decide the number of iterations we’ll put the prototype through. More importantly we stop at the number we’ve decided. You can continue iterating prototype improvements till the world ends, but the process wouldn’t. Put a number to it and stop there. We’ve found three iterations is plenty, and it’s the most customers will stand too.
4. Determine the fidelity of your prototype – How closely the prototype models the final solution is the ‘fidelity’ of the prototype. The fidelity required for a mobile application prototype would vary depending on the features/functions and user experience sought.

In the next post in this series, I’ll be discussing levels of fidelity and determining which level works for your mobile application design project.

The post Rapid Prototyping for Mobile Learning Applications – I first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.