Mobile learning offers another dimension of exploration. We have devices with us all the time, we’re always connected and learning happens continuously. Ubiquitous access meets ubiquitous learning!
Some specific areas of interest explored include:
- Personality. In both exploration and experimentation, I put together a “micro-book” titled “The Introverts Guide to Mobile Learning.” Using iBooks as an authoring tool, the micro-book is an attempt to put together a small, consumable view on how we can consider personality when it comes to mobile learning. I’m sharing the PDF version via this site to simplify distribution. The iBooks version is more interactive, but all of the necessary links are within the PDF to support consumption of the majority of content.
- Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs, Bots, Chatbots): We’ve all had interactions with Siri, Alexa or similar. Having the ability to easily access and use an intelligent assistant is straight out of a sci-fi future. It is exciting to think about having such support for learning with a PDA that can easily be accesses, is intelligent, recognizes you (and your moods) and is always getting smarter.
- Rusty: I like to give bots names – to give them an identity. Rusty was a bot built to support learning about bots and privacy. Yes, this is a bit recursive – a bot to teach about bots – but it provided a useful avenue for building a bot. In this case, Rusty was built using IBM Watson and then deployed to iOS, Android and Slack. I put together a couple of videos showing Rusty in action and also some details on building him. I’d like to see more bots put together in corporate settings – especially leveraging machine learning for ongoing development and enhancement for the bot. Ideally this evolves from more than just a simple “help desk” model to something closer to an always available coach.
- Phil: This script: “Futurecast Personality Energy and Learning with Phil” (audio) builds on the Introverts Guide and my experiences with Rusty to imagine a bot that is aware of personality and helps to guide the learner to manage their energy levels throughout the day. A case aspect of introversion vs. extroversion is how each personality type gains and expends energy. This bot personality, activities, energy levels and is always learning and improving. I didn’t get a chance to build Phil – but I expect that the future in this case is not so far off.
- Security and Architecture: This small post discusses a framework for data protection and security. While Digital Learning is not just about technology, it certainly does leverage technology. And if we’re going to use technology that is highly personal and ubiquitous, we better be sure that we are taking care of user data. Data protection and security cannot be overlooked. If the learning ecosystem lacks security – trust in the ecosystem will disappear.
- Constraints: This small post discuss the idea of batch sizes and how the constraints provided by mobile devices may guide us toward smaller batch sizes (i.e. smaller pieces of learning content). Small and simple are key goals to keep in mind as we think about how to scale.