2010 – the year of ebooks and mlearning?
When some intergalactic equivalent of the United Nations finally takes pity on us and enforces regime change on humanity, they will probably cite our distracting obsession with the latest gadgets as inability to manage our own affairs. The coverage of what was launched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week and what wasn’t but still stole the headlines will be held up as irrefutable evidence that we were beyond help.
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Well maybe but the trend toward smartphones and portable devices has major implications for how people see content relevance, accessibility and functionality and this will create expectations for portable learning. So for publishers and ebook / mlearning folk there was quite a bit of good news, albeit indirect. The iPhone and the Tyranny of the App have such an iconic stranglehold on forays into mlearning that many a publishing and other organisation was sitting tight until the Nexus One arrived. It’s not apparently that there isn’t anything better around than the iPhone. Rather Google is the only organisation with similar rain-making ability and the market needs rounding out.
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In some ways it doesn’t matter if Apple launches an iTablet or that Microsoft’s new toy is distinctly underwhelming. (The fact that its launch was entrusted to a pudgy guy with a whiney voice and a line in rumpled sweaters i.e. Steve Balmer, doesn’t help). It may not even matter that some are predicting that netbooks are doomed.
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The breakthrough is the increasing number of mobile multimedia devices which can handle ebooks – audiobooks are ebooks too, remember. Subject to actual availability (many of the smart phones are quite expensive and / or have slow rollouts due to the approach of signing exclusive agreements country by country ) and a fair wind from other enablers such as mobile broadband tariffs, there will be a market need for portable learning content sooner or later. And the more devices, the merrier as it reduces the liklihood of propietary formats.
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So 2010 may not be the year when mlearning takes off but it should be the year when we develop a much clearer idea of the art of the possible.
