Comments on: Apple About to Unleash Shock & Awe on eLearning?

By: Cisco WebEx for iPhone | eQuixotic

Cisco WebEx for iPhone | eQuixotic — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:18:56 +0000

[...] The iPhone is quickly becoming the ultimate do-it-all pocketable wonder device – including eLearning and virtual collaboration. [...]

By: Judging a Book By Its Cover | eQuixotic

Judging a Book By Its Cover | eQuixotic — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:06:55 +0000

[...] stand by my claim that the iPhone will revolutionize mobile eLearning. But not if your mobile eLearning looks anything like Car Finder (or Car finder, [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:59:05 +0000

Cathy, I agree that the lack of Flash support on the iPhone seems like a fatal flaw. However, my understanding is Flash for mobile devices is not terribly robust and is a processor (hence battery) killer. A Flash-based eLearning course on an iPhone (or Blackberry, or anything else) wouldn’t be of much value if it kills your battery in 30 minutes.

Is this really a technical issue? Or is Apple simply looking for something to substitute for Flash for strategic reasons? We shall see.

The bottom line is if iPhone sales take off, we will see either Flash on the iPhone or a suitable replacement in the near future:

http://www.macworld.com/article/134065/2008/06/sprout.html

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:50:28 +0000

It’s great to hear that off-the-shelf educational stuff is coming, and I love my iPhone, too. However, I think the iPhone will still be limited as a corporate elearning tool until it supports Flash. As development for regular mobile phones has shown, corporations are reluctant to spend extra time and trouble to create a phone-readable version of content, especially when they’re locked in to an LMS and think that the only solution to any problem is a Flash-based course.

Maybe a vendor will adapt their Flash-producing tool to simultaneously produce content for the iPhone. Or maybe LMS users will rebel and rediscover simpler approaches like HTML or our old pal Hypercard. If you can do it in HTML, you can do it on an iPhone.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:03:22 +0000

Scott, I assume they’re using Apple’s SDK to create these as there are no other authoring tools available at this point (as far as I know).

As for ScreenFlow-type video content, I say that type of media is best integrated into a framework that allows the addition of interaction and hyperlinking. For example, I could insert the video into an Articulate-based course, which would allow me to incorporate other interactive elements as well.

P.S. HyperCard was awesome!

By: Scott Skibell

Scott Skibell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:28:55 +0000

What authoring tools are they using to develop these?

Since your favorite tool and a slew of others, are all Flash based, which authoring tools are being used to create this new content? Is it just html?

ScreenFlow, as you’ve pointed out, is a great tool but it’s all video. How do we add interactivity and hyperlinking to these solutions?

Okay, I’ll show my age here, but this sort of begs for a HyperCard tool. Does anyone remember that?