CellCast Solution Wins Gold Brandon Hall Award!

We were pleased to learn yesterday that OnPoint's CellCast Solution won the Gold Award from Brandon Hall for 2009 in the "Best Advance in Technology for Mobile Learning Authoring" category. Congratulations to our entire team for all their continuing efforts and outstanding achievements and kudos to all of the other winners across every competed category; we all work/exist in an industry where innovation is alive and well! 

Click HERE to see the entire list of 2009 Excellence in Learning Technology winners and their awarded prizes.

Read More

Dissecting Saba's New "Anywhere" Product for Mobile Learning

I happened upon a tweet last week while trolling my Twitter in-box that heralded a product announcement from Saba for their new "Saba Anywhere" offering which they described as follows: "Saba Anywhere is a mobile platform that lets people take their learning on the go." The press release continues with details on how flexible, capable and secure the new offering is so I read on with great interest. Instinctively, I reasoned another one of the "Big 10" LMS/Talent Management platform players was finally joining the mLearning party introducing their own well conceived and highly polished solution for the creation, packaging, delivery and tracking on mobile-friendly content to on-the-go workers via their omnipresent smartphone devices. If you're thinking this announcement/product branding meant the same thing, a little further investigation would prove you wrong too!  The marketing post outlines the following:

At first blush, this all sounds great!  But peeling back the onion a bit reveals the plain fact the supported mobile device all this "mobile-accessible" content is delivered to and consumed on is a standard Windows-based laptop or desktop computer. Thump!

Okay, that's interesting news on a few levels but the likelihood today's typical enterprise mobile employee/executive traveling around for business doesn't have an enterprise smartphone in their pocket/purse in addition to their enterprise laptop computer taking up space and adding heft in their briefcase is increasingly slim-to-none. Furthermore, a recent Mobile Workforce Report conducted by iPass on "Employee Device Preference" revealed that 63% of respondents preferred to whip out their smartphone for work-related tasks versus cranking up their laptop computer to conduct those same biz chores. If booting my laptop takes me 2+ minutes and acquiring a suitable wireless signal takes another 1-2 minutes in some appropriate hot spot, by the time I'm finally ready to get down to learning something I may have already missed the window of opportunity. Contrast that experience/hardship to using your at-the-ready smartphone that enables true "Anywhere" and anytime learning and we begin to question the potential of this strategy.  Not to mention that smartphone-based learning can happen whether I'm seated patiently in a lobby waiting to see a customer/prospect, or standing in a queue ordering lunch or smashed into a commuter train heading home after a long day -- try opening your laptop and taking your course in those environments!  


Agreed, the desktop/laptop course experience is richer (more Flashy) today versus the mobile experience and considered by many to be easier to view and consume compared to some mobile content, but true engagement and learning are not only possible but highly achievable on the current crop of next generation mobile devices like the BlackBerry, Apple iPhone/iPod touch and iPad, Google Android and Windows Mobile smartphones that now proliferate across the enterprise. Yesterday's desktop/laptop-optimized content may need to be rethought and re-factored as well but the set of available tools and methods to accomplish these tasks improves daily...the rate of change is accelerating like nothing I've witnessed before and the mobile device (READ: smartphone) will soon be the dominate platform for content delivery (and training delivery) globally.  

Much of what the Saba team gleaned in designing and bringing their new Anywhere offer to market can likely serve as foundational knowledge for the next anticipated step in their evolution towards true mobile learning. They can even re-purpose their adopted product tag line too when that time comes ("...Complete your training anywhere, anytime, regardless of network connectivity.").

Read More

CellCast Widget for iPad - The Video!

I took the opportunity to do a live screen capture of our new CellCast Widget for Apple iPad today to better illustrate the key features and functionality we've included in our first release supporting Apple's revolutionary new tablet device. This presentation, captured using Camtasia for Mac and converted to an MP4/Flash format for easier web viewing, demonstrates a series of the core features that allow our customers and partners to plan, create, deploy and track a variety of learning content and performance support materials to their mobile workforce using the widest array of mobile devices possible.

In the video, we demonstrate how a combination of iPad-compatible M4V videos, MP3 podcasts, animated PowerPoint presentations and other mobile friendly web content are pushed down to a secure learning framework and enriched with tracked assessments, targeted messaging/notifications and mobile-accessible social networking platforms.  All user interactions including who/what/when/where/how long are fully tracked and managed in a centralized database which can also be fully integrated with an organization's Learning Management System or Sales Force Automation system as needed.

If you've already got an iPad and you're interested in evaluating the new Widget yourself, please drop me a line at rgadd @ onpointlearning.com and we'll set you up with a demo account to play with all the new features and functionality.

CLICK HERE to launch the demonstration video.

Read More

CellCast Widget for iPad Released!

It's officially iPad Launch Day and we're pleased to announce our CellCast Widget for iPad was included in the inaugural 1,000 applications shipped in support of Apple's revolutionary new tablet computing device. Better yet, we're the only sanctioned iPad application listed whenever a iTunes user searches on "mobile learning" or "m-learning" in the iTune App Store -- a situation that's certainly going to change in the coming days though as others jump on board the new device train.

I just spent the week over in Texas previewing our new iPad application (along with the rest of our CellCast Solution platform) to several different partners, customers and prospects who all anticipate the positive market reaction the iPad will have on the mlearning market.  Everyone concurs these iPad devices should slot into the mobile learning device market quite nicely and, as one of the mobile device market analysts stated earlier this week, should only cannibalize market share from Apple's existing iPod touch media player while replacing those sales with higher price/higher margin iPad sales!

If you're lucky enough to already have your new iPad, we invite you to go to the App Store and download a free copy of our Widget and try it out.  Send me an email to rgadd @onpointlearning.com and I'll even setup a private account for you and assign several more content examples for you to play around with too.

In my next post, I'll provide a guided video walk through of our iPad application and the many features we're excited about. 

Read More

Publishing our CellCast Widget for iPad

The rush has been on this week as our development team worked to design a new version of our CellCast Widget specifically for Apple's upcoming and much anticipated iPad tablet device. And while we've had a CellCast Widget for iPhone and iPod touch devices for about a year a half, the new iPad platform drove some interesting changes and helped us evolve our offering for this next generation mobile learning device.

When Steve Jobs first introduced the  iPad back in late January, he stated that existing Apple iPhone apps and games would work fine on the new platform and, generally speaking, he was correct. In fact, we only had to modify a select number of functions and application calls to ensure our standard widget would work on the new devices when they shipped.  

However, to really take advantage of some new features and a vastly improved 1024x768 display, we decided a full rewrite was in order so we've spent much of the last 2 weeks re-factoring our original iPhone code base to create a new iPad-specific version of CellCast.  Apple provided a strong "call to action" about a week ago with an email to all developers stating we had until Saturday, March 27th to submit our iPad applications -- developed using the latest Xcode v3.2 beta 5 development environment -- and that if things checked out, our application would be included as part of the official iTunes App Store offering for iPad on April 3rd, the official launch day!  Keep in mind we're developing something and checking everything using only Apple's simulator (not a real device) so our first chance to see it working for real will also be on/after launch day!  We have a high level of confidence it will work/run without issue given Apple's Xcode simulators are very strong and have always been quite representative of the way our apps actually perform in real life.

So, attached below are the first public glimpses of our CellCast Widget for iPad which will hopefully ship next Saturday with the first round of devices to hit the street. We are excited about how our partners and customers will use their new iPad devices to delivery on-the-go training to their enterprise workers too!  Thanks to our friends at 50 Lessons and Element K for use of their awesome mobile-friendly content from our CellCast Mobile Library that was included in the demo submission to Apple.

Never a dull day in the world of mobile learning!

Figure 1 (below) - Main Interface with menu block and customer-specific branding

Figure 2 - Assignment Listing on left with selection detail in main area.

Figure 3 - High Resolution M4V video playback of assignment selection.

Figure 4 - Course module (developed in Dreamweaver) with Javascipt interactions.

Figure 5 - Post content assessment using CellCast testing engine.

Read More

E-Learning Vendors Attempt to Morph Mobile

The sign should read:

"Don't touch! Wet Paint!"

I had a good chuckle today after receiving my latest emailed copy of the eLearning Guild's eLearningInsider update. A linked feature story in the update that immediately caught my eye was titled "Best Practices for Creating Mobile Learning Content" and clicking that link shuttled me over to SumTotal's corporate web site where I registered to download their latest mobile-related white paper.  Ahh, the anticipation of discovering what "the big boys" are up to felt close at hand. After supplying my details, I was rewarded with the delivery of not so much a white paper as a 3-page pamphlet outlining a few simple (and somewhat helpful) "tips" for someone approaching their first mobile learning effort.

Come on, SumTotal! Calling this effort a white paper is truly a stretch and a marketing ploy that falls far short of its intended mark. In fact, it is a "white paper" only in the sense that it's three total pages include a cover that's mostly white space balanced by a final page with only 7 total lines of text (and some disclaimers/addresses) along with a single page of information sandwiched in-between providing marginal tangible value and including several incorrect statements (e.g., the stated supported video formats for smartphones are simply wrong to anyone who is actually delivering video files to Apple iPhones and Windows Mobile devices). And I'm willing to "put up or shut up" too -- click here to see what a real white paper on mobile learning looks like!

On the positive front, this action proves again that most of the "tier one" LMS vendors are all show and little go when it comes to mobile learning. Having ourselves invested more than 7 years and millions of dollars to design, develop and perfect our own scalable, enterprise-grade solutions for mobile delivery, its amusing on one hand to witness how completley far behind the big guys are on the mlearning front while also disconcerting to see how they continue to provide mis/disinformation to their customers, prospects and the broader market. The "tier ones" may not be good at mlearning (yet), but that doesn't mean mobile isn't already 100% viable and practical if approached correctly using proven tools, methods and vendors. 

After many years of building awareness and false starts, 2010 will finally prove to be the year mobile learning gains wide market acceptance and proves its potential to organizations of all sizes.  We fully expect each of the Top 20 elearning vendors to start talking up their "don't touch/wet paint" solutions and experiences in mobile to try and keep their customers from selecting mature and viable mobile solutions from those select vendors who have stayed focused on the promise/potential of mobile.  For now, I'll sit back and continue to chuckle at whatever the tier ones convince themselves is relevant.

Read More

Content Types - Level 6: Rich Media

Level 6: Rich Media

NOTE: This is part 7 of 7 and the conclusion of this continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

Level 6 is the final stage of the mlearning content model comprising rich-media formats such as podcasts or video, targeted firmly at the smartphone/netbook audience.  Content in either of these formats has the ability to engage, convey and capture a mobile user, and therefore the higher the production value the greater the impact the content will have.

Level 6 Content Types

The CellCast Solution supports media-based content in podcast audio and video formats.  In both cases, the CellCast Server provides a simplified Content Creation Wizard that assists in uploading and creating needed media-based content.  Typically the Content Creation Team will either source the appropriate media file, or create it from scratch using a variety of industry standard tools such as Audacity for podcasts or Apple’s Final Cut Pro for videos.  The CellCast Server then automatically processes each uploaded source file using the CellCast Transcoding Engine – an included feature/service that encodes and generates compatible media files for each of the defined mobile devices within an enterprise. This server-based process yields professional-level content conversation results by any content creator.  Typical Use Cases for Level 6 include:

Additional Considerations

Level 6 rich media content is probably the most challenging mlearning content format with respect to cost and performance.  As the file sizes are typically larger (1MB or more) even when optimized for mobile device playback, the Training team needs to weigh the cost vs. benefit of deploying over their carrier network. If the data package for end users is limited then Levels 1-5 may provide a more cost effective deployment strategy. However, in cases where capacity on your smartphone plan is measured in gigabytes per month, rich media video/audio content are an ideal choice.

Another factor to consider with Level 6 content formats is download performance vs. network availability. If the user does not have access to a 3G or Wi-Fi network, then limiting the video/audio duration and size needs to be a prime consideration when preparing your mlearning rollout strategy.

Finally, with a little foresight and planning, much of the visual, rich media-oriented learning content you plan to produce to meet Level 6 requirements can easily (and automatically) be re-factored for delivery to alternative mobile learning-capable devices, including standard media/MP3 players or Apple iPods® (audio or video), using traditional content delivery methods like real simple syndication/RSS and Apple’s iTunes® application.

Summary – Level 6

Rich media content (videos, podcasts, Flash clips on supported devices) are the most engaging and entertaining form of mobile-friendly content, but each introduces higher levels of content authoring and delivery complexity for any Training team. That said, larger organizations may already have libraries of existing rich media content that can be converted to mobile-friendly content using standard utilities found within the CellCast Server platform. Several popular 3rd party tools are available across every desktop platform to assist authors in capturing and producing high quality media content.  Training time for SMEs and administrators varies depending upon their experience and knowledge of media content production and deployment, but averages 2 to 4 days. Finally, the coordination and delivery for Level 6 assignments represent the most complex mlearning scenarios, but these challenges are largely mitigated using standard features found within the CellCast Server platform.

Read More