USDLA The Intersection of Real-time Learning Tools with Learning Management Systems by Alan Greenberg from Wainhouse Research. Snippets of ideas and wisdom.

What’s a mashup? Media types, code, data sources, etc. from different sources.

Which of these do you use? vc, web conferencing, whiteboards, wikis/collaborative tools, LMS/CMS, other…

“videoconferencing was the hot technology in the 90s”

A crashup can be the blue screen of death or cars crashing together.

Alan has a great chart with the learning activity down the left and the tool (LMS, VC, streaming, web conferencing, interaction enables). Then whether or not that learning activity is possible in that tool.

Technology creates latency – it’s between you and the learners. You want that to diminish.

The crashup/mashup is happening because you need all those learning activities whenever you need them, not just in this tool or that tool.

A unified collaboration environment has a nice mix of synchronous and asynchronous tools. IM / Web conferencing / interactive writing tools / recording / streaming / classroom vc / web vc / virtual worlds / collaboration portals / audio threads / LMS CMS etc. All these things come together in one environment with infrastructure services.

Interestingly, he asked the audience if they have tried GoogleDocs. 15 people raised their hands. Then he asked, who is using it still? Only 3 raised their hands. I wonder how many people actually seriously collaborate for their work on documents with other people. And of those, how many stayed with GoogleDocs?

How can you take your content and make it for mobile devices? All these tools will converge onto mobile devices. The iPhone broke down the display tech and usability barriers for using mobile devices.

Comments from the audience about Second Life “I don’t have time for my first life”

mlearning – mobile learning. Convergence of educational, consumer, prosumer, enterprise markets based on the Smartphone.

The barrier of broadband and devices is melting away. I wonder about rural areas that don’t have the services offered with the cell phone plans that the more urban areas have. Is that barrier also melting away?

A report referred to: The Distance Education and eLearning Landscape

The silos of videoconference vs. online tools are breaking down. The VC has to connect to the LMS. Greenberg’s prediction: LMS platforms will include IM, presence and VC as a matter of course by 2012. This is interesting because it’s the best of both worlds – VC for the human interactivity and online for the reflection.

Context sensitivity is going to be more important – moods, polls, ways to know the context of the learner.

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From an audience member – in Afghanistan, everyone has a phone but they can’t afford food. They aren’t learning on a computer, they can learn on a mobile phone.

The session ended with Q&A and sharing from the audience.