I have had a quiet & relaxing holiday. A couple of good tramps in Kahurangi National Park & on the West Coast (despite the desultory weather) have recharged my mental arsenal. Will be away next week on Stewart Island for another tramp. It should give me time to sort out my plans for 2007.
Meanwhile, I have been catching up with relevant mlearning / elearning type articles and events. Primary of these would be the launch of Apples iPhone this week. The launch has been extensively reported in our local media including a front page photo in the Press (Christchurch paper) & on the TV news. However, what has brought the launch into focus has been the reaction of my daughter (& her friends). The iPhone is already on their list of ‘things to save up for’. They will have at least a year as the iPhone is not scheduled to arrive in NZ until early 2008. They are already enamoured by the overall coolness of the iPhone’s design (thin & slim is in), its colour / feel (although none of them have held one yet) & the ‘funky’ interface (no buttons, touch screen & brilliant display).
Apple is making a calculated move into the mobile computing market because that is one of the futures of computing. Steve Jobs reckons on getting at least 1% of the mobile phone market (currently 2 billion mobile phones have been sold) and Apple shares have gone up since the iPhone’s launch. It all bodes well for mlearning & provides some impetus for me to continue on our mlearning project.
The other area that is growing & becoming more mainstream is the rise and rise of Web 2.0 applications. Earlier on this week, there was a TV news article about car surfing. One of the reasons car surfing is growing is the number of people who take videos of themselves car surfing and then putting the videos up on youtube. I went out for a walk with a few friends who are ‘non techy’ & they wanted to know what youtube was. When I explained the concept & expounded on flickr & blogging etc. they were keen enough to discuss the topic at length. They had all come across the concept of blogging (its been in the news quite a bit) and the concept of social networking. This is another indicator that Web 2.0 applications are now becoming much more mainstream. Even though the majority of people are not using them, they are aware that blogs & the ability to put your photos on the web exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment