It feels like the first time...

I hope you don't have that song stuck in your head all day now ;-) C'mon you know the words, sing it!!!

Okay, so maybe it only FEELS like I'm starting over. I guess its been about 4 weeks since my last post and I've been itchin' to get back at it...sort of. Its weird. The longer I let it go, the harder it has been to get back to it. Its certainly not for a lack of things to talk about. It's not that I don't WANT too, so what the heck?

I feel like a n00b all over again: Scared to write, and don't know what to say. There is a TON of stuff that has blown through the elearning blogosphere over the weeks of my absense. Maybe my trouble is that there is too much to say?

Life Changes...so does the Blog
So, for those of you have not heard, I am the latest addition to The eLearning Guild...no not just a member, an employee! So, I find myself between jobs like my good friend Mark.
I'm psyched to be in an organization with GREAT people that work closely with other GREAT people in the elearning industry. I'm so psyched I can hardly stand it!!! I can't wait to see everyone at the recently announced DevLearn 2007.

Sir Ken Robinson is my absolute favorite TEDS podcast on my ipod. I hope I get a chance to meet him in person.

If you are getting this post via RSS you probably haven't seen the new blog look. I just updated to one of bloggers NEW templates that comes with widgets and other stuff. It's not great, but I thought starting fresh in so many ways should be signaled on the blog as well.

Oh yeah, and I'm the proud owner of a new Mac Book Pro.

Life just doesn't get much better: new killer job, new killer laptop...same ol' blog.

Vista cries uncle! Crashing demo site & Crashed voice recognition Presentation

I just scanned the e-clippings and I'm howling at this post.

You still just THINKING about buying a Mac?

wait...it gets SO much better...

Check out this Microsoft Demo of voice recognition...via YouTube.

Go ahead and head on over to your nearest Mac Store and start doing some cool stuff.

iPhone Impacts Mobile eLearning

I tried getting a post up about the iPhone on the day of the keynote but since I have switched to the NEW version of blogger all of my typical posting apps have been messed up. So, I've discovered my new work-arounds and now I'm able to post again. I was hoping the new version of blogger would convince me to NOT switch to Wordpress, but its not looking good for blogger.

Anyways! The iPhone! Its beautiful! I love it! Mark Oehlert and I having already discussed saving our pennies for the big June release date.

So what does this mean for Mobile Learning? It certainly changes the technology landscape for what's possible...no question. Corporations have already commited to the Blackberry, and many of those same companies are testing or preparing to implement iPods for their employees as learning devices. So, for the same price you can now get a device that can handle both...AND THEN SOME!

Will corporations make the switch? I highly doubt it. PCs are simply too entrenched in the large corporate cultures. But the rest of us should take a serious look...small business, and even midsize companies. One device to replace them all. If the others are smart phones then the iPhone is the genius phone. You will actually be able to sync EVERYTHING from your Mac and be able to access it on the iPhone. Not in some crippled version of a browser, or mail app, but the same beautiful full featured apps that Mac users are familiar with on their desktops and laptops. I'm hating my Treo650 more and more each day.

So you say, "Brent, give me an example"? Okay, I was listening to a podcast version of the keynote this morning and the selective voicemail feature struck me. Wow! So, its already cool that you use a graphical interface to access your voicemail msgs...in any order. That's cool enough, but what else does that mean. Hey, why not use the voicemail system in the same way that we have intended to us podcasts for elearning?

Bingo! Instant podcasts, but created using a technology that everyone already knows how to use. There aren't THAT many "silver learners" out there that are still uncomfortable with voicemail? So now, you create a voicemail that becomes an artifact on the system no different from an email, a wiki page, an mp3, or avi, file. Perhaps we can drag 'n' drop those email files into garage band and make them part of a podcast, or mobile learning module. Collaborative audio recordings from translators in different languages: You send a script to them in Language A, they call you back and read the script in your voice mail using Language B, and you pull the voicemail file into your editing/authoring app. Many possibilities here.

I hope to have Judy Brown, the queen of mobile learning, on an upcoming podcast to discuss this in more detail. Or maybe I should wait until I have one in my hands...hmmm. Not sure.