Tag: mlearning

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iPads and Surface and Nexus…oh my!

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

With the announcement of the new Windows Surface tablet coming out later in 2012, the new Nexus tablet coming out as well, and the rumors of an iPad mini possibly coming out in the fall, it’s made me think about what this all means in terms of “what device would be best?” especially for m-learning and other mobile applications.

First, I need to clarify that when it comes to technological devices, I’m generally torn. I’m all for having variety and such– it’s what makes market competition possible, but at the same time, each thing has its benefits and place, and it’s like comparing apples to broccoli. It’s no secret that I love my iPad. I got it almost a year ago after owning my iPhone for a couple of years. At the time, my husband retorted, “What do you need that for? It’s just a toy, if anything.” Or IS IT?

When I was doing my graduate studies, all I could think about what how I could use it for my own studying purposes, and I did several projects centered around the idea of using iPads for flipped classrooms or even classroom use, and based much of my experiences of what mobile learning is between my iPad and iPhone. I love the flexibility of the devices, and how lean and mean they are in how they operate.  Like many students out there with tablet devices, I read articles and e-books, I wrote up assignments and papers, did my research– did most everything I could with my iPad. The downside? Well, I didn’t have 4G on my iPad, so sometimes having web access was limited, but it wasn’t anything that bad that couldn’t wait until I did have connectivity, or until I got home and could use my laptop or the wi-fi at home. (There are 3G and 4G versions available–I just didn’t want to shell out the extra cash for that ability.) And until I had my wireless keyboard, doing all those papers and assignments could get a little rough.

At the same time, while I have an iPhone and an iPad, I can’t say that I’ve been totally sold on the idea of getting an iMac of some flavor. I love my PC laptops. While the last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIc about a million years ago (be quiet! I was a kid back then–really!), my entire IT existence both professionally and personally has always been on a PC. Yes, I’ve experienced the blue screen of death several times, and had numerous crashes over the years, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed unless the hard drive was dying. Until I got my iPad, my laptop went with me on vacation or whenever I was away from home. Even writing these blog posts is easier on my laptop than using my WordPress app on my iPad. Ninety-eight percent of my online degree was done on my PC laptop– the other 2% was on my iPad. I’ve owned 3 laptops in the last ten years, and had at least two or three PC desktops for years before that. So yes, I’m a devout Microsoft geek as well.

So when I heard that Microsoft had finally come out with a tablet they were going to release, I had to find out more. I thought that it would be helpful to understand what the Microsoft Surface tablet was all about, and was hoping that it would work well in the future for single-sourcing initiatives. I felt like the Microsoft presentation and reviews I was seeing online was just mirrors and smoke, and after three iPads having been in the market now, why a Microsoft tablet now? Was it worth me getting one, as if I were to abandon my iPad for…heaven forbid…something else?

On a recent weekend jaunt to a local mall that had both an Apple store AND a new Microsoft store, I actually asked a Microsoft store employee about the new Microsoft Surface machines, and he said it was rather simple to explain, actually. The new MS Surface tablet was Microsoft’s answer to having their own hardware like a Samsung Galaxy or other PC-type tablet, running on a Windows 8 OS platform similar to the Windows Metro platform used on their phones. The guy had his personal PC tablet loaded up with Windows 8 on it, and proceeded to show me how it worked. In a nutshell, it worked exactly like my laptop, just a few more bells and whistles for the interface. And this, as I was told, would be pretty similar to what my experience would be like with a Surface machine, but with a handy keyboard in the cover. So anything that I was running on my laptop–full versions of Adobe Tech Comm Suite or Creative Cloud, Flare, PC games, Microsoft Office– as long as it all fit on the flash drive inside, or ran off a Flash card or external drive device, you could use it on Surface.

But wait…if Microsoft Surface is essentially just a flatter, touch screen PC version of my laptop, did this make it the iPad killer that everyone (especially Microsoft) has been claiming it to be? At first, I thought it could be. I was thinking that Surface was what I was looking for over a long period of time before my iPad. Sure, there have been other tablet computers out there, but they were always out of my price range and weren’t as powerful as my regular PC laptop. So, a former me that was shopping for a tablet would have loved that. But now, in my mind, I don’t think it’s the “iPad killer”. It just sounded–to me–like it was just a flatter, touch screen version of my laptop, with less storage room and possibly less power. Would it replace a laptop for me? Well, maybe not me, but for the average person who is not a power user, it might be a good alternative for someone else who is less tech savvy. Imagine if all the full features of your laptop were in a convenient package like a tablet, so it’d be easier to bring with you–it would work well.

At first, that sounds great. Just in mobile learning alone, that could be monumental. And that might work better for many people who want the convenience of a tablet with all the power (but less storage space) as a laptop. For some, it’ll be just what they need. But for me, as I’ve thought about it, and debated whether to get one in the future, I decided it wasn’t worth it. First of all, for the same amount of money that this Surface machine is going to cost (if it’s financially on par with iPads, as Microsoft claims it will be)–what’s the point of getting a tablet with little storage space and not as much power when you can get something more powerful–more storage space and higher processor speed–in laptop form for the same price? There doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage in having one, unless you are a person who wants to make the switch, and you don’t do much on your laptop to begin with. Yes, there are some operational advantages, but they are minor. The convenience of a tablet? Oh yeah, that’s definitely a plus, but it seems so late in the game. And in the end…it’s still a PC. You can get this now on a Samsung Galaxy Tab or other PC-based tablet now, for the most part. Maybe it’ll be a slightly ramped up OS, but then again iOS6 will probably be coming out around the same time (more or less), so it’ll be interesting to see who wins the latest Apple vs. Microsoft battle.

But just as everyone is focusing on the usual heavyweights battling it out, Google has been a contender for a while–much more than Microsoft has been. Google has recently announced that it was releasing its new device, Nexus 7, running on the latest Android OS called “JellyBean.” Reports I’ve read is that since this is a full OS, not an abbreviated version like on a Nook or Kindle Fire, it runs more smoothly and robustly. It allows for more Google features like Google Now and Google Play to be used more fully, for example. This leads me to believe that while this is a smaller tablet in size than an iPad or Surface, due to it’s great affordable price starting at $199 (as compared to a “bottom of the barrel” iPad at $499 for the new iPad, $399 for the same in an iPad), it’s definitely a dark horse contenter to come in and steal some thunder. In the end, though, it’s not really in the same category as an iPad or Surface machine. Let me explain.

The way I see it, there are two categories of tablets. The first category is one in which the tablets are almost PC replacements, but not quite. They have the most flexibility due to their ability to do anything from word processing and reports, graphic and image editing, games, video, email, web browsing, etc.  They are generally a much leaner version of a PC, not only physically in the hardware, but also in its capabilities. iPads have this down to a science now, whereas Surface will be just a slimmed down physical version of what most people have already.

The other category includes the small tablets. These would be your Nook, Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 and if it actually comes out, iPad Mini. While it has great perfunctory use, it’s not meant to be anything but a basic device to provide basic services. I’ve never heard of doing presentations off of a Nook, or a report being written on a Kindle Fire.

Are there uses in education and business for any of these kinds of tablets? Sure there are. Because of their enormous flexibility and functionality, it’s no surprise that iPads have been dominant in both education and business, and will continue to be dominant. Will the Surface upset that dominance? It might, only because so many are used to using a PC that the learning curve (not that there’s a huge one in learning how to use an iPad) would not have to be contended with, and some might like that full PC functionality over a streamlined one like an iPad. I see iPad and Surface being more productive than the smaller tablets.

Does this mean that smaller tablets don’t have a place in education or business? No, not at all. It can still be used for reading, communication, video and basic web searches– that might be all someone needs.

But from my own personal experience as a student as well as a professional, I don’t see how the larger tablets could lose. The question will be whether educators or business people find the streamlined functionality of an iPad more beneficial or the PC-similarity of the Surface to be more productive in the long run. Hmm…I think I found the topic of my PhD thesis (if I ever do it in the near future)!

What do you think? Let me know the comments below.

(PS–Microsoft or Google– if you want me to try these devices out once they are out, I’m glad to give them a go. 😉 )

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What do learners using m-learning want–what they really, really want?

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Today, RJ Jacquez posted the following question on his Facebook account:

“If you asked ‘Learners’ on mobile what they wanted in #mLearning would they know? I’m not convinced they would.”

My first thought was that Spice Girls song–“So tell me what you want, what you really, really, want….” 😉

When I thought about it more seriously, I deduced that I don’t think learners would know what they want either. (Or in the words of the same Spice Girls song, the response of the average learner would be “I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ah….”)

Like most people involved in UX and e-learning/m-learning strategy, I’ve been taught the mindset of how to anticipate the moves of the average user. Must like what I talked about in my Adobe webinar, Transition from Content Consumer to Content Creator: Dual Viewpoints, to truly be an effective technical communicator–no matter the specialization–one has to look at things both from the end user perspective as well as the creator perspective.  So, in addressing RJ’s question, unless someone is a professional student, I don’t think the average person–adult or child–thinks about how they learn, or what method works best or them, mobile or not. The average learner doesn’t know what they want or need until they don’t have a feature or do have a feature, for the most part.

I find that I think about such things because not only do I have non-verbal learning disabilities that made me more aware of what worked and what didn’t, but I also grew up having an educator dad whose hobby was reading up on learning styles and that kind of subject matter.  And just for the record, despite recent reports that said that learning styles are a bunch of hooey, from personal experience as well as being the mother of a learning disabled child, I am a firm believer in learning styles and being aware of trying to make adaptive or flexible learning possible. My son and I are visual/sensory learners. We both have sensory issues, but for a person to describe an object verbally versus presenting the object in front of me to see and touch, the latter experience will always stick with me more. (I do know other learning disabled people where the opposite situation is true– they have no problem with verbal descriptions, but have a hard time with reading or retaining information from a demonstration.) Heck, it’s been a while since I’ve said this, but I used to claim that most of what I learned was from TV, not from other sources! (I watched a LOT of TV as a kid, including educational stuff, but plenty of pop culture that has served me well over time.)

That said, it helps that there are those of us that are on top of learning presentations, and trying to find ways to make learning accessible, comprehensible, and enjoyable–an “ACE” product (I should copyright that acronym now!). Learning policies and procedures, for example, especially on a topic that perhaps one might not have anything to do with, should be done in a way that makes it “ACE,” and e-learning and m-learning specialists can work on ways to facilitate learning using new technology for better information retention.  I had that sort of experience myself. At my last consulting position at a global financial firm, I was required to take P&P courses, even though they were about financial transactions in banking, and I worked on an intranet site that had a) nothing to do with the banking end of the business, and b) I had nothing to do with any financial transactions whatsoever. But because there was online training that could be tracked, and the courses were relatively short, I got the basic foundations mastered to be compliant, and I could move on from there. I’ll admit that I even remember parts of it as well, because of the interactivity in the online course.

User strategists–whether they work in mobile worlds or not–are specialists who know from training and professional experience what works and what doesn’t work on a website, from both the front-end of a website as well as some of the back-end as well. Simple things, like evaluating typography, color schemes, and content are all part of that person’s job. The average end-user doesn’t really think about what he or she is looking at on a website that deeply. We’ve all encountered good websites and bad websites, and we put up with bad websites out of necessity sometimes, but it’s a UX specialist’s job to rid the world of as much bad design and as many bad experiences as possible, anticipating how end-users would use a website. The average Joe will understand sometimes that something isn’t good, but might not always know what it is that doesn’t work well. The average person doesn’t think about functionality of a site until it’s not functional. The average person doesn’t understand the complexities of what e-learning and m-learning specialists are trying to do to help learners attain the main goal, because it’s the end goal which is what’s most important, namely that information retention learned through a course–any course through any medium–can be used thoughtfully and effectively.  Pull any guy or gal off the street, and they wouldn’t know the first thing about it. They’ve never thought about it. It is like asking people why they like a certain ice cream flavor–they just do. (But what they don’t know is that ice cream manufacturers do a lot of testing on what are popular flavors and tastes in different areas before putting their products out on the market.) The average person just goes about his or her business, and when it comes time to be learning something, whatever means is put in front of that person is how he or she will learn it.

So, does that mean that we shouldn’t put so much time and thought into the process? Heck no! We should continue to put a LOT of time and thought into the learning process! Mobile is a big mover and shaker with this, because it is making information so accessible–even more than conventional paper books or any other media out there right now, short of in-person, one-to-one teaching. More smartphones are bought on a daily basis globally, and the tablet market is starting to catch up with that.  Even in areas like third world countries, people have smartphones. What a fantastic opportunity to reach out to help others learn and help themselves and work globally instead of in isolation! But how is that done? It’s done through careful thought about how the information is disseminated in a way that the information can be retained and used. It needs to be ACE.  We need to spend the time to make it the best learning experience possible, even if the average learner has no clue as to what they want in a learning experience. In the end, if learners are able to use the information, understand the information, and recall the learning experience as a positive one, isn’t that the measure of what they want from learning? If they don’t get anything positive out of the learning experience, then they learn they don’t want THAT.

Being a newly minted graduate school graduate who did her entire degree online, I know that my fellow students and I would quickly be able to evaluate what worked and didn’t in various courses. For example, presenting all the assignments, reading documents and forum links in the course description in Moodle instead of utilizing the weekly scheduler was BAD for learners. Having experiences both inside and outside of Moodle to do our assignments were good for learners. It really varied from course to course, and some professors learned from end-of-the-semester feedback, and others did not.  Each course and each learning experience has different requirements. It is up to those who are developing the curriculum and helping to disseminate the curriculum to decide what’s the best delivery method, especially because the learner usually doesn’t have a clue.

As m-learning and e-learning specialists–and this really applies to all technical communicators, it’s our job to provide the most concise, clear and cogent information we can to the public, and that means anticipating those average person thoughts or moves in using anything we create. To me, that’s what makes the job challenging and exciting. It’s especially fulfilling when you know that you’ve got it right, and the end user doesn’t know why it’s so great, but it just is.

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Whitepaper: The Future of Mobile Learning: Empowering Human Memory and Literacy

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Yes, it’s official. I’ve written a whitepaper.

Actually, I wrote it a while ago, but just haven’t gotten around to reformatting it. This is actually a paper that I wrote for one of my classes recently just before I graduated, and it was edited by Mayra Aixa Villar. When editing the paper at the time, it was she who suggested that I either present this somewhere, or post it as a whitepaper here on my blog. Since I’m not able to get to any professional meeting anytime soon, I’m taking the latter suggestion, and posting it here. So, before anything else, many thanks to my friend Mayra for not only editing and providing criticism on this paper, but for helping me feel confident to put my work out there. (Muchas gracias, mi amiga querida!)

That being said, this whitepaper is entitled, “The Future of Mobile Learning: Empowering Human Memory and Literacy.” The basic concept behind this is that many of the basic elements that humankind formulated to enable memorization and literacy throughout history are basic elements that are used and needed in formulating the foundations of creating effective m-learning.

I hope my readers like the paper and find it helpful. Please download, pass around, and/or refer to this page! (Oh, and if you’d like me to present this somewhere, let me know! ;-))

Whitepaper: The Future of Mobile Learning: Empowering Human Memory and Literacy

Edited to add July 2015: This paper has now been presented three times as of July 2015, at the 2014 e-learning 3.0 Conference at Drexel University, at the 2015 STC-PMC Conduit/Mid-Atlantic Technical Conference, and as a presentation/workshop at the 2015 IEEE ProComm.

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I’ve hit the “Big Time” in Tech Comm!: I’m an Adobe Webinar Presenter now

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

It’s been rather exciting in the last week or so for me. Much like being in Times Square where there are so many lights and sights and sounds that one can’t possible keep up with it all in one outing.

Last week was a big week for me. My much-publicized webinar that was hosted by Adobe was presented last week. It went by so fast that it almost feels like a dream! But now I have evidence that it really happened, as Adobe just published the recording of the webinar presentation on its Technical Communications Suite -OnDemand Seminar  website today.  I’d been waiting all this time to comment about it, but wanted to have the link first.

You can find my webinar–now an Adobe OnDemand seminar here:

Transition from Content Consumer to Content Creator: Dual Viewpoints.

(There is a sign in at the Adobe site, but it’s free.)

I need to thank Maxwell Hoffman for his guidance in the process. He gave me a lot of fantastic advice and things to think about, as well as some great editing of the drafts for the slideshow that accompanied the talk.  If you ever have the chance to work with him, you will definitely enjoy yourself and learn from a master.

I also need to thank Adobe and especially Parth Mukharjee for the opportunity of a lifetime to do this. It was Parth who read my posting here and contacted me through Twitter to make it all happen.  Thank you, Parth! Another Adobe “shout out” to Saibal Bhattacharjee as well for his assistance in this process. I have to say, all I did was use my voice, and to know that people at Adobe were listening, well, that feels rather great, and again, I appreciate this fantastic opportunity. I was already an Adobe fan, but this experience made my loyalty to the brand even deeper. I would readily welcome the opportunity to do another webinar or any other opportunities that Adobe might bring my way. 🙂

I also can’t forget to thank Mr. Mobile himself, RJ Jacquez, blogger of The m-Learning Revolution blog. In the past few months, this former Adobe evangelist has become my friend and a mentor, and I felt that before I took on this endeavor, I needed his blessing. (I didn’t really need his blessing, but it felt right to talk to him about it first.) He definitely supported me and encouraged me to take advantage of this webinar opportunity, and I’m glad he did. So, thanks RJ. You da man. 😉

And then there are the other friends from all walks of my tech comm life that attended–many thanks for your support as well!

I’m proud of the work I did for this presentation, and I hope that anyone who takes the time to listen and watch it will get something helpful out of it, and learn something. I will never claim to be an expert on anything, but as this entire experience has taught me, it is worth it to try new things out by doing and not be afraid to use your own voice now and then to express yourself. You never know what good things might happen. 😀

(Update 9/17/2015 – The links to the webinar have been updated as Adobe has archived the presentation’s location on their website.)

Posted in mobile, singular experience, Uncategorized

Project Tin Can: Good Communication or just a Tin Can Alley?

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Something I’ve been hearing about lately is something called, “Project Tin Can,” and it’s been a topic that seems to come back again and again in reference to m-learning. “Oh, I think great strides are being made with ‘Tin Can’,” or “I think ‘Tin Can’ might help to solve that problem in how it relates to m-learning,” I’d hear. I knew it has to do with how scoring and assessments are done, but what is it beyond that? Why should I even begin to pay attention to this?

Of course, I had to start doing some research, because if this is a hot topic that affects m-learning, I need to be on top of it, right?

First, if one doesn’t have an understanding of SCORM, one has to understand that first.  SCORM, for all you technical communicators that don’t know, is best explained by Rustici Software, which works very closely with the ADL who set these standards:

SCORM is a set of technical standards for e-learning software products. SCORM tells programmers how to write their code so that it can “play well” with other e-learning software. It is the de facto industry standard for e-learning interoperability. Specifically, SCORM governs how online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) communicate with each other. SCORM does not speak to instructional design or any other pedagogical concern, it is purely a technical standard…. The SCORM standard makes sure that all e-learning content and LMSs can work with each other, just like the DVD standard makes sure that all DVDs will play in all DVD players. If an LMS is SCORM conformant, it can play any content that is SCORM conformant, and any SCORM conformant content can play in any SCORM conformant LMS.  (See http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/ for more details)

Okay, so we have a set of standard for e-learning so that all content can work together congruently.

Great! So, why mess with what works?

Well, SCORM was developed about a decade or so ago, and while it’s worked great, a lot has changed in how educational content is delivered. A decade ago, we didn’t have smartphones in the same way that we do now, and tablets were still thought of as either pads of paper or slabs of slate that you wrote on with chalk. Mobile devices took off in the last few years much faster than anyone anticipated.  Obviously, if there are new means of technology, there are also new means of learning and delivering learning content to learners.  ADL, the SCORM proctors, realized that they need to stay ahead of the curve and start looking new solutions as mobile technology started to integrate into daily life.

While I had heard of Tin Can, it most recently was brought to my attention by Chad Udell of Float Learning. Float Learning is hot on the trail of TinCan, as evidenced by their May 2012 newsletter. Chad posted this link on Twitter to the following article by Reuben Tozman of the edCetra Training Blog: Instructional Design Tips for Tin Can, which talks about how Reuben and his company started to use Tin Can to start using methods that had their foundations in SCORM for a project, but ultimately needed the flexibility of Tin Can to evolve and progress with the project. I also looked at this article by Ben Clark of Rustici Software, as posted by Aaron Silvers of ADL on “What is Project Tin Can?“, which basically outlined what Tin Can was in broad terms, but it wasn’t completely clear to the “lay person” like me.

The most helpful thing in helping me understand what Tin Can is was to listen to episode #7 of “This Week in M-Learning” with RJ Jacquez and Rob Gadd, which can be found either on this website or on iTunes. They had Aaron Silvers and Jason Haag of ADL as guests on the show, and being that both Aaron and Jason are very much part of and deeply into the Tin Can project, they were excellent sources to consult.

The following are the notes that I took from the conversation (and hopefully I’m summarizing and paraphrasing most of the conversation correctly–let me know if I have any inaccuracies):

First and foremost, both SCORM and TinCan API (as it’s now known) are not standards, but rather they are specifications. SCORM is a widely adopted and used specification, but it’s still just a specification, not a standard. That’s an important distinction to make up front.

From there, it was explained in the podcast that Project Tin Can started around 2008, when ADL started looking at whitepapers and various resources to determine how they were going to develop new standards within SCORM to develop a platform that could move forward rather than a specification. With social media starting to have a stronger presence in the world, especially on mobile, something was needed that wasn’t being pre-defined or pre-described yet was something that SCORM tried to addressed. For example, how could people have ubiquitous access to online data? How could a self-sustaining, open source system be created in the process to build this new specification/platform/standard using as many ideas as possible to push the evolution of the system continually into the future?

Tin Can API–the end result thusfar of that research–is a major component of tracking of learning activity in next generation of SCORM.

RJ asked a major question in the podcast, which was, “What is the big deal of Tin Can?” It’s a valid question, after all. Aaron, Jason, and Rob (who is using Tin Can at his mobile technology firm) explained that Tin Can allows for mobile SCORM tracking to work optimally, both offline as well as online. The spec is meant to help level the playing field so that the content can plug into new platforms without losing content in transfer, giving it far more flexibility and ease to help mobile technology use SCORM specs.

It was noted that the need to be simpler was key for implementation; it needed to be more flexible than SCORM, so the concept behind Tin Can is not only to use it for e-learning and m-learning, but to provide deliverables of different code libraries that go beyond online learning. It was noted that Articulate Storyline is using a simpler version of Tin Can rather than SCORM, but it’s more capable in its deliverable, and Blackboard is using a form of it as well.

Another big point was that Tin Can API can be initiated with informal training and not start with an LMS (Learning Management System). The idea is that learning not initiated with an LMS would take credentials from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Google (I believe Pinterest and Klout have these kinds of sign-ins). The idea is that by obtaining credentials from such sources, the content from a Tin Can-compliant app would already knows who you are. In other words, if you are already authenticated through a single sign-in ID, the app will be able to collect activity and log it. It was noted that not a lot of overhead to search for content, and Tin Can would allows smaller companies to do it for their projects.

So, the burden is lighter than SCORM. An LMS isn’t needed but it can integrate with an LMS; it is not specified to be a stand-alone but rather could expand the capability of any enterprise system by taking data about what you are doing in one place and allow other systems can see how you are performing, making it interoperatable and ubiquitous. Tin Can is meant to find a common ground to help look at data in context, helping disparate systems talk to each other.

As Tin Can API is a spec in early stages, it’s evolving very quickly thanks to
the project being highly community-based, in which things change quickly in weeks and months instead of over years like SCORM. Between the huge community support–slightly like crowdsourcing through specific online social media and other outlets– and getting some smaller m-learning “boutique” firms jumping in now, Tin Can is gaining great momentum. Rustici Software has been doing the research for ADL; ADL proposed what they wanted from their requirements, and Rustici were fortunate to get the job of bringing it to fruition. Aaron and Jason explained that Rustici released workable prototype that was incomplete–but workable–implementing the concept of using an activity stream in the Tin Can spec. (An example of an activity stream that they gave was Facebook’s layout.) Even after the initial project was completed, Rustici continued to build it out and offered what they did as open source, and their continued work was adopted readily by the Tin Can community.

So–the podcast was pretty informative and yield some of the best information to understand.

It seems to me that Tin Can API is still something to continue to watch, whether one is an m-learning developer, or even as an instructional designer or m-learning specialist. My impression was that Tin Can is meant to eventually go beyond m-learning and e-learning, and extend into other mobile applications as mobile technology specifications and standards evolve. Single-sourcing is a huge issue in mobile technology, and it seems to be that this is a project that is very much centered on making that happen.

For more information on Tin Can API, I recommend visiting the links above, and give a visit to http://scorm.com/tincan/.