It has been roughly two months since I left Adobe and I could not be happier with every aspect of my life. People ask me all the time what I’m going to do next and for the most part I say I still don’t know exactly, and then in a more serious note, I say that things are becoming more clear every day. I am going through this great exploratory phase where I embrace every opportunity that comes my way. I’m learning a great deal of new things and meeting great, supportive people along the way.

From everything I’m doing and Blogging about, there are certain topics that I’m clearly more passionate about. One of those topics is this mobile thing we are witnessing.

There’s no denying that we are in the midst of a mobile revolution that requires new ways of thinking about developing content and about meeting the ever-growing expectations we have as mobile users. This revolution needs new leaders and innovators, as well as new tools (or at least highly customized versions of existing ones). Mobile in general also requires new user experiences that in my opinion are very different from their desktop counterparts.

This mobile revolution is drastically changing everything we do today, from the way we shop and find the best deals; to how we consume the news and the way we communicate with people around the world. And yes, mobile is also changing the way we are thinking about Learning and developing the next generation of courses, most of us are calling this mobile learning or mLearning.

Just today a new statistic came out stating that less that 10% of the web today is mobile-ready and I would imagine that number drops dramatically when it comes to learning content being mobile-ready.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be an integral part of this revolution as it happens, and so today, I would like to share some new things I am doing as I ‘Blog the Mobile Learning Revolution’ in real time.

1) I’m officially changing the title of this Blog from Trends in eLearning and mLearning to The Mobile Learning Revolution Blog. It’s a subtle change but an important one nevertheless. The more I blog about different things, the more I realize that every time I talk about mobile, be it through statistics or Trends to watch, or educational apps I try, or even Interviews I do, I always get passionate about the topic. Furthermore, if I analyze what most of my Readers respond to and ReTweet the most, data shows that it’s these mobile topics that are at the top, so I think this new focus will resonate well with you, too.

2) I’m also launching a new Facebook page for my blog HERE. Over the weekend, I read this great article entitled 10 Social Media Tips for Bloggers and tip #2, specifically got me excited about launching a Facebook page for my Blog. I’ve been thinking about how to best use Facebook and then I read this article and thought what a great idea. My plan isn’t however to just broadcast my blog posts on Facebook, but rather to use the threaded conversations feature, to share and test thoughts and ideas that are trending for me. This is something I do on Twitter and when I see that something picks up steam because it’s compelling, I then head over to my blog for a more thorough post. What can you do now? You can navigate to this page and ‘Like’ it and let’s start collaborating on different ideas around mobile learning.

3) Finally, I’m also launching a new Blog, specifically for sharing my experience as an Evangelist. One thing I have learned as I slowly write my eBook on what I learned at Adobe and why companies need passionate Evangelists in the new Social Web, is that the best way to stay on track and motivated about writing a book is through a dedicated Blog. Having said that, I started a new Blog here: http://www.techevangelistblog.com/ At the time of this writing, I’m still working on the first post, but if you are interested in what I have to say about being an Evangelist, Social Media and Blogging, you can subscribe now.

So there you have it, from now on when someone asks me what I am doing, I will answer with “I’m Blogging the Mobile Learning Revolution as it happens.”

I hope you join me.

Over the weekend, I was looking at the entries submitted to the Adobe Captivate HTML5 Contest, hosted by my former Adobe colleagues. The basic idea behind this contest is that Adobe Captivate 5.5 users create a project and then use the HTML5 Converter for Adobe Captivate to convert it into HTML5. The entry with the most votes wins.

First, I’d like to say that I applaud the idea around this contest because it adds some much-needed engagement to the Captivate community, however I wonder if Adobe may be sending the wrong message to users who are interested in mobile, regarding what mobile learning (mLearning) is.

In other words, while I think HTML5 will play a big role in how we develop and deploy learning and how our learners will consume those learning experiences on mobile, I think mLearning should be a lot more than just ‘converting’ desktop eLearning to HTML5.

Mobile experiences are radically different from traditional desktop experiences and thus it’s important to approach the transition to mLearning thinking that our mLearners are used to and expect different things.

Mobile requires a different strategy, a different way of thinking about content, navigation and how to best utilize the device’s real estate and built-in mobile features like gps, camera, accelerometer, etc.

I think the onus is on eLearning Tools Vendors (i.e. Articulate, Adobe, Lectora, TechSmith, Zebra Apps, etc) to really think about this and make sure the next generation of their tools provides new and innovating ways of truly harnessing the power of mobile learning.

Luckily for all of us in eLearning, we won’t the first industry to make this transition to mobile and because many other industry have gone through, or are going through this same process, there’s a lot to learn from their experiences. I’ve been bookmarking and taking lots of notes recently on great examples I find of companies that are approaching this transition, and it’s my plan to share some lesson that I feel are important for us to emulate. Please stay tuned.

Until then, I leave you with a lively discussion I had on Twitter on this very subject and the replies I received from some of my followers who are also very excited about mobile learning. Let me know what you think about this by leaving a comment below:

I a recent post, I shared 6 Trends in Rapid eLearning Tools to watch in 2012 and one of those trends I listed was the need for rapid eLearning tools vendors to have a presence on mobile app stores. In fact I think every company that has traditionally made desktop software, needs to come out with a mobile App that complements their desktop software before someone else does.

Something else I have been thinking and blogging about recently is that we are getting closer to a time when we will think ‘mobile-first’ when developing content, but then I thought why not start thinking about developing right on Tablets, such as the iPad. After all, these powerful devices are not longer just about content-consumption but some recent apps have shown we can now do amazing things around creating content, too.

Since my focus is on vendors who develop eLearning tools, almost every day I’m going to the Apple App store on my iPad looking for apps from these companies.

As far as I can tell, only TechSmith, the makers of Camtasia, has a growing presence on the iPad App store with some pretty neat apps that have impressed me quite a bit.

Right now, if you type TechSmith in the App store search box, you get two apps, namely FastTrack and ScreenChomp:

FastTrack is a nice app that enables you to learn about Camtasia by watching how-to videos. The app includes a transcript of the tutorial, plus the ability for you to add feedback about any of the videos you watch. FastTrack features a different view whether you turn the iPad horizontally or vertically. For some reason the audio isn’t working for me, but I’m not exactly sure if this is just me, or is this also the case for other users. I like this app a lot and I give TechSmith kudos for putting it together and posting it on the App store for their customers.

An app about tutorials is the easiest way for other eLearning vendors to have a quick presence on the app store.

The second app however is what excites me the most and to me it provides a sneak peek into what mLearning development apps could look like going forward.

Screenchomp is a simple yet amazing little app that allows you to record anything by using the included tools on a blank canvas, or by loading a photo from your photo library and then using several markup tools, such as the highlighter and the pencil tool. You can use the built-in microphone on the iPad to narrate the process.

Think Camtasia or Captivate but right on the iPad.

Once you are happy with your recording, you can either log in to Facebook and share the recording with your friends, or upload it to the TechSmith cloud and then share it via Twitter or email. I personally would have preferred Twitter over Facebook as the easy way to share screencasts, but that’s just me.

Here’s a short screencast I did for this post: http://www.screenchomp.com/t/HWAUpxmX

I will admit the app needs work, for example it needs more tools, like an arrow tool, a simple text tool but this is a great start and I’m sure the folks at TechSmith are already working on this.

My point is that not too long from now, we will be recording and editing app simulations like we do today on the desktop using products like Adobe Captivate, the question is who is going to bring these mobile apps to us.

What do you think? How close are we to developing ‘mobile-first’ mLearning and do you think we will soon be developing mobile learning right on Tablets like the iPad? Leave a comment.

mLearning,Screencasting,iPad,mobile,Camtasia

This morning, I had the opportunity to be on #eLearnChat, a video Podcast hosted by my good friend Rick Zanotti and Jean Franzblau. The one hour interview felt more like 20 minutes to me, as I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Here are some topics we covered and my honest thoughts on how I feel about them:

• My departure from Adobe and my thoughts on the new corporate world
• My Thoughts on Adobe Captivate and the challenges ahead
• How I see the upcoming Articulate Storyline product impacting the Captivate business, and changing things in eLearning
• Why I’m excited about Apple iBooks Author beyond Apple’s walled-garden and EULA
• Mobile Learning and Tablets
• Twitter, TweetDeck and the other Social networks
• Why I feel Content Curation is important
• Apple iOS vs Android and Flipboard
• And much more

I have embedded the video here. If you have any questions, thoughts or any other topic you wish we could have covered, please leave a comment below.

via eLearnChat 44: RJ Jacquez Unleashed!!! from RELATECORP on Vimeo.

All signs continue to point to a near future where mobile devices will surpass desktop PCs for how we connect to the Internet, shop, and most other things, including learning. I believe we are getting very close to a ‘mobile-first’ approach to developing content and I can’t wait to see we can come up as a community when it comes to mobile learning design.

Having said that, here are three very compelling stats that all bode well for mobile learning:

• Apple recently announced that they had sold 15.4 million iPads. Amazing numbers. In my experience in talking to eLearning developers, they all have one thing when it comes to talking about mobile devices and eLearning, they all tell me their learners want to access their eLearning on the iPad. You can read more about these numbers here.

Apple surpassed Hewlett-Packard in PC sales and revenue. Apple sold 15.4 million iPads and 5.2 million Macs in its first quarter. That’s more than 20 million personal computing devices. HP’s PC sales for the fourth quarter were 14.7 million, according to Gartner.

via Apple Sold More iPads Than HP Sold PCs – John Paczkowski – News – AllThingsD.