Put those podcasts to work on your PDA!

I am part of the team creating several different mobile learning tools. We make:

• mobile content
• tools to help teachers make their own mobile content
• platforms to help people use SMS and MMS as educational resources

as well as spending much of our time exploring the pedagogies around mobile learning.

That was a rather long buildup to a very specific bit of news. One of our tools, Mylearning author, creates interactive content for mobile devices. But we never made enough use of audio. Sure we included sound effects and voice overs, but audio was always an extra.

I guess we were still struggling to shake off the prejudices of "e-learning on your PC".

Today, I am very pleased to announce that our author also lets you add in audio files. Not audio plus text, or audio as a background, but pure, podcast-style audio files.

We have had learners recording their own pep-talks, to remind them of things they learned before.

We have had recordings of lessons, or public talks

We have a few online e-learning courses that include podcast summaries.

All of these can now be more easily included into the mix when you make your mobile content.

Cool huh?

With huge thanks to Chris - the man who made our very first flash-based mobile content all those years ago, and who is still working magic in 2006 - this time with audios.