San Diego, CA (April 21, 2010) – This year’s mLearnCon organized by the eLearning guild, will focus on mobile eLearning concepts like elearning software, operating systems, authoring tools, content design and development. The event will be held in the San Diego Mariott Hotel and Marina from June 15 to 17, 2010. Participants can reserve rooms by calling (619) 234-1500.

Before the conference, there are optional certificate programs available for participants. There will be workshops on different topics like: creating learning apps for the iphone, making mLearning games and simulations, developing android app for learning, audio podcasting, and creating strategy for mLearning from scratch.

There will be exhibits of different products and services all focused on mobile learning technologies, the mLearnCon Marketplace Expo. Some of the suppliers that will be exhibiting their products like elearning software are Certpoint, float mobile learning, JTI, Inc Multilingual Learning Solutions, Mobi21, and Onpoint Digital.

There will be over 100 concurrently running seminar sessions that will be conducted throughout the event. Participants should check the schedule if they want to attend the seminars. Specific discussions about mobile learning are the main theme of the seminars.

The keynote speakers for the event include Tomi Ahonen, author of many industry books such as Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media and m-Profits. He also works as a consultant and considered as one of mobile technologies’ visionaries. His presentation will examine the end consumer’s use of the mobile phone and how phone applications can be utilized in learning. It will also include case studies from different places around the world, giving a concrete picture of how mobile technologies change the way people live.

Mimi Ito, also a keynote speaker, is a research scientist from the department of Informatics in the University of California. She will discuss how present user practices like SMS or texting, taking photos with camera phones and portable devices can be applied to the future of mobile learning.

On the final day of the convention, a panel will discuss the challenges and solutions of mobile learning. Brent Schlenker, Emerging Technologies Analyst from the eLearning Guild will be the panel moderator. The panelist are mLearnCon Advisory Board Members consisting of experts from the different sectors of the academics, corporate, and government.

The convention hopes to attract professionals from the academic sector, representatives from the IT industry, the senior executives, multimedia designers, trainers, project managers and basically, anyone searching for strategies and practices in mobile learning.

The registration fee is $1,495. Guild members are entitled to 20% discount. If participants register before April 30, a discount of $200 will be deducted from the fee. Members of non profit organizations and government employees will receive special discount of 25% while employees of academic institutions will get 50% discount.

There are so many things I want to learn nowadays. Thank goodness for elearning solutions. I have been an employee for nearly all my working life. Everyday I go to work, work for hours and then go home. I don’t have that much time to do anything else, and my work well feels like a dead end job.

At times I even feel like Gregor Samsa. I won’t be surprised if I wake up one day as a giant vermin. What would it matter? Even if I wake up as a cockroach, I will probably still be worrying about my job and about money. My whole family is counting on me. My father fell ill and is also too old anyway to work. My mother does not know a darn thing about work. And my sister, well, she is growing up into a lady but she takes care of so many things. She’s the one cleaning the house, preparing meals, taking care of my parents. She also has school to worry about. She can’t work. But I, a banker with a boss I really detest. The very person from whom our family owes a large amount of money that will never seem to get paid in full. That’s how I got the job anyway. When my father got sick, we had to borrow money from the man. That’s why my boss thinks he’s entitled to order me around and keep pilling a ton of work on my desk. I don’t even have time to think about love or marriage because I can’t let my family down. I am really feeling all burnt out from this kind of life.

Then I thought about boosting my job skills so I can find work in another company and a different position because clearly my boss seems to want to keep me right were I am so that he will have his personal work slave. I took some elearning courses on software and management. It was one of the best things I ever did. I could take elearning because first of all, it was very inexpensive. And also, it is accepted as a course by a lot of companies in my field of work. It also does not take much time because I can do it at my own pace and at my own time. I don’t even have to leave the house. Now because of elearning solutions, I got hired in another company and am earning twice what I used to earn.

The premise of accelerated learning was only once viewed and applicable in education when a particular learner displayed advanced aptitude and knowledge that was already beyond the level of the others, thus making continued learning at the present level quite redundant.  Once this has been properly established, the learner would then be accelerated to the next graduated level, or to whatever graduated level the learner’s current aptitude is most appropriate.  The introduction of e-learning solutions and the practical applications and potentials it presents to both learners and instructors, however, has made accelerated learning a possibility for practically anyone who wants to learn.  This is especially true in instances wherein certain proficiencies need to be learned in a minimum of time, such as in industrial and corporate situations.  One of the most common forms of accelerated learning types is done through the use of simulations, entailing a minimum of theoretical knowledge and putting the bulk of the training in actual physical training through various forms of simulations.  Simulations work by directly teaching muscle memory the appropriate or necessary response, and then promoting retention through repetition of the exercise, literally programming the muscles to the appropriate action given the situation.  This type of training has been effectively integrated with the stimulus of multimedia and innovative learning tools to create very effective e-learning solutions.

Typically, simulations only work to teach learners how to react accordingly to certain situations, without much room for contingencies.  These innovative tools add the knowledge component to this exercise, effectively teaching the learner why the response is the appropriate one to the simulation, as well as adding the contingency aspect of the situation, allowing them to formulate an alternative action once the traditionally accepted response proves to be ineffective or redundant.

The addition of these tools to the traditional simulations is seen as highly beneficial in the aspect that it does not only teach the learner to look for an alternative response should the traditional response fail, but it also gives a deeper understanding of the current situation that the learner is presented with. Equipped with that knowledge, the learner is presented with a greater overview of the situation, allowing him to foresee potentially critical areas of the situation and even formulate a response should a contingency in that area arise.  This deeper understanding also presents a failsafe of sorts to an otherwise unforeseeable occupational or situational hazard or danger, since the deeper understanding and comprehension afforded by the e-learning solutions allows the learner some crucial insight to the situation, or because of the learning and research habits fomented by the learning management solution, the learner may actually do a prior research and analysis of the situation and everything encompassed in it, to ensure better understanding of everything in it.  The combination of simulation and e-learning actually promotes a form of multi-tasking on the part of the learner, since the trained muscles and reflexes afforded by the simulation, allows for an almost automatic response and will not require much thought from the person, allowing them to allot some attention to other aspects of the task.