XplanaZine

It’s funny to hear people talk about atoms in a world of bits. Everyday, I listen to people talking about DVD discs, flat screen TVs, and cell phones. In reality, these atom-based containers may produce a lot of buzz from a public still caught up in technology they can see, but the real winner of today’s technology wars is a bit-based compression format we all know fondly as MP3.

This month, as in previous months, there have been numerous articles written about MP3 formats and P2P file sharing in 2003, the number of people using MP3’s in their daily lives has skyrocketed. The format has achieved a lock-in status as the audio file type most likely to be used and supported by everyone. We can already see the impact this lock-in has on the general society. The question is, how can we capitalize on it in education?

The most obvious solution is to take a page from what is working in the general marketplace, from commercial sites such as Audible.com. Learners want the flexibility of audio versions of content that they can listen to while multi-taking. Reading textbooks and notes requires full visual attention and focus but listening to snippets of those same notes or textbooks can be done while driving, eating, or walking across campus.

Think about it: most students already have portable MP3 players and almost all of them have fixed MP3 players in the form of computers. By making popular content available to students in MP3 format, publishers and educators can align their content to the real behavior behavior trends of their end users.

Forward-thinking content providers will soon begin making core or targeted selections of their content available as MP3 library items that can be purchased online and downloaded to a user’s favorite player. These learning objects will likely become a staple of education and, even more likely, will become the preferred content learning method used by students.

Let’s face it. They are too busy to read books these days and they’re too sophisticated to pay lots of money for pages they will never read. On the other hand, MP3 reigns and education needs to (will) find a way to make it work positively in student lives.

Check out the rest of this month’s research and predictions at our FutureMeter site.