Impact of Adobe AIR on e-Learning industry

So how about this AIR thing?? Let me explain. You've probably heard of Adobe's Apollo project, which is a binary runtime for executing web client applications outside the auspices of a browser. Apollo's "real name" is AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime.

Using AIR, you can create widget-like desktop thingies or full windowing applications which integrate, network style. The best part is, they can be written in Flash, FLEX, or [like Yahoo and Apple Dashboard widgets] using AJAX. For you Flash nuts, this is great news.

There has been a little bit of buzz at the conferences about using widgets and gadgets for e-Learning applications. Where this coincides with my evil plot is that it allows courseware to be used more in a "lifestyle" methodology without the trappings and pitfalls of a big, fat, bloated web application [known as an LMS]. I can promise you that e-Learning will once again reside outside the browser almost exclusively within 5 years. How exactly that is going to happen, though, is still up for debate.

We have the two major "next generation" operating systems, OS X 10.5 and Vista, which use widgets natively. Further, we have Yahoo widgets [formerly Konfabulator] which are platform independent, and the Google Desktop. All of the above are exploding in popularity for those who wish to track flights, play silly games, blog, and do other small stuff on their desktop without having to open a browser. The potential of these little guys far surpasses their current implementations, however. Imagine as a very simple example a tiny program resident on your desktop [or in your Dashboard for you fellow mac people] which asks you a question or challenges you each day with something relevant to your work. You can interact with it, or it keeps trying to get your attention. Once you respond to it, it tells you how others in your team are doing. This is a bargain basement lifestyle e-Learning example, and the sky's the limit.

Enter AIR. For courseware vendors and other web geeks who have cut their teeth on Actionscript, Flash, and Flex, it's the perfect vehicle for yanking their way out of the browser. Inherently lifestyle training like you might have for call center personnel can be intertwined with their daily work, with a nice and efficient tool that takes no more effort to get to than Notepad. Of course, in the background it can be doing very sophisticated things, like intercommunicating with a tracking or streaming server or aggregating disparate content sources. A fun option might be an organic learning tool linking people in a worldwide organization [think the oft-overused term 'social networking']. Learners could see in real-time who they can interact with, get access to real-time coaches, and collaborate with their domain peers across vast physical boundaries. Since it doesn't require a browser or big elaborate portal to get to, folks might be more apt to fire it up daily or often. The key in the corporate landscape is the reduced level of effort, and the increased potential for simplicity.

This is all just a lot of hand-waving at this point but I'm optimistic for once about the potential for thin, efficient, sneakily advanced courseware tailor made for once to the learner's lifestyle. The obvious challenge for any of the packages aforementioned is the need for IT department acceptance of a new installation. I personally feel that AIR has a greater potential for such acceptance since it's just a runtime platform like .NET or Java, but I'd love to get your opinions as well.