Abdel-Marguerite squinted as he looked at the horizon hidden by the trees. From the top of the small hill where he lived, he enjoyed a breathtaking view of the forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. Abdel-Marguerite had studied extensively the Mobile learning. He was one of the best known experts in the field, which allowed him to win the title of curator of the first mobile learning museum. - simply called the Mobile Learning Museum.
He was happy there, but he would not have chosen to have a kind of designer mansion built that was scandalously ugly and far from everything. Well, half an hour from the nearest town, but still. The building was regularly cited on social media as being the ugliest building in the country., but he was proud of it - of the building as well as the very special objects it contained.
He just saw a car coming and slowing down to his level. A tall woman came out, elegant in her retro clothes from the 2020s. Abdel-Marguerite smiles. A bored tourist, he guessed. Maybe he could show him his collection. And more so many affinities.
“- Hello, she said, excuse me, excuse me, am I at ML Stories? Did they tell me about a kind of mobile learning museum? Can I visit?”
Bingo.
Abdel-Marguerite preferred his regulars, who were also specialists in the field, but he was also bored.
“- If you would like to follow me...”
Pervasive learning? It's a trap!
Abdel-Marguerite opened the main door and invited him in. The room, which was quite large, was cluttered with glass cubes placed on complicated metal furniture. Inside, various objects of interest - at least we could hope so. More or less in the middle, two cars crashed into each other attracted attention.
“- Tell me, um...
- She Hèmès.
- She. Abdel-Marguerite, delighted. I assume you can clearly see the two crashed vehicles. Let me tell you how it happened...”
At the time, mobile learning players were still promoting ATAWADAC: Any Time, Anywhere, Any Device, Any Content. This was before time limit laws and places of learning. The mobile learning modules offered all types of content available on any device, anywhere, at any time. The training plans include a mobile learning strategy were quickly popularized and then generalized.
Microlearning had greatly contributed to this resounding success. A training plan was divided into short capsules, a maximum of five minutes. Practical for slipping your training time into the dead times of the day. At the beginning, employees connected with their computer, tablet, or phone. Then Connected objects have multiplied. From the smallest gadgets to large household appliances, everyone could broadcast at least one podcast. People have gotten used to learning à la carte with personalized programs.
“- Is that the cause of the accident? , cut it off Elle. Were people forming through their cars and no longer paying attention to the road?
-Oh, no. Well, it happened frequently, but not here. Look in the back seat.”
A ring was there. A ring Connected. It belonged to a fairly little-known deputy, who was engaged to another deputy who was no less memorable. Their couple enjoyed a meteoric celebrity when, While the fiance was driving, her darling accidentally switched on the ring on the podcast she was following. Namely “how to cheat on your spouse without getting caught”. Getting upset, he swerved and got right into another couple's car. Finally, of a other couple. Of a couple, because both of them were screwed.
Abdel-Marguerite sneered, very satisfied with his joke.
“-Imagine that I started my career selling exactly the same kind of ring! And also watches, pens, keychains in the shape of anything you want, I'll tell you: Name a bauble at random, there is a connected version. I sold connected yogurts. False eyelashes. Even toilet paper!
-Okay, she answered, glancing at him in surprise. But what happened to these deputies?
-Oh, I don't know. The last time we heard about them was a few years ago on a reality show. Angels in Pyongyang season... something.”
Gamification, globalization
They resumed their walk to a corner of the room. You could see several trophies there. Most were named after Abdel-Marguerite.
“-Oh! , fit Elle, have you won any mobile learning tournaments?
- A few, a few, he answered in all false modesty. I was a sports learning consultant, too.
-Incredible, her guest exclaimed.
Mobile learning had also brought with it the gamification of content. Each small training capsule was dotted with quizzes, cards to be arranged in the right order, virtual reality workspaces full of puzzles... Learners could win symbolic rewards, such as new avatars or achievements to unlock, or various gifts, or even more or less substantial bonuses.
It was Harigo who organized the first mobile learning tournaments. The subject? Their candies. The rewards? Their candies! The success was such that more and more businesses were starting up. The gamification of content, on the other hand, continued to intensify. Informal learning and neuroscience contributed to the creation of increasingly complex games where people learned without even realizing it.
Soon, inter-company tournaments took place, then national tournaments, and finally global ones. Abdel-Marguerite had acted as a consultant to the French chemistry team, which had trained until exhaustion., battle after battle. They reached the quarterfinals and lost to Ivory Coast. The problem that made the organizers of the event sweat a bit: North Korea also reached the quarterfinals. In the final all, even. She won the final, putting the whole world in front of this unmistakable fact: North Korea was world champion in the first international mobile learning tournament ever held.
Crazy rumours spread: participants trained in an inhuman manner, intellectual doping, information assimilated under hypnosis, etc. There were concerns about North Korea's level in this area. Were they making chemical weapons?
The applause was fairly lukewarm when the trophy was awarded. Trophy which, now, was in one of Abdel-Marguerite's windows. He had trouble getting it back, but thanks to a few wads of tickets stolen from the museum budget and friends of moderately frequented friends, he was able to do it.
Most people didn't believe him when he said he was authentic, but She did. He was beginning to like her, this girl who drank his words like whey.
National Revolution
Abdel-Marguerite stopped in front of another of his most beautiful pieces.
He heard Elle hiccup in surprise.
“- Is that the real thing?!” , she exclaimed.
-The one and only!” , he said, happy to see that the event had made enough history for new generations to remember it.
It must be said that the affair was a moment of national embarrassment. It all started with the rise of social learning, a little after that of mobile learning, which hastened to join this new form of pedagogy. On dedicated platforms or simply among themselves, people started sharing business tips. Huge inter-company learning communities had begun to be created. The circular on the sharing of professional knowledge has prompted companies to encourage their employees to share content (obviously not confidential). Specialized influencers Workstyle had grown like mushrooms and some had started to garner followers and rewards, sometimes financial, from their businesses.
One of the first and most famous influencers in the accounting sector, a certain Agrippina, began to be emulated. Before the advent of social learning, she was not a collaborator who shone by her application at work. Then she started to master various software, to share her progressions, her tips, and of course details of her daily life, which were certainly off topic, but which pleased her fans. She was on all professional networks, all learning networks. Its contents were mastered, almost professional. On video, she seemed to have crazy charisma.
The only problem was that the company employed Agrippina to take care of the bookkeeping, not giving tips to her accounting colleagues, which she spent all her days doing. And so, after several warnings, Agrippina was fired. It would have been bad to know her to see her leave with her tail down. Within ten minutes, his entire network knew about it. Millions of people were outraged on social media, posted hundreds of messages, gathered under the #jesuisagrippine flag. The shares of Harigo, his employer, were collapsing, calls for boycotts multiplied. The media relayed the story passionately. Several demonstrations had even been organized.
Behind the glass walls, Agrippina's famous computer, covered with a glittery shell and heart holograms.
“- I never knew how this story ended,” Elle said. Her company reintegrated her, right?
-At first yes. Their image was quite degraded as it was, answered Abdel-Marguerite with a wry smile. And then Agrippine was involved in a clash with several other influencers, she went on a series of mean, even insulting, tweets. And now, poof! The country turned its dry jacket against it. #agrippinedémission, etc. And she got fired again.
-And now?
-She is a music hall dancer.
-Really?!
-No.”
Abdel-Marguerite laughs internally at Elle's naivety.
“-Nobody knows what has become of her... She was discreet, and then we discovered that the Prime Minister at the time was collecting crocodiles illegally and everyone moved on.
-Oh yeah. A crocodile had escaped and devoured fifteen pets and two babies.
-Yes. Dirty business. It's still a bit funny that he claimed that the crocodile was in self-defense.”
A silence ensued, then She announced that she had to leave. Abdel-Marguerite was a bit disappointed. He had plenty of items left to show. Mobile learning had changed the world of training, education, work so much... He could talk to her about it for hours, with illustrated examples!
Arriving near his car, the young tourist looked back at him with a strange smile.
“-And e-learning? The LMS? We don't have these kinds of problems with these low-connection platforms.
-Oh, are there people still using this stuff? Let it go. That's the past. It's as if you wanted to replace your computer with a typewriter! , laughed Abdel-Marguerite, oblivious to the angry gaze of his interlocutor.
-And if I want us to go back to the typewriter instead of this crazy world where even my earring whispers advice to me to do my job better! , Elle screamed.
Then she collapsed to the ground. A small ball rolled from his hand before bursting into a shower of glitter.
“-I planned to blow it up in your museum, she admitted with a displeased look. To show you that there are still people who like to learn the old-fashioned way. Except that I have to face the facts: mobile learning is inseparable from education and vocational training today. My project...
-You never really believed it, right?
-I think I just wanted to believe in something. To fight for a just cause.”
Abdel-Marguerite let a moment pass. She had one more thing to say to him, he was sure of it.
“- Agrippina... she's my mom. Social networks and its damn mobile learning, she only thinks about that anymore. So I blamed mobile learning for... everything that happened to it.”
Abdel-Marguerite remained thoughtful. He understood this girl's logic, but didn't really care about her problems. After all, if he had to let anyone who wanted to cry on his shoulder, he would never have gotten very far. So he said, with a touch of annoyance:
“Say, your glitter bomb, you could have failed to detonate it at all. My shoes are full of them now.”
