The Future

"Wireless seems to be in the back of everyone's mind, as far as the technology of that nature is going to transform every aspect of our use of communications including schools."
(Nelson Heller. "Trends and Drivers in the Education Industry: The Condensed Version of the Publication 'Markets and Opportunities 2000.'" The Canadian Education Industry Summit. 11 October 2000, 15.))

"First and foremost, the growth of corporate learning, post-secondary and K-12 has been held back by a lack of industry standards and definitive market leaders. In their quest for an integrated, interoperable solution, consumers are left searching; companies are providing one or even many offerings, but so far none offer a seamless, comprehensive solution."
(The Canadian Consulate General in New York. E-learning 2002 New York City metropolitan Area. February 2002, 6.)

This situation is changing with the increasing popularity of AICC and SCORM compliance. You will observe more and more interest among training professionals for learning object aggregates and repositories. The desire to segment knowledge into reusable objects through meta-tagging and to make them available for a variety of uses and learners is driving these initiatives. Just as image banks became popular in the 1990s, learning and knowledge management systems are being intensely studied for widespread use and commercialization.

The use of high-speed Internet applications is driven in Canada by government investment in a number of initiatives.