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In effect what Naish is arguing is that we have now arrived at a point where the range oftechnology and the access it provides to learning resources is unsurpassed in history. Whatremains to be solved is the challenge of enabling the intended audience to engage with theintended learning episodes. Recent literature in the domain is tending to focus on how toachieve widespread adoption of the affordances of learning technologies. Naish cites one casestudy as evidence to support his hypothesis:"...lawyers are raised on a diet of lectures/tutorials/textbook, at university and postgraduatelaw college, so naturally assume further learning will come from furtherdoses of the same, plus on-the-job training." (Naish, 2011 ibid)CPD for teachers likewise remains a mainly face to face affair. Perhaps the tipping point will becaused by the most recent addition to the range of potential learning devices - 'handhelds'.Literature is already beginning to emerge about the potential affordances of new generationsoftware tools known colloquially as 'apps'."... apps tend to do one job really well with the minimum of fuss. They areformatted perfectly for the devices on which they are based. They tend not to temptyou away from the job in hand with links, pop-ups and extraneous clutter. They canusually be accessed with a single touch. By comparison, I find that I hardly ever usethe browser on my iPhone, mainly because most sites are unreadable or unusable."(Shepherd, 2011 p. 6)Shepherd contributes an important point to my hypothesis. He is effectively saying that theclamour (a refinement of 'need' N 1 ) for lightweight, handheld devices bundling togethertelecommunications software, access to the internet as well as software applications such as anorganiser, led to the creation of PDAs 34 and, at the time of writing, iPhones, Android Phones andWindows Mobile 7. He reports however that browsing is best undertaken on a bigger screendevice. To respond to this real HCI challenge, software developers - led again by the team atApple - have produced a multitude of apps designed to facilitate 21st Century living - once againthe application of new learning in a new context (N 4 ). 21st Century learning is catching up and34 Personal Digital Assistants.104Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thesis (October 2012)