Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Homework time… CWCCM Task 4.3

Podcasting? That phrase has come about as a result of the rise in popularity of the iPod, right?Well actually, No! That is however a popular misconception brought about, more than likely, as a result of the inclusion of ‘pod’ within both terms. The podcasting community generally accepts that the first person to use the term was Dannie Gregoire on September 15th 2004 who took the phrase ‘programming on demand’ and created the acronym ‘pod’ – hence podcast.

I’ve recorded some audio clips and placed them on my organisations intranet, am I podcasting?

Technically, No! A ‘true’ podcast is one which allows listeners to subsribe to it’s feed and subsequently receive updated podcasts from you, as and when you publish them. Just placing an audio clip on a webpage or emailing it to somebody, falls a little way short of a true podcast… BUT… you are doing more than a lot of people, so keep up the good work.

Surely you need a lot of technical equipment to Podcast, I mean just look at a radio studio.

You’d be surprised at how little equipment you need to podcast. In fact, services such as Audioboo and iPadio both offer Smartphone apps that allow you to record audio and then upload it onto their website, which then provides a feed that listeners can subsribe to… Voila! a podcast! For those of you without Smartphones, iPadio even offers a London based number that allows you to ‘dial’ into an audio recording system, which again publishes a feed. So you’ve got no excuse!

I like the idea of podcasting, but I doubt that anybody would want to hear what I have to say.

How do you know until you try? On of the most successful podcasts of all time was the Ricky Gervais podcast in which Ricky and Steve Merchant just engaged in conversation with their radio producer Karl Pilkington. Nobody ever expected it, but that unscripted, conversational, humorous dialogue has proven to be a killer formula. If you’ve got a subject that’s close enough to your heart that you feel passionately enough about it to talk into a phone or microphone for 5-10 minutes every week, then you have enough material for a podcast. Go for it, you never know!

I like the idea, but want to do a bit more research, where should I start?

A great starting point would be to pick up a copy of ‘Podcasting for Dummies’ which provides easily understood, humorous, technical advice for beginners onwards, whilst if you are searching for some good examples of podcasts (particularly if you are responsible for the education of others) then why not have a listen to some of James Clays podcasts.


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MoodleBrighton September roundup

Sept saw the launch of #MoodleBrighton, a monthly meetup for Moodlers in Brighton & Hove.

At last year’s UK and Ireland MoodleMoot in Dublin I met some of the guys from the Sussex University eLearning Team and we hatched a plan to start up a monthly event in Brighton. It took a while but this was the first such one, and is set for the first Thursday of every month at The Skiff in Gloucester Road, Brighton. The Skiff is a freelancer hub and provides space for regular software group meetups, as this is an open source event they donated the space for free every month, for which we are really grateful. Thanks @theskiff!

We did some brief intros and had two attendees from the Sussex University team (they run a pretty amazing Moodle site and elearning blog), three from the Epic team (the learning technologies company where I work) and one from Catalyst IT (a Moodle Partner based in New Zealand and who set up a Brighton office a year or so back).

First on the agenda was Bas Brands who we dialled in on Google+ and did a half-hour presentation and Q&A on theming for Moodle 2. He showed us the great work he did for University of Central London creating a theme for their new Moodle 2 implementation. This raised some interesting discussions around managing clients and a technical discussion around over-riding renderers which allow you to customise Moodle core functions from within the theme itself, removing the need to change core system code. It was a bit developer-y for me personally but I learned a lot about how far Moodle 2 can be pushed without changing core code which was really useful to know about.

Following this we opened up to the floor. I showed a few Moodle 2 themes that Epic had built including one for Reaseheath College with an accessibility settings panel. Stuart then led a discussion around responsive design and whether this could be achieved in Moodle. Not everyone was familiar with the concept (in summary, responsive web pages will change layout when viewed at different browser sizes so the same page can be optimised for desktop, tablet and smartphone screens, for example it may revert from 2 or 3 columns to a single column layout when screen width is 300px or under). We had a look at Twitter’s Bootstrap project which provides a framework for responsive web pages, and some implementations of responsive designs such as the BBC website.

We then looked closely at what David Scotson has done with his moodle-bootstrap project, an adaptation of Twitter’s Bootstrap for Moodle. Interestingly, he has raised a Moodle Tracker issue for every item which he felt did not follow web design best practice, and provided a patch for each one as he went! A highly pedantic approach but one that makes a point about Moodle interface design and usability, an increasingly talked about area.

It was great to get this first event off the ground. I thought it was a bit developer focused so I’d like to try and achieve a more even balance – maybe one Developer topic and one Admin topic per session.

Brighton is unique in being a ‘hub’ of elearning companies so hopefully we can attract more attendees from other companies, the event is about sharing and learning together in an environment where competition can be cast aside for the night. We also have two major universities, one of which runs Moodle, and local schools and colleges running Moodle so there is every reason to think this monthly meetup should go from strength to strength. The next one is Thurs 4th October. For details and sign up pls see the Google+ event page.


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Monday, May 26, 2014

It’s amazing who you bump into on the train….

Regular readers will know that I ‘moonlight’ as the Social Media correspondent for an industry-wide communications channel called Nuclear TV. (if the tax-man is reading this, then it’s as part of my day-job, so calm down!)

I recently had the Pullizter-worthy idea to conduct a number of TV reports on the use of Learning Technologies and Social Media within other industries, businesses and corporates. I have to admit that my intentions were a little selfish as I was hoping to demonstrate to my own industry the benefits of adopting, engaging and encouraging the use of such tools.

In order to generate interest in the project I put out a tweet asking for willing interviewees and was contacted by Niall Gavin from Firstgroup plc.

Here’s what he had to say….

Untitled from Craig Taylor on Vimeo.

If you feel that you have a story that you would like to share with others relating as to how your organisation is using learning technologies to add value to the business, (particularly where you have used them in a regulated, compliance driven market) then why not drop me a line.

The interviews will be hosted on the NLTV channel as well as this blog, if the interview is less than 15mins then I will place it on YouTube and you will also be provided with the edited footage and separate mp3 file for your own use.

Go on….. you know you want to….


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Get your foot in the door – Shift Workers

Having worked in a couple of organisations which operated a shift roster I know how important it is for shift workers to be able to accurately record and verify the shift pattern that they are operating on.

If this is applicable to your organisation then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your shift workers towards them.

iOS app (iPhone) – £1.49p

Android app – £0.64p

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

Good luck and let me know how you get on

The blog post that started it all

Image source


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I say “tomato”, you say “redvinegrownvegetableation”

Let’s be honest as Learning Folk who have an interest in using technology to add value to our organisations and our learners, we have a tough job on a number of fronts. Not least of which is the challenge in positively influencing those people in our organisations who are responsible for giving the ‘nod’ or putting their hands in their pockets.

So why do we make it hard on ourselves by (at times it seems) making up words or at best picking an existing word to explain what we are doing i.e. curation and gamification???

Surely a couple of words or even a sentence to explain what we are doing is better than trying to cram our plans into a single word?

I have been working with a published author Fiona Talbot for a few weeks now and she has been telling me of some work she has been doing with Corgi/Gas Safe to rewrite their manuals by putting them into Plain English. Interestingly the rewritten version is slightly longer than original version.

Because sometimes in order to make things clearer to people we need to take the time  (and word count) to explain things in Plain English as opposed to using jargon or overly complex words in a vain effort to sound ‘with it’ or dare I say it…. ‘buzz wordy’!

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, however a recent blog post from Saffron Interactive prompted me to respond to. I suspect that there may be some problems with Saffrons commenting system as I left the comment over 29 hours ago and it still hasn’t been moderated so I though it best that I reproduce the original post (and my comment here)

This is a report back from my first day working at Saffron Interactive. Apologies for the short delay, but you’ll understand that I have been very busy for the last month! In an exciting start to my Saffron career I spent my first day attending the Learning and Skills Group (LSG) conference at Olympia – a great way to be introduced to the world of e-learning.

I do not come from an e-learning background but I have always had a keen interest in technology and games and one particular talk really captured my imagination. I’m sure most people are familiar in some form or another with the world of video games whether through PCs or a range of consoles covering all ages and tastes. Gaming however is now beginning to have an effect outside of our leisure time and is becoming prevalent in everyday life, for example the way we shop, network and … learn.

For those unfamiliar with Gamification – a new and growing concept in the world of e-learning – the idea is based on the use of gaming mechanics to increase user engagement whilst delivering key learning objectives. For those still somewhat mystified by the term I have included a definition below;

“Gamification works by making technology more engaging, and by encouraging desired behaviours, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming.”

Radoff, Jon (2011). Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games. Wiley. pp. xxxii. ISBN 9780470936269.

At the LSG conference, this was explored in depth with a talk from Alicia Sanchez who has been appointed “Games Czar” at the US Defense Acquisition University (DAU).

Alicia’s talk presented some interesting examples, in this case based on military procurement, an area that apparently requires regular and incredibly stringent compliance training. By using the setting of a game, a far more positive response was generated from the workforce in digesting the necessary content for their roles. One such example was a simulation where the user would carry out compliance checks on weapons on the premise of preventing an alien invasion.

What’s more as gaming has begun to take on a social aspect, this can be incorporated into e-learning for even higher levels of engagement. For example, in the same way that Xbox players use “gamer scores” to celebrate achievements and relate to their peers, the DAU allows players to build online profiles giving added value and a social element to their learning achievements. This is also great from a learning provider’s perspective as it provides a method for demonstrating the impact that its courses have on user groups.

If you take this social aspect in combination with a Gamification style of e-learning further, it is also clear how learners working together could gain huge additional benefits in terms of organisation and teamwork given the right environment. In a previous organisation I worked at, the Sales Director actually mused:

“If teenagers can work together in World of Warcraft to be organised and achieve common objectives I do not see why our sales force cannot do the same!”

It will be interesting to see if many of the positive side effects of massively multiplayer gaming would become increasingly prevalent as an additional benefit for this type of delivery. Although I would add a caveat here that had the sales force assembled itself into a 30 man raid group and stormed customers offices (a la World of Warcraft) it may not have gone down well. I do hope however you can see the point I am making In terms of cooperation between departments and employees.

Of course there are limitations to the Gamification of learning. Budgets are always under increased scrutiny and is there as one of my colleagues put it an assumption that “if its fun it can’t be good for you”? Even taking these issues into account it will be interesting to see if this is a view that shifts if Gamification style courses begin to build up a backlog of case studies with quantifiable results. The other long term factor here could be as younger generations of the workforce come into management positions with a greater familiarity with the culture of gaming there will be an increasing appetite at senior levels to champion this as a style of learning.

As a final note I would like mention one of my favourite solutions of this type currently on the market: a revision of House of the Dead which is not only guaranteed to improve users’ typing skills but also looks like great fun!

I look forward to giving some further updates on Gamification from the Saffron perspective in the coming months.

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eLN Showcase

Yesterday I attended the eLearning Network showcase in London.

This hadn’t been on my agenda, however earlier in the week I received an email from @barrysampson who kindly invited me to attend the showcase as a guest of Onlignment.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I found myself sitting at my local train station at 0641hrs waiting for my train (this wasn’t a problem as I my 2 year old son woke me up at 0400hrs, because he was concerned that I might miss the Choo Choo!)

My HTC Desire coupled with Google Maps saw me make the transit from Oxford Circus to the venue very quickly (it always pays to get an early seat, next to the plug sockets ideally!).

The day kicked off with a demo of the Optivote handheld voting system, followed by a demo of a Content Management System called Moose, the morning was wrapped up by an oversight of 2nd Life.

If I have to be honest all of these sessions were very dry and uninspiring. It seemed such a shame that the early spot in the morning was taken up by such uninspiring sessions.

@philipgreen, @cliveshepherd and @barrysampson then entered into a Pecha Kucha head-to-head to determine which (un)lucky soul was then entered into the eLN Pecha Kucha final later in the year.

Phil’s & Barry’s Pecha Kucha sessions can be seen below (sorry Clive I forgot that I was meant to recording!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd7-dKqRtGM]

There was a great pre-lunch Q&A session facilitated by @robhubbard in which attendees pitched their e-learning related questions and problems via Twitter and then received advice back via Twitter. Rob ensured that there was still f2f dialogue in order to probe deeper into each issue – Good session Rob, well done.

Of particular interest in the afternoon was a session by Edvantage which centred around the ability of their CourseBuilder tool to create interactive PDFs, given that my organisations Monthly Brief is disseminated via PDF, this is something that I intend to look into upon my return to work.

For me, the physical networking  of these events is always a MASSIVE advantage to me as it allows me to meet those people who I have networked with throughout the year as well as making new contacts.

Aside from the people I have already mentioned I have enjoyed spending the day with:

@kategraham23

@bbetts

@juliewedgwood

As always I like to wrap my Blog up with a small action plan to help me implement any learnings back into the workplace.

Pass ATA’s contact details on to NSAN.Investigate the interactive PDFs optionArrange storyboarding session with Julie Wedgwood for e-learning authors

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Understanding Tin Can API

Tin Can has been getting lots of people in a twist lately. Early adopters are tweeting and blogging about it and anyone who’s anyone seems to be dropping it into conversations to prove they’re at the cutting edge of learning technologies. It is certainly doing the rounds as the Next Big Thing. But ask anyone, “What is Tin Can? Explain it to me” and more often than not you’ll just get a shrug of the shoulders and a quizzical look.

This is because Tin Can API is pretty confusing to the newcomer. I can vouch for that because I am a newcomer to it myself. This blog post is my collected notes and thoughts from one day spent learning about Tin Can API. It’s become pretty clear over recent weeks to me that most people understand that Tin Can API is the next version of the SCORM standard, but few people realise that it is still only at the DRAFT stage. There is a high level of vendor ‘early adopter’ activity with technology companies implementing the draft standard but there is also a high level of vendor hype with people like Articulate touting Articulate Online as a “Tin Can API-supported learning management system”. The level of hype makes it sound more real than it is, and the race to innovate seems to have taken the standards definition squad by surprise. While these people are still working on the final revisions to the draft specification, the hype in the vendor market is leading e-learning practitioners to eagerly search out press releases and marketing material that just aren’t ready yet.

So what exactly IS Tin Can API? 

We have to start with SCORM. The SCORM standard is all about tracking the status of big and chunky e-learning modules, with the e-learning module and the learner record usually residing in a single LMS or Learning Management System. Tin Can API however, rightly recognises that most learning happens away from the LMS. So the focus has moved away from e-learning modules towards learning activities, be these offline or online, tutor-led or collaborative, real-world or virtual. It doesn’t matter where the activity takes place; what matters is that some remote system with knowledge of that activity can send a simple statement to a central learner record store (LRS) containing some very basic details of what the learner did. That’s why it’s called Tin Can API - the API stands for Application Programming Interface. API’s are used everywhere in IT – they handily provide a common language to allow unrelated systems to talk to each other. For example, a library system could use Tin Can API to send a statement to an LRS to say that a learner borrowed a book or a journal. The statement itself is a very simple one in the form of ‘noun – verb – object‘, for example ‘Mark borrowed Book X’ – it’s as simple as that.

So what can Tin Can API be used for?

Think about the possibilities. You could create Tin Can API services for an almost endless list of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, event management systems, learning management systems, Slideshare, YouTube, Yammer, library management systems, blogs, social bookmarking tools, all sorts of learning and productivity tools. These would all send small activity records to the LRS such as:

I watched/uploaded/commented Video A on YouTubeI borrowed Book B from the libraryI attended Conference CI posted Status D to FacebookI tweeted Tweet E to TwitterI scored 50% in an online quizI completed e-learning F in MoodleI bookmarked Website G on DiigoI joined Group H on YammerAnd so on…

There will be plug-ins and apps galore to help learners record their learning – Rustici have already released an ‘I learned this’ browser bookmarklet and a book barcode scanner that both send Tin Can API statements to an LRS. Well, THEIR commercial LRS. But where they have started, many others will follow, hopefully allowing learners and IT administrators to point the statements towards an LRS of their choosing.

It sounds great, so who is behind Tin Can API?

In simple terms, the US Department of Defense is behind Tin Can API. They run the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative, which aims to “standardize and modernize training and education management and delivery”. As guardians of the SCORM standard, ADL have had a huge impact on the e-learning industry, far beyond the confines of the DoD. ADL’s current focus is on personalised, just-in-time learning and part of their vision includes “greater communication between systems and content types and tracking learner activity including non-linear learning experiences and social media interactions.” To this end, the current SCORM standard simply doesn’t cut the mustard any more.

Enter ADL’s new initiative: ‘Training and Learning Architecture‘. This consists of a number of projects including the Experience API (Tin Can API), Project Tin Can and the Learner Record Store (LRS). Forget about Project Tin Can, it is superceded by the Experience API (Tin Can API) project. Those other two projects we already know about. Bizarrely, the API project is very confusingly referred to by two names – Experience API and Tin Can API – heaven knows why but let’s just say no technology standards body has ever got an award for its marketing prowess.

So ADL are behind the draft standard, but they didn’t write it. They actually went to the market and offered funding to define the new standard. To do this they issued a BAA, which is basically an invite to tender for the work. That funding was won by a company called Rustici, who spent a year writing the draft specification. This was then delivered to ADL who put it out to the open community for review and revision. And that’s where it is now, at version 0.95.

Rustici remain closely involved in the process and are providing support to early adopters, particularly authoring tool and LMS vendors who are implementing the draft specification. I spoke to them last week myself and they were exceedingly helpful. They are also providing their own commercial LRS product and TinCan API plug-ins and are therefore investing in marketing effort around these, which has certainly contributed to the buzz and the perception among my colleagues that TinCan API was market ready. Rustici’s overview of Tin Can API – they purchased http://tincanapi.com/ to spread the word - is miles better than the ADL site, so I would recommend that as the best place to get in-depth about Tin Can API in layman’s terms. Rustici’s main commercial website is actually http://scorm.com/ - these folks really love their SCORM! But it’s important to make the distinction that Rustici are a commercial venture involved in SCORM technologies and received funding to draft the Tin Can API standard – which is all completely fine and above board. But it is ADL who are managing the definition or the Standards. This had a few people confused that I spoke to, so it’s important to clarify.

What is the current state of Tin Can API?

So as at Oct 2012 we are currently in the specification review and revision stage.

Tin Can API is a Draft Specification currently at v0.95.ADL should be publishing v0.98 by end of 2012 ADL should be publishing the final v1 specification by end of Q1, 2013.

A key reason we are hearing so much about the API already is that some vendors are already implementing the Draft Specification. Foolhardy? I don’t think so. These people are betting that Tin Can API is going to be a game changer in learning technologies, and I think they are right. These vendors are very firmly in the ‘early adopter’ category and are undertaking this work on the basis that there will be some movement in the Specification between v0.95 and v1. However, as significant efforts were already made to pull any major changes into v0.95, the hope is that any remaining movement will only be minor refinements.

Tin Can API: “tracking the bejeesus out of everything!”

So that’s the lowdown on Tin Can API as far as I understand it. I invite comment and corrections and will amend my lowdown accordingly so please enlighten me if I missed anything. But before blindly accepting all this as the future of learning technologies, let’s spare a thought for @craigtaylor74 who tweets that he is “Hearing more & more about tracking the bejesus out of everything, wrapped up in the ‘Tin Can’ guise!”  The man has a point. You have to ask why we need to track all this data and what use does it serve. ADL are backing it because they think it will lead to a future of personalised, adaptive, just-in-time learning. Others will see a definite big brother angle to all this tracking.

There’s a possibility we are obsessing over the ability to track everything we learn, when what is more important is determining our learning NEEDS. I recently saw a video of work.com, the social performance management tool from Salesforce.com. It was pretty awesome, and totally focused on tracking employee GOALS and rewarding them for meeting those goals. Learning activities were not the focus, there was no ‘Jonny did this’ or ‘Mary did that’. It was all about ‘Mary met her goal’. A manager needs to know that an employee has met their goals and have visibility of failures so that learning needs can be established and met, and THAT’S where the focus on learning activities comes in. It’s not much use a manager knowing about every minor learning activity their team took if they don’t know how they are performing.

There’s a danger of being led by the technology here and that by focusing relentlessly on methods to track learning activities we will go down the wrong path as workplace learning practitioners. We need to make sure we are following best practice, user-centred design principles to stay on the right track when designing these new systems and architectures. When I first saw work.com it was clear that these people totally understood their users and hence their focus on goals not activities. So that’s my next big challenge. We are starting work at Epic already on implementing Tin Can API for GoMoLearning and maybe for Moodle too. So my challenge is to ensure we do this in the right way, led by the needs of our audience rather than just being wowed by the technology.


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Thinglink

Regular readers will know that I’m an advocate of maximising the technologies that we already have at our disposal, I’ve even facilitated some online and f2f sessions around this subject in which I encouraged people to look under the bonnet of the tools and platforms that they already had.

One of the tools whose ‘hidden functionality‘ I’ve discussed in the past is Flickr’s ability for people to be able to add ‘hotspots’ to images and then add text to those hotspots, here’s an example. Whilst this is a great idea, the fact that you have to be logged in to the Flickr account where the image is hosted in order to be able to add the annotations is something of a drawback, add to this the fact that when you then embed the ‘tagged’ image away from Flickr, the hotspots disappear and you have a limiting platform….

Enter ThingLink…

ThingLink allows you to tag images that:

you have uploadedare within Facebookare within Flickrhave a url associated with themare within your blog or websiteOnce you have tagged these images, you can them embed them within a blog, site, intranet, LMS, VLE etc aaaaaand allow others to add tags too (if you so wish) – no more having to share Flickr account login details with others. Here’s one I prepared earlier. I’ve made it editable so please feel free to add some annotations, links, videos etc of your own.

How might you be able to use this platform within your own organisation?

What advantages and disadvantages can you see?

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below


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Sunday, May 25, 2014

It’s amazing what you can find…

…… when you really start looking!

Regular readers will be aware that I am currently undertaking an online Rapid eLearning Development programme which is being facilitated by @robhubbard.

The programme is broken down into ‘Building Blocks’ with this weeks blocks centring around Analysis/Design & producing video content for rapid elearning programmes.

It was the video assignment that really got me thinking as I have ‘dabbled’ with producing video content in the past using my Flip camera and the Flipshare software that comes packaged with it, but have always wanted (needed) a reason to push myself beyond the rather simple content that it produces.

The assignment criteria for the assignment was:

Your video should include:Someone speaking, either straight to camera or in an interview formatAt least two shotsSoundTitlingThink about what you want to communicate in the videoThink about the types of shots you want to useQuickly storyboard the video by sketching out each shotIf you are shooting outside in the daytime you probably won’t need lightsIf you are shooting inside use one or two powerful lightsShoot your video and record the soundRecord multiple takesEdit and title the video using a video editor – we recommend some belowTitle the speaker(s) when they first appear Use simple transitions between shotsCompress your video for web deliveryUpload the video to YouTube, call it ‘Your Name ReD Video Assignment’ and add a link to it on the Videos page on the Network. For a tutorial on how to do this view the How-To Guide: ‘The Network – Add video’ on the Main pageAs a comment add:A description of the videoThe technologies and equipment you usedAny challenges you faced and how you overcame them and What you would do differently if you attempted the same project again

………… I wasn’t overly keen in doing this as previous versions of Movie Maker have been….. ‘disappointing’, however credit where credit is due, I was very, very pleased with the functionality of it.

Admittedly, I doubt that it will be the first piece of editing software that James Cameron will reach for when he undertakes his next blockbuster. But if you are looking for an intuitive, feature-rich and (if you own a Windows 7 PC) – free piece of editing software, then maybe you should take a look…

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding as they say, so here is my assignment submission. As always feedback is always welcome – at this point everybody becomes a George Lucas ;-)


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Is Google Glass failing our children?

Following on from my initial exploration of Google Glass, I was keen to see what my kids would make of this device. As anyone who has seen a toddler using an iPad will know, some technology is just so intuitive that kids take to it like a duck to water. So I wondered what challenges Glass would throw up for a child, whether they would reflect my own challenges and frustrations in getting familiar with this device. After all, I had to undo decades of engrained user interface practice, whereas my daughter only had a few years of computing under her belt. Sharing Google Glass with my daughter turned out to be just as exciting and eye opening as I had hoped, but what really surprised me was the rather sobering reflection it led to, about just what kind of future we are leading our children towards.

Firstly, a word of warning. Officially Google Glass is not supposed to be used by children under 13 years of age, whose eyes are still developing. This was disappointing to find out, as I was looking forward to what my kids might make of it. I actually stumbled across the age guidance on the Google Glass Help site, there was nothing on the Glass box to indicate a danger to children, although I later found an FAQ card inside the box, in tiny print, with the age guidance on. Like many people who buy a gadget, I tend to try the device first and read the booklets later. I blame Apple for shipping mobile devices that ‘just work’! Google really need to stick a “13+ years” on the box. Smallprint just doesn’t cut it, this is kids’ eyesight we’re talking about. Otherwise we will end up with lots more uninformed parents posting  videos like this one I found on YouTube, once Google Glass hits the retail stores.

Google do not give any background to their age restriction, however the Children’s BBC site CBBC has interviewed a professor from the Royal College of Opthalmologists, who suggested that the reason for the restriction would be due to the unknown effects of Glass on developing eyes, and that the age of 13 was likely used just because no research has taken place yet. He stated that children’s eyes are actually fully developed by 7-8 years, and that children basically have their adult eyes by then.

Based on this advice and after a discussion with my wife, we decided to let our daughter, who is nearly nine years of age, have a go on Google Glass, but only after her younger brothers had gone to bed, otherwise there would be hell to pay!

So, after a short demo on how to use the voice controls, I let my daughter loose on Glass. It seemed that she picked up the speech and touch interface quicker than I did. After about 20 minutes she was flying: telling me the weather for the rest of the week, looking up King George IV facts, taking photos and video. Echoing my own problems, she had trouble with the voice recognition. King George the Fourth repeatedly brought up results for King George Falls, an impressive waterfall in Australia. On the plus side, the beautiful waterfall photos in the search results were easy and simple for her to scroll through. By coincidence, last week she was doing Internet Searching in her ICT class at school, and was using King George IV as a test subject, so she was able to report back to her teacher a big #googleglassFAIL on that note!

Ultimately though, she thought the device was totally cool and was excited about the prospect of walking around while looking at the web. I explained the idea of augmented reality, that if she was walking around wearing these then she would be likely to see ratings and reviews while going past restaurants or shops, for example. This really excited her as the potential of Glass really hit home: a personal shopping assistant!

We talked about how Glass might be used in school for demonstrating that you can perform a certain task, like this class have done, and about the privacy issues with hidden cameras. She concluded they could be both good and bad at the same time, making the example that they could be used to catch video of robbers in a bank raid so the police could catch them, but they could also be used by strangers outside school, more ominously. Nothing that a kick in the nuts wouldn’t sort out, she told me! We agreed that maybe Glass could make a sound or flash a light when taking photos or video.

My daughter also wondered out loud if everyone will be wearing these in 5 or 10 years time. Will they become the norm in the classroom, the high street or the workplace? Time will tell, but I am sure that Google will give it their best shot. One thing I have no doubt of is that this incredible technology, whether in the form of Glass or some other wearable device, will play a key role in our childrens’ futures. My daughter’s experimentation with Glass reminded me that as software engineers and technologists, we have a responsibility to safeguard people, especially the young and vulnerable, and to try and ensure that technology evolves in an ethical manner.  But it feels to me like we are collectively failing in that duty. Google Glass and its augmented reality services are closely tied into excessive and invasive personal data collection, and its spy camera technology does nothing to alert subjects that they are being recorded. This needs to be challenged.

Often technology moves so fast that discussions around ethical impacts only take place once it is already in use, as is the case with Google Glass. Conversations are taking place far and wide, and it’s vital that we keep these going. If we do nothing then we are not just failing upcoming Glass users in the short term, but are failing the entire next generation of internet users ahead of us, for whom wearable technology will be the norm and whose online lives are only just starting to take shape.

Inside the Glass box it says, “You are a pioneer, a founder and an architect of what’s possible. You are a Glass Explorer. We have an exciting journey ahead of us, and what happens next starts with you.”

There are ten thousand Google Glass “pioneers, founders and architects” out there, whose feedback and ideas are already helping to shape the technology landscape for the next generation. These people share completely in that responsibility to help shape “what happens next” for the better. I sincerely hope that this army of pioneers, and the wider technology community, will try to influence that future and make it a better place. One where our children will be free to use technology to create, learn and explore, rather than just to consume and be exploited for their data and images.


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Happy Twitterversary to me!!!

I am typing this Blog from a hotel room in London where I am staying during my attendance at the Learning Technologies conference 2011; I tell you this because it is entirely relative to my Twitter history…..

Twitter logo

I had heard of Twitter prior to attending LT10 but admit to having dismissed it as a celebrity ‘fad’, LT10 was the catalyst that I needed to pop my Twitter cherry!

So here I am 12 months later with over 2600 tweets under my belt, over 200 followers and following over 1oo other people. Everyone one of these people is in some way shape or form involved in L&D, Learning Technologies, Social Media or more usually all 3!

Twitter has enabled me to attend Jane Harts Masterclass on Using Social Media for Learning, James Clays Mobile Learning Boot Camp, the eLearning Network 2010 showcase (which subsequently led me to joining the eLN) It has provided me with some excellent contacts and some fantastic learning opportunities.

So if you haven’t yet set up a Twitter account then please don’t let this fantastic opportunity pass you by. If you don’t know how or where to start, then you could do a lot worse than checking out these resources which will help you on your way…

Image source


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What happened in Vegas, won’t stay in Vegas – thanks to #Devlearn

I’ve spent the best part of last week in Las Vegas attending DevLearn 2012, so as is customary, I thought I’d provide you with a run-down of the sessions I attended but more importantly, the actions and key points of each session that stuck in my head that I feel are of benefit to the work I am doing now and anticipate being involved in in the future.

Day 1

Morning Buzz session – Content Strategy – Clark Quinn

When I asked Clarke what common pitfalls he sees organisations fall into when devising their L&D content strategies, he informed us all that centering on ‘courses’ was the biggest pitfall he observes. This was a timely response for me as I am about to get involved in writing my Organisations L&D strategy. It had certainly never been my intention to centre on ‘courses’ within the strategy, however I’m sure that having the advice of Clarke on my side will come in very useful, should we hit any ‘problems’ during it’s creation.

My action: Take extreme care when developing my Organisation’s L&D strategy to steer clear of making any suggestions that ‘courses’ will be the default learning solution.

Keynote – Braving a New World: Innovation in Avatar and What Lies Ahead – John Landau

John informed us James Cameron never writes a script with ‘what’s technically possible‘ in mind, with that ringing in our ears he suggested that we write our business plans with that mantra in mind. Oh, and I won a signed DVD from him…

A copy of Titanic signed by John Landau

My action: This “don’t write for what is possible ‘today’” concept is something that I intend to weave into my Organisations L&D strategy.

Evidence-based Training: No Yellow Brick Road – Ruth Clarke

An interesting piece of research was discussed during Ruth’s session in which it was shown that a ‘simple’ piece of learning content faired better in terms of achieving the learning outcomes than a ‘complicated’ piece of content. This may seem like an obvious answer to many readers, however Ruth then revealed that when the learners involved in the research were asked to reveal which of the two activities they preferred, the more ‘complicated’ piece of content faired better. I believe this should act as a reminder to us to balance achieving the learning outcomes with delivering what the learner ‘likes’ (and the whole issue of ‘learner engagement’ that comes with that)

Ruth Clarke discussing research into many common myths and questions

My action: Continue with my mantra (which is echoed by Clark Quinn) of “what’s the least I can do for you“

Taking Video to the Next Level – Mark Locke

This session was waaaay to advanced for the likes of me with my Flipcam and iPhone with a great many references to high end cameras, specialist lighting and editing software. There were some good tips on how Mark had developed characters for his series of videos and his use of humour as well as the mantra ‘tell a story…. always tell a story‘!

My action: Review my organisations usage of video in the coming months and determine whether the small hand-held ‘Flip-cam-esque’ cameras are suitable for our needs or whether an upgrade to a DSLR would be advisable.

Building mLearning for iPads using HTML5 and iBooks Author – Jason Baker

I’ve been tinkering around with iBooks Author for a little while writing a book and had been able to get to grips with almost all it’s functionality, however the ‘HTML 5' widget has had me stumped!

Fortunately, Jason had been working with iBooks for some time and had discovered a tool called Hype (Mac only) which seemed to provide a very simple and intuitive way of creating HTML 5 animations that allowed direct exporting to iBooks. On a few occasions a few technical minded attendees asked some quite technical questions, which to his credit, he swiftly answered but reminded people that this was an intro to Hype and iBooks and quickly got back to the focus of the session.

The opening slide from Jason’s session

My action: Purchase Hype to allow my exploration of iBooks to continue, with a view to offering some organisational resources via iTunes U. Look into gaining access to an area of my Organisations server so as to trial pushing mobile web content to iPads.

Day 2

Morning Buzz session – Compliancy, How Can We Do this to Our Advantage? – Neil Lasher

As ‘good-an-idea’ as the Morning Buzz (0715-0815) sessions are, I guess they are always going to have to do battle with the desire to have a lie-in, add to the equation that this was the morning after an almighty Las Vegas Halloween party and that probably explains why there were only a small number of attendees at this session.

The session took the form of an informal conversation with each of us swapping compliance war stories. Neil suggested that we reaaaaaallllly do some digging with our external regulators to fully understand ‘The Rules’, as opposed to guessing what is expected of us or taking our compliance department’s word for it. He also provided a novel insight into a piece of work he had been asked to undertake around ‘anti-money laundering’. Neil took an antagonists approach to this subject and developed a resource more aligned with ‘How To Launder Money’. This approach initially proved controversial, however Neil assured us that over time it began to have the desired behavioural impact.

My action: Set up a meeting with our designated external regulator to discuss ‘The Rules’. Consider taking the antagonists approach, the next time I produce any material(s).

Super-charging Google Sales Readiness with Gamification and Social Media – Erika Grouell & Patrick Williams (no, not ‘that’ Patrick Williams)

Google talked to us about their SalesPro+ platform and how they have moved away from what we might call ‘traditional click next’ elearning to a collaborative, games-based approach. This approach resonated with me as I have been mulling over ‘free text’ assessments for a little while now as part of a project I am involved in. I had been worried about taking this approach as I was concerned about the time it would take to assess and provide feedback to free text submissions compared to multiple-guess assessments being marked by SCORM / LMS (this ain’t gonna happen!)

Fortunately Google were able to put my mind at rest as they had been taking approx 2 hours a week to review, assess and feed back on the free text assessments for an audience of approx 700 people.

Google SalesPro+ reflective essay slide

My action: Step up my plans to include free text assessments should they work out being the best form of assessment for my upcoming project.

Straight Talk on New Tech – Koreen Olbrish, Cammie Bean, Jane Bozarth, Janet Clarey & Jeanette Campos

A great dynamic session here involving a ‘panel discussion’ with several members of the panel being physically there in person, 1 Skyping in and one participating via Twitter all answering questions relating to the emergence and usage of ‘new’ Tech. There were a number of pre-prepared questions along with the opportunity for people to ‘Tweet in’ relevant questions as well as traditonal ‘questions from the floor.

The Godesses of elearning in action both in person and online

My action: Discuss this option with a colleague of mine in our Internal Comms team as a way of bringing more people into the regular Q&A sessions with our MD.

Implementing Gamification with Media – Alicia Sanchez

I love watching Alicia speak as she has a great way of combining her vast knowledge in this area with great facilitation skills and a sharp sense of humour. Whilst I’m not a fan of the word ‘Gamification’ it was still very worthwhile attending to gain a perspective on how others have been using gaming mechanics to increase engagement and ‘stickiness’ of resources.

Alicia facilitating her session

My action: Identify examples of where gaming mechanics have been used for L&D activities that are NOT enclosed within self-paced, click next tutorials. Consider a games-based learning session for the Lunch and Learn sessions that I facilitate.

Developing a Multi-year Learning and Development Technology Strategy – Allison Anderson & Sarah Johnson

I had been looking forward to attending this session however after about 10 minutes one of the speakers suggested conducting an organisation-wide Learning Styles survey…. I took this as my cue to leave and move to….

Ignite! Six Provocative Perspectives on the eLearning Industry - Jane Bozarth, Kris Rockwel, Megan Bowe, Judy Unrein, Robert Gadd, Chad Udell

A series of Ignite presentations across a range of topical subjects. I found myself wanting to hear more from some of the participants, so was naturally frustrated at the 5 minute air time that Ignite rules provides them. In particular Jane Bozarth encouraged us to ‘Show Your Work’ a subject that I’d be keen to hear more from Jane about…… who knows…. perhaps she’s planning to tell us more…..

My action: Include Ignite into a future Lunch and Learn session I am planning on ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points’

Day 3

Morning Buzz session – One-person eLearning Departments – Lisa Goldstein

I hadn’t planned to attend Lisa’s session, however once I saw that it was directly next to the room that I was due to be facilitating my session in 1 hour later (and was currently in use) I decided to pop in, join in the conversation and say “Hi” to Lisa, who I have been having conversations with on Twitter for some time, but have never had the good fortune to meet. Lisa was facilitating a (large) group conversation around the challenges of being a 1-person L&D team. Some great pieces of advice were passed around, but for me the piece that really hit home (even though I’m not in a 1-person L&D team), was the reminder that we can only do 1 thing at a time, that sometimes work needs to be pushed back, that sometimes we need to learn/remember to say “No“.

My action: Feel comfortable with saying “No”. Promote the Twitter hashtag – #1PDept – to ensure that the small group that formed during that morning session can grow in size and can benefit from a wider audience. 1-person teams can be tough enough, so if you feel that you can offer some insights or even of you fall into that category, why not search them out on Twitter?

Getting Started with Mobile Learning – Me!

My session served as a timely reminder that people / organisations are at different points in their journey of understanding / adopting mobile technologies. The audience were fantastic and very forthcoming in asking questions, providing responses and generally getting stuck in!

What did surprise me, was the fact that approximately 30 minutes into the session I announced the practical element of the session and informed people that they were to break down into groups and use a mobile device to create a piece of content, push it to Twitter using the event # and then we could all consume the content via our mobile devices – at this stage approx 5 people stood up and walked out of the session?!?! To this day I have no idea why, however I do know that many people commented on how much they enjoyed the practical element of the session and saw it as a refreshing change to some of the other ‘info only’ sessions that they had attended.

My action(s): Send slides to the eLearning Guild for publication on the event resources page. Upload slides to Slideshare. Create Slidecast on Slideshare, so verbal context is not lost.

Measuring the Impact of Social Learning – Jane Bozarth

All to frequently hear the cry “but how do we know Social Media adds value, blah, blah, blah” so I was keen to see and hear what Jane had to say. Jane ran a wonderful session which from my perspective, centered around a story in which Jane had used Twitter to crowdsource an answer to question. Jane has blogged about this example in detail and I would encourage you to take a look at it, in particular the ‘Value Creation’ table shown in Figure 1.

Jane Bozarth discussing measuring the value of social learning.

My action: Re-read the article that I referred you to above. Discuss with my boss as to whether the Value Creation table could be applied as an evaluation method to all our L&D activities and not just those that center around ‘communities’.

Overall conference observations / take aways

Good to see the conference and exhibition being co-located avoiding the ‘upstairs, downstairs‘ that has been mentioned before. It also makes life a damn site easier for attendees.The mobile app was extremely useful and became my real ‘workhorse’ during the conference and indeed before it actually started. I would have liked to have seen the inbuilt Twitter function with a greater degree of functionality i.e. RTs, DMs, attaching images, following people etc – however having said that the fact the app overall was very impressive and I’d like to see something of this standard at UK conferences. (if any UK conference organisers want my app login details to fully explore it, then please get in touch)The Conference staff all wore eLearning Guild branded sky-blue(ish) shirts/tops which massively helped attendees in terms of being able to know who to ask for help.I went to some trouble to ensure that the phrases, stories and examples that I used were ‘non-UK’ specific and were therefore more likely to be understood by an International audience. Unfortunately not every speaker went to this trouble, resulting on a number of occasions with me spending valuable time trying to Google/understand the context that they were talking about – time that would have been better spent listening to / watching the facilitator. Perhaps the eLearning Guild could be more explicit about asking future Devlearn facilitators to consider this?The conference badge holders were actually little ‘around the neck’ bags (see first image in this post) that not only allowed you to display your conference badge, but also had a small zipped section to store business cards, a pen, some money. A simple little thing, but one that made a difference.The morning buzz sessions are 0715-0815 sessions designed for the early riser (or like me, the jet-lagged). The sessions that I attended were very informal, had a small number of attendees and were very much geared towards having conversations with like-minded people around a given subject. I thought it was a great way of maximising the time of the conference and an idea that I’d certainly buy into, should they ever make an appearance at UK conferences.The conference was much less formal than others I have attended, which in my opinion, provided a much more ‘friendly’ and welcoming atmosphere. You had to look hard to spot somebody NOT in jeans/casual dress! I don’t believe that this dress code effected anybody’s morale or motivation….. ;-)

Devlearn backchannel

Dave Kelly has curated an ever growing list of Devlearn related resources.

Devlearn utilised a great curating platform know as Hashcaster

If any of the overviews that I’ve provided above make you curious for more info, why not check out the backchannel or drop me a below?


View the original article here

At last! A fruitful meeting!

Regular readers will be aware that I recently met with RSC North West.

I’ve recently opened an ipadio account, so here is my reflection on the meeting


View the original article here

Will an ‘in-house’ unconference work???

Had a little thought whilst driving home tonight..

Part of my role involves facilitating the Continuing Professional Development of a number of internal Learning Facilitators. I normally do this by facilitating some lunchtime-learning sessions, which to be quite honest receive a very poor response in relation to the number of facilitators we have on-site (part of this is due to operating a shift-pattern).

I’ve attended quite a few conferences and workshops this year and have gained a great deal from them, so I have hatched a cunning plan…

Book an offsite facility for a day with Wi-Fi access.Invite all Learning Facilitators to attend.Set up a Google Moderator series to allow attendees to choose some of the content for themselves.Invite all delegates to facilitate their own sessions (depending on the number of submissions these could be voted upon)Offer up a Flip Ultra camera (or something similar) in a prize draw to all attendees.Encourage delegates to set up a Twitter account prior to the un-conference and provide the support for them in doing this.Utilise Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools during the un-conference.

So that’s my plan to date

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated


View the original article here

What’s in a name?

Or to be more accurate

“What’s in a job title“?

You might say (and I wouldn’t neccesarily disagree with you)

“not a lot, it’s what the individual ‘does‘ within that role that’s important”

You might come back to me and say (and again, I may not disagree with you)

“actually, a job title ‘does‘ matter, as it (rightly or wrongly) paints a picture in other people’s minds as to what you do and may often be the first thing that somebody discovers about you”

Which brings me nicely to the job title ‘Instructional Designer’.

Really?

Does anybody, anywhere be it in the vendor, client or DIY community really Design Instruction anymore?

Really?

Surely we are all about creating an environment, be it physical, digital or virtual (or what the hell, a combination) in which to facilitate learning, aren’t we?

My organisation moved away from calling its trainers ‘trainers’ a few years ago and now they are called Learning Facilitators – sure it’s just a title but look at the difference between the two…..

…. they send out very different messages don’t they?

So why in the eLearning community do we use the term Instructional Designer?

Now that’s not a rhetorical questions. Regular readers will know that I am a self-confessed newbie in this field and I am genuinely interested as to why this title exists.

Is it a throw back to the early days of eLearning where we ‘did’ Design Instruction or is there some other reason that has passed me by?

If you know (or even if you don’t but agree or disagree with what I am asking) then please drop a response in the comments box below.

Image source.


View the original article here

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Online overload?

Panic

Tomorrow I’ll be participating in Day 1 of a 2-day online activity entitled the Virtual Learning Show.

Here’s why I’m getting involved:

The titles and content of the sessions interest me (although I’ve been let down in the past in the gap between what was promised in a synopsis and what was delivered in the event itself)I’m interested to see ‘how’ some of the ‘big names‘ facilitate their sessions as I’m always up for stealing a few ideas!If I’m brutally honest though, what I’m really interested in is whether it’s feasible to run a days worth of online sessions. Admittedly they’re not back-to-back sessions, but my experience in the past has always been that of my ‘attention wandering’ towards the end of an hours session…..

How will I cope with multiple sessions over a day?

Am I the only one who finds even the *best* online sessions difficult to engage with beyond 45 mins?

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow…..


View the original article here

So there I was, wandering around YouTube, minding my own business….

…. when I stumbled upon the ‘edit video detail’ toolbar at the top of the page. Now I had seen this previously and had chosen to ignore it as my video editing is done in either Flipshare or more recently in Windows Movie Maker.

What an oversight on my behalf!!!

Within the video editing options there is an option to add annotations. Now this in itself is nothing startling as many video editing tools allow you to annotate on top of the video footage, but what this allows you to do is to add a ‘spotlight’ on top of anything that is being shown in the YouTube footage.

This spotlight (imagine a hot spot) will then allow a URL (including another YouTube video) to be added to it.

This then allows your YouTube video to become interactive in so far as the viewer can be steered towards making a choice which then jumps them from one YouTube video to another to another etc etc depending upon their choices. For a far more in-depth account as to how to do this then check out this blog post.

Of course I almost fell over myself in an attempt to try this out so I hope you’ll all be able to see past the poor lighting and dodgy camera angles to the real potential that this approach to using YouTube can bring. My only niggle at this moment in time is that upon completion of the clip it  jumps (as any YouTube clip does) to a ‘related videos’ window, this in turn stops the viewer from making any on-screen selection at the end of the clip, so it prevents the viewer from being able reflect upon the available choices.

Confused?

Then try watching the following short clip without making any selection and you’ll see what happens at the end of the video. Then you can replay the video and start taking part for real…

So what do you think?

Is this something you could use?

If so, what for?


View the original article here

Monday, May 19, 2014

Podcast #7: What does good elearning look like?

Craig chats with Fiona Leteney on the subject of the new Media City e-learning showcase that she has implemented. The aim of the showcase is the pursuit of excellence, and the desire to inspire and share best practice so that e-learning can always be viewed in a positive light.

Download podcast in mp3 format: What does good elearning look like?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.


View the original article here

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Another bandwagon I’m avoiding…

… is the annual ‘Learning at Work Day’ (I’m not linking to it out of principle)

What I can’t wrap my head around is that in recent years we, as L&D professionals have (and are) taking considerable steps in:

So why, once a year, do many of us jump on this particular bandwagon and before you say

“it’s nice to give it its own space”

or

“it’s good to concentrate and focus on it”

know that my response will be

“what are you doing for the other 364 days of the year”

“why aren’t you/your organisation concentrating on embedding learning and performance in every day life and if you are, why the need for this ‘focus’ once a year?”

Hell, why don’t we have an annual ‘Performing at Work’ day? (can you imagine how that would go down with your leadership team?)

I know it’s ‘fashionable’ to get on these sorts of bandwagons and with many ‘trendy’ names backing this, I’m sure that I’ll get some flack for these thoughts…….

Incoming…….


View the original article here

Will an ‘in-house’ un-conference work?… it appears it might!

A few days ago I posted my initial thoughts on facilitating an un-conference based around the theme of using technology to enhance learning. I was at that time a little dubious over the uptake of this, but the pieces seem to be falling into place…

… I’m really pleased to say that the support and interest over the last week has very encouraging, here’s how I did it.

Emailed all internal facilitators to invite them to the un-workshop, including details of the venue and the offer of a Flip Ultra camera being presented to a randomly selected participant on completion of the day (always helps!)Those facilitators that responded positively were sent a link to a Poll Daddy survey asking for them to contribute their ideas and suggestion for the days content. I opted for Poll Daddy over the Survey Monkey licence that we possess, as I will ultimately want to ‘poll’ the attendees and I am unsure if Survey Monkey has that functionality (note to self; look into this functionality). Google Moderator required everybody to have a GMail account, so it was a non-starter.

I have also invited out IT team along, to allow them to see the direction that we are trying to take in terms of Learning Technologies. I am hoping that this will grease the wheels of progress in the future and may allow IT the opportunity to interact more closely with their customers.

Anyway, 6 days after sending out the initial email I have 9 confirmed attendances and 1 tentative, with a week still to go it is shaping up to be a great event.

Picture: Source


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Going Mobile in the Public & Private sector – Live Blog from #LT12UK

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Friday, May 2, 2014

Podcast #25: Books and ebooks Part 2

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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A Little More Conversation – Building a Dynamic Social Learning Space

Published on October 22, 2013, 12:52 pm Written by Ruth McElhone

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If you missed my presentation at LearnX this year don’t worry. I have built my presentation using Articulate Replay. I discuss how to create memorable conversations in your learning space and also provide some tips for e-gardening.

About Ruth McElhone:
Ruth is the Learning Director, B Online Learning. She holds a MEd. and is an Articulate Certified Trainer. Ruth has a passion for new technologies, social collaboration strategies and the impact they have on learning. Her extensive role at B Online Learning includes managing and facilitating the Master eLearning Course. This course instructs learning professionals how to design, develop and deliver eLearning courses effectively and efficiently in the workplace, whilst engaging them in a social community of eLearning best practice. She manages the Certified Articulate training programs in the Asia-Pacific region and was recently awarded BEST ONLINE FACILITATOR at the LearnX 2013.

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Get your foot in the door – Leadership

Let’s be honest, Leadership programmes are a ‘must have‘ component of any successful organisation – (or so the many vendors who sell them will have you think)

So if your organisation is conducting such a programme (or even if it isn’t, but is keen to develop it’s leaders) then you’ve got a fantastic opportunity to get your foot in the door with the very people who are likely to have/will have a key role to play in any future decision making process around the use of mobile technologies.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues to them?

GoodPractice Top Tips for Managers (iOS) – £1.49

Leadership Performance (Android) – £1.82

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

Good luck and let me know how you get on

The blog post that started it all

Image source


View the original article here

Get your foot in the door – First Aid

I think I’m fairly safe in saying that regardless of what organisation you are in, your employees are just as much at risk of having an accident or an ailment as the next person.

So of course the ability for them to be able to respond accordingly is in everybody’s interest. I’m sure there’s some form of ‘law’ that states that employers should have suitably trained people and that’s all well and good, but how likely is it that that person will be ‘on the scene’ as it happens? When did that person last undertake that treatment for ‘real’ or under assessment?I’m certainly not saying that those roles aren’t important, but why not augment that role by providing First Aid training / performance support to ‘all’ via their mobile devices?

If your employees are as prone to slips, trip, falls, cuts, grazes, (and worse) as the rest of us mere mortals then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues to them?

First Aid by British Red Cross (iOS) – £FREE

First Aid by British Red Cross (Android) – £FREE

(I have actually downloaded and used this app myself, check out the app store reviews for my thoughts)

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

Good luck and let me know how you get on

The blog post that started it all

Image source


View the original article here

Following #LT11UK, it’s back down to Earth…

…. with a bump!

At least it will be on Monday morning when I’m back in work, having left behind the visionaries, disruptivists, forward-thinkers and all round ‘good eggs’ that I was surrounded by at Learning Technologies (LT) 2011.

shot_1296295348630

Following last years attendance at LT 2010 I went back to work envigorated, inspired and with a spring in my step, so much so in fact that my organisation created a Communications Technologist role (it’s a Learning Technologist role… don’t ask its complicated)!

Unfortunately, what they didn’t create was any strategic support or vision to accompany that new post! In order to reduce the sense of frustration that arises from that situation, I made a deal with myself to ‘reign in’ my excitement following LT11.

That said, I still find myself ‘buzzing’ 48 hours after the conference finished so in order to make best use of that ‘buzz’ before it disappears (i.e. Monday morning) I thought I’d blog about my experiences at LT11.

As regular readers will be aware I always try to commit to a couple of action planning points from any event that I attend, in the hope that they will assist me in transferring any learning back to my workplace. I have outlined those actions in blue below.

Keynote – Roger Shank, Getting it right: how the corporate learning world must change

Roger Shank making his keynote address at LT11UK (try and zoom into the signage on his slide for a giggle)

Never sit at the very front left of the auditorium at a future LT for 2 very good reasonsIf Roger moved more than a metre from where he was stood I couldn’t see him!The event photographer seems to take up residence in this area and his camera flash is brighter than the surface of the Sun (my retinas will bear testament to this!)

Exhibition nosey on Day 1

Recommend that my organisations project team look at the digital room booking displays that were being exhibited by Steljes, ahead of a new-purpose built learning centre being built on my site.

Prof Steve Wheeler – e-Learning 3.0 – Learning with the extended smart web

A somewhat underexposed Steve Wheeler giving us the benefit of his crystal balls with a glimpse into that Web 3.0 aka 'the future' might hold for us.

Consider how AUgmented Reality might be used as part of a new-starters induction tour. This approach (if we ever get handsets this side of Alexander Graham Bells prototype), could also be of benefit to all employees as part of their standard workphone handset package.Obtain a copy of the book Distraction by Mark Curtis.

Clark Quinn – Using games for effective learning

Serious gaming is something that has only just started to seriously register on my radar so I was extremely keen to find out a little more about it and how it could enhance what I am currently doing as well as enhance my skillset for the….. future ;-)

Unfortunately for me, I found that the session seemed to be pitched at those who already made the decision to go ahead with gaming and not those who were just entering the fray. I also thought that a great opportunity was wasted to prove the value of gaming by actually running the session as a game itself, an example of using the concept to sell the concept.

I assume (there’s the gaming naivety in me coming out) that this would have taken some time to prepare and given that Clark very kindly stepped in at the last moment to cover for another speaker, maybe this would have been his choice with more preparation time?

Exhibition nosey Day 2

Consider whether the Moodle off-shoot Totara LMS offered by Kineo may be a better option for my organisation than Moodle itself.Ascertain whether the Elluminate tool that we have just acquired a licence for is able to

James Clay & Maj Richard Gill – Mobile and Immersive learning

I have been following James Clay for some 12 months via Twitter, his blog, his podcasts and have even attended a couple of his workshops on the subject of Mobile Learning and podcasting, but I had never had the opportunity to see him speak live…. until LT11!

I gather from his blog posts, that he has never been an advocate (who is?) of bullet-point riddled slides and he certainly proved that point by providing a visually engaging presentation allowing only single, full-screen images or perhaps the odd word or two to adorn his slides as opposed to lines upon lines of text (this approach received very positive feedback via the Twitter backchannel)

Craig Taylor & Paul Simbeck-Hampson – Taking the next step

Yep, that’s right folks I was priviledged to speak at LT11, but I’ll cover my session in a future blog post. I shared my session with Paul Simbeck-Hampson who spoke about the opportunities that QR codes present. It became apparent quite quickly that for many of the audience QR codes was either completely new to them or they had only a fleeting understanding. Paul then went on to explain how QR codes were not only being used by large organisations to promote their brand but also how they were able to connect a learner from a static learning resource such as a book to a more dynamic resource such as a webpage. Whilst the video below shows how I have dabbled with QR codes in the past

I still gained an incredible amount from from Paul’s session, so what am I going to do with it?

Contact Paul and ascertain which of the many QR code producing engines is the most feature-rich.Encourage the use of QR codes on the exhibition display stands for Nuclear TV (a project I am involved in), as well as visual reference to other social media streams.Encourage the use of QR codes on the exhibition display stands for my own organisation, as well as visual reference to other social media streams.Use QR codes on my own business cards.Experiment with ‘pimping up’ my own QR codes.

There has been a great deal of discussion elsewhere on t’internet as to the disconnect between the exhibition and the conference in terms of what is being offered, what is being asked for, what is being sold and what is the ‘right’ thing to be doing. Whilst I am not in complete disagreement with this sentiment, I think it is worthwhile to add that whilst I saw plenty of examples of forward-thinking innovative practice downstairs in the exhibition, Curatr, Cofacio and Lightbox to name but a few, I also saw some old-school, discounted methods and practices being used upstairs in the conference; bullet-point riddled slides Powerpoint slides for starters!

So that is Learning Technologies over for another year, or is it just the start of lots more innovative, inspiring, challenging work for me within this……. I’ll let you know on Monday morning ;-)


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Podcast #5: Now the dust has settled…

Craig chats with Lillian Soon, Kate Graham, Karyn Romeis, Laura Overton, Christie Fidura and Don Taylor on the ‘actions’ that they personally took away from their attendance at Learning Technologies 2011, along with the challenges that they anticipated in trying to achieve them!

Download podcast in mp3 format: Now the dust has settled

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.


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Thursday, May 1, 2014

I got it wrong….. Or did I?

I recent attended the eLearning Network event ’10 things every learning designer should know’ and whilst the event gave me a few ideas to mull over, what really had an impact on me was a chance conversation that I had during the mid-morning break, which if I’m being honest, shocked me a little and distracted me for the rest of the day.

Allow me to explain…

During the first session of the day Bryan Hopkins from UNHCR made a general reference to the fact that “people can’t possibly be learning effectively if they are tapping away on mobile devices“(paraphrased). This led to a few giggles on my table, as at that very moment I was tapping away on my iPad.

iPad

During the mid-morning break I made reference back to that incident and drew a parallel to a meeting I was in during the early Summer where everybody was taking notes, however I was the only one taking them on an iPad, whereas everybody else was taking them with pen and paper. The meeting organiser actually stopped after 10 mins and asked what I was doing; when I told (and showed) them what I was doing, they still admitted that the fact I was on a mobile device made them feel uncomfortable.

Pen and Notebook

Now I had expected the people I was regaling this tale to over a cuppa to be sympathetic to my situation however I was wrong!

Instead 3 of the 4 people indicated that it would also put them off and make them question whether or not I was truly paying attention during the meeting and whether I was genuinely taking notes. We threw this around for a couple of minutes with me even pulling the old “who’s to say I’m paying attention/taking genuine notes, just because I’m using a pen and paper” but even this didn’t sway them.

I quickly popped smoke and withdrew back to the safety of the main area and discussed this back at my groups table, where, you may be surprised (or maybe not) to discover that the majority of those people also expressed doubt/concern/worry/frustration etc over people using mobile devices to take notes during learning events, meetings etc.

Had I been in any other environment than the one I was in yesterday I probably wouldn’t have been overly surprised….

… But this was an eLearning Network event!!!!

Surely eLN members would ‘get’ the advantages of using technology to aid productivity even if it wasn’t in an overtly ‘learning’ context, wouldn’t they?

And that’s what led me to this particular blog title, because it appears I was wrong.

Or was I?

Is it reasonable to expect us and our learners to use technology to aid our/their productivity in areas and in situations that have traditionally used pen and paper?

Should we maintain traditional practices for meetings but attempt to push forward with new practices when the output has an overt ‘learning’ tag attached to it?

Do you use technology to aid your personal productivity or not?

Are you encouraging/discouraging of others to do so?

Oh and for those of you who are wondering exactly what I was tapping away on my iPad for, I was producing this mindmap of the days sessions, which I am now sharing with others.

For those of you I was annoying, why not share your handwritten notes with us all?

Image sources: Click one each image to be taken to the individuals Flickr profile page.


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From Compliance Course to Campaign Part 3 – Getting outside help

If you haven’t read this series to date it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set the context for this post…

Once I’d won the SMEs over (I’m still pinching myself to be honest) I invited 3 x local vendors to come and meet with me to discuss my idea and to see if they would be interested in participating in the procurement process. This was a huge advantage for both sides as it:

allowed me to sense check my ideas and proposed approachprovided the vendors with an opportunity to take a brief look around my organisation, observe some of the resources and channels that we currently use (and may well use to communicate the campaign resources) and ascertain whether they felt we could work together.

I’m pleased to say that at this stage all 3 vendors were keen to work with us and all of them commented on how refreshing it was to see a traditional subject such as compliance training having a radically different approach taken to it.

Having previously worked as a vendor I understood the complications and ‘quirks’ that can be associated with a tender process, so I was very keen (from both perspectives) to own a process that was as transparent, fair and simple as possible. Rather than wrestle with (or expect others to) the typical procurement portals that are often the bane of a vendors life I decided to use Google Docs (I can’t get into the habit of calling it Google Drive) to write and communicate my Request for Proposal (RfP) through.

This had the advantage of being:

freesimple to usemobile friendlyable to allow each of the vendors to ask any questions ‘within’ the document, thus negating the need for a procurement portal and allowing each of the vendors to see each others questions – and of course my responses – thus keeping the process as fair and transparent as possible.

Several of the vendors said that they seldom saw GDocs being used in this way and were welcoming of the approach.

In terms of what I included in my RfP I used a great deal of the advice contained in this post from Stephanie Dedhar along with my own previous experience as a vendor

Once I’d released the GDoc RfP I set up a f2f meeting at our offices to:

allow each of the vendors to come inask further questions in an open forumand also to provide them with another opportunity to look at some of our existing comms channels etc.

Again, the feedback I got from this was very positive with one of the vendors saying that it helped to confirm their interpretation of the RfP and removed any ambiguity.

At that point I:

sat backanswered questionsarranged some access to some of our portalsconducted a few Adobe Connect session to explain our internal collaborative platform to some of the vendorswaited…..

I did learn some lessons along the way with this approach, here they are:

Get your potential providers in early, way before you write the RfP – the conversation will inevitably help you shape your thinking.No matter how long you provide people with the opportunity to respond, somebody will be late.Include a ‘please let us know if you intend to submit a proposal by xyz date’ request. I didn’t, and as a result had a vendor drop out with only 1 week to go until final submission, despite having the best part of 2 months visibility of the project scope!!!

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover what happened after we’d received the proposals and what I’m calling the ‘end of the beginning‘

If you’d like to discuss how we may be able to work together to bring about a fundamental change in the way your organisation delivers its mandatory training or would like to advise on how you can maximise the effectiveness of your next tender process then please get in touch.


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