eLearning Blender

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

This week I was able to overcome what I thought would be one of the most difficult hurdles in a Moodle implementation. I was having nightmares about setting up and maintaining over 1000 user accounts. I knew that Moodle had some options to make this easier but didn't realize just how easy it would be. Moodle provides a couple of different options for managing users in bulk (at least I am only aware of 2).

Moodle 40

Moodle Management Report Sound 40

eLearning Blender

NOVEMBER 10, 2008

Tony Karrer of the eLearning Technology blog invited me to take part in a new site called eLearning Learning. This new site brings a collection of ed tech related blogs together making it very easy to research a variety of topics without jumping from blog to blog. Tony describes it best with this quote; "This is the beginning of a community portal where the community will help to collect and organize the best content from blogs and web sites.

eLearning 40

eLearning Portal Site Learning 40

eLearning Blender

NOVEMBER 1, 2008

Everybody talks about how great LinkedIn is so a while back I set up an account to see what everybody was talking about. And that's about as far as I went, I set up an account then didn't really know what to do with it. I found that without connections it's hard to make any use out of it. So that raises the question; how do you establish connections on LinkedIn?

Social Networks 40

Social Networks LinkedIn eLearning Guild Social Network 40

eLearning Blender

OCTOBER 9, 2008

I am working on an eLearning project where I will be using a character that will be the learners tutor throughout the module. I am toying with the idea of creating a cartoonish character and in my research I came across SP Studio which is a very cool site that makes it easy to create custom south park cartoon characters. That's me as a South Park character by the way, yes I am addicted to my Blackberry.

Toys 40

Toys eLearning Photoshop Flash 40

eLearning Blender

OCTOBER 3, 2008

I finished up my first project developed with Captivate and decided to take the opportunity to dive into SCORM with Moodle. Until now, I have only experimented with moodle and have never had to worry about SCORM when publishing courses. We are now taking our eLearning programs to a larger scale and Moodle will sure save us a lot of headaches as opposed to using MS Sharepoint as we have been doing.

Moodle 40

Moodle Captivate SCORM SharePoint 40

eLearning Blender

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

I read an interesting article titled "Behavioral, Cognitive, or Brain Based Learning" by Paul G. Whitmore and it gave me a whole new perspective in analyzing performance problems. The article discusses how when you are conducting an analysis, not only do you want to look at how the task is completed, but you also want to analyze what the audience is thinking while they are completing the task.

Brain 40

Brain Cognitive Analysis Behavior 40

eLearning Blender

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

My Adobe creative suite and Captivate arrived and I have already dove into a project in Captivate. While I was waiting for the software to arrive, I designed and storyboarded a soft skill scenario simulation for management training courses that I am working on. Now I am knee deep in developing it in Captivate and I am kicking myself for not pushing harder for this purchase a year ago.

Captivate 40

Captivate Photoshop Simulations Storyboard 40

eLearning Blender

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

This week I had some time to moodle around in Moodle. I really haven't dug too deep until now so this was definitely an eye opener. I didn't realize how easy it was to set up. One thing that did trip me up though is customizing reports. Moodle has some great standard reports but it doesn't appear to be too easy to customize them. I'm looking to make the simple modification of adding a column of information and from my small amount of research, it looks like you have to get into the root folders

Moodle 40

Moodle Report Custom Research 40

eLearning Blender

AUGUST 29, 2008

I took a big step in my web development skills by moving my portfolio web site to a new web host and domain name that I purchased. Last semesters web design class held my hand through FTP'ing the files to the university web server so I was a little nervous to go out into the big scary Internet all on my own. Everity was recommended to me as a web host and everything went well minus a small password problem.

Portfolio 40

Portfolio Server Web Hosting 40

eLearning Blender

AUGUST 13, 2008

To Moodle or not to Moodle, that is the question. I have come to a crossroads with a project that I have written about before. I am currently in the process of developing a series of eLearning courses that are part of a blended management training program. At this point, I have 3 of the 6 courses complete. Here is where it get's interesting, an associate installed Moodle to start playing around.

Moodle 40

Moodle SharePoint Blended Learning Association LMS 40

eLearning Blender

JULY 31, 2008

I put together a portfolio website with my newly learned Dreamweaver skills. My intentions of the portfolio website is to share some of my work and tell you a little more about who I am. At this point, it doesn't contain much but ultimately it will contain a collection of my work in instructional design. This is definitely a rough draft, as it is going to be an ongoing project throughout the ed tech program at San Diego State.

Portfolio 40

Portfolio Site Web Dreamweaver 40

eLearning Blender

JULY 9, 2008

Months and Months ago I mentioned how I am starting my first larger scale eLearning project in a posting titled Manager Training Program. I am now knee deep in the project and learning a lot along the way. I designed and developed a prototype for the first course and it is under review now. I am expecting that there may be some barriers I have to overcome due to the fact that this is a big change in how we facilitate training programs, and nobody likes change.

PowerCONVERTER 40

PowerCONVERTER Wondershare PPT Program 40

eLearning Blender

JUNE 18, 2008

The web design class I am taking is really getting my feet wet with Dreamweaver and photoshop. I am currently working on my portfolio site which will eventually contain a gallery of my work along with some information about me. Something that is confusing me about Dreamweaver is the need for multiple site definitions. Our teacher had us set up 3 different site definitions which makes it hard to know which one I should be working out of.

Site 40

Site Dreamweaver Photoshop Portfolio 40

eLearning Blender

JUNE 11, 2008

After a long hiatus I am making an attempt to get back to posting. Classes in the Ed Tech program at SDSU have me swamped on top of my work schedule so it's been tough to make the blog a priority. However, I have been learning some great stuff at SDSU and feel like I need to get back in the blogging habit so I can reflect on these lessons. So, my plan going forward is to get back to posting but I need to write shorter, quicker posts so that I can fit it in to my schedule.

Write Blog 40

Write Blog Lesson Classes Blogging 40

eLearning Blender

JUNE 11, 2008

So far, the Ed Tech program has been hard work but extremely rewarding. It's very exciting to find a Masters program that is catered to the line of work I have a passion for. So far, I have completed a course on Educational Technology and I am currently enrolled in a class on Web Design. The Ed Tech class was more of an introduction to the theories of instructional design, mainly the ADDIE model.

Instructional Design 40

Instructional Design Dreamweaver Photoshop ADDIE 40

eLearning Blender

FEBRUARY 2, 2008

I am seriously considering bringing on Moodle as our company's first LMS but I am a little nervous about setup and support. I recently had a discussion with a high school teacher going through the aches and pains of using Moodle with his classes and he is having a much harder time getting other teachers in his district to take advantage of Moodle. Although I work in the corporate sector, I work with a team of “Trainers” that could be described as Teachers.

Moodle 40

Moodle Open Source Outsource LMS 40

eLearning Blender

JANUARY 25, 2008

I work for an organization that has heavily depended on Instructor Led training and has experienced great success with ILT over the last 20 years. I am the computer geek of the training dept and have been working hard to bring our systems into the 21st century by gravitating towards a blended format of training. It has been a tough battle due to the resistance to change.

Blended Learning 40

Blended Learning ILT Blended Format 40

eLearning Blender

JANUARY 25, 2008

Now that the tide towards eLearning has turned I am getting ready to begin the biggest eLearning project I've worked on. It's actually two projects for the same course. This would be small beans for experienced Instructional designers but I am new to the party and I am still trying to find my way so I am looking forward to getting started. The first project is to revamp our current “Manager Training Program” aka “MTP” certification course.

Program 40

Program Management Training Train 40

eLearning Blender

JANUARY 23, 2008

I started my first class in the ed tech program at SDSU and the first discussion topic is simply “Why are you here?” We are getting to know each other by explaining what lead us to enrolling in this program. Simple, but interesting. The one sentence answer for me is; “I want to do better at my job.” I fell into a career that I get a kick out of and I want to make the most out of it.

Blended Learning 40

Blended Learning Blended Consulting Internet 40

eLearning Blender

JANUARY 7, 2008

If you have read my previous posts Proving ROI in Training and One small step for eLearning, a giant step for the company you know that we are focusing on improving product knowledge amongst our sales staff. One of the methods I decided to implement to improve this deficit in product knowledge is online games. Luckily I don't work for one of those organizations scared of the word “Game” so I did not have to overcome that objection.

Games 40

Games Sales Corporate eLearning Flash 40

eLearning Blender

JULY 23, 2008

I earned rookie status in Adobe Flash by making my first GIF animation. I had always been interested in this and was surprised at how easy it is to learn Flash. After playing around with this a little I am amazed at how skilled some people are with the drawing tools. I found the drawing tools very difficult to work with. Any tips or tricks for becoming better at using the drawing tools in Adobe products?

Flash 40

Flash Adobe eLearning Tools Classes 40