Here's an article published in Learning Technologies magazine this week. wrote it some time back (old world printing deadlines) failing to fully forward plan for some events, like Obama moving from Elect to Active president status last week. But I'd welcome your comments on what you think mission critical e-learning means to your organisation or the organisations you work with. The bits in.

Here are the editors top 10 forecasts from Outlook 2009: 1. The Society hopes this report, covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology, will assist its readers in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in 2009 and beyond. The Outlook 2009 report was released as part of the November-December 2008 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine. Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030. Humans will have nanoimplants, facilitating interaction in an omnipresent network.

This article was first published on Futurelab in March 2008. I've reproduced the text of the article here with some minor amendments. Some links to resources are now no longer current. Considering the raft of links that could be included in the text, I chose to preserve the referencing style used in the original article. Those who detest wading through a fan of links will be relieved. Enjoy! It is today we must create the world of the future Eleanor Roosvelt What is elearning? But there is much discussion on what elearning should consist of. What skills are needed to teach online?

Read on for notes from a webinar today, April 9, 2009: Building Better Learning Games: Leveraging Game Design and User Testing for Results Our hosts today: Enspire Learning (Ben Katz) Doorways to Dreams D2D -- financial entertainment. Interested in building casual games for your learners? Work with and for consumers how to better manage their money. Focus on casual video games. Nick Maynard) Skillpoint Alliance (Kristy Bowden) Partnership of profit and non-profit organizations. Poll: Do you play any of these? D2D's vision is financial entertainment. Player controls that celebrity's job.

I am becoming increasingly aware of the the need to make clear a distinction between the broad concept of digital learning content, in all its many varieties, and the much narrower idea of interactive tutorials of the traditional CBT (computer-based training) variety. This is no more than a natural evolution from their traditional responsibility for the production of PowerPoint slides and handouts which support most classroom events. While some trainers will have the aptitudes and interests which will help them to excel in this area, in most cases this will remain a job for specialists.

Home > Executive Perspective > How not to adopt an LCMS How not to adopt an LCMS June 2nd, 2009 Goto comments Leave a comment As the economy has forced organizations to do more with less, we’re seeing more and more interest in LCMS systems. Home About Podcasts Videos Xyleme Inc. The times of getting through the inherent inefficiencies of the old approach of having multiple copies of instructor guides, student guides, slide decks and online courses are gone. Organizations are looking for ways to streamline their processes and remove waste. But make that the exception not the rule.

users report a 20% decrease in communication and travel costs both internally and in external supplier relationships (according to a November 2009 T&D Magazine article, The Wonders of Conversion , quoting a McKinsey & Company Survey ) Production innovation soared by 20% because organizations could receive input from partners and customers quickly and apply feedback to products. percent of all search queries in October 2009.( Here are some interesting Web 2.0 Statistics gathered from a number of different sources. Web 2.0 same source as above) Web 2.0 An estimated 6.8

One of the hardest things to find are real-life examples of different kinds of eLearning solutions. On May 21, Learn Trends will be hosting a free online event where the people who have developed interesting eLearning solutions will demonstrate and briefly discuss what they've done. Moderators: Judy Brown - Mobile Learning Solutions Bob Mosher - Performance Support Tools Karl Kapp - Games and Simulations Tony Karrer - Self-Paced eLearning Solutions Demonstrations will showcase a variety of different kinds of eLearning. This will be our primary device for connectivity in the years to come.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. Its a bit of a pity that there are "no good rapid-elearning tools" (take this with a pinch of salt for now) for the Mac. When it comes to Windows of course, there's quite a wide array of tools in Articulate , Raptivity , Mohive , Captivate and what have you. Yes you have Powerpoint on the Mac , but given the fact that you can't convert.wmf files into drawing objects, its greatly limited in its graphics editing and authoring capabilities. use Articulate to create elearning, and it packs a huge punch into your extremely familiar Powerpoint interface.

In Social Media Conversations , I posted the story of how this post came about. Briefly, I sent Ken Allan the following question: Any thoughts on how deliberative practice relates to becoming something less than an expert. It seems like it should be applicable to all levels of achievement, but everything I'm reading is the study of becoming an expert. Is that just aspirational, or is deliberative practice also studied for quick attainment of proficiency? And he responded with Proficiency and Deliberative Practice. In this case, I'm going to create a post out of it. Jack of all trades.

George Siemens ,  Tony Karrer , and I are pleased to announce the LearnTrends 2009 Innovation Awards. The awards are designed to recognize products, projects, processes, and companies that represent interesting innovations in applying technology for Corporate / Workplace Learning and Performance. Winners will make short presentations during the LearnTrends conference. Deadline for submission is: October 30. To apply for an award, fill out the: Submission Form. Spread the word. There’s no admission charge. We want to recognize innovations, from individuals to teams to enterprises.

Wikis are an under-utlised tool in the arsenal of educators and education facilitators. am often asked "what is it?" and sometimes "what is it for?", but rarely "how can I use it?". There are many reasons for this approach, most notable is the distinct lack of understanding of both what a wiki is and how it can be used. often find the best way to describe it is to in fact describe or demonstrate examples where it is already used. successfully. Group Work. Authoring. Organisation. Participation (and tracking it). Interaction. Multi-authoring. Peer review. Debate & discussion. Resources.

#lrnchat December 10, 2009

Tony Karrer recently announced the LearnTrends 2009 Online Conference , which will be held November 17-19, 2009. Here’s a description of the conference, straight from Tony’s blog : The theme/focus this year is on Convergence in Workplace Learning. We will bring together people who look at different aspects of learning and knowledge work to understand better what’s going on in those areas and how we should be thinking about this holistically. I’m particularly looking forward to discussions of how: Enterprise 2.0. Communities and Networks. Talent Management.

The Edublog award winners were announced last night, and I'd first like to say Congratulations to all the winners, runners-up and those who reached the shortlists. This year, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day was awarded 2nd runner up in the Best Resource Sharing blog category - so very many thanks for all of you who took the time to vote for it. Thanks too for those who voted for me in the Lifetime Achievement award, where I actually came in a respectable 5th! You can view all the winners and runners in all the categories - together with all the voting results - at the Edublog Awards site.

Students at Purdue University are experimenting with a new application developed at the school called Hotseat that integrates Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging to help students “backchannel” during class. The idea behind this isn’t new; using social media in conferences allow participants to engage the speaker(s) to exchange ideas and questions on the fly. The difference here is [.].

As you will know if you read yesterday's post, the proliferation of learning theories over the last century or so has led to a broad range of philosophies and ideas for learning professionals to. The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more.

I recently discovered how I can effectively use LinkedIn to find potential candidates for recruitment. simply update my status message with what I am looking for and get responses from interested candidates. Okay, I know this isn’t really new but hey, it’s new for me. Anyway this post isn’t about this discovery of mine. received a few responses to my status updates. These were from people I know and have worked with in the past. Unfortunately, a few of the people who responded did not have an updated LinkedIn profile. Lost opportunity! Include your achievements too.

If you haven’t heard of Marshall McLuhan , well you’re simply missing out on one of Canada’s most innovative minds. Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program of Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto since 1983 wrote McLuhan for Managers in 2003. Shamefully, I didn’t know about the book until this year, courtesy of Jon Husband. In the book, Derrick (and co-author Mark Federman) introduce the Laws of Media through a tetrad: Extend (what does the artefact enhance or intensify or make possible or accelerate). philosophy. define Learning 2.0

Here are the most popular posts on the Informal Learning Blog in 2009. Business Impact of Social and Informal Learning. o implement social/informal learning infrastructure projects, learning and development professionals need to shift their focus from learning to earning. The place to begin is by identifying a business objective that is vital to a corporate sponsor. New roles for former trainers. et Out of the Training Business , my most recent column for Chief Learning Officer, called for the abolition of corporate training departments. Help me write the next installment. ust fooling.

Hewitt Associates conducted a Cost Reduction and Engagement Survey in April 2009 with 518 US based companies. There are two tell-tale points that resonated with me: 47% of companies surveyed reported a decline in employee trust as a result of the way in which they have managed their cost reductions in 2009. Top investment actions currently being undertaken during the difficult economic times of 2008 and 2009 include leadership development (47%) and manager capability training (35%). technologies. technologies become part of that new philosophy. technologies. thomas malone

So I was super excited when I saw that Nancy White, who helps me learn about all things communities and networks , posted a response to the New Skills for Learning Professionals Big Question for July 2009. But, I by no means consider myself an expert and find that I spend quite a bit of my time building my network skills so I can do this more effectively. When I looked at her first post, I was actually disappointed because it wasn't really about networks and communities. My disappointment was purely my own making. I've come to few realizations from the process. Meet once a month.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. One of the things I believed as a novice presenter was that I lacked creativity. In fact, that was far from the truth. What I really needed was some inspiration. I've learnt a lot by watching some really excellent speakers. still consider myself to be just about an advanced beginner as a speaker, though being able to watch great speakers each day helps me hone my skills. Here are the top 6 talks that I believe every budding presenter can draw inspiration from. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch A successful talk needs STAR moments (Something They'll Always Remember).

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I'm a big Star Trek fan and the last movie just rocked back childhood memories of idolising James T Kirk. Thinking of Captain Kirk reminded me of his famous line, "I'm a great one for rushing in where angels fear to tread!". Its so cool because it has great parallels with the learning industry which is going in directions we never imagined a few years back. With the growing maturity of Web 2.0 In that, some of Captain Kirk's brave world-play from Star Trek seems to have come true for our cult at least! I'm bound to get some criticism for this -- but that's fine.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I was recently part a discussion on the ThoughtWorks Trainer Community, where we were talking about the problems of having to put together a course with 2-3 days in hand. Usually the only recourse in such a situation is to quickly slam together something in Powerpoint. Firstly, I think the problem is genuine which is why I'm writing the post. The pitfalls I notice however are: The delivery usually involves reading from slides. An average adult (in this case the trainer), can speak only at 120 words per minute. Sketch out your ideas on plain paper.

Related Posts The Agile Elearning Design Manual - Problems with existing Approaches The Agile Elearning Design Manual - Agile Re-explained The Agile Elearning Design Manual - Think Small (Iterations, Action Maps, Storyboards, and Mini-Modules © Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I was unsure about what I should write in this blog post. realized that I had perhaps generated some sort of interest in iterative elearning development, but I hadn't written enough about what goes into an iteration. So it doesn't take any guessing why I've chosen this as the topic for today's post. What's an iteration again?

The definition of an economic bubble is, according to Wikipedia , “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values ”.(Another Another way to describe it is: trade in products or assets with inflated values.) Universities and colleges have inflated values disproportionate to their value. number of signs of the stock market bubble, technology bubble, and recent credit bubble point to the higher education bubble continuing to grow. Where he indicated that colleges are becoming more like cruise ships than educational institutions. Things are changing.

As of January 2009, Sakai is our LMS, a great improvement over our previous system. I’m updating my Top Ten Tools for Learning for Jane Hart’s Top 100 list. decided this year that I wouldn’t look at my 2007 or 2008 lists first and would just start fresh. I’m also organizing my list into tools for personal learning and for developing courses. Personal Learning. Google Reader is my main tool for personal learning right now, as it’s the hub where everything I read comes in. When I’m actively working on new ideas, this is where I collect my thoughts.

Note: you can generally tell if info was provided by a real user or by an authoring tool company ;) Bryan Chapman, Brandon Hall Research Report, Authoring Tool KnowledgeBase 2009 (A Buyer's Guide to 120+ of the Best E-learning Content Development Applications). I had the great pleasure of speaking last night at the Massachusetts chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). It was a lively conversation and a wonderful opportunity for me to meet some of my online colleagues from the twitter sphere (thanks for coming, y'all!) asked "What do you use it for?,

People who create eLearning get involved in many types of content development tasks. In addition to researching and developing content for courses, you may find yourself creating training manuals for webinars or the classroom, writing web copy, making reference materials, and developing Electronic Performance Support Systems, Help documentation, presentations and so on. During all of these tasks, you will be organizing content at a high level to give it a meaningful structure. The content on this page is organized alphabetically. Alphabetical. Categorical. Some content has a flat structure.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. Questions are a great tool to facilitate discussion in a classroom. In today's blog post, I want to touch upon the various things one should take care of, when dealing with QnA in a group setting. husband, five wives and a "witch" You won't believe this, but I struggle to remember the different words an open ended question can begin with and I use the mnemonic of "a husband, five wives and a witch" to remind myself of the various questions. You can ask your open ended questions for various reasons. About’  ­ ‘How do you feel about .?’ What questions do you have?

August 1, 2009 to August 30, 2009. Blog – Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH - Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories , August 3, 2009. How I use social media - Full Circle , August 4, 2009. Five Challenges Social Media Will Bring to Business - HarvardBusiness.org , August 14, 2009. Big Data and Real-time Structured Data Analytics - OReilly Radar , August 13, 2009. Defining the Big Shift - Edge Perspectives with John Hagel , August 2, 2009. 10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets - ReadWriteWeb , August 11, 2009.

At DevLearn ‘09, I had the pleasure of hosting a Thursday morning Breakfast Byte. Conference participants gather around a topic of interest at an ungodly early hour, while sipping coffee and eating croissants. bleary-eyed, loosely organized conversation. If you know me, you’ll know my topic was right up my alley: “Instructional Design: You Do What for a Living?” Over 25 IDs gathered to talk about how they got here and where they're going. asked people to introduce themselves and tell their stories – how they each got into instructional design. Many of us thought that we would be teachers.

This month's ASTD Learning Circuit's Blog Big Question is "How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?" Here are several ways to help sell Social Media in an organization. Address a Business Need The most important element in communicating the value of Social Media is to solve a pressing business need. If you try to sell the use of social media as a technology play, it will not work. Address the need to share knowledge over distances or the value of timely information to sales tactics, don't focus on the technology. Lessons Learned.

Kylemore Abbey Garden. One of the features of Sakai that our team was looking for in a new LMS is a blogging tool. admit some significant improvements in usability are possible in this tool. However, it does give us the option of blogging within the system. Previously, we’ve used tools like Wikispaces and Edublogs, but we’ve had a number of requests for internal tools that don’t require a separate login and location. During the pilot of our new facilitator training course, I lurked in the forums during a heated debate about the use of the blog tool. Blog Conversations.

Today I will discuss the third in their little triumvirate of tools, the Microsoft Learning Content Development System or LCDS. Free-to-use e-learning development 14: Learning Content Development System is a post from: E-Learning Curve Blog.

Tags: e-learning 2009 christmas message e-learning curve blog happy holidays ireland nollaig shone

I think it is safe to say that for most of us the personal computer is the first place we go when we are looking for web-based information; however, new web-ready mobile devices are emerging with increased speed and are blurring the line of what traditionally constitutes a viable endpoint for digital content. Have you seen the new Verizon netbook ? Is it a laptop, a souped-up PDA? Neither, it’s a “ netbook ”—netbooks have been around for awhile now, but the fact that this one was selling for under $200 definitely caught my eye. sign of things to come? What do you think?

Every Thursday evening there's a great fun live gathering on Twitter called #lrnchat. It's a fast free-for-all organized around a theme, like instructional design, virtual worlds, social learning, or e-learning myths, structured around 3 general questions. If you're in the training/learning/Ed business, folks you've heard of often drop in, as do many folks you haven't heard of. Once you meet them, you'll want to know them better. recently threw out an idea to organizers of a large conference, saying that I'd like to host a 'Twitter event' during the conference. Warning: #lrnchat is messy.

The nodes are teachers and the edges are common projects (Breuer, Klamma, Cao & Vuorikari, 2009). For years people are pushed to tag their learning resources, but I often wondered whether these tagged resources actually do get reused? Or whether tagging between peers that live in various parts of the world only works in theory, but does in fact not result in sharing resources in actual learning life. But here comes Riina with a clear answer to these questions. Another renowned one is of course the MIT opencourseware , but then the latter does not use tags much. learning resource).

This month’s Learning Circuit’s blog Big Question is “What will workplace learning look like in 10 years&#.  Triggered by Jay & Harold’s post and reactions (and ignoring my two related posts on Revisiting and Learning Design ), it’s asking what the training department might look like in 10 years.  I certainly  have my desired answer. That is, will be responsible for the full performance ecosystem. So, there may still be ‘courses’, though they’ll be more interactive, more distributed across time, space, and context. 

Preamble I missed IDCI session yesterday but am thankful for the tweets from @gargamit100 and @sreyadutta. These followed by Sreya’s post gave me some idea of the discussion. You can read the post here: Business-driven Learning and LH Theory (Love-Hate Theory). The post set me thinking about when do we use “Love vs. Hate” to design a training program. This triggered thoughts related to learner motivation and how even a “business driven” or “business centric” program benefit from motivated learners. This confidence sustains motivation and engagement.

At the beginning of June a funny thing happened … I suddenly became very popular on Twitter. jumped from about 370 followers to (currently) over 500 (TwitterCounter). At first I was a little bemused (happily so) until I looked through my webstats for the blog. found that (luckily it was the beginning of the [.]. Awards Award Technology Twitter Web 2.0 Web 3.0

A few weeks ago I wrote on the Onlignment blog about The multitask assumption. By this I meant the assumption you can safely make with any webinar that a good proportion of the audience is multitasking - you know, checking emails, answering the phone, listening to music, finishing off a report, and so on. Well, on the basis of recent research, I think it's fair to challenge that assumption. Your webinar audience might think that they're multitasking, but they're not. Humans can't multitask, they can only switch from task to task, and they do this relatively poorly.

I love crossing into related disciplines and exploring the received wisdom. I'm obviously not a professional graphic designer but I am an enthusiastic amateur and keen to improve. With this in mind I enjoyed exploring Timothy Samara's sumptuous Design elements - a graphic style manual. This book has two appeals: firstly, it lays out clearly and simply a number of basic rules; secondly, it overflows with breathtaking examples that just cry out to be stolen. In this posting I can't make available any of the examples to you - for those you'll have to buy the book; but I can share the rules.

Below are the top picks for the Boggs e-Learning Chronicle's August '09 posts: e-Learning Lingo Podcast: SyberWorks e-Learning Lingo Podcast #102: Teleconferencing SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Series: SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Discusses Performance Management in a Manufacturing Organization SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series: SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Episode #34: Interview with Dana Fine, Senior Instructional Designer at SyberWorks, Inc. Learning Management Systems: An article about e-Learning ROI. elearning. learning management systems.

Continuing my search to find out more about new techniques for eLearning has brought the PLE, the Personal Learning Environment, to my attention (see previous posts on PLEs).  In short the PLE seems to be an update to the VLE, but with a greater emphasis placed on the student and the learning materials, and less on [.] eLearning PLE VLE Web 2.0

Another way to think about what I was talking about yesterday in revisiting the training department is taking a broader view.  I was thinking about it as Learning Design, a view that incorporates instructional design, information design and experience design. m leery of the term instructional design, as that label has been tarnished with too many cookie cutter examples and rote approaches to make me feel comfortable (see my Broken ID series ).  However, real instructional design theory (particularly when it’s cognitive-, social-, and constructivist-aware) is great stuff (e.g.

Anyone who is a student of instructional design has heard of Robert Gagne’s nine events of instruction. In fact, when designing a course, most of us make quite sure we incorporate Gagne’s instruction event #2: (inform learners of objectives) right away. In our attempt to follow the rule, we often think less about HOW we share the learning objectives and focus more on simply listing them…in that dreaded bulleted list we introduce with the following words: “After completing this course, learners will…blah blah blah.” Why do we do this? What does it really achieve? That soon stopped.

In the broadest sense instructional design has been described as. an emerging profession, (2) focused on establishing and maintaining efficient and effective human performance, (3) guided by a. The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more.

CLO magazine, June 2009. More Human Than Human. Column on Effectiveness, by Jay Cross. The future is people, not technology. My last column in CLO called for the abolition of corporate training departments. Now some instructors and traditional instructional designers see me as a job threat. They needn’t worry. Enlightened e-learning requires more people, not fewer. Ten years ago, venture capital firms issued lengthy reports explaining why e-learning would take the world by storm. It was a classic industrial age proposition: Replace humans with machines. We’re all in this together.

Let’s face it, whether you are a teacher, instructional designer, teaching assistant or multimedia developer, the shear amount of new tools being released on the Internet makes it difficult to stay up to date with what’s new and what can apply best to your specific discipline. So instead of wasting hours randomly searching for new things when you have a spare moment, I would suggest you consult regularly with Russell Stannard. He runs a great site called teachertrainingvideos.com. If you find any of these resources especially useful, let us know by leaving a comment below.

I came across Dan McCarthy ’s blog recently. Dan is a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years and is currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune "Great Place to Work", "Training Top 125", and "High Impact Learning" (HILO 80) company. He has a great blog on leadership that I would encourage you to subscribe to. Dan wrote a great post Head’s Up – You are About to be Promoted or Fired where he shares why you might get promoted or fired. think there’s also a third script: the status quo script. Unfortunately we aren’t promoting you.

I stumbled across this on a writer's blog today: "Officially, I’m now an Instructional Designer. fancy term for writing training material." Blog link not provided to protect the innocent]. Koreen Olbrish asks "Is Instructional Design Dead?" If all we do is write training material, then perhaps yes. The debate has raged here and elsewhere as to whether instructional designer's need to have advanced degrees in ID. The ID survey on this blog now has over 200 responses: 62% do not have advanced degrees. We have questioned the value of Instructional Designers. Some folks are curriculum designers.

In this episode of the E-Learning Curve Podcast, I introduce and discuss the basic concepts behind the learning theory of Constructivism. Learning Curve Podcast New Episode: Introduction to Constructivism is a post from: E-Learning Curve Blog.

did that a lot in 2007 and 2008, and a few times in 2009. “Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity , and formal education positively fortifies it.” - Stephen Vizinczey Actually, as you learn and acquire knowledge and skills, your ego might amplify your confidence, ignorance and pride, which again could hinder you from going beyond what you have already learned. You become stubborn to try new ideas and approaches, because you have reached a level whereby you are comfortable with what you are doing, and it works perfectly fine to you. she can't sing!). Tough!

The Learning Circuits Big Question for this month is: If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? To answer this question, I’ve organised my own two cents’ worth under six major banners… 1. The responsibility for e-learning development will decentralise across the organisation. In 10 years’ time, I believe organisations will rely less on external development houses to produce e-learning solutions, and instead bring more – if not all – of it in-house.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I've tried my best this year to average at least a post a week. In the last few weeks however, my vacation has thrown me off my blogging schedule. Backpacking through Sri Lanka with limited access to the internet has meant that I couldn't be very prolific with my blogging. But now I'm back, so hopefully I'll be back on track in weeks to come. At DevLearn , I was in a discussion with a few other e-learning industry colleagues and a lot of them seemed to believe that they were limited by the tools they were using. Articulate seems to lend itself to this pretty easily.

I am just about to dive into Google Wave (just could not resist the association here). From what I have read and seen so far this seems to be a really fascinating concept and from the hype anyway, what would appear to be a one size fits all for many applications, in a way I hope that it is when you consider features like a replacement for those WiKi’s, great as they can be, and I have used the Moodle version for some time now, it does present some degree of challenge to my students.

I hear a lot of trainers complain about learners wanting to be spoonfed, when in fact it is often the trainers who won't let them hold the spoon. In training -- both traditional and online -- I see lots of missed opportunities to let learners learn. Partly this seems to come from PowerPoint "default thinking": Insert image, insert text, keep the autobullets. And it happens even without PowerPoint: We list "guidelines" for learners. We outline "key ideas" for learners. Often, though, the learners could do this very well on their own -- if only we would let them.

I created this 16 minute social learning primer (podcast) to address some of the frequently asked questions and concerns about social learning, and to share some of my insights and suggestions gained from my experience helping client organizations with their social learning agendas. hope you find this primer useful. Please feel free to comment and provide feedback. Tagged: learning, social learning, social media, social networking.

Predictions for 2009. welcome your thoughts of what made these the most interesting posts of 2009.  Seeing all the top 10 lists, I thought I’d look at what the top 10 posts were for Learnlets (using Google Analytics), and I have to say that the responses were interesting, as some weren’t the ones I thought were most interesting. suspect that they’re the ones that other people pointed to most for a variety of reasons (including me pointing people to the Broken ID series beginning). Here’s the list: The ‘Least Assistance’ Principle. Learning Twitter Chat!

To fork or not to fork? Blogging has been an important part of my life for ten years but now I’m wondering if the party isn’t moving on. Like classrooms in training, blogs will always be around. But also like classrooms, blogs are ceasing to be the primary source of value. While I write a couple of public-facing blogs, Internet Time and the Informal Learning Blog , I spend more time participating in group discussions, writing comments, making online presentations, adding descriptions on sites like Flickr, posting to my wiki , and so forth. Dialog trumps monolog. Any thoughts?

Most would agree that Twitter was one of the social networking phenomena of 2008, and has enjoyed exponential growth in popularity. The microblogging tool has obvious potential to be used in formal learning, both in traditional online classroom settings and - through mobile technologies - for mobile learners. Ever since I first began to use Twitter I have been thinking about how to harness the potential of microblogging for the benefits of my own students, and have tried out several ideas to exploit it already. Below are my 10 top uses of Twitter for education: 1.

Followers of this blog will know that I have been reviewing John Medina's book Brain Rules chapter by chapter over the past three months. This has proved a rewarding experience for me, as it has forced me to explore the implications for each of John's main recommendations with much more thoroughness than would have been the case if I was skipping through the book for my own benefit - it's a bit like John set me twelve homework assignments! In this posting I have attempted to summarise these conclusions. Schedule lots of breaks and encourage participants to take a walk. The implications?

In the field of education, instructional design has traditionally been applied using established models, typically using a top-down approach, that focus on explicit definitions of audience, The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more.

I recently attended the 3DTLC conference, as I reported before.  Chuck Hamilton presented on his (IBM’s) take on affordances on virtual worlds. Given that I’ve opined before , I asked for more detail on their take, and he was kind enough to forward to me their definitions.    I like what they’ve done, but it led me to try to refine what I see as some confounding (they actually separate several of their 10 into two separate ones), and try to capture what I think are core, what can be enabled, and what then arise from those capabilities. through the internet).

I come to check briefly on what’s happening, late on an evening, and find a flurry of discussion that prompts reflection. It’s been an ongoing debate, with notables like Ellen Wagner and Brent Schlenker weighing in.  In reading another post pointed to by Cammy Bean, I see a cogent discussion of how processes can be stifling or supportive. was reminded of a story told many years ago on a listserve, where both new and experienced (10 years) graduates of several ID programs were asked to design projects.  The projects by the new graduates were categorizable by school. 

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. If there's one thing that helps an organisation grow and learn, its the practice of feedback. As a matter of fact, some of the more successful projects I've seen are the ones where its a part of the team's culture to share feedback. There's a lot to be said about growing a culture of feedback in an organisation, but the minimum we can do is to start from ourselves. We can be good recipients of feedback. My colleague Pat Kua has recently been writing an excellent set of posts about good practices when recieving feedback. You may just find that useful.

I know I have already blogged about how most people outside the industry frown on eLearning. am ready to crib about something else now. :) Why do people think instructional design is easy? Case 1: Acquaintance (who happens to be a software engineer): So, what do you do? Me: I am an instructional design. design learning programs for corporates. Acquaintance: Really? am usually free during weekends, give me some work. would like to do something. Me: Yeah ok. Thinking to myself: Do you know that you need to learn how to do my work? You think you can master this task over the weekend? Read it.

The typical mindset regarding use of game elements in elearning is "We don't have that kind of budget!" But, are we trying to design a high end graphic game? You can use game elements in a modest budget. How you ask? Let us think about the elements that make a game and which of these can be used for an elearning application. We designed a decision tree with branching stories. Given below is the description of how we included game elements in elearning. Rewards and punishments were displayed in terms of the reaction of the customer to a particular action taken by the learner and points gained.

Audio is a crucial aspect of an elearning application. There are lots of courses that do not have audio. These courses can still be good if the learner hates audio. But audio can play an important role in learning. Audio: Sets the tone for your course. If the audio is formal, the theme of your course will be formal. If the audio is humorous, the theme of your course is light and humorous. Adds a personal touch by giving your course a personality. This does not apply for robot-like audio. Captures learner's attention. Completes the learning experience. Using audio in your course can be a gamble.

Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I went out with my students today to watch Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen. The movie, for me was an absolute disaster. Visually and story-wise, there was way too much going on and I realized very soon that the only thing I was really focussing on, was Megan Fox. It made me think of the way I've seen a lot of elearning in past years and in recent days. Designers seem to be really keen to do everything they possibly can, inside flash-based-elearning. We as designers had to make a compromise and place all learning into a single learning object. Answers.

Tony Bates reflects on 2009 , noting positive developments and disappointments: Then we look at the public sector, and in particular the big research universities, and what do we see? Clickers, lecture capture, multiple screens in the classroom, learning management systems with Powerpoint slides and pdf files loaded, and a total lack of recognition that the current formal higher education system is failing, and a total lack of vision of what is needed for the future, and the role that information and communications technologies can play in formal learning.

Twitter in Education Twitter Blogging eLearning Social Network University 2.0 Web 2.0

Tidbits: I’m at the ASTD 2009 International Conference & Exposition this week. Good audio is critical to your elearning success. You might be a great instructional designer and create the most engaging courses possible. But it all falls apart if the audio quality in your course is not very good. In an earlier post we looked at when it makes sense to consider paying for professional narration. If you have the money, this is a viable option. However, many of you are like Old Mother Hubbard and your cupboard is bare. Today we’ll look at the microphone and recording environment.

Cammy's Top 10 Tools of 2009 These are my favorite tools in support of my own learning adventures. Google Reader It's how I stay informed on the latest blog posts and news. Used to be my first stop in the morning after email, although that's recently changed. Now I stop first at Twitter. Tweetdeck I'm officially hooked to Twitter and use Tweetdeck to organize and group those I follow. My best column: eLearning, of course! Not only is Twitter great for the occasional laugh, but also a great source of information and links. Have a question? Ask your Twitter network! Very cool! Really.

The elearninglearning site managed by Tony Karrer has come a long way in the last one year. It plays a significant role in bringing together some of the best elearning blogs on the Internet , thanks to Tony's efforts. My blog too came a long way after getting listed , as it was one of the most exciting and encouraging achievements for me. I'm really late to post this announcement, but the site now has a new look and some new options as well: A new feed that is just the "Best of" which are basically the hot lists and other similar supporting items.

I was surprised by the fear and loathing expressed around SharePoint yesterday at LearnTrends 2009. don’t think it’s the best tool out there, but it likely is the best tool being adopted by your IT department and is part of the Enterprise 2.0 plan in your organization. My belief is that it’s going to be a big part of eLearning 2.0 for many workplace learning professionals. SharePoint 2010 looks to be a much better product. As such, I’m always looking for people who want to discuss how they are using it. And I’ll continue to collect examples of how organizations are Using SharePoint.

I got a Google Wave invite and didn’t really know what to do. was quite lost when I first logged on. It took me about a week before I actually started exploring and figuring it out. am still at it. Here’s what you can do when you get a Google Wave invite. Add the person who sent you the invite in your Contact list. Start a wave thanking the person who sent the invite. This is getting your feet wet. think the Contact list shows your Google contacts who already have Wave account. am assuming this since Wave showed me only my limited contacts. could be wrong. Join the conversation with them.

Catherine Lombardozzi recent post Coaching informal learning sparked something for me around online coaching opportunities. In prior posts she identifies the following elements as being needed for informal learning strategy to be effective in the workplace: Motivation for learning. culture that provides access to other people who support learning in a wide variety of ways Easy access to materials that support learning Skills in utilizing electronic tools to manage learning. There's a new level of responsibility on learners. It's somewhat event oriented. They originate based on the work itself.

The Big Question this month is Workplace Learning in 10 Years : If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? What will the mix of Push vs. Pull Learning; Formal vs. Informal supported by the organization? Are there training departments? What are they doing? How big are they as compared to today? What new departments will be responsible for parts of workplace learning? What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years? The answers to this have been very interesting.

I’m at risk of flogging a very dead horse here, but some recent posts from Ellen Wagner (What is it about ADDIE that makes people so cranky?) and Donald Clark ( The evolving dynamics of ISD and Extending ISD through Plug and Play ) got me thinking about instructional design process and ADDIE in particular (please  don’t run away!). Ellen’s post focused on how new Learning Designers get “cranky” at the first mention of the ADDIE process (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation).   Don responded with some great comments on how ISD (ADDIE) has evolved and adapted. Add Web 2.0,

My post on how to increase call out lengths in Camtasia helped Tina Williams solve her problem. This feedback on my post prompted me to write this post with yet another useful tip. When I was working on my tutorial videos using Camtasia, I noticed that after I produced the video in a shareable format such as avi, the video did not have a smooth transition from one slide to another. There was a slight jerk or a random zoom effect. When I previewed the project before producing it in avi format, the transition was smooth. The problem occurred only after I produced the video in avi format. I

This month's Big Question asks what new skills learning professionals need going forward in a Web World, "where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace". don't know that I see 'new' skills so much as further refinement of the ones that we've needed since we first tried to integrate any web technologies into traditional classroom and OTJ instruction: 1. Become comfortable enough with technologies so that you can recognize them for what they really are. Get yourself past the hype and to the possibilities. And it's fun.

The article “Where do you Learn?&# Tweeting to inform Learning Space Development published in Educause Quarterly shows us an innovative way to use Twitter for data collection. The research described in the article has used Twitter discover the places where students learn. Instead of answering the question “what are you doing?&# , serveral students were asked to share where they were learning. think this is a real nice method of data collection becasue it is real easy to publish tweets at the same time that the action is performed. tools in a very productive way

They stood facing each other across a muddy ploughed field. It had rained heavily the night before. On the one side, flying their colourful banners, the pride of French medieval nobility: at least 30,000 men in shining armour, armed to the teeth and ready for an overwhelming victory. On the other side, the army of Henry V - less than 8,000 English and Welsh soldiers, weakened and bedraggled from weeks of forced marching, dysentery and hunger. The French looked like they had just stepped out of a Louis Vuitton boutique, and their opponents looked like crap. The personal web is on the rise.

This month’s Big Question in the ASTD Learning Circuits Blog is ‘How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organisation?’ How indeed? Well one way to approach this issue is to step back from the technology and ask yourself whether bottom-up learning in general (which has always happened, but which social media facilitates) is appropriate for the target population? Bottom-up learning is managed by employees themselves. Because it is in their interests to gain whatever knowledge and skills they need to perform effectively.

As you can see, I'm really having to rough it at the ITU Regional Human Capacity Development Forum for Africa here in Kampala. However, this abundance is not representative of the situations many of the delegates here are facing when trying to implement e-learning. And given that practically everyone here at the conference wants to attend the e-learning strategy workshop I am running here tomorrow with Kineo's Mark Harrison, there are many institutions looking to do just that. It follows that we've been having a lot of discussions about where to start and how to get quick results.

Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently In this chapter, John Medina explains how every brain is different from every other: "When you learn something, the wiring in your brain changes." What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like." Our brains are so sensitive to external inputs that their physical wiring depends upon the culture in which they find themselves." Learning results in physical changes to the brain and these changes are unique to each individual." Students of the same age show a great deal of intellectual variability."

2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences? Great video similar to Did You Know? Here are some of the stats from the video: By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% last year met via social media Always love to see this. Pretty amazing stuff. eLearning Technology.

I read Dr. Karrer's recent prediction that we will morph into "management consultants". dunno - that term seems so charged. think of the overpriced "consultants" that have invaded more than one of my corporate environments because decision-makers won't listen to people from within the organization. It means more if they are spending thousands of dollars for the same advice.) I think of the management gurus who tell us how to play nice with others, climb the corporate ladder, and win friends and influence people. Dr. Karrer talks about how the definition of "management" will change. Maybe.

The Morrison, Ross and Kemp Model, more commonly known as the Kemp Model defines different elements – not “step, stage, level, or sequential item” (Morrison, Ross & Kemp 2004, p.10) of an. The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more.

A very common theme in the Moodle forums is problems with email notifications for things like submitted assignments, forum posts, graded assignments, etc. It's good to know that I am not the only one having these kinds of LMS problems. was having issues with email notifications only working every once in a while and I finally had time to dive into the Moodle community and research the issue. In my research I found that there are two common problems Moodle admins have with email notifications. Turns out I was having both of these problems. The first issue was the tough one to figure out.

billion in 2009 according to a new report by Ambient Insight called, "The Worldwide Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis." The global market for Self-paced eLearning reached US$27.1 " The demand is growing by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% and revenues will reach $49.6 billion by 2014

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Scenario Based Learning View more presentations from Kern Learning Solution.

This is the 6th year of the edublog awards and this year there are 19 categories.  Hundreds of sites were nominated over the last few weeks and these have now been whittled down to a shortlist in each category. Very many thanks to all those who nominated me and my blogs; I am very pleased to appear in the shortlists of the following three categories.  In fact, BOTH Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day and Social Media in Learning have ben nominated for Best Individual Blog!). Voting closes Wednesday 16 December. Good luck to all the nominees!

Here's Cammy's recap of Ruth's session from DevLearn 2009. Sumeet Moghe, 2009. I'm going to have to ask you to pardon me for not making this a typical visual post. I'm using the Bangalore Airport internet, which is excruciatingly slow, so I hope you understand. My friend Krishnan has been pestering me to come up with a few guidelines for producing elearning. The fact is that I'm not an expert to come up with such a list, but I can speak from my experience as a not-so-great instructional designer and a consumer of some such content. Cathy Moore writes eloquently about this. Thanks!

I mentioned in my post 2009 Predictions How Did I Do? that we are seeing more and more about Add-ins & Mashups as a means to build richer learning experiences. particularly cited a DevLearn demo of twitter being embedded inside Captivate as the basis of a social learning experience. They’ve posted on the Adobe Captivate blog - Collaborative learning using Captivate and Twitter. You can run a demo (18 mins) to see it in action. The basic idea is that students will be able to have a social learning experience utilizing twitter as a messaging systems within a Captivate course.

As we saw when we investigated the Three-Phase Design Model, a number of stakeholders including subject matter experts, educationalists, and technical experts need to work together to design and. The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more.