This post completes my commentary to the Learning Insights 2012 Report produced by Kineo for e.learning age magazine. The tenth and final 'insight' is that ‘Evaluation and follow-up matters'. This insight mirrors the findings of Towards Maturity , which places 'demonstrating value' as a key element in their model for effective application of learning technologies. To quote from their latest benchmark report, demonstrating value means: 'Closing the value loop from strategic objective to achievement – and ensuring that stakeholders are kept fully informed along the way.' insights MORE >>

Book says ‘Big Data’ becoming a global nervous system – from USA TODAY by Chuck Raasch — with thanks to Ray Schroeder for the resource. Explosion of “Big Data” collection and analysis is hopeful, yet worrisome, trend. Excerpt: Smolan, a former National Geographic photographer, built the book around a simple premise: That “big data” are becoming a “planetary nervous system,” the potential and consequences of which few have even started to contemplate. MORE >>

Open-source software has ushered in a new era of possibilities in the learning space. For a while now, Moodle has been the world’s most popular open-source learning management system. It  has enabled organizations of all sizes to deliver and track learning to (likely) millions of people across the globe. Lately, however, Moodle is becoming rather stale. Unless you are a skillful programmer, removing the clunkiness that Moodle has out-of-the-box can be quite the task. Not too long ago, I met Patrick Selby from On Learning Point. What are the advantages of using WordPress over Moodle? MORE >>

Last week I was at the eLearning Network’s 25th Birthday Bash in London. It was a fantastic event with some great speakers and an opportunity to learn drumming. spoke (for 5 min) on how mobile enables informal learning. Here’s a summary of my talk. Informal Learning. Even though informal learning has been around for as long as we humans have been, the use of the term ‘Informal Learning’ in corporate has grown significantly in the last 5-8 years. One of the challenge L&D staff has had is to understand Informal Learning and what can they do something about it. MORE >>

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this era demands collaborative approaches to stay on top of any expertise. In order to enable collaboration, mutual trust and respect is needed. This in part will result in the necessary openness and willingness to grow collectively, research collectively. In the past (and present) I had the good fortune of collaborating on some research papers with fellow researchers that were not linked to my own educational institution. It was a great, open, informal research experience. And now, I want to expand on this. or not (time/changes in life.), MORE >>