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

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.

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

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

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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SMARTening up

Several years ago my organisation conducted an internal survey relating to the training courses that were delivered at that time. As a result of that survey a significant shift has taken place relating to the way in which formal people development activities take place; a very brief overview of these changes can be seen here.

Training course – learning event

Trainer – Learning Facilitator

Training – learning

All about the trainer – all about the learner

PowerPoint centred activities – people centred activities

It is this last paradigm shift, that whilst having a significant positive impact on the delivery of our learning events may have inadvertently sent the message to our learning facilitators that they should avoid considering/using technology when planning/delivering their events – a BIG ask when you consider that we are a decade into the 21st Century!

In order to redress this balance my organisation has recently invested in a number of SMARTBoards including the SMARTNotes software.

Whilst I have ‘dabbled’ with the equipment once or twice over the past month since having the equipment installed, I desperately wanted to lift the lid on all the features that I had not yet discovered in order to further develop our learning facilitators.

And so it was, that on 14/05/10 I took part in a 1-day (because it was done on a 1:1 basis and I had prior experience) SMARTBoard/SMARTNotes Train-The-Trainer learning event. The event was facilitated by Johanna Guest from Steljes who did a fantastic job of coaching me through the many and varied functionalities of the product.

I’m certainly not planning to wholesale replace my learning events with SMARTBoard activities, nor indeed advocate the same to our Learning Facilitators, however I do believe that this product adds another resource to the facilitators toolbox and can turn what could otherwise be a very dry, top-down, non collaborative session into an interactive, learner-focussed, collaborative learning event – whilst taking a very large step into the 21st Century!

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What’s in a name? – Your Help Needed!

I’m looking for (don’t laugh) a name for an LMS that I am in the process of delivering for the organisation I am contracting with.

Early suggestions have all revolved around suggesting that the LMS is the ‘centre’ or ‘hub’ of the organisations or individuals ‘learning’ – anybody who knows me will know that I’m keen to steer away from creating this perception around the LMS.

Early thoughts are:

Hal (suggested by Mark Aberdour, with the modification that it sings ‘Daisy, Daisy’ when you log out of it.The Training Portal (my idea – does what it says in the tin!)Novus - suggested by David Hopkins

So over to you folks… can you think of any (serious) names that I could propose for their new LMS?

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Designing #mlearning Book Review – Chapter 6

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 6 – Getting Concrete

This chapter provides an insight into several real-world, concrete examples which demonstrate a range of mlearning possibilities and applications, each of them following this template. (which with a little tweaking, would make a nice business case template)

The organisation: Who was involved?The challenge: What was the need?Why mobile: What made mobile a solution?Making the case: How was the solution presented?The solution: What was actually done?The benefits: What was expected?The results: What was observed?Lessons learned: What recommendations came out of this project?

There were an impressive number of examples in this chapter and I won’t spoil your future reading by going into each one, however what I will highlight is a few surprises that some of these case studies held for me?

I had always assumed that Blackberry was a particularly crappy platform to develop for and in turn deliver content via, this assumption was based upon the low number of apps available for BB and the teeth-sucking and eye-rolling that took place whenever BB development was suggested to some former colleauges. This chapter helped to reshape my perceptions of what can be achieved via BB as a result of reading a case study which centered around the delivery of pharmaceutical sales training and performance support to field sales teams utilising their BB Bold 9000 and 9700 devices. This reshaping of my BB expectations will certainly be of use to me on in my new role within an organisation whose mobile solutions at this moment in time, is BB.

Reading many of these case studies also brought to light just how long many people/organisations/vendors have been developing mobile solutions (as we might define them today) with Hybrid Learning Systems developing XML SCORM compliant mobile solutions in 2006 – that’s 6 years ago folks!

There are no questions being posed at the end of this chapter, which was a little disappointing as I found that in previous chapters they had helped to focus my thoughts and gave me an opportunity to openly reflect and share.

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What happens on my way to work….

Since I started work in my new Organisation, I’ve facilitated a few Lunch & Learn sessions  on the subject (unsurprisingly) of using technology to enhance and enrich what the HR team offer and how they offer it.

One of my sessions included this much publicised infographic

What happens in an internet minute

which generated a great deal of surprise and in turn, discussion – Great!

Prior to facilitating the session for the second time (I facilitate each session twice to hopefully attract as many attendees as possible) I reflected on the fact that the infographic references a ‘minute’; a period of time we are all familiar with, but one that let’s be honest is a bit too ‘abstract’ to the majority of people.

I then decided to approach the ‘time’ aspect with something that many people will be all-too-familiar with – the time it takes to commute to work.

Here’s a video that I put together to help to illustrate just how much is taking place on the t’internet as we all travel work (and on this particular occasion during my 38 minute daily cycle commute to work)

I’m not overly happy with the angle of the video, but to be honest it was a Flip camera ‘masking taped’ to my cycling to my helmet so I guess I should be happy that it didn’t fall off mid-commute!

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A change is as good as a rest

For some time now, I have been reflecting upon my use of Twitter.

Over recent months I have found my Twitter stream to contain little, if anything of true value to me personally. It’s either been stuff that I ‘get‘, stuff that I’m not interested in or RTs of other peoples stuff (again, that I already ‘get’ or that I’m not interested in). I’ve also noticed that the way I have been accessing Twitter has most definetly fallen into the ‘from a mobile device’ category – even when I’m sat in front of a PC! (I guess that as I am ‘mobile’ myself a lot nowadays, this has helped to form the habit)

Given:

the fact that I access Twitter a LOT from my mobile devicesmy perception that I haven’t been getting a lot from it recentlythat I’ve had a G+ account from Day 1, but have never really ‘dug into it’

I decided to uninstall Twitter from my mobile devices and use that same habit and time to concentrate on Google +.

Uninstalling Twitter from my mobile devices. Focusing on G+ from now on. Tatty-bye

What I hadn’t counted on was the response from some members of my network in response to this. Some people genuinely asked “why“, others jokingly said I’d ‘be back‘, one accused me of Social Media snobbery and others sent quite ……. ‘colourful‘ DMs; which depending on what mood I’m in over the coming weeks I might just embed in a follow-up blog post….. (that’ll teach ya!)

Now it’s not that some people responded in the way they did that I am puzzled by (only last week I sent a tweet that some people considered a personal attack, so I’m not overly guarded myself as to how I use Twitter) it’s more the issue that my decision to uninstall Twitter from my mobile devices (I never said that I was stepping away from Twitter, or closing my account, just that I was uninstalling it from my mobile devices to focus on G+) should have generated such a feeling on animosity from certain tweeps.

Anyway for those of you who do feel that my decision to concentrate on G+ has in some way had a deep impact upon your lives I just want to be absolutely clear that

I am still using Twitter but for the time being only from my PCI still have several auto-posts set up from various sources to TwitterI may well return to tweeting from my mobile devices once I have had time to concentrate on G+

but it will be a decision that I will make, in my own time and for my own reasons.

Now why not get yourself across to G+ and have a play…

Image source.

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Bared faced lying (but in a nice way)

Since I started in my new role as a Learning Technologies Manager for Bupa International I’ve facilitated a number of ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions for my colleagues within the HR team around a number of learning technology related subjects.

To date these have been:

‘elearning….. discuss’ – a 2 hour sessions which helped people to see ‘e’learning as being more than just traditional, ‘click next’ SCORM objects‘Getting Started with Mobile Learning’ – a 2 hour session which was essentially a dry run of my DevLearn 12 session‘Welcome Aboard’ – a 2 hour session  centering around the use of technology within the onboarding / induction process

The latest ‘Welcome Aboard’ session was facilitated as an Alternate Reality Game. In order to add the context in which the game was being unknowingly played I referred to some research that I heard about at DevLearn.

Only problem is that there was no such research at DevLearn – it was lie, a misdirection, a bluff, an economical use of the truth….

To help me with this bluff I created the animation below using Powtoon  which I played during the early stages of the session/game after I had prattled on about the DevLearn research ‘discovery’

It’s a cracking piece of software; cheap, intuitive, a great trial period.

Why not give it a whirl and let us all know how you get on?

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Designing #mlearning Book Review – Chapter 4

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 4 – The technology it’s not about

We start this chapter with a nod to the fact that the iPad (1) was announced during the writing of this book. Given that this is still considered a ‘recent’ book, this shows very clearly how dynamic this market is.

From looking forward we take a look back at a brief history of mobile devices commencing at the Palm Pilot, skipping ahead to mobile phones, through media players to smartphones. From there we review the advent of handheld games, tablets and recording devices, before acknowledging that by the time many readers pick up this book some of the descriptions will already be out of date.

We then take a look at a trend that gives a fairly clear indication of how things are going at the moment – “convergence”. More and more devices are providing a 1-stop shop for much (if not all) of the functionality that we used to associate with multiple devices.

Towards the end of the chapter we are reminded just how quickly this field is developing as Clark suggests that we may even be moving towards wearing glasses with a Heads Up Display - imagine that!

We finish off the chapter with these questions being posed (along with my responses):

How can you take advantage of any of the dedicated devices (media player, camera, PDA, phone)?I’m not sure that we really need to go out of our way to take advantage of the plethora of dedicated devices, after all our learners are already using them within their day-to-day lives to take pictures, record video, access the web, read novels etc. Given that dedicated devices are in my opinion “High Street” what I think we need to do is to tap into learner’s familiarity with them and start to drip-feed examples of how they can use them within a workplace environment. Why not model some good examples using dedicated devices? Often when I facilitate face-to-face activities, I make a point of recording audio feedback, video voxpops and photographs of interactivity using dedicated devices in order to model good practice for the attendees to (hopefully) follow.How can you capitalize the increasing ubiquity of the converged devices?Let’s be honest most organisations (even now) are not providing converged devices (read phones and tablets) to support learning programmes or ‘overtly’ to maximise performance. I believe they are providing them so that you have little or no excuse for not responding to emails! But let’s not let this worry us, instead let’s leverage the growing distribution of mobile devices for our own ends and start to offer resources, assets etc that can benefit from the functionality of the converged device.Have you considered the tradeoffs of providing (devices) versus supporting devices ?I guess the provision of devices ensures (to a certain degree) greater control and in turn ‘peace of mind’ (wrongly in my opinion) to organisations, but hey, if it  increases the chances of mobile uptake then maybe it’s worth it? Of course, this approach no doubt brings significant expense with it in terms of providing the devices, however I’ve no doubt that it is easier to support 1 x device type as opposed to trying to support learners own devices. Of course allowing learners to use their own device means that they will be familiar with it and therefore more likely to use it and quite possibly less likely to need support, although the cost and logistics involved in trying to support multiple device types cannot be ignored.So folks, why not take a look at the questions above and provide your own responses in the comments below?

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Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio.

If you’ve not already read my previous blog post ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)’ then I’d strongly suggest having a read of it before you read any more of this post.

Why?

Well for 2 reasons really:

1. The earlier post will provide you with the context behind this post.
2. The purpose of this specific post is to act as a comparison to the first post in this series, hence the benefit of viewing the first one!

As you will have seen in the previous post, using the approach of images and single words in a presentation is certainly visually engaging, however where it falls down (as highlighted during my live session by Laura Dickson) is when the presenter/facilitator is no longer present to provide the narrative – the engaging presentation is now nothing more than a collection of images and out of context words.

Here are the same slides that were contained in the earlier post, but this time with the narrative.

Don’t forget, this is Part 2 in a series of posts surrounding my LSG11UK session.

Part 1 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visuals only

Part 2 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio

Part 3 – Bringing in the backchannel

Part 4 – The Learners Voice

Part 5 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points live recorded podcast

Part 6 – Tools and resources

Did you get anything from the Slideshare?

Why not let us know in the comments section?

View the original article here

QR codes? sounds like something out of a Bond film!

I’ve been aware of QR codes for some time now after reading one of many blog posts on the subject from @jamesclay, but I had never really seen the benefits to them for learners in my organisation (or maybe that should read that I had never applied myself to researching the benefits!)

Blog posts from @jamesclay and @hopkinsdavid have provided me with some great ideas as to how QR codes could benefit learners. Admittedly I may be held back a little due to certain restrictions on the use/carriage of mobile phones on my site, with the primary phone being a very attractive brick

However, for those people who do own Smart phones we have started to use QR codes in our Learning Centre and here is a short video to prove it…

Are you already using them, if so let me know how?

If you are planning to, then why not share your ideas with us all?

View the original article here

My #COLF L3 Assignment

As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of each of the 9 lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading.

Here’s my third assignment:

Does your organization already use Web Conferencing? If so, write a 100-word report onwhat it uses it for.

My organisation presently uses web conferencing and virtual classrooms, however this is to a very limited degree and the efficacy of these activities may be being reduced due to a lack of knowledge from the host/facilitator as to how to conduct traditionally ‘face-to-face’ activities in an online environment.

Within my organisations, I have seen examples of ‘telepresence’ meetings taking place and virtual classrooms being facilitated for some of our globally distributed personnel. I have also personally used and heard examples of people using their personal/work provided mobile devices to use tools such as Skype, G+ Hangouts and Facetime to enhance participation and collaboration.

Do you think it could use it for other parts of the organization?

I am struggling to think of areas of my organisation that would not benefit from utilising webinars/web conferencing/virtual classrooms etc.

Here’s a list of potential opportunities for use:

Conduct a monthly ‘clinic’ for the ‘Top 5' reported issues to the IT HelpdeskConduct traditional meetings (perhaps I should lead the way with this with our monthly L&D meeting)Systems training ahead of and during the early days of a new system launchExplain products and services to potential/current clientsAs a way of helping people transfer previous learning activities (regardless of method/media) to peoples workplaces i.e. as a way of connecting people to share their ‘what’s worked and what hasn’t’ storiesAs a method of conveying the ‘why’ / ‘theory’ behind a subject that may require a future physical aspect to it. This approach would allow people to reflect upon the WIIFM prior to engaging in the face-to-face aspect

I’ve no doubt that there is a plethora of other ways for my organisation to maximise this approach, but at the moment the list is above is where I can see immediate benefit.

What others can you think of?

Image source

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

Designing #mlearning Book Review – Chapter 6

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 6 – Getting Concrete

This chapter provides an insight into several real-world, concrete examples which demonstrate a range of mlearning possibilities and applications, each of them following this template. (which with a little tweaking, would make a nice business case template)

The organisation: Who was involved?The challenge: What was the need?Why mobile: What made mobile a solution?Making the case: How was the solution presented?The solution: What was actually done?The benefits: What was expected?The results: What was observed?Lessons learned: What recommendations came out of this project?

There were an impressive number of examples in this chapter and I won’t spoil your future reading by going into each one, however what I will highlight is a few surprises that some of these case studies held for me?

I had always assumed that Blackberry was a particularly crappy platform to develop for and in turn deliver content via, this assumption was based upon the low number of apps available for BB and the teeth-sucking and eye-rolling that took place whenever BB development was suggested to some former colleauges. This chapter helped to reshape my perceptions of what can be achieved via BB as a result of reading a case study which centered around the delivery of pharmaceutical sales training and performance support to field sales teams utilising their BB Bold 9000 and 9700 devices. This reshaping of my BB expectations will certainly be of use to me on in my new role within an organisation whose mobile solutions at this moment in time, is BB.

Reading many of these case studies also brought to light just how long many people/organisations/vendors have been developing mobile solutions (as we might define them today) with Hybrid Learning Systems developing XML SCORM compliant mobile solutions in 2006 – that’s 6 years ago folks!

There are no questions being posed at the end of this chapter, which was a little disappointing as I found that in previous chapters they had helped to focus my thoughts and gave me an opportunity to openly reflect and share.

View the original article here

Virtual Learning Show 2013 – Day 1

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in the 2013 2-day Virtual Learning Show. Whilst I am directly involved as a panel chair on Day 2, I am also attending both days as a participant .

Here are my reflections on Day 1 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itselfThe way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

Presented by Colin Steed
10.30 – 11.00 UK BST

Chairman and organiser of The Virtual Learning Show, Colin Steed welcomes you all to this unique event.

During his Keynote, Colin will report on the headline findings of the ‘Live Online Learning in Europe’ survey he conducted over the past two months. There are some revealing findings that you’ll find invaluable when planning your live online sessions in your organisation. There will be plenty of discussion in this session so bring your questions!

My key facilitation take-away

Colin commented when he could see the ‘multiple people typing’ message appear above the chat pod and informed people that he was going to pause until those responses had come in. I’ll keep an eye on that area above the chat panel in the future and moderate my delivery accordingly.

Presented by Elaine Giles
11.00 – 12.00 UK BST

If you think webinars are the epitome of a desk-bound sport – think again!

The major web conferencing services all provide feature rich Apps for mobile use. You can be forgiven for thinking these are limited to providing a second class way of just attending a session. The truth is very different – these Apps provide a feature rich experience including access to chat, slides, polls, audio, video and whiteboards.

In this session, Elaine will cover:

Present from an iPad?Monitor your audience with just an iPhone?Deliver an entire webinar via your Android device?

All is possible! In this session you’ll find out just how far virtual training has come in recent times.

My key content take-away

Look into how I might be able to use Reflection to upskill people on using their mobile devices via our Adobe Connect platform/

My key facilitation take-away

Don’t get caught up in the demo at the expense of the attendee interaction. There was a lot of talking from the facilitator but I felt very little interaction with the audience other than ‘feel free to chat in the chat panel’ comments.

Presented by Phil Green
12.30 – 13.30 UK BST

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck“. To some trainers and teachers, working live online may seem less daunting than other forms of eLearning. It does, in most cases depend upon the teacher to be present. It can easily support the model of “sage on the stage”, and presenters can deliver elegant and beautifully illustrated lectures very close up and personal. If it looks like a lecture, sounds like a lecture and works like a lecture then…

Many examples of ingenious interactions have been developed to exploit the features of virtual classrooms, or to overcome the constraints. Lectures and intricate interactions have their place, but in a spirit of “less is more”, how can a skilled facilitator mount truly participatory sessions? In this webinar Phil Green shows some examples of how “a little technology and a lot of creativity” can engage learners live online in meaningful activity without over-elaboration.

My key content take-away

I was only able to attend the first few minutes of this session so I’ll update this once I’ve listened to the recording

My key facilitation take-away

I was only able to attend the first few minutes of this session so I’ll update this once I’ve listened to the recording

Presented by Karen Hyder
14.00 – 15.00 UK BST

Once you calculate the time and travel cost savings, the decision to offer training online using virtual classroom software is easy. Choosing the right software to support your content, trainers, and learners isn’t as easy. There are many tools on the market, and the features and licensing fees vary dramatically.

In this session, you’ll see three different virtual-classroom software tools demonstrated, and you’ll discuss the features you’ll NEED, as well as the ones that are really NICE to have.You’ll also learn some simple methods you can use to ensure successful sessions, regardless of which tool you use.

In this session, you will learn:

What to look for when shopping for a virtual classroomWhich features make premium products worth havingWhat you can do to ensure your virtual classes are successful from the start

My key content take-away

If I’m totally honest, I took very little content away NOT because it wasn’t there, but because my Org has recently settled upon using Adobe Connect and as such I undertook a LOT of research into the pros and cons of each tool, which Karen essentially covered in this session.

My key facilitation take-away

I plan to use a poll at the end of my session to ask ‘what do you need next’. This would serve as a great way for me to identify who needs what sort of support and will help me concentrate my efforts.

Presented by Cindy Huggett
15.30 – 16.30 UK BST

Engagement is the best way to create an effective learning experience for your participants. And engagement stems from your training class design.

In this session, Cindy Huggett, author of the best selling book ‘Virtual Training Basics’, will explain five techniques to design an interactive virtual training programme.

You will leave this final session of the day with some practical tips that you can immediately apply when designing your next live online session!

Design techniques for virtual training programmesSelect activities to effectively engage any audienceEstablish interactivity from the start of a session

My key content take-away

There was a lot of talk around providing ‘intro’ sessions to the online classroom tool BEFORE the actual ‘real’ event commences. I’ve been running some ‘hidden’ intro sessions under the guise of ‘getting to know’ sessions about our intranet, however these are due to finish soon. This session has reinforced my determination to get some more of these ‘intro’ sessions into the diary…..

My key facilitation take-away

Cindy spent a lot of the session responding to attendees questions and used them to steer her session, rather than the questions being ‘in addition’ to her content/intended direction. I’d like to think that I’ll do this in the future.

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?

View the original article here

My #COLF L1 Assignment

As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of each of the 9 lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading (I’m making some assumptions here as we’ve only just completed the first session).

When the assignment was originally discussed it was indicated that it should be submitted via a Word document, however when I enquired as to whether the submission could be made using any media format (as long as it was accessible by the facilitator), I was pleased to hear that that would be perfectly acceptable (I also suspect that this may become an overt option in the future for participants).

Here’s my first assignment

Additional resources:

What stinks about webinars? – Alison Rossett

Image source

View the original article here

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

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

View the original article here

Book Review – ‘Remote. Office Not Required’

Remote – Office not required

Regulars Twitter followers will know the fun and games I’ve had since October of last year with my daily Peacehaven – London commutes to undertake a 6 month contract.

Since then I’ve picked up the book ‘Remote – Office Not Required’ and have been (rather ironically) dipping in and out of it on my commutes into London.

Over the next few posts I plan to share with you some elements of the book, if you simply can’t wait, you can find it here. (Amazon UK store)

Gotta dash….. Train to catch…

View the original article here

Designing #mLearning Book Review – Chapter 1

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

;

Chapter 1 – Overview

OK, so I’m off to something of a false start here as I’ve just realised that there are no questions asked of ‘The Reader’ at the end of this short introductory chapter, but we are provided with a list of very realistic and pragmatic situations in which a range of ‘everyday’ roles and occupations can/could/do harness the benefits of a mobile device to increase their performance and value.

And guess what?

Only one of the examples is to undertake a compliance ‘course’! This (thankfully) fleeting mention of a ‘course’ provides me with a warm, fuzzy feeling that the rest of the book won’t be trying to convince me of the benefits of shrinking down desktop learning onto a smaller screen.

He also provides us with a definition for mlearning that he admits the eLearning Guild mobile learning research team struggled to come up with:

“Any activity that allows individuals to be more productive when consuming, interacting with, or creating information, mediated through a compact digital portable device that the individual carries on a regular basis, has reliable connectivity, and fits into a pocket or purse”

(eLearning Guild 360 Mobile Learning Research Report, 2007)

He finally reminds us that the pace of change in this area is so fast that any suggested, specific solutions would be unlikely to stand the test of the publishing process time, so instead explains what the book is really about; preparing the reader to take advantage of the mobile revolution.

I’m hooked.

I’m reading on…..

View the original article here

Getting Beyond Bullet Points – Tools and Resources

For those of you who have read this series of posts relating to my LSG11UK session you’ll know that I reference several tools, resources and pieces of research throughout.

Rather than just sitting on these resources I thought I’d share them with you via this blog post.

You can find the bookmarked resources in my Diigo account or alternatively if you fancy viewing them whilst you are out-and-about, here’s a QR code that will get you to the same location.

If you find anything of interest/use it would great if you could let me know in the comments box below or indeed if you know of any resources that I could add, then again please leave a link in the comments box below.

Part 1 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visuals only

Part 2 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio

Part 3 – Bringing in the backchannel

Part 4 – The Learners Voice

Part 5 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points live recorded podcast

Part 6 – Tools and resources

View the original article here

The story of how I got to speak at #LT11UK….

….. begins in the Summer of 2010.

I was speaking on the telephone with the fantastic @juliewedgwood on the subject of my progress with using learning technologies since attending LT10, when she suggested that @DonaldHTaylor may be interested in the story as a potential session for LT11… I joked about this…. mulled it over…. dropped Don an email….

… and so it came to pass that at 1400hrs on Day 2 of Learning Technologies 2011 I found myself co-facilitating a session entitled ‘Taking the next steps‘ with @simbeckhampson

I remembered the presentations at LT10 being broadly broken down into 2 types:

The sage on the stage with a pocket full of Bullet Points.And the ‘guide by your side’ with a pocketful of interaction and activities.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that the content of the latter still resonates with me today and indeed Julie Wedgwood (who has become a friend and has delivered that same session back into my organisation for me) falls into that category.

It was that same impact that I wanted to have on those delegates who were kind enough to attend my session at LT11. Here are the simple steps that I took in planning and preparing my session.

Given that my session was about my ‘journey’ over the past 12 months I thought it would fit quite nicely into a calendar format.I identified 12 tools that I had used over the preceding 12 months and slotted 1 of these into each month, which then formed the basis of a PowerPoint deck.I asked my friend Sam, to create a desktop calendar from my PPT slides and then ordered 100 of them

I added some autotweets to each of the slides order to feed the #LT11UK Twitter backchannel.Given the target audience for my session I anticipated that many of them might not have a Twitter account (not yet anyway!), so I set up a Text Wall (courtesy of @xlearn) to allow non-Tweeters to experience participating in a back-channel.I realised that as I had only 25 minutes to cover a 12 month period that I would not be able to cover each of the 12 months, so I created a slidecast using Slideshare which allowed me to cover each of the 12 months in greater detail due to the lack of time pressure. Here it is:

At that point it was time to put everything in the laps of the Gods and as Nike would say

The footage can be viewed here (please not that is appears that this site is still being edited (at least I hope it is) but you’ll get the idea)

The actual presentation went as I had anticipated, however the feedback I received be it  face-to-face, via the backchannel or peoples blogs was phenomenal and quite humbling. I had never thought for a second that such a ‘simple introduction’ to Learning Technologies would have pushed so many peoples buttons. Some people have commented upon the unusual, non-linear, delegate-driven presentation style that I used, others have mentioned how passionate I was…

… whatever the reason, the key factor for me was that people enjoyed it and gained some small measure of motivation of it. I wish you all the very best for your future implementation of Learning Technologie and if I can be of any help or assistance then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

On a final note a BIG “Thank You” to Julie Wedgwood for being the catalyst to me speaking at LT11 and to Don Taylor for taking a ‘punt’ on me.

Did you attend my session?

What (if anything) did you take away to action?

How is the action progressing?

Why not provide your responses in the comments box below?

View the original article here

Podcast #10 Sunshine. In Plymouth. In April. Never!

This podcast sees Craig being joined by Erica Neve to discuss their recent attendance at the Plymouth eLearning Conference at the University of Plymouth.

Download podcast in mp3 format: Sunshine. In Plymouth. In April. Never!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.

View the original article here

An award entry – with a difference

Over the Summer of 2013 I submitted an entry into the LPIs annual Learning Awards in the Learning Professional of The Year category.

I know that’s somewhat narcissistic of me but it was the only category I felt I could provide actual evidence for at the point I wrote and submitted the entry. All the other categories would have, I felt, required me to provide evidence, examples etc that I no longer had access to (I did contact my ex-manager on several occasions, but have yet to to receive a reply……)

I wanted to submit an entry that caught the judges attention, so I used iBooks Author to create an interactive entry using text, image carousels and embedded video. I also provided a PDF version for those without an iPad.

Screenshot of the cover of my iBook submission

I was short listed as a category finalist and presented to the judging panel in November 2013.

I was keen to pitch my entry not just against the Learning and Performance Institutes and my own ‘criteria’ but also against what many of you considered to be indicative of a modern and effective L&D professional.

I’m prepping my @YourLPI awards pitch Can you help me? What 3 behaviours/characteristics/attitudes etc should a modern L&D pro demonstrate?

— Craig Taylor (@CraigTaylor74) November 20, 2013

Here’s what some of you came up with

Learning Awards submission Wordle

What words, behaviours, characteristics etc do you believe are missing from this Wordle?

View the original article here

#LMS Confusion…

… is probably the best way of describing how I felt after reading some preliminary findings from the ‘LMSwishlist‘ that Redtray have been conducting.

If I’m honest I’m not a big fan of all the L&D online surveys that seem to be doing the rounds nowadays for 2 reasons.

There seems to be about 1 survey a month (at the very least)! Can’t somebody just say “you know what, I’ll cover ‘em all Guys”Reading that 87% of senior executives would consider utilising xyz technology if it added value to the bottom line, doesn’t really float my boat or add much value to what I do.So it was with some trepidation and apathy that I glanced over the ‘Ten LMS Features Most L&D Experts Don’t Really Care About‘ and boy-oh-boy am I glad I did!!!I’ll let the Storify below outline my confusion and if I’m honest incredulity (not a bad word for a Sunday afternoon). Suffice to say that I’m dying to find out what the 10 features Experts DID care about are!!!Were you one of the ‘experts’ that participated in this survey? What were your reasons for submitting some of the responses you did? I don’t mean to be nosey, but come on…. you ‘don’t care’ about compliance? About RSS feeds? About language packs? About managing your budget?You’ve GOT to tell me what I’m missing here….

Image Source

View the original article here

The story of how I got to speak at #LT11UK….

….. begins in the Summer of 2010.

I was speaking on the telephone with the fantastic @juliewedgwood on the subject of my progress with using learning technologies since attending LT10, when she suggested that @DonaldHTaylor may be interested in the story as a potential session for LT11… I joked about this…. mulled it over…. dropped Don an email….

… and so it came to pass that at 1400hrs on Day 2 of Learning Technologies 2011 I found myself co-facilitating a session entitled ‘Taking the next steps‘ with @simbeckhampson

I remembered the presentations at LT10 being broadly broken down into 2 types:

The sage on the stage with a pocket full of Bullet Points.And the ‘guide by your side’ with a pocketful of interaction and activities.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that the content of the latter still resonates with me today and indeed Julie Wedgwood (who has become a friend and has delivered that same session back into my organisation for me) falls into that category.

It was that same impact that I wanted to have on those delegates who were kind enough to attend my session at LT11. Here are the simple steps that I took in planning and preparing my session.

Given that my session was about my ‘journey’ over the past 12 months I thought it would fit quite nicely into a calendar format.I identified 12 tools that I had used over the preceding 12 months and slotted 1 of these into each month, which then formed the basis of a PowerPoint deck.I asked my friend Sam, to create a desktop calendar from my PPT slides and then ordered 100 of them

I added some autotweets to each of the slides order to feed the #LT11UK Twitter backchannel.Given the target audience for my session I anticipated that many of them might not have a Twitter account (not yet anyway!), so I set up a Text Wall (courtesy of @xlearn) to allow non-Tweeters to experience participating in a back-channel.I realised that as I had only 25 minutes to cover a 12 month period that I would not be able to cover each of the 12 months, so I created a slidecast using Slideshare which allowed me to cover each of the 12 months in greater detail due to the lack of time pressure. Here it is:

At that point it was time to put everything in the laps of the Gods and as Nike would say

The footage can be viewed here (please not that is appears that this site is still being edited (at least I hope it is) but you’ll get the idea)

The actual presentation went as I had anticipated, however the feedback I received be it  face-to-face, via the backchannel or peoples blogs was phenomenal and quite humbling. I had never thought for a second that such a ‘simple introduction’ to Learning Technologies would have pushed so many peoples buttons. Some people have commented upon the unusual, non-linear, delegate-driven presentation style that I used, others have mentioned how passionate I was…

… whatever the reason, the key factor for me was that people enjoyed it and gained some small measure of motivation of it. I wish you all the very best for your future implementation of Learning Technologie and if I can be of any help or assistance then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

On a final note a BIG “Thank You” to Julie Wedgwood for being the catalyst to me speaking at LT11 and to Don Taylor for taking a ‘punt’ on me.

Did you attend my session?

What (if anything) did you take away to action?

How is the action progressing?

Why not provide your responses in the comments box below?

View the original article here

Intranet scoping

Close up of a Zeiss scope

Regular readers of my blog and social media followers will know that I’m not a huge fan of click-next, self-paced eLearning. Sure, there’s a time to wrap the whole learning experience up in a SCORM object, bury it deep within a Learning Management System and track the bejesus out of everything. (When I say everything, of course I’m not actually referring to whether the learner has been able to synthesise the content and has an ability to recreate it in the real world and the subsequent business impact, I’m actualy talking out who did it, when they did it, what score they attained, whether they ‘passed‘ and lets be honest about this; how good their short term memory is!).

The time being when an organisation needs to tick a box and cover their asses to prove that ‘training’ was provided to a learner, the place being (alas) most organisations. (I’ve just re-read the text above and realised I’m going off on one again, so I’ll get back on track…)

I much prefer the approach of providing support at the point of need via relevant resources. Many people will assume that those resources would be of a technical nature and of course they could be. They could also be a poster, a handout, a leaflet etc.

Given my interest in technology however, I’ve always been intrigued and surprised at just how overlooked the intranet is in many organisations, in terms of being able to deliver support in a way that is no doubt far more in people’s ‘workflows’ than an LMS is!

It’s this fascination with how under utilised intranets tend to be, that led to me volunteering to facilitate a number of scoping workshops in a previous organisation when the decision was made to overhaul its intranet offering.

Being a global organisation those workshops took place at each location with the same questions being asked of each group.

Below is the Google Doc that I produced to present the outcomes of the scoping workshop that I conducted, I hope you find the questions that were asked to be of use to you if you are considering developing your own intranet platform. As you can see very few of the questions actually refer to an ‘intranet’ at all, but instead ask how people work, the types of info they require, the media that info is presented in etc

Let me know if I missed anything

Image source

View the original article here

My review of the #Encore #mlearning app

I recently attended this Kineo event. I had originally intended to produce a Storify from this event, but there were several different event hashtags in use throughout the day, so I rapidly gave up on the idea – sure I could’ve manually added the tweets but you know how it is…

Instead, over the next few posts I’d like to share with you a few tools and platforms that @DonaldClark referred to during his session, starting off with ‘Encore’.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of anything that can be done minimise the forgetting curve and automate the process of ‘forcing’ the act of recall around a subject so I was pleased to see Donald highlight ‘Encore‘.

In a nutshell, it’s a Moodle plugin that can be used to synchronise with a free app. The plugin is configured with certain content reminders / frequency etc and then pushes those to the app allowing a steady drip-drip-drip of ‘tasks’ directly to the employees / students mobile device.

Encore showing an alert on an iPhone

The FREE demo involves undertaking a SCORM piece of eLearning with a Moodle, completing  a ‘self assessment’ using Moodle’s inbuilt assessment tool which then unlocks the ‘Encore’ plugin. At this stage you can select to receive the automated ‘tasks’ by email or the Encore app (see below)

‘Tasks’ showing within the Encore app

As sound as the principle is, there are a few areas where I feel some improvement could be made. Having spoken to Learning Pool (the company behind the app) they were very vocal about their desire to receive feedback so I going to speak to them at the end of the 3-week ‘demo’ that is available and relay this feedback onto them.

Firstly (and this is not a criticism, just an observation) but if you’re not using Moodle (or possibly Totara?) then this obviously isn’t for you! Hopefully other LMS/VLE providers will latch onto the idea though??Despite this being a Moodle extension it’s not freely available. Having spoken to Learning Pool they said that even if your Moodle (possibly Totara?) isn’t supplied by them that that the Encore extension could probably be purchased from them.The Encore app is only available on iOS and Android, with Windows on the roadmap but a definite ‘No’ to Blackberries (possibly a stumbling block for corporates who currently use BB?Whilst the end user has the option of receiving the reminders via email or the app for me this still relies on (assuming that the organisation is wishing to tap into the mobility of the employee / student)  the end user having a smartphone. I’d like to see the option of using SMS as a delivery channel. Sure, some of the more media rich activities may not be accessible to feature phone users, but as I see it, at present, none of it is accessible to feature phone users.Some of the activities I undertook in the trial period were just tests of short term memory (see below), which for me, weren’t the best examples of spaced activation of learning, however I think with some thought around reflective questions (possibly with the option for ‘free text’ responses) and short videos there could be a real opportunity for this app to serve as a ‘trigger’ for deeper thought and processing. An example of a ‘task’ within the Encore app

All in all, I think this is a great step forward in terms of demonstrating that mobile learning can be and is so much more than responsive ‘click next’ elearning.

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Using Social Media for Learning

I had been hoping to gather a number of key stakeholders within my organisation to pitch to them in relation to the use of Social Media Technologies for both knowledge management and learning, however the first available date to gather them all together for the 2-3 hours that I needed was the 04th January 2011!!!

A great suggestion was made to me that I actually deliver some of my ‘pitch’ using the very media tools that I was hoping to gather support for in bringing to my organisation. The negative aspects of social media unfortunately grab the headlines more so than the positive effects, therefore it was my intention to bring to their attention the positive aspects of using Social Media Technologies. I was intending to use a wide-ranging number of tools including the very Blog you are reading now, You Tube, Twitter, Delicious, a ‘members only’ social-networking site and Facebook, however a number of those tools are blocked by our IT security policy so I was unable to fully demonstrate their effectiveness (I think they call that a vicious circle!) To begin with I intended to show them a short film entitled Social Media Revolution 2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng]

I have recently seen Peter Butler (Head of Learning at BT) speak extremely passionately on their internal use of a Knowledge Management platform which they have christened ‘Dare2Share’. The footage below, shows a great examples of how a collaborative platform has benefited BT.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtVYkEdGtfo]

The image you can see below is actually a PowerPoint slideshow that I have inserted into a tool called ‘SlideShare’. This tool then allows me to embed the show inside a webpage, as you can see below. This slideshow is only 11 slides long and will go some way towards demonstrating the change in mindset in terms of using social media tools for learning that there is that there has been within the wider global population and the potential ‘disconnect’ that we may be guilty of causing amongst future employees.

[slideshare id=4339355&doc=usingsocialmediaforlearning-100528023309-phpapp01]

During the above SlideShare I mentioned a social bookmarking site called ‘Delicious’ and promised visibility of my Delicious bookmark account, here it is, please feel free to click on any of the links and see what I have been researching. Imagine the power of this type of application within a Project Team who are all collaborating and undertaking research towards a common goal… The first two clips that I showed above were from YouTube, however as you could see these were created by other people/organisations. The clip below was created by me and uploaded to YouTube. I created this footage in order to update our e-learning authors on some pending changes to our e-learning authoring software. To type the update within an email would have been time-consuming (and probably quite boring to read!) however by talking to people in a ‘virtual’ manner, I believe it bridged the gap between numerous face-to-face meetings and a dry email – the feedback received by the recipients was very encouraging. Imagine that this footage was of a technician disconnecting ‘Valve A’ from ‘Pump B’… what a great Knowledge Management tool! Obviously the content shouldn’t sit in the public domain i.e. YouTube, but would need to be more secure. In essence our own organisations version of BTs Dare2Share model.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVfOp2CxFI0]

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