e-Learning in your Pocket

Just downloaded the Howcast iPhone application. Very simply you access hundreds of user generated videos on various topics (some serious, some off the wall). The videos offer advice and guidance on a multitude of solutions from how to extend the life of your iPod battery, how to tie a tie (badly needed), how to survive an airplane crash, how to give a speech, how to cram for a test, to how to conduct research, etc. "e-Learning on the go" - is this the future of training?

Mobile Streaming Video

Finally managed to stream video in realtime from my phone to a website using Qik. Not all phones support the Qik software and it seems they only recently expanded their offering to the HTC brand. The video quality is suprisingly good and I was amazed to see this working live on my PC as I streamed video from my phone. You could even chat to the person recording the video through the website. Powerful. They also updated the application for the iPhone and you can now view videos on your iPhone (no worries about having Flash installed, etc.). In a class setting you could potentailly setup a Training Channel for your class and provide a link to a video stream or video collection. Nice. I really like this tool as there are times when you want to get a video online as quick as possible. Now I can. Lets say I was at a conference / business meeting and just interviewed someone. I could potentially stream that interview live on my www.qik.com/liamfoley channel for people to follow instantly. Combined with a Twitter alert my followers could access the video immediately with an embedded link. Go to Qik for more details. Welcome to the future.

More Pictures from Learning Council

Some more pictures from the highly successful learning council meeting where training associates got together from all over the world to share best practices, learn about new technologies, discuss the roadmap of planned activities, and of course, network with like-minded individuals.

Learning Council Interactive Sessions

Good interest from participants to explore mobile technologies and integrate our virtual classroom platform into the LMS. Discussion goes on. Here are some live pictures from the highly engaged participants.

Lively Sessions at 3rd Learning Coucil

Good crowd of Training, HR and IT folk attending our third Learning Council meeting. Great participation with associates flying in from France, Germany, US, Portugal, Belgium, to name but a few. Very engaging sessions sharing best practices, new ideas and concepts with live LMS demos, and now using a virtual collaboration space to preview a new testing tool. Lots to learn and share.

Learning in the cloud

Interesting viewpoints captured during the London Learningtechnologies conference last month on SaaS - software as a service. Looking at the pros and cons of hosting an LMS on an external server, the article on www.trainingzone.co.uk gives food for thought. With Google apps, and many other services becoming pure Internet hosted apps, it is only a matter of time that the LMS Market shifts to a cloud model. The benefits are not hard to calculate. No worries about upgrades, no fiddling with servers, and maintenance schedules, SaaS sounds more and more attractive.

Conversation Agent: You're on Twitter

Great article about Twitter:
http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/02/youre-on-twitter-now-what.html

Sent from my iPhone

Social Media In Plain English

As we currently have a strong spotlight on social media, I have dug up some short and to-the- point e-learning snippets on a number of popular channels and tools that fall under this (growing) umbrella. Hopefully, I can also try and put these as web links in our Learning Catalog (of course, only after I get licenses sorted out) on the LMS. Being a good social media citizen I should tag these items appropriately so they are easily searchable. I like these short modules as they explain things in an easy to understand cartoon-like format and manage to get the basic message across by avoiding confusing techie terminology. Best of all they all run for less than 3-4 minutes. Short and sweet. Dip in and learn. Have fun. Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Twitter, Podcasting, Social Bookmarketing, Social Networking

Social Media Workshop

Just came back from a stimulating, and at times heated discussion, on making social media in our company "business as usual". After 7 hours of an action-packed agenda looks like we are well on the way to kicking off some concrete initiatives around communication, sponsorship, education and implementation. So who turned up and led this challenging event? 16 social media thought leaders and power users from IT, Marketing, Development and Communications (and other departments) gathered from all over the world in a small room on our campus with ample supply of food and caffeine to thrash out a plan. The next 18 months will be critical to the success of this project and its going to be interesting to see how the general population reacts to an increased focus on these channels. I know in the training area, any move to introduce and scale up new productivity tools and collaboration spaces will be extremely welcome. So, overall a successful and highly productive day. When I look back on it, just getting all of us into this workshop for a full day was a major achievement in itself and demonstrates a strong desire and passion to bring us to the next level.

Pics from the 2009 LearnTech Conference

3d World - Sample Avatar Expressions

Following on from the blog about 3D worlds used for training at the learningtechnologies conference, here is a small snippet of how the avatars sounded and looked. Please excuse the low quality and the crazy laugh of the conference participant who unfortunately sat behind me. Enjoy.

3D Worlds for New Hires

Its not easy to pull off a live session with over 6 avatars (logging in from all over the world) acting out roles in a virtual world in front of a sceptical bunch of serious trainers. But Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance did just that last week at the London Learningtechnologies conference. Using Olive, a virtual platform that is managed by Forterra, he demonstrated how new hires in a retail company use a 3D Virtual World to get onboarded. I really liked the linkage of voice to expressions. Normally, in such an environment, there are limited or no facial reactions, here they smiled, laughed, and even looked liked the real people. See the photo of Ron Edwards attached and his lookalike avatar. Olive uses Voice Over IP (VOIP) so the participants were able to talk during the whole demo, showing how a new hire meets existing employees, and allowing them to ask questions and move around the virtual shop. It got pretty extreme during the role playing, also for the new hire, when they showed how a disruptive customer could make life hell for the shop assistant. We were told this role play scene could even be played back (just like video) to show what could be fixed by treating the customer differently. Impressive.

Learningtechnologies 09 Conf - Mobile

Enjoyed the presentation at the learningtechnologies conference on using mobile devices for training purposes. Using the DS Lite from Nintendo, the company in question, adapted the popular Braining Training program, to create a cool game to improve numeracy skills. Using prompts, tips, rewards, and personal feedback the game provided a simple and easy interface to train hundreds of users. 8 games were included with varying levels. Audio and video sequences were included. In this case, the training was not tracked but in future they could output a file of the scores to an LMS. They also plan to use the device for programs on cultural awareness, languages, and even teaching vehicle electrics. They will also attempt to prove the effectiveness of mobile devices for training through a control group. With an iPod they also pushed out language training to travelling associates working in countries around the world. The iPods were loaded with flash cards with images and audio.