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September 27, 2005
Learning Design...continued
Brent Schlenker makes great points in an interview on the Learning 2005 University pre-conference website on designing learning in the format people want it in, with just the amount they need and just that bit being easily accessible -- instead of over- designing to fit SME desires to include everything and the kitchen sink... This was also discussed at the recent eLearning Age seminar referenced below. The discussion he and Elliott Masie (and other commentors) had about selecting colors and styles for types of learning/perspectives is intriguing. Visitors from that site may be interested in similar comments I recently made (below) during a talk on Instructional Design for eLearning, where I highlighted the need to design with performance support in mind, and advocated use of 'JGE' design where appropriate - Just Good Enough - content production that makes it easy for people to appreciate it because it gives them exactly what they need when they need it.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2005
Reference Links from Yesterday's Instructional Design Talk
Here are links from yesterday's talk on Instructional Design...
Tools - world class suppliers I work with the most:
eLearning - Rapid content development - Macromedia Breeze for audio/video synched with slides with quizzes, etc., Learn eXact for template-based content production including for SCORM trackable mobile & wearable devices, and Datmedia for streaming video with easy porting to mobiles.
Performance Support - Learning Guide for easy to build and access reference materials for systems & processes and Instancy, a platform supporting workflow learning including mobile data collection and task support.
Connecting people - a variety of methods were discussed. Communispace is an excellent provider of online commmunities. Coaching and faciliting immersive online experiences is an art itself we didn't have time to discuss - Feel free to contact me to learn more about it or about any of these tools/applications further. my email
Games for Learning - I mentioned the UN's Food Force game as a good example of a well produced 'Serious' Game with decent game play, and Second Life & There for low cost, rich 3D environments to connect people and give them a place to practice new behaviours. Here's the link to last week's BBC article on Second Life used for new graduates. I also mentioned Gizmondo as a promising choice for location-based team building games and 'personal learning devices'.
I described Podcasting and Blogs as emerging low cost tools being increasingly used for learning, with Elliott Masie's Learning 2005 pre-conference blog as a good example. And how about this blog posting for learning event follow-up? ;-)
Posted by Ron Edwards at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
Instructional Design for eLearning
I presented a few tips on instructional design strategy and examples of learning innovation (podcasting, blogs, games, mobile) today at eLearning Age's Instructional Design for eLearning event in London. As an example of rapid content development, produced 'JGE' - Just Good Enough, I recorded my comments using my iPod with the iTalk microphone attachment and synched up the audio with my slides using Breeze and uploaded it here. Note that the audio quality would be much better had I used wireless microphone gear (next time!) That would also have enabled me to record directly to my laptop into Breeze/Powerpoint and I wouln't have had to spend the half hour synching it up afterwards.
Thanks to the participants for their interest, questions and comments!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
Mobile Content World - London... Quest for Innovation
This year's conference expo was much smaller than last, but still intense enough to drive a steady uptake of massages! (massages provided by Urban Chill - a cool idea for your meetings and conferences). The overall sense that I got was that video with interactive capability (via SMS & MMS) is really growing, and that sending messages anywhere in the world and managing them is getting easier. It's also easier to distribute content, including something new I hadn't seen before from Cell Jump, a Danish company selling a small device you plug right into your phone to upload games, videos, etc. - these could be sold @ retail or used in training centers to load content without having to rely on network connectivity and cost. I saw a slight increase in educational content this year - some from Motricity, partnered with eReader, 'the world's largest ebook store' to deliver books on smartphones & PDAs to GignoSystems launching National Geographic resources on mobiles - growing at about 1000 subscriptions per month per country. Speaking of National Geographic and mobiles, click here to read a story about tracking crocodiles in South Africa using GPS devices to send their location to a scientist's phone to help guide further development away from their natural hang outs... hmmm... We've heard of location based services to help you find where to eat, I hadn't thought of using them to keep from being eaten!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2005
Open Source Location-Based Learning:Wikipedia on Smartphones via Semacode...Semapedia.org!
| Check this out - a few people have just started a collaborative effort to combine the use of Semacode - a way to get a link to a website on your smartphone by taking a photo of a special graphic that can be generated online instantly for free -(example on the left)- with Wikipedia, the free collaborative encyclopedia, and are encouraging people to "tag" (with permission) places of interest so visitors can instantly learn more about them by referencing the relevant Wiki on their smartphone. It's a great example of combining free open source tools for people to create and share learning content. You can learn more about it here, including how to post the Semacode images on Flickr, a free (mobile) photo blogging community now owned by Yahoo, and tagging them with GPS (Latitude/Longitude) coordinates to combine with satellite maps on Google Earth or Google Maps. |
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2005
PSP Launch Today!
Today is the long awaited UK launch of the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), a beautiful, powerful, WiFi enabled gaming/music/photos and movie device. You can catch reviews of it everywhere, including the BBC here and the Guardian here. (There is a nice comparison on the BBC site of 6 handheld gaming devices here). Note the references to how difficult it is to view your own video and the lack of messaging capability on the PSP which in addition to the proprietary development platform inhibit off the shelf use for learning. A more promising device for learning is the Gizmondo, recently launched in the UK and the US, this handheld device also has some 30 titles but also includes GPS for outdoor location based gaming and a GPRS data card enabling network play and messaging. Another handheld device I'm tracking is the Nokia 770 mini-tablet - a Wifi enabled handheld with a browser which will play Flash, thus enabling low cost learning games development.
How might mobile gaming be used in a learning context in the near future?
While much of the discussion at the mobile games conferences I referred to yesterday have focussed on technical capabilities of 3D and multiplayer networked play as usual, there were a few mentions of important developments in location based and multi-platform networked gaming where you interact with your game world and fellow gamers across platforms from mobile to console to pc. Some of this is referenced on the Guardian games blog here by Kieth Stewart who attended the full day.
Location based gaming/learning gives you the ability to have context sensitive content (information based on where you are and what you are looking at) delivered into your hands, eyes and ears. I envision a few "channels" available for wherever you are from history to politics to "how does this work" to entertainment to yes, even the most cited and boring application, the location of nearby retail services. It's great to see more experimentation in this space as I also agree that it will become prevalent and invaluable. Multi-platform networked gaming is important because it connects people independent of device which is key to collaborative learning across distance. This would also enable the type of tracking important to many learning organizations - just as you would "accessorize" your Sim on your mobile device with skills, tools, etc. by trading with a friend you just bumped into (or found online), and play further when you got home on your PC - the same process could occur for accessing context sensitive knowledge objects (and people!).
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)