October 13, 2009
A minute on Enterprise Virtual Worlds
Nigel Paine (his blog and Twitter feed) and I were discussing how easy it has become to share knowledge in real time across the world using mobile social media tools... and he suggested we create a minute on virtual worlds which we did! He uploaded it via iPhone to an audio service and was then able to tweet it to his posse. I like this tool - it even geotagged our location automatically. Cool! Hopefully the audio plays on most phones too.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 04:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 11, 2009
Back From CeBIT with some pics vids and news
I visited CeBIT last week in Hannover Germany to participate on a panel on Enterprise Virtual Worlds to represent Forterra Systems OLIVE. The panel was moderated by Steve Prentice of Gartner who did a good job of keeping it interesting. Some panels are a drag! We were part of the California Pavilion (Qwaq, Second Life and Forterra are all based in California) and I have to say it's the first time that I have given a talk with posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger all around (he opened CeBIT this year).
I took a few pictures of the trade show and put them on Flickr with some comments:
I was fascinated by the Microsoft Surface display used by T-Mobile where they had several connected to look like a koi pond. I loaded my first HD video to YouTube of it (try it in 'HQ'!)
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2009
Time to focus on employee development and engagement
I just read an article on McKinseys website (free registration required) discussing how during periods of job cuts, it's more important than ever to focus on employee development and engagement to ensure a positive company culture and performance, and that wise companies use these situations to redesign work to give people more responsibilities which can require more training and support. It argues that to stay competitive, companies should continue to invest in people and engagement programs rather than put a freeze on all activities.
Here's the conclusion:
Cost cutting during a downturn is often necessary to ensure a company’s current profitability and future competitiveness. Rather than freezing all hiring and employee-development programs, companies should use this period as an opportunity to upgrade talent and better engage existing staff. This means reinvesting a percentage of the capital liberated from cost cutting into, for example, selective recruiting and development programs and in efforts to safeguard the culture and to redesign jobs so that they are more engaging to the remaining employees.
I think our new Virtual Instructor Led Training V-ILT just announced which we're developing with Brey Leino BroadSkill couldn't come at a better time. Effective training delivered more efficiently and at lower cost.
Meanwhile, interest in using the Forterra OLIVE platform for collaboration to save travel costs, improve efficiency and engagement continues to outpace pure training applications so it will be interesting to see whats more popular in a year or so. (Disclosure: Ambient is Forterras European service provider).
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 01, 2008
Off to Orlando for IITSEC Conference
A Memory Vending Machine!! Unbelievably cool.
Off to Orlando for IITSEC conference
Originally uploaded by ron777.
You have a new picture message!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2007
Half Life 2 Machinima of A Few Good Men
I just viewed this Machinima based on A Few Good Men again after a year or so, it's even more compelling after seeing the G Man in action again in Half Life 2 Episode 2. What a great produciton!! Timeless....
This clip makes me want to play Half Life AND watch A few good men!
Going to be a busy weekend.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 16, 2007
Conferences Follow up Resources *updated*
Hi!
I have been speaking at quite a few conferences lately and promised to share some of the links I referenced during various speeches and workshops. So, here they are!
We produced the first conference in Europe dedicated to exploring enterprise and education applications for virtual worlds with the Serious Games Institute (SGI) last month. You can access the video and slide archive directly here or the new Serious Games Institute website. We streamed the event into Second Life with the help of Datmedia, the SGI and David Burden of Daden, Ltd (who has generated lots of interest in doing it again!).
We had just over 150 people at the conference and another 150 online. Not bad for a first!
I really enjoyed Dr. Leroy Heinrichs presentation which you can view here, he shared published results showing virtual worlds working as well as or better than physical training for the emergency response training they ran at Stanford Medical School. (You can email presentations to colleagues but this feature doesn't always work in Firefox yet).
My presentation on the various implementation aspects for enterprise use of virtual worlds can be accessed directly here (and can be sent to your mobile phone too. I am curious to how well this works for our overseas viewers, your comments are welcome!).
A live demonstration of the Forterra Systems OLIVE platform was provided by John Burwell, Forterra VP and can be accessed directly here. John showed the retail training and emergency response examples.
Roo Reynolds of IBM posted a nice collection of pictures and comments from the conference on his blog here.
There are also lots of pictures on the SGI site.
Workshops:
Podcasting resources I referenced in the workshop can be viewed on this blog by using the search box on the lower right side.
The video interview on Podcasting, blogging and wiki use at the BBC I did with Nigel Paine, former Chief Learning Officer for the BBC can now be found here . (there are also several presentations there from our annual Seriously Mobile Summit).
My keynote from the Chicago Learning Executives conference was videotaped, I'll add it to the archive when I get a copy. Feel free to email me for the slides in the interim if interested. Update*** A video clip of me discussing virtual worlds for training is embedded below. The .mp3 and slides are now available, I will try to synch them up in the video archive soon.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2007
Virtual Worlds, Virtual Earth, Mobile Visualisation Article
There is a great article titled Second Earth here in MITs Technology Review this month discussing how Virtual Worlds will combine with Virtual Earth viewers (e.g. Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth), and will extend to our hands via Mobile Augmented Reality.
The article also features some great forward thinking by Forterra's Chairman David Rolston. I agree with the vision presented and am excited to be contributing in all three domains to help realise it.
We'll be exploring these at the Serious Virtual Worlds conference 13,14 September in Coventry.
More information on the conference we're producing with the Serious Games Institute can be found here.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2007
My IITT Training 2007 Evening Speech
You can listen to my evening address 'All Technology Was New at Some Point' at the IITT Conference in Warwick, UK here:
I spoke about my start in IT training and today's interest in mobile, serious games and virtual worlds.
I wrote out what I wanted to say - but left out some of it. You can check it out below if interested.
All Technology Was New at Some Point
Pornography! …is just one of the many uses of the internet….that’s how I introduced the Internet 10 years ago to 500 sales people who were wondering what possible business benefit it might have. Of course, if I were introducing the web now I’d probably have to say something like “role playing as a furry animal is just one of the many things you can do in cyberspace. I’ve been invited to share a few thoughts on technology for the next 15 minutes. I consider myself a journeyman, always learning what’s new and considering what’s next.
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? It wasn’t that long ago that we were first introducing the internet to our corporate colleagues, and before that it was personal computers themselves with Windows 3.1! Back then our training software ran in DOS. Just the way we liked it! Windows ushered in an age where workers started to think of their desktop tools differently, from mainframe thin client apps to input data to using new tools for word processing, number crunching, visualization and project management. Email went from zero to hero and I remember how funny we thought it was that people were sending emails across the office instead of walking over to talk to people. Now of course, email is so pervasive, it’s spawned a new device, one that delivers the email within 1 meter of your head 24/7. Yes, the crackberry.
Consumer led technologies keep creeping their way into our organisations, don’t they? Think about it. The personal computer – the first ones by IBM , Apple, Commodore, Sinclair, and Acorn. These were used in the 80s by us geeks in droves before the personal computer started to make inroads in to our organisations.
It wasn’t until 1992 that the large company I worked for started to bring in PCs for all workers. They started with the secretaries in the R&D group I worked in and I was in charge of their training. I started learning everything I could about training and software training in particular. I attended conferences, started a masters in training and development and found kindred minds and spirits (yes, in the bar), and through networking developed a few partnerships with training providers. We figured, when introducing new software, why not just show people how to get their jobs done using the new tools vs. showing what was behind each menu in case they might need it. We undertook a light task analysis to try to find what the high performing workers were doing that we could train the others in while looking for opportunities to further automate things. We called it Job Specific Training. I’ve never been very good at catchy names. While the name may not have caught on outside the US, we inspired quite a few people to take a look at how to better train people by sharing what was working at conferences. I think that this approach still holds value today, but jobs have become more complex requiring more tools and more multitasking – I think this is giving rise to something that’s been around for a long time but is finally becoming “hip” – and that is online performance support. This solves the problem of not being able to remember everything whether it’s a process or a few mouse clicks to get something done.
I’ve always dabbled in performance support as I’ve defined my role as enabling and developing performance, rather than delivering training. I started by simply putting sales materials on the new Intranet I lobbied for because I could see that if we could get people using the Intranet to get their day to day business information, it wouldn’t be long before we could use it to support and eventually deliver learning. This of course became known as eLearning. Who knew?
If we jump forward a few years to 2001 when I moved over here to lead eLearning for Unilever globally, one of my first tasks was to advise a group looking to train 28,000 people across Europe on SAP. I was encouraged that they had a well thought out plan that was focused on the change management needed to get people to work differently in new work processes, and that the software was actually just an enabler. They designed performance support into the application so you could always look up where you were in the process and how to compete the transaction. They used shortened classroom time to help people understand the change and to learn how to use the online help. This was an award winning project – DACG won the Gold award in 2002 for it, but to us, it just seemed like the only way to do it and I don’t think any of us went to the award banquet. In hindsight, maybe we should have. Champagne is a good thing. So is sharing what works.
These days, I’m doing what I can to keep up with the rapid technological change that we find ourselves in. I track what’s happening in the consumer worlds where all of us live and play because that’s where we find stuff that people want, that will help our organisations. How do you keep up with developments? I think that once you master the fundamentals of great training, training management and get the infrastructure right, to remain a master Jedi you’ve got to keep an eye on what’s next that will make a difference. Fortunately, nowadays many of the really innovative things don’t cost much.
A great example of this is last year’s hot topic – podcasting. For those of you that just arrived to this planet, Podcasting is simply distributing audio or video clips over the internet to people that choose to subscribe to them so they get constant updates for free. The Christmas gift to have in 2004 was an iPod. It still is because now they come with video. There are millions of these .mp3 players out there and now, not only can you play .mp3 on your phone like this one, but you can actually subscribe and get them on the run over wifi or phone network. So people have the devices and they’re listening to podcasts, some of which could even be educational I suppose, now we have companies saying, hey, the cost of these are less than the round trip taxi to the airport. I could put all of the lectures on them. And companies are starting to do this, with some even supplying thousands of them. I started listening to a few myself, and practiced making a few. I sucked. A few companies asked me to run workshops on how to create & implement them and I started to do public workshops which were fun – I was finally back in the classroom doing what I love – teaching technology. Now I think people are figuring it out on their own which is great. I’m on to the next big thing – or the next few big things.
So what are the next big things? We’re in the midst of a revolution on the web (and on mobiles but we’ll get to that tomorrow). This revolution has a name, Web 2.0, and it is the transition from a read only web where you just access information to a read-write web where we can all contribute whether for personal interests, learning or work. These tools are talked about a lot now, especially in context for how they support informal learning. Tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking, and social bookmarking and news sites. As Technorati, the epicenter of the Blogosphere says, there are 60 million blogs, some of them must be good. Blogging is good for you. It help keep you on your toes for what’s happening and looking to blog it which I think helps clarify your thinking. Commenting on other’s blogs builds community and can help you find people that are smarter than you are. Or at least more knowledgeable.
Social networking sites such as Facebook are hotter than ever right now. It’s as if the UK has taken over Facebook in terms of buzz. I created an account in both Facebook and Myspace – each of these has 25 and 100 million users respectively. A few people I didn’t know in the far east asked to be my friends in Myspace just after I registered. I felt bad for saying no. But seeing that they had hundreds of friends already, I didn’t worry too much. Meanwhile, one business contact and friend after another keeps adding me as a friend in Facebook and I’m finding it kind of fun. I was doing a piece of research on social media for a client and came across a quote from a marketing director about my age, from his daughter who was 15. she says “All of my friends but 2 are on Facebook and I have 100’s of friends. I only use email to communicate with old people, like you.” For those of you that have kids, you probably notice that they are constantly using Instant Message and now social networking sites to communicate with each other. It isn’t just the teens though. I met some friends a few days ago for dinner, one of the three was a passionate Facebook user who says all of her friends but one (and she’s working on that one) are on facebook and that she only uses email for the few people she interacts with not on it. She’s 26. The business colleagues I’m networked with are older. There’s something to this – a new way of communicating that I think we can tap into. I’m just not sure how yet. There is a growing chorus of “what are we going to do when the youth of today who are used to interacting and learning in entirely new ways come into the workplace? Well, they’re here. And they are going to stay where they feel like they can contribute and work at a pace they’re used to.
I think the other frontier is tapping into games, game technologies and virtual worlds as the immersion is incredible and is providing new opportunities. When was the last time you felt an emotion when doing online learning? Ok, maybe anger, frustration, boredom to take a few cheap shots. But what about laughing out loud? Feeling nervous, on the edge, exploring, not knowing what would happen next? Virtual worlds are so immersive you find yourself transported to another place and you’re very focused on your experience vs the distractions around you.
I first heard about 3d virtual worlds in 2002 from Elliott Masie who reported on them from the big consumer electronics show and suggested they might have some learning potential. I tried to sign up for the beta, but they would never give me a password. I really wanted to try it though. I remembered seeing news articles saying they were hoping to attract women online because if they are there in the online community, then men will follow. The reverse is of course not necessarily true. So, I signed up as Ron-da and got an account immediately. As I signed on I had to choose, be a woman avatar or a man. I was worried that if I selected man they might be on to me, but I didn’t think I could be a woman forever either. So, I chose dude, and I’ve had the account every since. My first experience was intense. I was transported to a cartoonish tropical place and somebody that looked very young and fit walked up to me and introduced herself. I didn’t realise I was wearing ‘nube’ gear – white t-shirt and khaki pants. She taught me how to change my clothes and answered my questions about how to get one of those cool hoverboards. She loaned me hers, I thought that was pretty cool. We joked around a bit and added each other as friends to find each other again. In those few minutes I felt nervous, excited, glad, happy, and a sense of accomplishment once I mastered the hoverboard. I’ll talk more about some of the applications of virtual worlds beyond hoverboards tomorrow.
On the gaming front, how many of you consider yourselves gamers? How many think video games have some potential for corporate training? Well, a lot of people do, too. It’s one thing to read about why people play games and increasingly choose do so over tv, and a lot of other activities including for me, sleep. It’s quite another to actually find a game that you can’t put down and experience it for yourself.
I had heard about Half Life, one of the top selling, most award winning games for some time before finally buying it to try it for myself. Then of course, I had to play Half Life 2, the sequel, which rocked. The game play is that you’re Gordon, there’s been a catastrophic accident that threatens earth and you guessed it, it’s up to you to save everybody. You have to blast your way through tunnels and buildings and you find yourself facing scary zombies in the dark which munch your brain with this horrible crunch crunch sound. It’s awful! I couldn’t put it down. Why?? The theorists will say it’s a concept called flow – when you feel like you’re succeeding just past your capabilities. How do we tap into that, without the zombies??
We have a lot to learn. You’re in the right place. You have some world class speakers here, great sessions and each other to learn from. Of course, the learning doesn’t stop here, and while it doesn’t have to include zombies, I encourage you to try a few new things to find what will add value for you and your organisations.
Thank you for listening.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 02, 2007
++Update++ Corporate Blogging Conversation in Romania
I participated via skype video in a summit on corporate blogging that was held in Romania this morning. They explored the role of blogging vs traditional PR, the role and risks of CEO blogging and I think that they "got" one of the most important points for compelling blogs: that individuals blog, not corporations. It was a good use of technology and kudos to the organiser Radu who was able to connect me through translators! It felt like being there, more so than the video broadcast I saw in a virtual world last night with a cacophony of text chat which made it hard to tell who was talking (typing).
If any of the participants have found thier way to this blog, please feel free to follow up with any questions or comments.
Update: Mirona Ilesciu has a more thorough description about this summit on her blog here. I think she has a nice blog, too. Interesting photos!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 31, 2007
New Laws of Knowledge Motion via Twitter
Twitter is a way to send messages across platforms (SMS,IM,Web) to groups of people who can choose to subscribe to follow your musings. I found this interesting post on the iCommons blog (iCommons is an upcoming summit focussed on keeping the internet open and free) where the author uses the Newton's laws of motion as an example of how to reach 3 billion people with 138 characters of educational content and suggests 'new laws of knowledge motion'.
It is a stunning new truth of our time that the laws of motion have changed for knowledge. What is known by humankind can move from person-to-person across the planet at the speed of light. Knowledge can move in showers of messages from a single person to myriad more. And those who receive it can answer back and comment to each other. The new laws of motion will let us spread the exchange of knowledge into a twittering global commons.
I've been playing around with Twitter and was thinking it is a disruptive technology to the for fee messaging services starting to be used in the financial markets and elsewhere for instant k sharing. It's great to find a kindred mind already thinking of education potential.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2007
Seriously Mobile Summit 20 April Live Webcast Link
Hi! We will be broadcasting our Seriously Mobile Summit live from Reuters in London on 20 April.
Here are the links for the Webcast and the 3G streaming video for mobile phones link:
Webcast (Real or Windows Media, click on "Live Broadcast in player (not archived content from last year).
Mobile Phone (Real Format only this time (should work with Nokia and many other phones), link will be added tonight)
The agenda is below. You can ask questions and leave comments using Twitter. (send messages to my Twitter account RonEdwards) We'll get to them when we can! Try to add yourself as my friend, your comments should be listed below this agenda.
The Mobile Internet: Working in Real Time
20 April 2007, 9.30-16.30, Hosted by Reuters @ Canary Wharf, London
Format:
Supporting Mobile Workforce Capability
The Seriously Mobile Summit offers presentations and discussions with thought leaders from an eminent range of commercial, academic and independent organizations. Which business and cultural drivers are requiring new approaches?
Why is traditional event-driven training no longer meeting needs?
How are readily available new technologies including Networked 3D Simulation Environments, Mobile Learning & Performance Support on platforms such as BlackBerrys, PDAs, iPods and Smart Phones making a real difference as part of the blend of informal and formal learning approaches?
Creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but which have the most compelling architecture of participation. That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products - Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly MediaAgenda 9:30-10:00 Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters Charles Jennings, Global Head of Learning, Reuters 'Mobile Learning, Getting Serious About the Potential' Nigel Paine, Conference Chair Opening Remarks
10:00-10:45 Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO, Giunti Labs. 'Towards Personalized Ambient Learning'
10:45-11:10 Break
11:10-11:40 Kristina Nyzell, Director, Working Play Playing Work 'From Playing Work to Working Play… New Work(ing) Models in a Seriously Mobile World'
11:40-12:30 Jay Cross, Founder and Chief Scientist, Internet Time Group 'Free Range
Learners in the Ubiquitous Chicken Yard'
12:30-1:30 LUNCH (view Nigel Paine talking about Podcasting, Wikis and Blogs at the BBC here while you wait)
1:30-2:00 Case Study: Paul Landers, Strategic Product Manager, Ericsson Learning Consultancy Services 'Taking Learning Mobile'
2:00-2:30 Case Study: Hanif Sazen, CEO, Saffron Interactive 'Learning on the Move'
2:30-3:00 Technology Showcases: Datmedia Mobile IPTV & Me2B Next Generation Mobile Hardware
3:00-3:15 TEA
3:15-3:35 Case Study: Lizbeth Goodman, Director, SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and Magic Gamelab at UEL 'Lost & Found > A system to track missing and exploited children (and adults) using mobile technology'
3:35-4:00 Case Study: Claus Nehmzow, Partner, PA Consulting 'Virtual World Applications'
4:00-4:20 New Technology Implementation Panel with Leading Experts including Mark Oehlert, Booz Allen Hamilton, Brent Shlenker, Hospice of the Valley and David Metcalf, PhD, University of Central Florida
4:20-4:30 Closing Remarks: Ron Edwards & Nigel Paine
Posted by Ron Edwards at 03:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2007
2 Good Blogging Books
I just finished two good books on corporate blogging. I found Robert Scoble and Shel Israels book Naked Conversations a fun read that helped fill in the history of blogging for me with examples and really made the case for why employees at all levels should blog rather than have it be managd by PR/Communications departments. It also offered some insight on where blogging seems to work better/worse in different cultures. I found Debbie Weils The Corporate Blogging book more thorough on how different departments could/should blog to support business goals and perhaps better for people completely new to the idea and wanting to get started. Many of the stories are the same in the two books so you probably don't need both unless you are looking at both angles - departmental vs. any employee blogging. I think there is room for both approaches as long as there is authenticity and something of interest for readers.
Both books have online follow up resources that are helpful including blogging policies and lots of links to good examples.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2007
Growing Your Own Business Presentation
I had fun speaking and exhibiting at the Growing Your Own Business conference in London last week. I really enjoyed talking with people that were considering starting businesses and looking for low cost ways to run them. My presentation focussed on web 2.0 trends and tools including You Tube, Podcasting, Blogging, Virtual Worlds with Real Businesses, Location Based Services & Mapping applications using Microsoft Virtual Earth and a variety of low cost tools including collaborative Wikis and Google Documents as well as Skype and BT Wifi Access - which you can now pay one fee to use Wifi at any of their partners including T-Mobile and The Cloud - so it is finally cheaper to use WiFi in the UK.
I shared my booth with colleagues at CellClear on Friday who specialise on mobile phones and contracts for small businesses. We are excited to find ways to help get people use the mobile internet together.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
See You at the Learning Technologies Conference?
I'm excited to be speaking at this years conference and looking forward to hearing the presentation on games and learning following mine - but even more jazzed to see whats happening in the exhibition as the buzz on mobile continues to grow. David Wilson commented on the future of elearning on his blog recently and cited mobile (and games/simulations, too) as the way forward adding yet another voice to the chorus (Elliott, Jay, Clive, Hanif and Vaughan have all recently commented on mobile learning).
I hope to see you there, I will be oscillating between partners Giunti Labs and Datmedia booths - both have new press releases discussing mobile. I will also be visiting the Learning Light booth for whom I've provided some PSP content - it will be great to hear some feedback on it.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 06, 2006
Leadership Dev & Performance Slides up
I uploaded my slides and synched with the audio from my speech last week using Datpresenter for fun. (whee!)
You can access it here. I added a chat group to it for fun, feel free to leave a comment!
Has anyone had problems with the same audio as a podcast (posted below?) Sometimes it works fine, other times it runs way too fast. I may just have to quit using free tools... and you may notice I need to get a better microphone, too!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 13, 2006
New Technologies for Learning Presentation
I delivered a presentation titled New Technlogogies for Learning for a Learning Light event on the 11th.
I discussed consumer mobile device and use trends, enterprise applications and infrastructure, and web 2.0 tools and trends that are being adapted for learning and communication.
You can view the presentation here.
The BBC video with Nigel Paine discussing thier use of Podcasting, Wikis, Blogs and Informal Learning can be accessed here.
We have designed and produced related workshops on Podcasting (22/9), Wikis/Blogs in the Enterprise and Serious Games (6/10), and primers on mobile learning tools, content and approaches on 22/10. You can find out more and register here.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 04, 2006
Enterprise 2.0
Interest in Web 2.0 technologies and approaches for the corporate world continues to grow and the term 'Enterprise 2.0' has been coined to describe this mix. Check out this article by Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew McAfee for a clear explanation of the 3 underlying enabling trends.
We'll be discussing these trends with examples in our upcoming London workshops throughout the year.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2006
The Power of Blogging and YOU TUBE?
You Tube is a free video hosting service, is viewed by millions daily, and is a phenomenon. You know that. But did you know it is being used as an agent of change? I noticed this article from the New York Daily News commenting on the grass roots momentum to unseat US Senator Lieberman in the primary election for Connecticut:
Novice Connecticut candidate Ned Lamont's victory was hailed as the first electoral coup by the ranks of liberal bloggers who breathed life into the upstart's campaign.They drummed up crowds to see Lamont, dogged Lieberman on the campaign trail with questions and coordinated the travels of the "Kiss Float," a giant papier-maché representation of President Bush's infamous kiss for Lieberman that showed up at all of Lieberman's events.
Much ink has been spent analyzing the bloggers' angry screeds, but little attention has been paid to the most remarkable technical innovation of the Lamont race: the introduction of YouTube.com into politics.
The new Web site, which lets anyone upload and broadcast video for free, was a major player in the Lieberman upset.
Lamont backers posted about 500 homemade videos, from snippets of Lieberman being roasted on the "Colbert Report" to compilations of conservatives like Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson gushing praise for him.
Also, Lamont's TV commercial, "Messy Desk," which lampoons negative ads by darkly warning voters that Lamont's desk is a mess and he's rotten at karaoke, was viewed more than 140,000 times on YouTube: a stunning number of people to actively seek out campaign advertising.
500 homemade videos?! The era of anybody/everybody generating content is here!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2006
Ambient Peformance Event Calendar - Subscribe via RSS
This is the feed for our events calendar - copy and paste into your RSS feed reader to keep up to date with upcoming events. We'll be adding the conferences and partner workshops we'll be at soon.
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/36n9s0elr4ter4d9nlho7s5p54@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
Workshop topics and maps are in viewable from each entry. Note you can add events directly to your Google Calendar via the Google Calendar buttons on the previous list published on July 21.
Here is the html link to the calendar. We'll embed this on our website soon.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2006
Free Stream on BBC Internal Podcasting, Wiki & Blog Use
I interviewed Nigel Paine, Head of BBC Training and Development recently to share the great work he's been doing to encourage the use of various web 2.0 technologies including podcasting, wikis, blogs. I think it turned out great (your feedback is welcome!) and I liked how Nigel related them to efforts to better enable informal learning, provided advice for implementation and was able to articulate the benefits he is seeing along the way.
You can access the video from here: http://www.datmedia.co.uk/showcase.htm . You can even send it to your mobile phone!
The press release on it with direct links is here.
We'll be using the video with our upcoming Seriously Mobile Series of workshops to help bring more business applications to life.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 05:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2006
Podcasting, Wikis, Blogs, Mobile Solutions, Serious Games Workshops Scheduled
Seriously Mobile Series Update:
We have had great response and feedback with our initial Podcasting and Seriously Mobile Solutions seminars so we have scheduled a new series of ½ day workshops to further help colleagues understand and apply hot technologies that are making a difference in organisations today.
All workshops will be held in Central London at 7 City Learning. Cost is 99 GBP + VAT for each ½ day seminar or 160.00 GBP + VAT for two.
To register, just send an email to seriouslymobile at ambientperformance.com indicating your interest and a booking form will be emailed back to you.
These workshops are also being delivered on-site for Learning colleagues & stakeholders and are often combined with project planning. Contact us if interested.
Seriously Mobile Series Q3 & Q4 Workshops:
September 22: (Morning) Podcasting I: How To Podcast Hands-On Workshop: A hands-on introduction to the fundamentals of finding, making and using podcasting: how to find and subscribe to Podcasts, how to create them, how to publish them and how to market and distribute them.
September 22: (Afternoon) Podcasting II: Podcasting in Organisations: This seminar will focus on introducing and implementing Podcasting in organisations: planning for success, increasing Podcast quality, production and equipment advice, capturing content anywhere and anytime, and ideas & tactics for introduction and implementation.
October 6: (Morning): Wikis and Blogs in the Enterprise: How are Wikis & Blogs being used for Collaboration in organisations? What value are they adding? What software is available? How easy are they to implement and use? What are best practices for implementing and managing them?
October 6: (Afternoon): Serious Games in the Enterprise: How are games and game technologies being used beyond pure entertainment purposes? What types of games should be considered for various purposes? How much do different approaches cost? We will provide practical advice for getting started including finding the right partners and overcoming barriers.
October 20: (Morning) Mobile Solutions that Work: An overview of Mobile Video, Performance Messaging & SCORM trackable content production to address: What are the applications for mobile video? What’s available “off the shelf”? How can you create and distribute video to mobile devices. What tools are available? How can intelligent messaging sent via email to BlackBerrys or SMS to mobile phones be used to assess organizational knowledge and compliance/regulation/product understanding? How can targeted messages help boost performance? How can SCORM & IMS compliant content be created, distributed and tracked to mobiles?
November 22: (Morning): Wikis and Blogs in the Enterprise: How are Wikis & Blogs being used for Collaboration in organisations? What value are they adding? What software is available? How easy are they to implement and use? What are best practices for implementing and managing them?
November 22: (Afternoon): Serious Games in the Enterprise: How are games and game technologies being used beyond pure entertainment purposes? What types of games should be considered for various purposes? How much do different approaches cost? We will provide practical advice for getting started including finding the right partners and overcoming barriers.
December 8: (Morning) Google Earth & Mobile Location Based Services Business Applications: Location-based services have now arrived on desktops and on handhelds/mobiles. Now that you can locate your customers in time and space what services might you offer them? What value can you add to you existing services – from marketing to logistics? This introductory seminar will focus on how geo-location is being used and will tour a range of exemplar services now available on the web.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2006
Google Trends: Podcasting, Wikis & Blogs
I took a look at Google Trends to see where the interest is in these globally and found that interest in Wikis is rapidly growing and is as high as blogging in many places (based on Google searches using the terms).
Here are a few charts (Red line is Blog, Blue is Wiki, Orange is Podcast)
Global
UK - Wikis overtake Blogging!
US - interest in Wikis growing this year
Australia - Higher interest in Wikis!
Australia is a hotbed of interest in each of these and mobile learning in general. There is also a lot of interest in Japan, and Germany.
You can take a look at the top 10 cities for Podcasting here.
Glad to see London at No. 9 with our upcoming Podcasting I & II workshops July 27!
We'll continue to run our popular mini-workshops focussed on helping people to use and apply these technologies in organisations. We're scheduling the rest of Q3 and our Q4 worshops now which will include our fourth Podcasting worskhop in September, Wikis and Podcasting in Organisations in October, Mobile Video Applications in October, and Google Maps + Location-based services in November.
Stay tuned!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 04:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 08, 2006
Collaboration on the Move: Location-Based Learning & Web 2.0 Apps
I gave a presentation yesterday at a British Learning Association event titled 'Collaborative Learning' in which I highlighted trends in consumer mobile devices, location-based learning games, and Web 2.0 social tools which should be increasingly used for collaborative learning: podcasting, wikis, blogs, mashup examples and user generated video via You Tube. We polled the audience and found that only a few people were bloggers, most had heard of RSS and Podcasting but few had tried/used it, and most people had accessed a Wiki (mostly Wikipedia).
I recorded most of my talk using my iPod. It doesn't sound great as I wasn't using a good microphone that followed me around on stage, but will work as a quick follow up reference to those of you interested.
Download 10 meg .mp3 by clicking here.
Here are links to the examples I discussed (please send me an email to request the slides).
Docker's Dilemma Game for Docklands Museum produced by Celine Llewellyn-Jones, available to play soon, example of collaborative location-based earning between pairs playing with one device.
Blast Theory 'I Like Frank', example of players collaborating between online and in street to play the game.
Urban Tapestries example of annotating space with mobile phones to collectively add meaning and understanding to places. A good example of people benefitting beyond the active contributors by subscribing to virtual 'post it' notes via RSS.
I showed the RSS subscription capability of Google Personalized home page I use to see updates to blogs, news sites and video podcasts I'm interested in one place without having to access each separately and didn't mention the myriad of other tools such as FireAnt, and the Firefox Browser which do the same thing.
I talked about Mashups, connecting two web based applications to add value, and showcased a Google Maps focussed mashup site where you can find hundreds of examples.
I concluded with playing the Ask A Ninja 'What is Podcasting' video as an example of really engaging viral video and suggested it would be great to see more like it instead of traditional corporate training videos.
I then described You Tube, a site with millions of participants where anyone can upload videos for free where I found that somebody had animated the Ask a Ninja Podcasting explanation. Have a look here. Notice you can easily email it to friends. That's where the 'viral' comes in!
I concluded with plugging my 'How to Podcast Workshop' coming up tomorrow (of course), and showed the link to the video archive from our Seriously Mobile Event: Mobile Knowledge Workers: Providing Solutions for Performance.
Several people invited me to deliver a similar talk in their organisations and I'm really looking forward to it!
Comments are welcome!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 21, 2006
ELN Members Showcase: More Interest in Our Podcasting Workshop than Seats Available!
There was a great turnout last Friday for the always popular eLearning Network Members Showcase. The photo above is of Laura Overton summarising new research on eLearning best practices, one of the highlights.
In my presentation on Emerging Technologies and Learning I referenced our upcoming How to Podcast Workshop on 9 June (am) and more than a dozen hands went up when asking 'who wants to learn how to create and distribute podcasts'
click here for more information and to request a booking form as there are just six spaces left!
I also referenced several important terms that were new to many people. Click on each of these for links to Wikipedia definitions, always a great place to build your understanding...Web 2.0, RSS, Podcasting, Blogging, Wikis.
If you would like to reinforce your notes with a thorough summary of a similar presentation I did, click here to read Bob Little's report.
The video archive from the first event in our Seriously Mobile Series I mentioned is here where you can access presentations from thought leaders on mobile performance applications and see a few innovative technologies in practice. Thanks again to Datmedia for producing and hosting the archive, and for the cool demo of streaming the event live to mobile phones!!
Upcoming events I recommended include Apply Serious Games 25, 26 May in London where I'm doing a live demonstration of Forterra Systems MMOG Environment for Emergency Response training, and Moving Learning 14 June in Reading where I'll focus on supporting informal learning with mobile solutions. Discounts are available (25 and 15 percent), use the code: Seriously Mobile when registering.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 03, 2006
Wikipedia on Your iPod!
I delivered a brief overview of emerging ways to better reach and engage people yesterday and a question arose about why 'blogs, wikis and podcasting' are often thrown together and referenced as examples of current learning innovation because it's hard to see how they are related. I suppose they are related in a way if you take out the underlying technologies and just focus on the concept of 'people creating content' ...which is a pretty good idea and represents a powerful way to increase engagement at low cost. Of course, there is a technology linkage between blogs and podcasting because they both utilize RSS to enable people to subscribe to updates. Now, thanks to the video blog Rocket Boom I've learned of a link between iPods and Wikis! You can get a version of Wikipedia on your iPod called Encyclopodia to use as a portable reference guide. Unlike Podcasting, there isn't a subscription in which you can stay up to date, and unlike Wikis, you can't change the content yourself, but it's a great example of a mashup of technologies with learning potential!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
Blended Learning - Great Article!
While everybody is talking about Blended Learning these days, I haven't found many discussing the real benefits and the inclusion of approaches more focussed on continuous technology enabled conversations to better support knowledge workers. Check out this article in Chief Learning Officer Magazine by Allison Rossett, Ed.D. an expert in Instructional Design here. I think it provides more specifics on techniques of connecting people I refer to in my article on Increasing Productivity in Mobile Sales Forces here where I simplify the approach by addressing the What, Why (context) and How for global performance.
An excert of Allison's article is below.
That others are doing it is interesting, but not conclusive. Far more compelling are experiences and studies that suggest that blended learning makes a difference. What might blended learning do for you?* Capitalize on the resident smarts in your organization: Blended learning presses people and organizations to find, store, stir and share what they know. A database might help salespeople re-use parts of proposals. Far-flung hotel administrators can “ask the experts” through FAQs, e-mail, phone calls or live video streams. Employees may turn to their supervisors to practice a skill or explore an idea. Learning experiences are paired with knowledge available on demand.
* Converge learning and work: Instructors and managers have good reasons to worry about transfer when employees go to training and return to work. This is less worrying in a blended situation because blending insinuates learning, information and support into the workplace. Got a question? You can look it up online. Got a problem? Chat with your manager or share it with an online community. Eager to get better at personnel management? There is a course you can take and a pre-assessment that will make certain you are ready for that course.
* Promote connections and conversations: Blended learning encourages the organization to extend lessons and conversations beyond the classroom and into the workplace through coaching, e-coaching and online communities. A salesperson who has learned about a new product can chat with more experienced colleagues attempting to bring that product to Asia. An executive can reach out for expert views from a trusted e-coach. A researcher can reflect with others on the investment team about how a natural disaster should influence their purchases and sales.
* Provide consistent and updated messages: Instructors are a great resource during training, but their messages sometimes differ and their smarts and enthusiasm depart after class. Technology, on the other hand, can deliver standardized messages consistently, tirelessly, swiftly, repeatedly, patiently, around the globe. Online modules, knowledge bases and archived presentations do not get jet lag.
* Nurture independent habits: Employees in blended programs can participate in online communities, seek out lessons and answers as needed, and enjoy interaction, guidance and encouragement from peers, experts, supervisors and coaches. For those who are reluctant to turn exclusively to independent learning, blending anchored in the classroom can pave the way.
* Improve performance and control costs: Studies have reported increased cost-effectiveness and productivity for those using a blended approach as opposed to e-learning alone. Other studies have reported enhanced employee retention and reduced training time for blended approaches. In addition, online resources can be easier and cheaper to update and distribute.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2006
BETT Zoo Report
I attended BETT today, an educational technology exhibition directed at primary and secondary education and attended by 26,000 people. It filled several large halls with E3/CES size megabooths which was impressive but I have to say it was tough to find much innovation.
A few thoughts on what I did see:
Lots of games ready to play and integrate into curriculum and a lot of interest in them.
A new game modded from the Atari Neverwinter Nights to teach basic math and science that looked exactly like the $15 million dollar original but had learning baked smoothly in.
So many booths had the word 'Mobile' in them, but so few had anything new - it was mostly tablets, laptops and a few ready made pda games/learning apps. What was missing was content production tools with support for mobile phones, pdas and game platforms for both educators and students to create their own content.
However, there was at least one cool example sponsored by the BBC directed at teens to create their own content.
Nesta Futurelab also had some cool things to show from games to a context aware space learning program that showed planets in relation to where you were standing with detailed information and a 1.5m tall pointer that showed where in the sky the planet was. They also supported BETT Mobbing, which you can learn more about below.
BETT Mobbing was a way to stay informed of events at the conference via mobile phone text messages. I just registered my phone and selected a few interest categories and received updates throughout the day. Here's their welcome message:
This message is to confirm that you have successfully signed up to the following BETT Mobbing group/groups: Learning With Games - Wednesday Learning With Games - Friday Mobile Learning - Wednesday Mobile Learning - FridayWhen you arrive at BETT, go to the NESTA Futurelab stand (Y30 in the National Hall) to collect your BETT Mobbing badge – this way everyone taking part will be able to identify other ‘BETT Mobbers’. You will then receive text messages throughout the day notifying you of interesting stands to be ‘mobbed’ - messages will be sent to you in plenty of time for you to get to the stand.
Share your favourites!
While you are at the show text 447800003245 to tell the BETT Mobbing team about anything you’ve seen that has amazed, surprised and delighted you, or to say what you thought of the mobbing events. Your recommendations could be passed on to fellow ‘Mobbers’ so they can share your discoveries. Please note - this number will only be active from the 11th of January.
This was a great way to get alerts on what was happening across this huge event. Here's a picture below of a small BETT Mob gathering for a discussion on mobile learning at the Handheld Learning booth:
I'd recommend the approach to other large conferences.
Of note, I organized my first Flashmob 3 years ago in Picadilly Circus for an Interclass conference I helped design. It was more fun instantly dispersing into the crowd than the crazy chant we did when we got there. It was a bit worrying to see my US colleagues not know how to send and receive text messaging when I was explaining the exercise! ...sometimes with innovation you have to start with the basics!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2006
'Tis the season...for predictions!
I continue to advocate mobile, social and gaming technologies for learning and performance support. It's fun to see others who are even MORE bullish on when their appplication will become mainstream. Check out Rob Reynold's post from Future Trends here and Godfrey Parkins blog here where he writes about the Future of Corporate Trainers - declining with the shift to informal personalized learning and outsourcing.
Always a good source of identifying trends to watch and accessing links to everything related to gaming, mobile learning, technology, and more is Mark Oehlert's eClippings blog here where his latest post references a cool new Social Networking tool called Frappr.
It's time to rethink how organizations approach learning and performance as the days of event-based time-sink training courses with content locked into cumbersome LMS's are waning (but what's taking so long to adopt better models??)
I wrote about this need with a focus on Sales Force Productivity in an article for Chief Learning Officer Magazine published here this month. Your comments are welcome!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2005
Online Educa Perspective
I have written a bit more on my experience at Online Educa in Berlin for a colleague's publication I'll share with you here as well, focussed on my perspectives on eLearning for Security, Enterprise eLearning, Mobile Learning, Games for Learning, and eLearning for Developing Countries.
Online Educa 2005 Perspective
I have attended Online Educa four years in a row now and have seen the conference grow steadily. The format and focus has been consistent with more attention on higher education and governmental initiatives than on the corporate world in which I have been a part of for more than a dozen years (last year I counted about eight corporate attendees, this year seemed about the same). The structure of having four presenters share an hour or a bit more is quite different from what I have come to recognize as primarily an American model of one presenter per session. This means that you can get a variety of perspectives in one session, but I find that they rarely fit together or are of the same caliber, and rarely (by design) do I obtain any real insight. Experiencing Educa as a collection of data points to draw your own conclusions about the state of the industry and to generalize on trends rather than as an educational experience where the learning happens in the sessions is where I have found value in addition to the networking, of course.
My conclusion from this conference is that while the presentations did not change much in terms of how advanced the subjects/projects were, the interest in the audience seems to be shifting towards more innovative approaches. I noticed five areas in which this seems true, naturally the same areas I am working in and spent my time at the conference pursuing: eLearning for Security, Enterprise eLearning, Mobile Learning, Games for Learning, and eLearning for Developing Countries. My thoughts on each:
eLearning for Security
New to Educa this year is the emergence of security as a significant educational need better addressed through technology as I experienced through my participation/presentation at the Defense and Security Forum preceding Online Educa, where Dick Davies and my presentation on mobile games and simulations for learning received significant interest and generated conversations throughout the week. This audience ranged significantly in experience with eLearning so what impressed some as an example of effective learning looked like standard-issue page turners to me – an arena ripe for innovation.
Enterprise eLearning
Two presentations stood out for me, Nigel Paine of the BBC on their new learning practices, I’m impressed by how far he’s led his organization to adopt collaborative informal learning utilizing an effective mix of blogs, wikis, podcasting and other techniques Elliott Masie is calling 'Extreme Learning'. It was especially amazing to see progress in their culture Nigel would characterize as 'not sharing' before! The other presentation was by Jonathan Levy on a project he led for Cisco for an enterprise learning portal that matched needs and interests of learners to content, courses and other people, a utopian mix he actually got to work and used a wide variety of people around the world to help make it a reality, showcasing the new way innovation is constructed and providing a state of the art working model companies should aspire to. Based on the questions and comments heard, I don’t think either audience grasped the significance of what was being presented, in the first, that a mix and match low cost approach can get even the most insular company collaborating – helping it to move faster while saving money, and in the second, just how far we’ve come to now see a real example of a dynamic and intelligent learning portal that has almost nothing to do with an 'LMS, yet the questions from the back were 'so what LMS are you using'…
Mobile Learning
I found the interest in mobile learning strong based on the number of participants and sessions held on the subject, as well as the myriad of discussions I had in the corridors and Giunti Labs booth where they were showcasing their mLCMS. Three tiers of applications are emerging; solutions for executives, traveling employees (primarily sales & engineers) and line workers often in remote locations – for these combining corporate learning with connecting to experts and the emergence of context sensitive help (wearable computers, location based content) were of high interest once you got past their first impression of what mobile learning is (same content and approach on a smaller, mobile device). Most people I talked to or overheard did not make the distinction of fitting need to device and approach so there is a lot to be done to educate people to better understand the context in which mobile learning can be a powerful addition to their efforts.
Games for Learning
The session held on this subject was so full there was a queue outside the 150 seat room waiting for people to leave so they could enter for the six presentations that varied wildly on relevance and value. The most important thing to note was the sheer interest in the subject. The organizers should take note and hold better and bigger sessions to accommodate. Interestingly, I did not see any vendors exhibiting game engine platforms or other related solutions. We generated several interesting discussions with our handheld gaming platform we demonstrated continuously shoulder to shoulder (it was hard to get it back sometimes!) - on applications for sales people (rich media demonstrations) to corporate communications/culture building games to team building support on the device that costs less than many mobile phones and could either be integrated with corporate systems or not - it was appealing that they could be a low cost way of distributing content and engagement without infrastructure impact.
eLearning for Developing Countries
There were a few presentations showing quite advanced elearning programmes in universities in South Africa and Ethiopia and across Latin America/South America and a room full of interested participants who shared overviews of their own significant programs (e.g. a Kenyan University startup with 18,000 learners). Conversations revealed high interest in African countries being able to participate in EU funded educational initiatives in 2007 and upcoming relevant conferences. I was impressed at the scale of the programs with attention to learning effectiveness. The South African example of 28,000 students with class sizes of 800 having to be split into sub groups for engagement and facilitation was encouraging to see how programs can scale and evolve with student needs at the forefront. I came away with a sense that eLearning is working in places in Africa quite well and at a scale many would find surprising. Of course, there is still much work to be done, especially with educating teachers how to best use existing and emerging technologies. Interestingly, mobile learning support was seldom mentioned for countries in which the majority of learners have mobile phones but not access to email and computers from home – contrasted to the mLearn conference in Cape Town which highlighted mobile phone support for learning programs in countries across Africa.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2005
Online Educa & New Security/Defense Conferences
We're back from Online Educa in Berlin where we were among 1700 attendees and hundreds of exhibitors. I experienced a few standout presentations that were thought provoking and inspiring, but one that really stood out from me was Nigel Paine of the BBC explaining how over just the last few years they have adopted several leading edge collaborative learning technologies including Wikis, Blogs and are exploring internal podcasting. They have created a culture of sharing information which has cut considerable time from others searching for the same thing. An example was given of one leader sharing the list of links he had acquired on the New Orleans disaster that was used by thousands. They really have come a long way and win my informal "best of show" award!
(Here's a link to a recent article on BBC Learning in Workplace Performance Solutions for context.
Dick and I presented Serious Games to the New Security and Defense Forum by giving an overview of examples and why games for learning are so important for this field. We then did a live demonstration of Forterra Systems OLIVE platform, an immersive 3D virtual world in which avatars driven by real people can practice skills and proceedures. The demonstration was coordinated with 15 people from across the United States during the I-ITSEC conference in Orlando - attended by thousands, showcasing how a distributed audience can learn together during a First Responder scenario. We received a lot of interest in using the system for a variety of security and safety training uses. We also presented the work we're doing on geo-location based gaming and augmented reality (placing virtual objects in real environments for lower cost, more realistic training using mobile devices).
We hosted a Special Interest Group Lunch that was packed with a people interested in mobile applications and games. I promised a few links I mentioned so here they are.
Serious Games Europe
Water Cooler Games
Social Impact Games
Gizmondo - Serious Games Mobile Platform!
My presentation at the end of the conference "Learning Innovation at the Speed of Business" had at least a few people interested in games and simulations and the instructional design considerations of rapid content development. Thanks to those of you that made it to the end of the conference to catch it!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
World of Learning Conference November 15,16...Free Exhibition!
We're pleased to be exhibiting at the World of Learning Conference in Birmingham, UK 15,16 November. Stop by our booth D120 for a chance to win a tasty Gizmondo with tremendous Serious Game potential besides being a great entertainment device already!
To see a mini-poster of our focus there - Rabid Rapid Content Development, Mobile Performance Solutions, Serious Mobile Games Europe, and of course, Expert Advice for Scalable Solutions Download 300k file
We're also excited to be producing one of the first conference podcasts in the UK for the conference with our friends at Datmedia for paying participants who get free Ipods for attending both days!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
RSS - Publishing & Subscribing to Blogs, Podcasts, Videoblogs
Producing audio and video content can be cheap and distributing and viewing it is getting easier!
I'm exploring the use of podcasting and videoblogging with a few of my clients. I've recently experimented with some free video blogging software and readers you may want to check out. I made this test video clip (still having problems with free video hosting site referenced below!!) with a regular digital camera and compressed it for much smaller file size using Windows Movie Maker which comes with XP. I uploaded it to a free audio and video hosting service called Our Media which I found by learning more about video blogging here - these nice guys tell you everything you need to know to create FREE blogs and how to post videos to them.
FireANT is an RSS reader I recently found which enables you to subscribe to blogs, videoblogs and podcasts so you get updates automatically instead of having to search for them. Give it a try - it's so easy, you just put in the web address of the blogs you want so subscribe to and it does all the rest. Wonder what those orange RSS buttons are for you see increasingly on websites? Subscribing!! If you want to give it a try, I'll use this opportunity to recommend Mark Oehlert's e-Clippings blog (copy and paste into Fire Ant or whatever you're using to subscribe to RSS (blog) feeds with) his URL http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/ where you can find COMPREHENSIVE links to all things learning, technology, mobile, games and more in addition to his interesting posts. A fun video blog to add to your new subscription is RocketBoom, a daily news show shot in an apartment in NYC which shows that video production doesn't have to be expensive to be interesting. It's also a good example of a video blog where you just get the video feeds with links to what's being talked about. I like this model and think it has applications for corporate learning, communications, universities and more...
You can also subscribe to Elliott Masie's Learning 2005 University site where you'll find several interesting interviews and step by step instructions (via a podcast, of course!) on what podcasts are all about and how to produce them, transcribe them and applications for learning here. In his podcast you'll hear him talk about his new Learning Feeds service where you can subscribe to content "channels" you're interested in, and be able to access them from iTunes. This new service is launching here.
It is truly getting easier to rapidly build and deploy content and to keep informed with what interests YOU!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
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)
August 20, 2005
Mobile Phones for Learning?
Last May I cited a white paper Marc Prensky wrote titled "What Can You Learn From a Cell Phone? Almost Anything" in an article I wrote for Chief Learning Officer Magazine "Knowledge Sharing for the Global Workforce" A reader followed up interested in examples of how the different learning methods of listening, observing, imitating, questioning, reflecting, trying, estimating, predicting, and practicing Marc listed could be accomplished. A few immediate ideas sprang to mind and I've put them in Flash Paper here for nicer printing. What ideas would you add?
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)