Twellow DevLearn 09!

To make the technology-enabled social networking easier (i.e. Twitter), I created a “Hello my Name is” Twitter sticker for attendees to write their twitter user name on. This will hopefully make the Twitter business card exchange must faster.

My fantastic fellow T-Mobile co-worker Jeff Tillett and I will be printing them and handing them out at our presentation on how to develop low cost mobile learning solutions on Wednesday (114).

Feel free to download and print this 3”x5” Twitter sticker to write your Twitter user name.

I am looking forward to attending the many DevLearn inspirational presentations on innovative learning (gaming, mobile and social), as well as the usual informal conversation with (in my humble opinion) the best minds in the eLearning world.
See you there!

A|G 2008 – ILS Symposium & Day 1 Highlights

The eLearning Guild 2008 Annual Gathering (Orlando) has been amazing with so many new ideas, fresh perspectives, amazing case studies, actionable approaches and social connections. I look forward to staying in connect with everyone I met to continue the conversation. I tried to take as many notes and plan to synthesize and post. Below is a collection for the a pre-conf symposium and Day 1. More to come…

Immersive Learning Simulations (ILS) Symposium

This was a very, very impressive session with ILS experts let by Mark Oehlert, which was an awesome blend of theory, group discussion and plenty of awesome examples. Life and learning looks different through the glasses of ILS. The coolest thing is that they started a wiki for continue the conversation.

Here are my random notes and examples.

Terminology

Simulation – model of reality (an engine that drives everthing)

Scenario – initial conditions, goal, story

Game – tuned (being in the zone, tuning the scenario) adding time, pressure

Frame game – uninteresting, content irrelevant, glorified quiz

• “Play in the beginning of knowledge” – baby animals, kids. Learn how the world works.
• People do things for two reasons (Have to, Want to)
• Congtive science research, learning should be “hard fun”…play is better learning
• “A good game is a series of interesting decisions” Sid Meier
• “People make mistakes in patterns” bring models in from their experience
• Every wrong answer should have a different set of feedback
• Mark asked a question about compliance training….Clark, ethics – have high stakes for story, law suit will shut company down. Mark O. said he does this, even with simple quiz, they are making results public to add competitive element.
• “Tuning is nine-tenths of the effort.” Will Wright
• Book: A Theory of Fun for Game Design
• Book: The Game Design Reader
• NY School The Game School – tell Cinnamon about this (public) Katie Salen
• Tip” Provide a social outlet with the release of a course/game (i.e. a wiki), even better is a built in comment, feedback mechanics into the training…unmoderated.
• Term: Adver-games
• Choosing the right metaphor for your game content
• (Mark C thought) – Are toys valuable in learning?

Day 1

Keynote: Keith Sawyer

To be successful we need to create a culture of collaboration and learning (environments).

How to learn to be creativity:

• Research says, build on learners knowledge
• Encourage reflection, meta-cognition
• Carefully scaffold authentic situated practice
• Combine inquire and project-based activities with information delivery
• Foster learning in collaboating group

Challenges for eLearning:

• Identifying a good problem or design challenge (ideally come from learners)
• Support active learning
• Fostering effective collaboration
• Supporting the creation os shared artifacts and effective critiques

Positioning Your Careers in Social Networking and Collaborative Learning

Ray E. Jimenez

Social networking jobs are increasing and will continue to a vital part of the learning ecosystem and job market. Some up and coming job titles are: social learning analyst, social networking analyst, toolkit guru, resident expert, gaps consultant.

This ain’t your Mama’s training. Implementing learning 2.0 at eBay

This was a most impressive example of how eBay has strategically incorporated collaborative web tools (blogs, wikis etc.) in their work environment. The heart of their presentation was using an organized matrix to look at what they are doing with information, where they are doing it and the flexibility and “able-ness” of the tool(s).

Here is a bunch of other random notes:

• Millenials are primary employee base
• 90% of people say carrot when asked to name vegetable.
• 3 weeks average time to develop a program
• Speed, lean teams, change, trends, location
• Survival forced eBay to think differently, are we relevant to the organizations
• Have you ever thought of declaring training bankruptcey, get rid of everything…give freedom.
• How we can deliver in a different way.
• Moving from called training professionals to learning professionals.
• Call themselves knowledge farmers
• eBay “assign learners to use a blog as a personal training journal” – great idea
• Turn learning objectives into “challenges” individual and teams
• Applied Learning 2.0 to formal first with success, than they tackled informal…they found other islands of employees already using informal learning 2.0
• Build “digital knowledge artifacts” feedable, searchable, taggable, linkable…

eLearning Guild2007 Annual Gathering – 4/13

A few highlights…

Brave New World
Cecily Sommers put on an amazing presentation on current and future world realities. Her combination of stimulating questions and compelling examples really moved me. Essentially, we need to look within ourselves to understand where we are and where we, not want, but must be. I really dig her philosophy.

Here is a quote that really stuck-
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.”

eLearning 3.0, or vLearning or 3DLearning
Wow, this session blew me away. A techie dentist named Ovi Ciobanu presented case examples of using 3D scanning / rendering to generate reusable 3D objects, which can be embedded in Acrobat PDF. With Ellen Wagner of Adobe as a co-presenter, Ovi showed how he uses this technique to teach dentistry. Talk about effective learning and short development time. I never thought tooth fillings could look so fun.

Build Your Own Webinar
Matt Lisle from Peacehealth put on amazing presentation on utilizing totally FREE tools to build a full functioning webinar. Widgets included a slide show presenter, polls, video, VOIP, chat and share files. Even though it was the last session, on the last day of the conference, people were totally into Matt’s session. In fact folks wanted to stay afterwards to discuss more. Nice job Matt!

The conference was so much fun and I look forward to keeping in touch with all the new people I met.

eLearning Guild2007 Annual Gathering – 4/12

A few highlights…

With a good night’s sleep, a fresh cup of hotel coffee, and a few paper cuts from the night before from sorting photo images for one of my presentation exercises, I grabbed a muffin and sat down for another keynote speaker.

Change Management
Peter de Jager presented an enlightening and eye opening presentation on Change Management. He opted to not stand on the stage or use any presentation slides. With a strongly projected voice, and a single-page handout he proceeded to go through misconceptions and obvious truths of change management. Essentially, the first step is understanding that denial and resistance is expected and okay and the collective group must WANT to adopt the change (e.g. a bottom-up approach). With rapid technology change and slower process change, it was refreshing to absorb his perspective.

Stump the Captivate Experts
This was an amazing session. You had two Captivate experts, one Captivate software engineer and 30 eager captivated super users, full of questions, feature requests, troubleshooting issues and brainstorming topics all in one room. Synergy was the word. We covered things like incorporating JavaScript, using custom captions, optimizing file size and much, much more. Everyone was enthused and the experts were such great fun. I plan on inviting them to speak at future Captivate User Group sessions.

***Thanks to the folks who attended my session on incorporating best practices of art, photography and film to informal learning. It was cool discussing different grid and storyboard approaches during the exercises and I really appreciated the discussion during and after the presentation. It was a lot of fun. A special thanks to Silke for checking it out as well!!!

 

I also had the pleasure of attending a beer tasting with such great minds as Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, Silke Fleischer, Mark Oehlert, Brent Schlenker, Stephen Downes, Judy Brown, Clive Shepherd, Lance Dublin, Tom Crawford, Mark Prasatik and more.

eLearning Guild2007 Annual Gathering – 4/11

I just got back from eLearning Guild Annual Gathering in Boston and had a totally amazing time. I caught a bunch of excellent presenters, including eLearning guru Tony Karrer, as well as a panel discussion including Silke Fleischer from Adobe Captivate and Jay Cross of Internet Time.

Convergence Culture
Also, I was totally engaged, inspired and a little frightened by the key note speaker, Henry Jenkins, who is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He examined the convergence of media and how borders are blurring between audience, content and producers. One of his examples was the television show American Idol. Does this mean I will have to start watching TV, yikes!!! I bought his latest book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and read about halfway on the flight home.

Applying game theory to eLearning
Jeff Johannigman gave an excellent background of the who, what, where, why and how behind gaming from theory to application.

***I also had the pleasure of talking to Mark Oehlert, who is another passionate gamer, with so many progressive and relevant ideas.