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Here is this month's round up of tools and resources added to my website:
UPDATE
Following Allison's suggestion (see comments below) I have created a word cloud (using Wordle) of January's Reading list. Even on the tiny thumbnail below you can see the key words. Click on the image for the full Wordle.
I've been at the LT Conference for the last two days; I was involved in a couple of sessions and I spoke to lots of people both in the Conference and Exhibition.
What I was amazed about was the very wide spectrum of understanding and use of the tools and technologies for learning. There seemed to still be many for whom this was a completely untried experience, whilst others who had already used LMS and authoring tools were striving to do things better - more effectively, more efficiently and so forth - and of course there were many who were trying to come to terms with what social learning had to offer them.
But I came away with a number of concerns. It wasn't so much the fact that there are now so many different definitions and expectations of what the term "e-learning" actually means, nor the fact that the Exhibition was dominated largely by providers of what I would call "first generation e-learning systems" which for me didn't reflect the full picture of learning technologies today, but more that as a result, delegates are receiving mixed (and therefore confusing) messages, from different quarters, as to how to implement tecnology-supported learning approaches.
For instance, I was talking to someone who was at the Exhbition to find out how to start the whole ball rolling and move from traditional classroom-based training to "e-learning", I remarked how I thought they were actually in a very good position. They could learn from the lessons of the last decade and in fact go straight into providing social approaches to learning; the technology was now there to support it, and it was very cost-effective. But the response was interesting to say the least:
"Really! X told me that I need to get all my content online first, then I need to think about a web conferencing system, and then when I've got all that sorted, at that point I should think about social media ... They reckon it'll be at least 4 or 5 years before I need to think about social media."
When I relayed this to my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, Jay Cross instantly sprang into action and put together this great blog posting that summarises the ITA's position on this. In a nutshell; it's not about incremental steps that you have to go through, but leap-frogging to end-state. Here's one of the diagrams he uses to visualise this - but do read the posting in full.
I gave a short presentation at the Learning Technologies 2010 Conference in London on Wednesday, which summarised the content of my recent piece The State of Social Leaarning and Some Thoughts for the Future of L&D in 2010. Although I promised participants that I would make the slides available on my blog, for those who weren't at the presentation, you will need to refer to the article above to make sense of the slides!
And then a great follow up piece, is the Internet Time Alliance's White Paper: A Framework for Social Learning in the Enterprise.
LATE ADDITION!
Here's a picture taken by me on the platform at LT 2010. It shows Clive Shepherd (track chair) in the foreground and Peter Butler, from BT, in the background presenting.
Of course everyone's talking about the Apple iPad, unveiled yesterday by Steve Jobs.
There's lots of info about the iPad at Apple website, but Mashable have already come up with the Apple iPad: The Complete Guide.
The price tag looks good, although in the UK, according to the Guardian, the price won't be announced until its launch at the end of March.
I've already been told about at least one company that's promoting educational services for the iPad, so I expect to see lots more soon. I'll try and keep up with some interesting applications, but do share any you know about already.
Last week I posted about the 140 University service that I had set up to demonstrate the potential of Twitter and Facebook as formal learning tools - to deliver and share "classes" in the form of daily knowledge nuggets. In the short time this has been live, it has proven to be a popular idea, and at the time of writing there are now over 320 followers on Twitter and over 120 Facebook fans, with many others simply reading the archived nuggets at the website.
I have now set up a "sister service" that operates along the same lines, but is for people to ...
"discover and share daily knowledge and skill nuggets with interesting links - web pages, videos, podcasts and other free resources via Twitter, Yammer or Facebook- in less than 140 characters - to support their personal productivity and performance in the workplace."
It is the first day of the Learning Technologies Conference in London, where I am involved in a number of sessions, so I thought this was a good day to launch the service formally.
This free service is called the 140 Learning Centre. Follow the link for full information about it.
I'd like to think that it demonstrates the way that L&D departments could use these tools to provide relevant and useful resources in an ongoing way to their employeers, which they can then comment on as well as contribute to, thereby build a useful organisational knowledge base of resources.
This is a fantastic Firefox extension, I've used it to create desktop apps for some of the websites I frequently use, like HootSuite and Google Reader
"No more wading through web browser windows and tabs just to read your email or check your Facebook feed. Prism apps run directly on your desktop and can be accessed just like any other application. On Windows, you can launch applications from the Start menu and then access them in the taskbar. On Mac, you can launch and access applications from the OS X dock."
Why Dekks? This is how it is explained on the website
"Your employees and what they know is the heart of every organization. Engage them by participating in a new kind of collaboration which helps route questions to the proper source automatically. Dekks will give your employees a Pulse (literally); the pulse is where updates are shown, new messages, polls, tasks which highlight the hot topics in your company"
Find out more in this video, which gives an overview of its functinality
Free 30 day trial.
[100+ Social networking and Collaboration spaces listed in the Learning Tools Directory 2010]
Following the success of the inaugural E-Learning Debate at The Oxford Union in September, Epic is staging another debate at Learning Technologies, London Olympia, on Wednesday 27th January, 11.30-12.30 in Theatre 1.
The debate is entitled: Smart phones: smarter learning? Or new technology, same old pedagogy? Professors John Traxler and Mike Sharples, acknowledged experts in mobile learning, will lead the arguments for and against, accompanied by Kim Whittlestone of the Royal Veterinary College and Dr Mike Short of O2.
Entry to the debate is completely free, but as places are limited you are urged to arrive early to get a seat - register online to avoid the queues. Afterwards, the debate will continue online at www.elearningdebate.com.
I recently set up the 140 University to demonstrate the power of Twitter and Facebook as tools to enable formal approaches to learning. Although they are recognised as personal learning tools, they are not necessarily seen as formal learning systems.
The way the 140 University works is that you receive "classes" in the form of daily knowledge nuggets with links to supporting web resources (pages, videos etc) that provide further explanation and clarification - in tweets of less than 140 characters. You can comment on the classes, and also share your own "classes" too.
It's open for anyone to join up; classes cover wide-ranging subjects and are at varying levels; you explore what you are interested in.
You can find out much more at the 140 University web page and also view all the "classes" so far archived in the "Departments". (Note this week, we've been tweeting classes every hour to establish an initial set of classes, but from Sat 23 Jan this will be reduced to a more manageable 4 per day). I also have plans to incorporate other functionality, so stay tuned!
I'll be documenting how this project progresses and particualrly considering its application (and the implications) for formal education and workplacce training, so any feedback, ideas or suggestions will be very welcome.
Just come across this ...
"VuRoom enables Instant Multiparty Video Conferencing for Skype – an exciting new breakthrough, previously unavailable to Skype users. Along with its multimedia presentations and desktop sharing functionalities, VuRoom empowers you to collaborate real-time with remote users"
VuRoom is available for both Windows and Mac users and is compatible with ‘Skype version 3.0+ for Windows’ and ‘Skype version 2.0+ for Mac OS X’.
Buy VuRoom for US$9.95/month
More
[via TechCrunch]
Email: jane.hart@C4LPT.co.uk
Twitter: @C4LPT
Facebook page: C4LPT
