Stumble Upon - Discover New Sites

A colleague I work with sent me an interesting link today. As part of a course she must learn the latest and greatest ways to search the web for content. She found out that 80% of the web is not located through traditional search engines.

Wow....do you know what that means is out there?

Well if it's true, I just googled (I love that's a verb now) the word "the" and got 5,130,000,000 hits. If that is only 20% of what is out there then there are potentially 25,650,000,000 sites that are really in cyberspace. Okay maybe not exactly, but I'm sure the premise is real. Not everyone knows how to set their site up properly to be found by search engines, so it makes sense that many are hiding.

The site my friend referred me to is called Stumble Upon.

When you set up your account you are given the option of choosing which types of sites you would like to see from about 500 different topics. Some examples of categories are alcoholic drinks, internet tools, astronomy, crafts, physics, iraq, online games, open source, and web development.

A toolbar is installed in your browser that when you click it you are sent to a webpage based on one of the topics you have chosen. The pages are ranked by users (3,727,921) and are delivered to you based on the preferences you have chosen.

It's a neat little tool if you are looking around for some different content you've never seen before, if you love to just websurf, and/or you just want to learn what's out there.

Obviously it isn't too new if there are 3.5 million+ users. However, content on the web is always expanding and changing and it's seems like a good way to see what's out there and have your say on ranking a few of the sites.

Not only can you "stumble" through websites but also photos, news articles, videos, and a specific topic. I could lose a lot of time playing with this one.

Some neat ones I stumbled onto (for now....):

Hubble Image Heritage Gallery

Earth Album

Solving a 50-Year-Old Moon Mystery

3000 Hits Today and Still Going

I had my 3000th reader today. That's really cool. I thank you all very much, especially since I have fallen back a little on my posting frequency. The LMS project and other work (not nearly as fun) has taken more of a front seat.

I'm still completely engaged in blogging, reading and learning from one another and try to promote this to my colleagues as often as possible.

I have a follow-up education session at the end of November to see how the T&OD Network (GTA) is liking the online community that I set up for them. Instead of emails flying all over the place we now have one central place (hosted on Yahoo! Groups) to house share files, policies, job postings, speaker reviews, and questions posted to each other. A wonderful feature (true of many web applications) is it's all searchable. I'm hoping that they group votes to continue as currently we have about 75 users on the site. That's about half the group so I need to sell it to the rest of the members.

I'm sharing the same idea with the PPNO next week as well. They too are looking for a central idea to store their posted questions to members and responses. As well as house files, newsletters, calendars, etc. Online communities are great for this purpose.

Thanks again to all my readers and please continue check back frequently, subscribe to the feed, and comment often. I promise to do the same in return and together our knowledge will continue to grow.

Are you coming to "Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations"?

Well I can only schmooze up to the boss so much without her realizing that I am trying to scheme something out of her and I have been denied to attend the eLearning Guild DevLearn 2007. Disheartening? A little, however I've been able to find lots of great online conferences and learning workshops through the Guild's monthly Online Forums (highly recommend), some through Elluminate and now this great excitement....Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations.

There are some great speakers participating in this entirely online conference.
7.1 Tony Karrer
7.2 David Snowden
7.3 Jay Cross
7.4 Rebecca Stromeyer
7.5 Richard Straub
7.6 Clark Quinn
7.7 Steve Mahaley
7.8 Gaurav Rastogi and Jai Ganesh
7.9 Keith Resseau
7.10 Donald H. Taylor
7.11 Janet Clarey
7.12 David Wilson
7.13 Rae Tanner
7.14 Bill Bruck
7.15 George Siemens

The conference runs November 15th to the 20th and is free, but REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.

If you haven't taken a look yet at all the conference has to offer, wander over to the conference wiki that has been set up. Even it is a great example of what you can create with a wiki.

A little off topic - Blog Action Day Stats

As I said a little earlier I've been a little off topic lately and more behind in posting then I would like, but the CBT training is almost over and the LMS/Intranet/CMS meetings are progressing more smoothly.

I was happy though to see a thank you email in my inbox today from the Blog Action Day Team. They posted on thier site some stats from this year's effort.

• 20,603 Blog Participated
• 23,327 Blog Posts (Google Blog Search)
• 14,631,038 RSS Readers

"Impact on the Blogosphere: The graph below shows the frequency of terms appearing in the blogosphere courtesy of BlogTrends. Additionally "Blog Action Day" was the top Technorati search term AND tag for the day."

Blog Action Day - What if we do nothing about global warming???

Today is Blog Action Day. Today 15,000 blogs are focusing in on the environment today. Some are writing, some are donating their earnings. All for the same cause though. We will be hitting potentially 12 million readers today.

So what do I write about. I've been thinking about that for a few days now. I found something I truly want to share and it is this guy's video labelled "The Most Terrifying Thing You'll Ever See". From his description he is a "burnt out high school teacher" with a great message that everyone should wonder about "What will happen to the world should we disregard even the slightest chance that global warming is indeed happening?"

Look up more videos by this gentleman and you find a fun trailer for his sequel "How it all ends". This production is broken into many smaller segments all around global warming and us as a global village taking action NOW and the consequences of not doing so. He presents the argument in a clear and easy manner that even a high school student would understand and more over stay compelled to listen to the entire piece.

I'm sorry that I can't give him credit other than this as I haven't found his true name yet. Thanks to him for opening my eyes a bit more....a lot more.

One more thing you can do today....
Take the time today to see some more blogs focusing in on the environment.

Selling Web 2.0 (again)

I haven't been posting as much as I would truly like. I've been so swamped with work, including trying to prepare our selves to get the LMS up and running. I have however been introducing a few more people to the fabulous use of blogs and wikis.

I have one friend that loves to write poems and has been using the Facebook feature of Notes to capture them. I suggested that if she wanted something a little more private then she could open a blog and use it as a private journal. She also writes collaboratively with another friend. The two of them take turns write a paragraph of a story and see where it goes and ends up. For this I suggested and set up a wiki for them to try out. This way they can go in and read each other's work, make edits and suggestions. They can also create a new page for each story or for each theme of stories and can keep it private or share it as well.

My final sell this weekend was using a blog for a newsletter instead of a paper based item. Currently they create a newsletter in Publisher and then email it out. They only send electronically and do not print it to paper. Sounds like a job for something webish. I took their articles from their last newsletter. Created a new post for each article starting with the last one first. This would allow a reader once they open the blog to read the first intended article as the most recent post of the blog. The last article of the paper copy would appear as the last post as well. The first post they open was titled "In this Issue", with the month and volume/issue number. Then a listing of the post headings as links to each article.

My arguments for them using this system were:

• articles can be tagged for reference and searching (ie: volume 6, issue 3, meeting, agenda)
• articles are all searchable by any word
• articles are all archived individually and monthly
• links on the main web page can be added to the newsletter blog and back to the web page
• because of the flexibility of posting, special articles could be added at times other than regular newsletter issuing dates
• members can subscribe to updates, rss feeds
• the blog can have stats tracked regarding usage.

I'm still waiting for responses on all 3 "new ideas" that I've put out for my colleagues. Now just waiting to see if I sold it all properly.

6 Days and Counting -Blog Action Day 2007

Just a reminder to my blogging friends and readers that Blog Action Day 2007 is fast approaching. Take a few minutes to think about what you can write about, share, and maybe even change the world.

Is your HR tracking software prepared to take on your new LMS?

The on going LMS saga....

TIP 5: If your HR system is not already tracking reporting structure throughout your organization, you may want to start working on that now.
TIP 6: The more information you can use to identify your employees the better to track and report them.

We are still going through the motions of getting our new LMS and our current systems to function together so that 1) we have a comprehensive data base of employees that needs to only be adjusted in one location (HR), and 2) so that managers can track the learning/training progress of employees that report to them.

Currently if we run off a report of our employees we can only break them down into which funding centre pays which group of employees or who looks after their weekly pay. This is not necessarily the manager that they report to; aka. the person responsible for their mandatory learning requirements. This has come up several times in the past and now that we need several new systems, besides the LMS, to talk to the HR system Human Resources is now forced to some how start added new fields to the employee database and use existing fields to better sort reporting structure. This is a daunting task with 2500 employees, but imagine if you are a company with thousands more.

So today's tips are to make sure that your employee database is filled with as much information as possible. It will and can only come in handy later as more and more systems are automated and upgraded.

Speaking of Virtual Frogs

Follow up to my posting about see through frogs....

Here is a link to a site that will give you a free cd-rom digital frog disection. Or if you want to take it further there are several links here for even more animals.

(yes, I too am finding this a little creepy, but better then the smells I remember from my biology classes)

Creating a Navigational Model with Mindomo - LMS Project continues

The LMS we are working on (if you can call it that) is one part of three. The other two parts are the policy and procedure component, and the intranet which will house it all.

I've been working the last couple of days on the lovely task of trying to create our navigational model. The main links that users will use to navigate around the intranet and then some of the lower tiers (or clicks).

We are suppose to produce something that looks like: The blue rectangles would be our tier 1 navigation (the main headings) and the pink rectangles are the tier 2 navigation (sub headings). More tiers can fall under these, but the rule is to try to only have users make 3 clicks to get to any topic. An example: Tier 1 - Directories, Tier 2 - Staff Directory, Tier 3 - Voice Mail.

We have a simplified intranet now composed of Word docs, Publisher pages, pdfs and web links. I wanted to first map what we have to try and decide what tiers we want included in our new intranet. Excel wouldn't let me move items around as easily as I wanted to and PowerPoint has a limited screen size so I thought I would try a web application mind mapping tool. I then started with Mindmeister (a suggestion from Brent Schlenker) - which I do like, but not quite right for this exercise. Then I moved to Bubbl.us (a suggestion from Angela White) - I really like the look and feel of this one, but again just not quite the set up I was looking for this project. Then I came across Mindomo and this is just what I needed.

It's a nice mind mapping tool that allows similar functions as the others, but I seemed to be able to manipulate around the branches of my chart a little easier. I'm able to colour code items, link some together, bound others and expand and expand and expand.

Here's a screen shot of a piece of our current intranet (left zoomed way out, right just a small piece):

The green lines are relations ships, the green/orange squares are items I've highlighted and the red line box are bound items.

My next step is to translate this back to the simple square model above.

If you don't want to do it virtually...how about see through

I've always wondered with technology the way it is, why are students still dissecting animals for biology classes. Why not use a computer program that's been around for 15+ years and just do it virtually? No more sad little screams of "YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT TO THE FROG?!?!"

Well Japanese scientists have come up with another way that maybe teachers will latch onto instead. How about a see through frog? No need to cut Kermit open when you can now instead watch all his organs, veins, and eggs (Kermit's sister) develop over the span of its life.
Photograph by Ho New/Reuters

Microsoft Surface Makes Guest Appearance on CSI Miami

Well to my delight the new season of fall shows has begun. Thank goodness for satellite so that I can watch one show, pvr another and then catch another one during a different timezone showing.

Last night I was catching up on all the new episodes of CSIs; Miami, New York, Las Vegas, NCSI. During CSI Miami I was quite excited to see that they were now using right in the middle of their lab a Microsoft Surface. A parole officer had been killed by one of his parolees. So how better to find a list of call his charges but to look through his Blackberry. How better to get the data off the Blackberry then to place it down onto a Microsoft Surface. If you've looked at the Microsoft promo spots on their site then you would recognize the telltale ripple marks that immediately appeared when the mobile was set down instantly linking the two (pic). Then, like some magical ballet, the character Calleigh begins to wave her hands over the Surface and sorts all the bad guys instantly into lists of bad to evil, and one MO from another.

Now I wonder if it was a one shot product placement or if the Surface will have a recurring role.

Developing an e-Learning Strategy and Architecture - Lance Dublin (Elluminate Webinar)

Developing an e-Learning Strategy and Architecture - Lance Dublin

This was my first Elluminate webinar and it was quite neat to see a different format then I have seen before. One tool I haven't used before was a whiteboard that participants can add too and slides can be altered as the presenter speaks. All participants can use a mic if wanted.

Webinar points:

Yesterday's communication - same time , same place (ie: meetings, phone calls)
Today's Communication - any time, any place (ie: chants, blogs, wikis, virtual offices)

Strategy - the way we get there:

eLearning Pathway might have been as.....(9 elements)
discover, envision, understand, analyze, define, enlist, plan, implement, learn

Doesn't really happen this way. Much more like putting several pieces of an elearning architecture together. It is more like including the above 9 elements, but not in a particular order.

Discover - what is the purpose of your organization, type of environment, how your place works
Envision - create a vision, something to draw and motivate people
Understand - identify gaps you may have in getting to where you want to go with your learning
Analyze - learn about all the types of learning options that you may have
Define -
Enlist - emplementing, business case (next webinar)
Plan and Implement - (next webinar)

Architecture - the place you want to get

Ad Hoc Model:
do you have info - documents, websites, etc.
do you have training - paper based, instructor lead, videos, etc
do you have elearning - we had a course and now we deliver over the internet

Foundations for Learning (Bloom) (Rube Goldberg):
Need for Knowledge - job aids, remembering info
Comprehension - job aid and on the job training
Application - self-paced training, and OJT
Analysis - instructor led and OJT
Synthesis - developing training for others

Now we need to find/develop the right learning product for the right learner and the right situation.

Ensuring Performance:
we could give a person more support, tools, information, learning

Fastest way to improve their performance
Most participants chose the answer as TOOLS.
The slowest way to get there is Learning.
A great way is support - bringing the info when they need it.

Process Perspective:
Performance can be helped/enhanced by taking data/info through requirements, using tools like job aids, webinars, etc, creating some applications, that the user can then take to better their performance.

Content Perspective:
Sometimes organizations want to push content/courses. (formal)
Sometimes staff need to find info and pull it from searches, OJT, mentors, chats, collaboration.
Sometimes it needs to be embedded into the work, performance support systems, expert systems, workflow learning

Time/Place Perspective:
Physical ----
same time same place - classes, ojt
same time, any place - webinars
Virtual----
any time, same place - job aids
any time, any place - elearning

Question is...how do you blend them successfully all together? This is the world we are moving into.

Examples:

Strategy--Technology
Learning from collocation--face-to-face (learning labs, mentoring, role playing)
Learn from collaboration--collaborative (e-labs, virtual classrooms)
learn from interaction--multimedia
learn from information--internet

Moving from Aware, to conceptual, to functional, to competent, to expert using...
basic information, structured information, applied learning, action learning

LMS Project....A Little More Progress

Well, where to start. Nothing has been happening since our last meeting in August, or so we thought. The LMS vendor has been working on there part but not quite according to the time lines we had initially set out upon. After a brief meeting today we set up weekly phone conferences between our LMS provider and the 3 project leaders (and some of their support members) here at work.

TIP 1-3 See (LMS - I don't want to be Little Miss Should've and Tony Karrer's LMS Gotchas)
TIP 4 - make sure you set up these meetings right from the beginning. Don't assume they are going to happen. This is the first way to ensure the LMS vendor is doing what they promised and that your team is doing what is expected of them to move the project forward.

We are now going to attempt to move a little more quickly then initially planned out. What does this mean? We are having several meetings (by phone) over the next few days to hammer out details of server preparation, staff database transfers and some remote training. We are going 0 to 60 without trying to go too fast. We are also aborting the idea of setting up the intranet first, then the CMS and then the LMS. We have decided to push at least the intranet and LMS forward at the same time. Amazingly enough though they (the vendor) is still convinced they can stick to the November go live date even with the several weeks of silence we've just gone through.

Meeting Werner Berger

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Werner Berger as we were talking with him to come and speak to our organization.

"Werner is the oldest North American to have stood atop the summit of Everest, and we believe him to be the fourth oldest person in the world to have accomplished that feat. Werner is the oldest North American to have completed the 'Seven Summits'."

Some of the key ideas and thoughts that came from him out of that meeting I wanted to capture and decided I would place them here.

• The Mountain doesn't care what I do, it is I that must rise above and not be a victim of circumstance
• Visions/Mission - you need a desired outcome, that is time sensitive and tangible, then decided what steps you will need to get there and just do those
• Vision yourself there and then visusualize how you got to that point
• Be clear on what you want
• Open and honest communication always needed
• Need the ablitity to challenge that which is causing trouble, permission to speak up without being penalized
• reframing your mindset not to see the problem, but the solution and the steps that you took to get to the solution

Showing The Value in Web 2.0 Tools to Create Buy-in

I listened in on Clark Quinn's presentation for the eLearning Guild yesterday and two comments hit me hard:

"You're not about training/learning, you're about empowering performance."
"You're not about computers or web, you're about all technology."

I draw from these thoughts that I can't just be the only one using these web applications. I need my colleagues to start playing with them and learning how to use the tools. I need to be more of an advocate for how the tools could assist their productivity and promote more often.

I have already successfully had the management team to try out a wiki as a tool for capturing answers to questions instead of sending out a survey and having to compile the data manually. I also have the team fully immersed in using online survey tools such as Zoomerang and Survey Monkey.

Today I decided to share the idea of mind mapping or brain storming online using the same type of principals as a wiki. Users can each go into the map and add their thoughts at their convenience. I suggested that when an occasion occurred for such a tool to let me know and I would help get one established for the team to use. The comment was put to me by my co-worker, "I really need to see the value of it to know if I'd want to use it."

Then, amazingly ten minutes later an occasion has come up to try it out. We teach a course several times a year where three of us each teach a different topic for a full day. We have decided that because there are key messages we are trying to spread through out the organization, we should make sure that we are each touching on these messages during our training sessions. Since finding meeting time together right now would prove very difficult we are going to use a mind mapping web tool to plan out what messages/themes we currently each deliver and then how we can tie them together to match the organizational plan.

My co-worker immediately said, "That's a great idea....I see value in that." Now after she uses the tool once she will be able to see how it could be applied to other situations. I just had to discover the perfect stepping off point in which to start and grab hold of her attention and willingness to discover something new.

E-Learning by Design, Not by Default (eLearning Guild Online Forum)

E-Learning by Design, Not by Default: An Overview for Setting your e-Learning Strategy - Clark Quinn, Ph.D. Quinnovation (blog)

Today the eLearning Guild began hosting another set of online forums. The opening session was by Clark Quinn of Quinnovation. I enjoy making notes in this "live blogging" manner so that I can refer back to them and I can share them a bit as a review of the presentations.

Clark's presentation was a great start to September's series of online forums. It was an extremely informative session for all levels of users of elearning design and development. He was wonderful at making sure all attendees' questions were addressed. I look forward to catching any presentations he may give in the future.

"We can no longer just learn everything we need at the beginning and hope that it will carry us through the rest of our career lives."

Problems group was facing with elearning:
multilinquistists
distance
resources
time
money
changing regulations
more simulations
competing with small organizations
internationalization
workers coming in with less skills then desired
retiring expertise
motivating learners
growing number of students
access for all learners

Is eLearning a solution or a distraction?
easy to try, but never the be all and end all of every thing

What do participants think eLearning is?
self paced, online
blogs, wikis, rss, courses, websites,
integration of technology into the learning/training process
web based
delivered over the internet/intranet

split between any learning over an electronic means and specifically training/course based

Elearning Myths
is a panacea
will go away soon
is about the technology
is about content
will replace training
is difficult and/or expensive (not with web 2.0 applications)
cheaper (no, used to sell it, but not cheaper - goal is to execute better for the same money)
only for the new generation (no)
if you build it, they will come
if you build it, they will learn (must lead to meaningful change and learning that works, is applied)

"It's not about learning it's about doing. Doing things better and more effectively."

Empowering the organization through information systems.

Trying to achieve:
Integration. Innovation. Execution. Efficiency. Effectiveness. Performance Support. Community.

Strategy:
Step 0:
Tech - hosted or web based conferences
Benefits - broad reach, low downtime, single investment into system
Costs - you tend to get low quality, increased maintenance

Step 1: Improved Instructional Design
Tech - LMS - for tracking, are we getting the ROI we expect (LMS tend to have all the money put into system and non left for content)
Benefits - getting learning that will motivate and involve learners
Costs - improve capabilities, gets over used, is very novice based

Step 2: Performance focus
Tech - portals of resources (policies, procedures, other info)
Benefits - better performance, supports more then novices
Costs - redundant development, hard to search/use (many different ways to search for info by all users)

Step 3: eCommunity
Tech - blogs, wikis, discussion boards, yellow pages
Benefits- supports top performers, captures hidden knowledge (experts can talk, share new knowledge, brainstorm, one level of education supports another)
Costs - needs support, hard to catalyze

Step 4: Greater integration
Tech - CMS (material from others), xml/dita (semantics and tags added to info)
Benefits - decrease overlap, efficiency, silos eliminated between user groups
Costs - organization tends to become coordinated

Step 5: Broader Distribution can be supported by step 4 - making learning mobile
Tech - devices (mobile, cell phones, pdas, etc), media tools
Benefits - trading bandwidth for convenience, listen while driving, learn while waiting, don't need large amounts of paper to take learning with you, Context sensitive - ie: fedex scanning a pkg before handing over,
Cost - redundancy can occur (low bandwidth, higher bandwidth), conversion costs for media

"if you're not measuring it, why use it" don't assume it's perfect from the beginning

Step 6: Performance Ecosystems - Suites of resources so that everyone can work to their best, single place to go for what you need
Tech - competency, content (description), roles (who you are and what you can have access to, or tasks you might handle)
Benefits - unified approach to everyone's efforts
Costs - linking systems throughout and organization as well as the organization

Words people were wondering definitions for:
web 2.0
SMS
ERP
LMS - learning management systems
CMS - content management systems
ILT - Instructor Based Training
WBT - Web based training
CBT - Classroom based training

Participants were 53% at level 0 and 30% level 1, a couple at level 2, 3 and 5

Essential eLearning Elements
-organizational implementation
-some project management to focus, keep scope, find resources, keep schedule
-enlightened Instructional Design
-performance focus (think of supporting full performance not just course content)
-flexibility (adapt to users, new technology)
-technology savvy (know what it is good for, get what you need but don't go overboard)
-good partners/advice (find people who can support your efforts)

Learning
1) present....apply...practice...reflect...present...appy...practice...reflect
2) reference framework...examples...space practice...job aids...communicaiton...reference framework...examples...space practice...job aid....communication

-spacing practice out will promote retention and understanding of material
-reference examples can become job aids that learners can take to the real application
-included self reflection tests for learners to decided if they are ready to move on

"You're not about training/learning, you're abut empowering performance."
"You're not about computers or web, you're about all technology."

Next steps:
-identify your needs as an ID and organization
-assess your readiness
-recruit needed capability
-scan for opportunities
-choose your priorities
-plan your implementation
-execute

Learning in an Instant

The thing I love about the internet is how quickly I can learn about virtually anything. Elearning doesn't have to be a full on college course. It doesn't have to take weeks to occur. It doesn't have to be towards a certificate or degree. I wonder about something, anything and moments later....I read, listen, observe and know.

Here's a quick example of my random elearning for today...

I get rss feeds from a variety of sources and one of the first I looked at today was about sand dunes and why they sing or making booming noises (Discovery). Cool seems interesting. Two minutes later I've read it quick article about them, the new theory behind the sounds and now I'm hooked with new questions. What does it sound like? What does it look like? Is it like an avalanche? Two minutes later I'm now watching videos and listening to audio clips. If I wanted there were lots of more links to explore the topic about. All from one sentence sent to me through my rss reader.

In 4 minutes I've learned about singing sand dunes. Asolutely amazing.

Time Zone Converting - Knowing When to Login

With the blogosphere being so large and sitting in on webinars all over the world I often have trouble remember what the time difference is for me compared to the host sites.

There are several tools that are available out on the web to choose from and here are a few that are my favourite for ease of use.

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/

Loud, Ear Ringing, Rocking Time - Not elearning related

Okay this has nothing to do with elearning at the moment, but maybe I can tie it back to technology at least. Last night I saw Aerosmith put on one heck of an amazing, rocking, ear ringing, guitar blazing performance.

The 5th last show of thier 2007 World Tour was phenomenal. I saw them last year as well shortly after Steven Tyler had throat surgery and was amazed at how well he was able to still sing and reach his signature high notes. Last night however, it was like watching them again back in high school. He hit every note he should (at least to my inexpert ears) and never stopped moving all night. In fact, the entire band - Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton (who looked great), Joey Kramer, Brad Whitford - all had a ton of energy last night that swept away the whole audience. Thanks guys for a great show!!!

Okay the technology bit....no...I don't actually have one. I was going to post pictures from my cell phone, but it doesn't take great pictures. Ah ha, I now have a case to get a new pocket size camera.

A Follow-up to Finding Volunteering Opportunities Online

After a recent post about Volunteer Match I had contacted them to see if they have a similar website for Canadian based volunteers and organizations. Apparently I did not look quite far enough through the site. They do indeed and in fact they have opportunities all around the world.

Under the Search feature of the site one can search out opportunities by keyword, skills, country, preferred partners and American Corps. I mistakenly thought the link would lead to a search of the site, not opportunities. My apologies.

They did let me know that they are currently working on a plan for the UK and Canada as it would be easiest to establish in locations where English is already a primary language.

Pangea Day - May 10, 2008

This is an incredible world community event that you and I can play a role in or just observe. Pangea Day is set for May 10, 2008. This will be a day were sites around the world including London, New York, Cairo and more will be linked together through web conferencing. Visionary films, speakers and music will be shared globally to everyone. What is wonderful here is it will be broadcast live as well through television, internet, and cellphones.

This event will be much like Live Earth which occured earlier this year in July, but will take place over 4 hours connecting each other through visual messages.

There is an incredibly moving trailer on the home page of Pangea Day and footage from the TED 2006 prize winner and the inspiration behind this Jehane Noujaim.

Speaking of Ebooks....

I went on a small tangent yesterday about an ereader and today I found yet another ebook site. ManyBooks.net claims to have 18000 free ebooks for download to pdas, ipods and ereaders.

Many of the books on this site I have seen on other free ebook sites (Project Gutenberg - who have by the way really improved their site), but there is a nice feature here where you can see the top downloaded books and reviews from readers as well.

Looking For a Great Volunteering Opportunity?

I came across this site today VolunterMatch.com. It's a website network for volunteering, matching nonprofit organizations looking for volunteers with members of the public looking to donate their skills, time and effort.

As a volunteer you can view opportunities by area of interest (animal, health care, children, environment, etc) or skill that you can offer to these organizations.

I only wish this was expanded through North America.

VolunteerMatch is connecting good people with good causes.
Referrals: 3,144,487 Opportunities: 45,948 Organizations: 53,244

Thanks to my readers and 2000 visitors.

I started keeping track of visits to my blog June 21 of this year. Well early this morning I had my 2,000th visitor. I know that this includes many of the same readers that come back time and time again to read my posts and respond to some of my questions.

I just wanted to take a moment here to thank you all.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Photo of the Day, National Geographic

My home page popped this image up as the photo of the day. I just saw it now and thought it was beautiful.

Now I know what a sea nettle looks like...there...I've learned something new today.

To e-book or Not e-book? That is the Question.

I came across a bunch of posts today for Amazon.com's new ebook reader Kindle that is coming out apparently in October. Ugg...I'm sorry but this is one ugly piece of equipment for appx. $400.

I like reading books on my pda. In fact I've read probably 20 or so in this method. For me it's a great way to get into bed, turn the lights off, read to the soft warm glow of my pda, and not disturb anyone else with blinding room lights. But.....the cost of ebooks tends to be almost the same as regular books...and there is still something to be said for having a stack of printed, bound papers in your hands. If you do it right you can build up your biceps reading something like that last Harry Potter book.

I'm not sure how well this Kindle thing is going to go over. I think people want devices that allow you do many different things with them (ie: pda, iphone, etc) rather than just a reader.

Blog Action Day - Oct. 15th, Get Involved

This is a wonderful concept. One Day....One Thought....Cool.

So what is Blog Action Day?

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind. In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

What can you do?

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.
2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice.
3. There is no 3..."If they choose bloggers can also promote the initiative itself. However they are also free to simply post on topic on the right day or discreetly donate to a charity without publicizing Blog Action Day."

That's all there is to it. How simple?

As of today there are 4,597 blogs/websites participating, reaching an estimated 3,516,159 people.

Welcome Aboard Our New Orientation Format

About a month ago I wrote about how our department was striving to create a new, exciting and more interactive orientation.

Well today we launched our S.S. Southlake, General Orientation. Yes indeed we have designed our first day of orientation to be that similar to welcoming guests aboard a cruise ship. We greeted each new staff with a flower lei and a "cruise" itinerary for the day. The room was decorated with as many cruise motif decorations we could find. Local party stories have moved full swing into Halloween decorations, but we seemed to do okay. We had a large life preserver at the front door that says "Welcome Aboard", there were tiki torches at the front door, other life preservers in the room were decorated with sayings regarding our strategic focus. We changed our presentation from our corporate logo to a lovely picture of a cruise ship.

Now elements of our actual content have yet to get updated. This portion of change will come when we move some of the documentation of new staff to another day. We want to add hospital scavenger hunts. These will be designed to lead staff around to key areas of the organization and pin point items of interest. Including our most popular intranet site....the Cafeteria Menu!

We haven't quite decided yet on a few games to place into the content. Once we have created a little more time within the day we plan to change the breaks into "Stretch Breaks with the Cruise Director". Also I may possibly add in some "Improv" entertainment into another of the breaks.


We did so much of this, I hate to admit, last minute last week that we didn't mention the cruise idea to anyone in the organization. Mostly we wanted to keep it a secret. Our presenters were great and are embracing the entire new concept with open arms. Our IT manager came in and used all sorts of "sea worthy" sayings in relation to password protection including..."it was our responsibility to make sure the ship didn't sink from improper computer use." For those of you who have read me before....yes this was a Dannyism.


So far the new staff seem to be welcoming the idea of the theme and playing along with the day of fun and learning. The majority of our staff are women (it is a hospital) so they laugh along, the men in the room tend to chuckle and you can see them wondering how long they have to wear the lei before they can take it off. The feedback throughout the day has been fabulous and we are already thinking of ways to make it even better.

LMS - I don't want to be Little Miss Should've

"Okay, okay, okay...it's not all my fault Tony." --- I'd rather be Little Miss Splendid

Tony Karrer (eLearning Technology) posted today on his blog, 10 Gotcha's when implementing an LMS into your organization. Apparently after sharing my frustration yesterday, Tony helpped to point out that I may be experiencing #1 - Starting With an Unrealistic Expectation of What You Need, #4 - Failing to Identify Key Differentiating Use Cases, and #6 - Not Testing a LMS.

We've (my org.) have been trying to step into the LMS world since....uggg, my calendar says....2003. I'll start with Tony's #6 Gotcha. Yes, I'll admit to this one. No we didn't get hands on testing of anything and I think the reason we never asked was, we just wanted something anything, just give us the darn thing. 2003-2004 we had an IT Director that was keen on the whole project, got all the stake holders together and looked at one demo after another after another. He left, the project went stale, the money got filtered elsewhere and we lost the momentum. 2005 the new IT Director gets more push about an intranet....no...sorry....no funding, figure something else out. So, our make shift intranet is born. It's used. More and more department want a page/section on the site. Ah-ha, now he has some leverage to find funding and begin the ball rolling again. However, we are going to make sure we get an all in one package from someone that includes and intranet, doc management and LMS. After a billion more demos, some the same from the first round, we narrow it down to two vendors. I will share here as well that during one point of all this searching around there were issues with trying to make sure we were doing what other hospitals in the area/affiliates were doing. It would have helped with pricing, sharing, hosting, etc., but again we were sick of waiting and went and begun our own project. With the two vendors chosen, we invited every stakeholder we could think of (maybe too many) and armed with a series of must-haves we evaluated them again through demos (and referenced other hospitals using the products) and put it to a vote. Again, I'll add here.... we finally had the funding approved, we just wanted one, any one, get it going. So....no there was no hands on testing. (FAIL - perhaps, time will tell regarding our product and our satisfaction, but this was definitely an oversight.)

Gotcha #1...Unrealistic Expectation....okay maybe, this is a definite we'll see. I don't think we are aiming too high here. We know it's going to be a real challenge to get our staff to start using and embracing the system. I really would just love something that is going to track our staff education (outside the organization), something to help with booking the internal courses, and something to launch and better yet marked the annoying core curriculum (still marking the paper ones from June). (PASS - but barely, I think are expectations are okay, but listening and believing the implementation time line was very, very silly.)

Gotcha #4 - Failing to Identify Key Differentiating Use Cases...I'm going to admit here....I'm not sure what this one means. I'm going to need some help clarifying this mistake.

I will be very interested to see if any of the other Gotchas show up during this project. I'm keeping track now.

What's Happening With My New LMS?!?!

NOTHING!!!!!

No I haven't neglected to post the trials and tribulations of my new LMS and all the joys I get to experience as I play with the toy. Nothing has happened. We had a meeting with the vendor, what a month ago? No contact since. Oh they better be getting something good ready for me to look at and try!

Oh and my little meeting about my job role and what path this LMS will lead me down. NOTHING!!!! We can't possibly discuss that until we have the tool in place and know exactly in what capacity we will use the darn thing.

Okay...thanks I feel better for the rant.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Blogging - (my name in print)

Tony Karrer has an article published in this month's T+D (Training and Development) magazine (click the magazine cover to launch the reader). His article is based on blogging, but more specifically the learning and networking benefits that can come from starting your own.

I was honoured earlier in the summer when Tony asked me for my perspective on blogging. Now to see it in print; well I'm giddy with excitement. It's a great article with other perspectives from Karyn Romeis, Jay Cross, Wendy Wickham, and Brent Schlenker.

This is a bit of a tangent from the idea of blogging, but....I love the technology it takes to reading a magazine like this online. It's really cool (yes, my name is Tracy and I'm a techno-geek, "Hi Tracy"). It's a great method to get, traditionally, boomers to read printed material online. Being able to see the pages, go to the table of contents, flip through pages back and forth, and zoom in and out (picture your dad holding the newspaper at arm's length). I can not get my colleagues (boomers...sorry but it's true) to read anything online; I've got to print it out for them if I want them to read something. It makes the online reading experience more interactive and more like real life.

However, back to the article....

Some of the ideas and quotes from it that really struck for me are:

"Bloggers continually search for interesting information they can post. When they post information, they must synthesize that information, formulate additional questions, contrast and make sense of differing viewpoints, and identify patterns and trends." - Tony Karrer
I learn something new every day.

"The one thing I have really notice and experienced about the blogging community is that everyone is extremely friendly, open, and willing to share ideas and mentor one another." - Tracy Hamilton
I learn something new from my online mentors.

"If for no other reason than your job is changing, and you might want to be engaged in the process of what your new job will include." - Brent Schlenker

I'm tracking my progress.

The starting point...is to learn how to use blogs as individual work and learning tools and then become evangelists about these technologies, methods, and habits." - Tony Karrer

I'm tracking my development, sharing my experiences, and hopefully teaching and mentoring others.

e-Tools & Tips Recorded for Your Listening Pleasure

Yesterday I posted some upcoming webinars being hosted by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.

Jyothi Jayaram from the E-Learning Networks Project at AFLF was kind enough to email me back yesterday and let me know that yes indeed the sessions are recorded for our listening pleasure.

If you happen to be somewhere else in the world sleeping when these sessions are happening you can catch them later at:

http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/flx/go/home/projects/2007/pid/440

Blog Day - Whoops I'm Late

BlogDay2007

Well I completely missed Blog Day, until my newest blogging friend (Christy) linked me on to her Blog Day roll.

I'm making a note though to make sure that I participate fully next year in this. Catching up after a long weekend is making my head spin.

The instructions apparently are....
1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st)
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org/

Blogs I've learned a ton of information from:

Christy Tucker - Experiencing E-Learning

Angela White - A Nice Cup of Lizard (fairly new to blogging, we started roughly the same time, is begining to implement an LMS, we are roughly starting on this at the same time too)

Cammy Bean - Learning Visions (I love Cammy sense of humour, she's almost a year into blogging - Sept. 28th - I think I've learned something new from her each week)

Cathy Moore - Making Change - Ideas for Lively Elearning (I stumbled on Cathy recently and I love all the tools and tips she keeps sharing with the blogosphere)

Big Brother 8 - Okay this one is just for fun....but I cant' help it...I'm addicted to the show. Go Evil Dick, Go!

e-Tools and Tips - (AFLF)

The Austrialian Flexible Learning Framework is hosting a series of webinars over the next month on a range of e-tools and how one can use them in the classroom.

Topics being discussed are:
Moblogs - recorded session
Podcasting - Sept. 5, 2007 1:00pm (AEST), or 11:00pm (EST - North America)
Virtual Worlds - Sept. 11, 2007 8:00pm (AEST), or 6:00am (EST)
Social Bookmarking - Sept. 13, 2007 2:00pm (AEST) or 12:00am Sept. 13, 2007 (EST)
Personal Learning Spaces - Sept. 19, 2007 2:00pm (AEST), or 12:00am Sept. 19th, 2007 (EST)
Digital Story Telling - Sept. 20, 2007 10:00am (AEST), or 8:00pm (EST)
Video in elearning -Sept. 26, 2007 3:30pm (AEST), or 1:30am (EST)
Wikis and Blogs - Sept. 27, 2007 10:00am (AEST), or 8:00pm (EST)

For more info on all sessions click here. For a time zone converter click here.

I'm am checking to see if more then the first session will be recorded and will report back when I know.

Bloggers Need to Watch for Malicious Fake Posts

BBC News is reporting today that several blogs through Blogger are being "hijacked" by hackers. Hundreds of blogs have been attacked with fake posts. These postings look normal, however they contain links to what resemble YouTube links or software testers. These links when clicked on then allow the hackers to access many files within you computer including saleable information.

It is unsure, currently, how they are obtaining access to post to the blogs. One potential way that is being considered is the feature to email posts to one's blog.

Please be sure to check your own blog routinely.

What's Your Best Web Source for Info

Business Week is compiling its best of the best for 2007. It's looking for the top sites where we, the users, get our most compelling information.

There are several categories to choose from and there is offer to add to the list as well. Categories include Best Blogs, News, Finance, Travel, Games, Mashups, etc. The polling closes September 10 and results will be posted at the end of September.

Make sure to add your favourites into the list.

Good Advice for Solving Problems

Lee Lefever posted a nice piece last night on their experience at Common Craft Show regarding producing their many fabulous videos on RSS, Social Bookmarking, and etc.

Some great advice that really struck for me when considering our upcoming LMS implementation was:

"If you're about to start something new, don't spend weeks trying to make the first attempt perfect. Get started as quickly as possible and learn as you go. Tinker, experiment and look for the big things you can tackle as you go. Solve problems when they need to be solved and you won't feel as overwhelmed by all the things that could be fixed."

I think I've been a little wound up thinking about getting the Cadillac version out there for our staff to really get excited about it, but at this point I need to realize that a Vespa will do. We have nothing right now so anything that gives staff easier access to course registration and material is going to be better.

Howtoons - cartoons showing how to build things.

Howtoons is a great site for kids to take a look through. It has lots of colourful graphics that look like modern day comics. Oh but wait...what's that you see....learning. Uggg, children tricked the world over to learn something hidden behind 1000 colours and images jumping out at you from the page. Ha...how diabolical.

This one is actually quite beautiful. It simply and elegantly shows how to create a pinwheel.

There are other toons on how to build soda pop submarines and learning about the Beaufort Scale. The blog section takes readers further out to the web to learn about tonight's lunar elcipse and tons more.

Howtoons are cartoons showing kids of all ages "How To" build things. Each illustrated episode is a stand-alone fun adventure accessible to all. If you are and adult and want to learn more about them (no pictures, just words and reading...yes...I know...how lame) click here.

Go ahead, share with your kids....trick them into learning something new.

A Closer and More Detailed Look at the Moon

Imagine being able to view up close and in high detail photos of the Moon that were taking during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. Now you can. Many of these photos from the 1970 are being scanned by Arizona State University, Geological Sciences Program. The resolution is at 14 bits (16,000 shades of grey per pixel).


(Image: AS15-96-13093research: David Woods)

Many of these photos have been kept safe in a freezer by NASA to preserve their quality over the last 30+ years. There are hundreds of photos of all the missions to be found at the Project Apollo Image Gallery.

The BBC News reports that:

"Prof. Mark Robinson (the principal investigator) said that the scanned images
were of such fidelity and precision that stereo measurements could be made where
the images overlapped - and therefor a follow-on project will be to make
topographic images of the Moon."

Another use for old books

Following on the heels of the Great Textbook debate....I found this today. If we refuse to allow other students to get some use out of old text books, why not turn them into art.

(Artist: Su Blackwell)

Karyn Romeis' African School Tale (textbook debate)

I usually just use the share feature of my reader to mark items that I like and want to share with others. Today however, I really want to point this posting out to everyone.

Karyn Romeis has been following and commenting on the textbook debate. Today she apologized (far too many times, lol) for what she thought was a long posting about her personal account of an impoverished African school - Once upon a Time in Africa.

It is something anyone who is even remotely concerned/interested in education or has a child in a school system any where in the world. It's a great reminder to us all of what we have and makes us think how we can help others.

Thanks Karyn.

GeoDistance - How Far Have You Gone?

Read/Write Web had and interesting post that caught my eye today. SimpleSpark has a video of 5000 web 2.0 applications logos presented in 333 seconds. Cool enough, but SimpleSpark has new applications daily.

So I started working backwards in time and found one from yesterday. GeoDistance!!!! Oh this is so neat. I have wanted one of these for ages. I love to go biking, but how far have I gone when I go off on my adventures. Open up the application. Pin point your starting point, your end point and any point in between and voila. Now I can see that I've been biking 35km in one direction (and back). No wonder I'm tired at the end of my trip.

What a great tool.

Private Social Networks - not your daddy's Facebook

I suppose I'm not high class or connected enough to be one of the 260,000 elite members of ASmallWorld. It's a social network, much like Facebook, but you must be invited by trusted members.

Erik Wachtmeister founded ASMALLWORLD as a private online community for
like-minded individuals. Most networking communities are open. Ours is only by
invitation. Trusted members who have existing social networks of quality in the
real world extend the invitations. aSmallWorld offers a retreat that intimately
allows members to enhance their networks and to reconnect with old friends.

One of those....why didn't I think of that ideas, I could keep riff-raff out too.

LMS is here, now what?

So we got our LMS or so they say. I've yet to get my greedy paws on to it. Initial thoughts were....let's just get using it and start tracking some of the training and registration that is already going on within our facility. This quickly changed at the first meeting to a general discussion about what "course material" we were going to put on the system. There are a few government created courses (which I'm sure are fine) floating around that need to be put on, but the rest is all paper.

Is is fine to jump in with just putting up .pdfs of booklets that are currently circulating around this place? I'm sure it's a start, but is it really the image of this great new tool that we want to promote. Many of our staff have never seen elearning, but there are a great many that have been taking elearning courses through all sorts of colleges and universities and they do know what course should resemble.

I've got a meeting tomorrow to discuss "WHERE IS MY ROLE HEADING?" A great title for...we have more work for you, no additional resources or recognition, nothing is being taken off your plate, and don't even think of more $$$.

I certainly don't want to become incharge of just student data entry. I'll keep you posted....uggggg.

Elluminate Free Webinar's (and Edubloggerworld Kickoff)

So I'm looking around my Reader today reading up on what I have been missing out on over the past few days (mini holiday), and I come across Victoria Davis' Cool Cat Teacher Blog mentioning the EduBloggerWorld kickoff on Thursday. I see that she mentions that she is hosting a little Elluminate session on Thursday....I go over to Elluminate. Heard of it a billion times in my online courses, never participated, yet! I then did a quick search through the Events link to see if I could see her session.

No, BUT!!!!!!

There are 3 pretty neat and FREE sessions coming up by Lance Dublin.

Back-To-Basics: Developing An E-Learning Strategy And Architecture
Lance Dublin
2007-09-27
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!

Back-To-Basics: Implementing E-Learning Successfully
Lance Dublin
2007-11-01
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!

Back-To-Basics: Understanding And Applying Learning 2.0
Lance Dublin
2007-11-29
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!

Blogging - Thoughts on copying entire posts

I've never tried to post directly from Google Reader so I'm unsure just exactly what Brent is commenting on here, but I'll give it a go and use his post as an example/test.

 

 

Sent to you by Tracy via Google Reader:

 

 

Blogging - Thoughts on copying entire posts

via Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development by Brent Schlenker on Aug 17, 2007

I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to make blogging faster for me. I see so much stuff that I want to share with the eLearning community that its hard to get all my thoughts into blog posts about it all.

I tried the email option from Google Reader which seemed like a great idea at first. I can scan the world and instantly post to my blog all from one spot. PERFECT! That's what I want to do. But then again...not so perfect.

The Google Reader adds a bunch of stuff to the email and that shows up in my post. Not so good. However, I'm all about the information getting to you...even if it looks a little sloppy.

My biggest problem is in my gut telling me that it just isn't cool to put another persons ENTIRE blog post into my blog post. Sure the Reader email feature adds the link back and all that stuff, but still...ya know? Very uncomfortable with it!

So, in a pinch under certain circumstances I will post via the gReader email feature. But I'm going to try and avoid it.

What do you think?

 

 

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Blogging while listening to a webinar...oh and chatting

So my attempt to day capture notes while I participated in a webinar worked much better. I opened the browser full to see the slides of the presentation. Minimized my Google Notebook and placed it in the upper left corner of my screen where there was nothing relevant to the presentation. I was invited to chat during the webinar and opened gTalk, minimized it and placed it just slightly above the webinar chat.

Now all at once I could see the slides, take my own notes, see the participants' chat comment, and chat with a friend all at once. Wow. That was fun. Not only that, but I didn't get distracted with some strange formatting happening as I took the notes. Notebook gave me a very clean look (no extra line spaces) and I could format it how I wished to, save it in my notebook and copy/paste it into my Blogger post tool. Oh happy day!