DemoFest 2007 Winners from DevLearn 2007 (eLearning Guild)

DemoFest Winners 2007
Based on demonstrations run during the DevlLearn 2007 in San Jose, CA Nov. 2007.
Winners
Seal Works - Ariel
Can Do It, LLC, 3-D Instructions
Sun Microsystems
OnPoint Digital, Sales Quenchers - mLearning
KPMG - Expense Reimbursement Training
Oxygen Education - Emag machine

Nick Floro - Ariel - A Reader's Interactive Exploration of Literature

Team of 6 people, 6 months to create
Budget of $80,000.

Goal: gain resources to better understand literature content
Objectives: creating a cdrom, or webserver could deliver content along with book.
Audience: college students
Created from scratch not existing technology or solution.

Used 5D's of project management
Discovery
Define project
Design
Develop
Delivery

Created a flowchart for each author flowing through the content of the book.
Each would have some activity associated with them.

Tools used:
Html, flash

Created wire frames on how to interact with the content.
27 authors
Wanted interactivity (on web, or cdrom)
Each author had their own logo and a font based on their particular work.
Banner, Content in middle. Left side user choices to pick a particular piece of author work, picture, or audio related to author.

Glossary based on material, but could be pulled from and turn into a pop up within each author window content.

Project management tools used.

Basecamphq.com (recommended by Nick and participants within the online too.)

Program had a poem creating tool such like fridge magnets.

Nick@sealworks.com
http://tinyurl.com/3y8pyx


John D'Amours - 3D Instructions, An EPSS Prototype (Can Do It LLC)

Mission: Deliver low-cost 3d Assembly instructions and lead consumers to expect this quality level for all do-it-yourself tasks (eg. Ikea products, not just using paper instructions)

Tools:
Deep Exploration (5.1 beta)
Right Hemisphere (alpha and beta version)

Items are displayed on screen in 3D, user can shift screen perspective to see each angle of item being put together.


Sorry I don't have more notes than this....I had to leave the demonstration early to go to another webinar. Recordings of the presentation will be found on The eLearning Guild website.

9:15pm...later this evening....I just saw that Cammy Bean posted information on a few of the other presenters at this webinar. (thanks Cammy)

So Just What is a Blog?

Another great production from the Common Craft Show. Blogs in Plain English is well done and follows similar formats to other pieces done by the group. I especially liked about 3/4 of the way though when they explain why people use them, or what's more important is how you use them. I like how blog communities are explained because it is one of the greatest advantages I have found and experienced since starting my own.

Tools & Technologies for Mobile Learning - eLearning Guild Online Forum

Tools and Technologies for Mobile Learning by David Metcalf, University of Central Florida (notes from the eLearning Guild's online forum)

What is mlearning?

• laptop, micro pc
• cell phone
• tablet pc
• player
• PDA/handheld
• Ebook reader
• game device

Wiki - seeking lesson in small, manageable formats that can undertake when it suits them.

No consistent answer as it is still developing, growing, being explored.

Polls of participants
experience with m-learning projects - most haven't started
delivery are you using - most using podcasting
devices you are targeting -most were using ipods, blaceberries, smartphones/pda, cell phones,

Why consider it?
2 billion handsets by end of 2006
40M multimedia phones in US, 279 digital tv phones in US by 2010
More than 100 billion handsets with touch screens
3.25 billion mobile phones use

First Building Blocks
Learning

Second Building Block - performance support
- on the job
- task specific
- support at time of need
- coaching, mentoring
- paper based job aides

Need a consistent base of knowledge base
- repository of knowledge
- sharing of best practices & lessons learned
- connect with experts

A learner knows what they need to know - they just need to find the information.

Example - sports theme learning, sent through phone. Lesson is about a math course. Questions scored as a game. More points, they can win ring tones, prizes, sporting even tickets. (MySportsPulse). Using Moving Knowledge.

Example (Tyco)
Using vXML - book on tape style learning. For customer service management instructions.

One could also use a specialized device. ( Ie: PocketPC Symbol). Videos can be downloaded directly to the device. Best to use closeup shots. Can record messages.

Development Tools
Flash Lite
Zirada, lectora publisher
Camtasia Studio
iQuiz Maker
iWriter
quiz building for the ipbo
mobipocket ebook reader
interactive video technologies
emantras mobls
podquiz maker
kallisto
classinhand
quizzler pro
zirada mobile publisher
hot lava software
mobile and devises developer center
mobile chalkboard
talkshoe
tourcaster
pocket podcast
podtrip podcasting new
Captivate
Studymate
MobiGlam
mscape
tribal CTA
Profcast.com


Look for more on www.mlearnopedia.com (free site to look at).

Free tools:
Mob5
MobiSiteGalore
Winksite

Check what you have http://mr.dev.mobi/

Test/Quiz:
FlashcardExchange
GotestGo
iQuiz maker
Mobiode (surveys)
Studycell.com


Misc:
Apresto podcast
emantras' mobls
Giunti
Instancy
Liquid Talk

Communication:
CampusReact
clearTXT
Gabcast
Mobilesphere
Mogopop
MovingKnowledge
Podlines
Rave Wireless

Technical Areas to Consider:
types of devices
wireless connections
does your corp have standard devices
content providers
Wireless service providers

Platform options can make things difficult since there are many types. (blackberry, Palm, pocketpc, smartphones with WAP, JWME, tablets, handtops)

Overall this was a fairly good presentation. I was one of several in the session having trouble with audio and video files during the presentation. Another issue for myself it felt very business oriented. Not entirely, but that is a strong focus I find often of the mobile teaching. They speak of on the job tools, training as you need it, performance support. However, it generally seems related to sales. There is a huge world out there that needs more training then customer service. I'm in the health care industry and at a facility that has a great deal of RN students....how great for them to have a bedside "companion" with them to reference a wound for proper treatment, medication references for dosages (these greatly exist in the mobile world I realize). I'm not sure where we are going with this as an organization yet, but this session wasn't quite what I was thinking of, although there we a ton of useful sites, tools, and info for me to go explore. Great job again by the Guild.

Finding new Web tools by looking and digger a little deeper

I have a follow up presentation to do this Friday to see how the Training and Organization Development Network (Greater Toronto Area) is enjoying and utilizing the online community I set up for them. Long story short, in the spring the group met and was discussing that they were getting tired of keeping track of the billion emails flying around filled with questions, replies, and attachments. I suggested setting up an online community. Got it up and running in the summer and now that it is fall we are revisiting the idea to see if it has worked as we (I) had hoped.

What's this got to do with my post heading....well....my first presentation I included a couple of those great Common Craft in plain English videos. A better way then I could ever attempt at explaining some of the web tools out there to use. I wanted to come back at this presentation time and show another cool video that explains and showcases more of what is happening in the digital world. So I remembered Prof. Micheal Wesch 's video "The Machine is Us/ing Us". If you haven't seen it yet, take a look it's a wonderful piece. From an interview with the professor:

"As I tried to illustrate in the video, this means that a change in one area (such as the way we communicate) can have a profound effect on everything else, including family, love, and our sense of being itself. Second, everything is connected throughout all time, and so as anthropologists we take a very broad view of human history, looking thousands or even millions of years into the past and into the future as well. And finally, all people on the planet are connected. This has always been true environmentally because we share the same planet. Today it is even more true with increasing economic and media globalization."

Through looking at his site I came across Creative Commons (which I have seen before but never really looked into).

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Watching Prof. Wesch's video I saw him using/referencing an interesting site that I could see had lots of little window panes with rss feeds in, blogs, news items extra. Really liking the look of it I wanted to know what it was being used. Pause the video, rewind the video, step-by-step the video....I was just about to do a screen capture and send the image to a friend to ask if they knew what it was and....I see on the web address line...netvibes. Type that into my browser and there you go....that's it. Another neat little tool to try out and see if I like using it as a reader.

I feel like Columbo (sorry for the 70's reference, but I still like him) discovering, exploring, finding clues, solving puzzles. There's something I always find really satisfying when I discover something new (at least new to me) on the web. I wonder how many more feel that way?

The Price to Buy 12 Days of Christmas

From article out of the Toronto Star, Dan Nephin (Associated Press).

Shopping list
Prices of items in the Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas," according to PNC Wealth Management:

1 Partridge, $15 (last year: same)
1 Pear Tree, $150 (last year: $130)
2 Turtle Doves, $40 (last year: same)
3 French Hens, $45 (last year: same)
4 Calling Birds (canaries), $600 (last year: $480)
5 Gold Rings, $395 (last year: $325)
6 Geese a-Laying, $360 (last year: $300)
7 Swans a-Swimming, $4,200 (last year: same)
8 Maids a-Milking, $47 (last year: $41)
9 Ladies Dancing (per performance), $4,759 (last year: same)
10 Lords a-Leaping (per performance), $4,285 (last year: $4,160)
11 Pipers Piping (per performance), $2,213 (last year: $2,124)
12 Drummers Drumming (per performance), $2,398 (last year: $2,301)

My sister was quite surprised that 10 Lords a-Leaping was cheaper then 9 Ladies Dancing....oh no...I hope I'm not getting 10 Lords a-Leaping for Christmas....where would I put them?

Yes Virgina, There Are Other Search Engines

A co-worker of mine (the one that went to India, who I'm still trying to convince to blog) is working on a course that discovers various ways to do literature searches for research among other things. Every so often she comes across a great "new" little tool that she gets really excited about and shares with me. Now I'm excited too.

Have you visited KartOO?

It's a visual search engine in that once you put in your search topic you get up a picture representation of the most relevant pages.

Here's an image of when I searched my own blog.

Th largest icon on the visual map is a small capture of my homepage, and the large bluish blob that lies in the background has labels on it letting you know the basic site topic/category (ie: blog, guide, photos, deals, tours, etc).

The upper left has a list as well of the major key words found on the pages that are showing. If you roll over a website page icon then you will see a brief description of the site as well.

It's actually a fun way to search and to "see" what might comes up.

Mobile Survey - Online Demo

This is not a commerical...I'm just sharing. I thought I would sit in on the Zoomerang Webinar: Capture "in the moment" feedback with mobile surveys. I've enjoyed using Zoomerang in the past for deploying surveys, and thought it's at least worth a look to see what they are offering in mobile ideas. If nothing else, online webinars are a great way to see what is out there and new to use.

If you are intersted here is the link they have sent me to register for this free seminar:

Reserve your spot today.

Who knew that Costco and Zombies go together?!?

Okay, I'm a little late on this one....

Common Craft posted this one at the end of October that I just had to look at and killed my self laughing. Great way to leave the office on a Friday.

Zombies in Plain English

Online Conference Starts Next Week (Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations)

I'm quite excited to be participating as a learner at the upcoming Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations Online conference which begins next Thursday. There is a terrific line up of speakers presenting a wide range of topics over the course of 4 days.

What's great is like a face-to-face conference you can pick and choose which sessions you wish to attend that are of interest to you. Best yet, you can stay home in your pajamas and learn. (hee hee). Seriously, there are 15 or so presenters to learn from. There are over 800 people registered to participate globally. It's all free. Did I say that loud enough FREE!!! How can you not stop in and listen.

I was sent an email today from the organizer George Siemens that linked participants and speakers to a wonderful site that was new for me; Attendr. What a neat representation of attendees, where they are from, who they know and connecting them to who the would like to meet.

Elearning Blueprints Needs Beta Testers

Cathy Moore is looking for some beta testers to try out a new elearing design tool she has been working on.

Elearning Blueprints are online tools that walk you through the process of designing and writing lively elearning content. Beta testers will get access to:

• Design and write clear, engaging elearning materials on any subject
• Immediately apply the ideas to your current project
• Use research-based best practices that will make your elearning more
  powerful
• Find and share creative ideas
• Streamline your elearning development

The premise seems like a great idea and I hope Cathy gets all the feedback necessary to get the project up and running.

eLearning Guild Gives More to Members

The eLearning Guild is upgrading it's membership perks. Associate members can now access 237+ archived issues of Learning Solutions eMagazine and Guild Research 360° Reports will now be available to all Guild Member, Member Plus, and Premium Members.

Thanks to Brent Schlenker's update on this today. You can see much more info from his blog or directly from the eLearning Guild site.

Just in time for my LMS launch.

PC Magazine - Top 100

PC Magazine's latest edition has three great lists to peruse through and try out. They have their picks for:

• Top 100 Undiscovered Sites - "top new or under-the-radar sites of 2007"
• Top 100 Classic Sites - "these sites are best-of-breed in their respective categories"
• Favourite 100 Blogs

Now I just need some time to look through them all.

Flickr Related Tag Browser

Here's one more I found and thought was quite neat. [Link] This site allows you to enter any search term and it will give you a matrix of 36 photos related to that tag. You can click any of the photos to see it enlarged beside the matrix. You can also scroll through the thousands and thousands of other photos with that tag.

The interesting part that gets you to keep exploring here is as you move your mouse away from the photo matrix you are presented with about 40 unique tags related to the original. For example if I start with CAT, I am presented with 1.3 million+ photos. As I move my mouse out other tags that I can now choose from are Baby, Meow, Kitty, Dog, Sleep, Nature, etc. I picked nature and am now sent to 2 Million+ photos to look over with a whole new series of tags to explore.

Truly an interesting way to view photos that have been posted, but also a great demonstration of the power of tags and relationships.

Want to try something really different & uncomfortable?

Okay this may sound like I'm losing my mind, but give it a try first. Stumbling around the internet I found a site called Don't Click It by the Institute for Interactive Research. Basically it is a series of different experiments, games, exercises in trying to use your mouse only as a rollover tool. NO MORE CLICKING the mouse buttons. As this is apparently a waste of our valuable time as computer users. One now simply moves the mouse over the menu we want to expand or circle over a button we want to activate.

The premise sounds quite interesting, but give it a try first. Play around on the site for 5 minutes and you will instantly see how "weird" it feels not to click any thing. Try out several things and see if you get the "warning screen". I did, but only once.

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.