eLearning Weekly

I used to go out and buy domain names whenever I had an idea for a start-up or a new project. Over time, I’ve accumulated several decent domain names, but I haven’t followed through with all of my ideas… So I thought I’d post all of them here. Please leave a comment on this post if you’re interested in making an offer for any of these. I’ve highlighted the ones that I think have the most potential. (I hope this doesn’t come across as slimy; my goal isn’t to gouge people. I’d rather see these names be put to good use.)

You’ll see that all the domain names are just place-holders at this time; no sites have been built.

eLearning Domain Names For Sale

• eLearningInsider.com
• eLearningConnections.com
• eLearningExamples.com
• eLearningConnections.net
• eLearningMonthly.com

mLearning Domain Names For Sale

• mLearningSoftware.com
• mLearningSolutions.com
• mLearningExperts.com
• mLearningInfo.com
• mLearningExamples.com
• mLearningGuild.com
• mLearningHelp.com
• mLearningMonthly.com
• mLearningPulse.com
• mLearningWeekly.com

Apple / mLearning Domain Names For Sale

• iPhoneMLearning.com
• iPhoneLearningSolutions.com
• iPodLearningSolutions.com
• iPodMLearning.com

Again, if you’re interested, just leave me a comment and I’ll get in touch with you privately.

Yes, that’s probably the cheesiest title I’ve ever used, I know… But I recently found out about GCast, a free service that lets you record messages using your phone and then converts them to a podcast. Sure, this is kind of similar to Jott, but I like the simplicity of GCast. It does one thing, and it does it well.

Here’s how it works: Once you set up an account (again, it’s free), you can dial into a 1-888… number, enter your PIN, and record a voice message. After hanging up, your message is immediately available as a podcast online. People can subscribe to your feed and get updates whenever you record new messages. It’s quick and easy. Go here to hear an example. (WordPress won’t let me embed the Flash widget that plays the podcasts… Grrr.)

So, how might this apply to eLearning? GCast could be used in these ways…

• Management could record soundbytes or motivational tidbits for employees.
• Sales managers could record coaching tips for their sales staff that are out on the road.
• Executives can use it to keep in touch with employees, make announcements, give weekly updates, etc.
• You can capture those "A-ha!" moments while driving in the car.
• You could produce a weekly podcast featuring tips and tricks for employees at your organization. You could interview senior-level workers and get them to share their wisdom with the rest of the organization.
• …you tell me! I’d love to hear your ideas.

Here’s more info about GCast, straight from their site:

We offer many ways to add to your podcast channel:

• Record messages by phone (never touch a computer!)
• Upload MP3 files from your computer
• Add “podsafe” songs from GarageBand.com (Note: Gcast is run by the same people that run GarageBand.com.)
• Mix all the above with our online playlist manager

Whether you’re podcasting a 30-sec phone message or a 30-min radio show, you can publish it with Gcast for FREE. We’ll store your media and automatically generate the “RSS feed” that enables listeners to “tune in” to your podcast channel.

Give it a shot… It’s free!

I’m in an interesting position right now: I get to work on designing our organization’s mobile learning (mLearning) strategy and I get to develop mLearning applications, but things aren’t working 100% as I would’ve imagined. I’m finding there are more roadblocks that I expected and they’re popping up in unusual places. I want to document my experience here…and I appreciate any feedback / tips you can provide.

So, here’s what I’ve recently learned:

• If you’re thinking about implementing mLearning, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Don’t use mLearning because you think it would be cool, or because somebody else is doing it. Otherwise you’ll find yourself wandering around with the proverbial hammer, looking for nails to hit. I recommend that you research mLearning a bit and then see it as another tool in your toolbox. Use it when it is the best solution for the situation.
• The hardest part isn’t the technology. The hardest part has to do with politics, logistics, and security. Be prepared to involve several departments and get ready to face barriers. Just stay creative and look for ways to work around these road blocks. Read case studies to see how other companies have overcome obstacles and seek out blogs, articles, etc. Share the info with peers (ahem).
• To SCORM or not to SCORM, that is the question. When developing mLearning applications, decide early on if you need to track usage in your LMS. If so, you’ll need to research something like Pocket SCORM or OnPoint’s CellCast Solution. Fair warning, though, this definitely adds complexity to your project. You may even want to consider the SCORM tracking to be the second phase of your mLearning deployment.
• Know your audience and the devices they own. Create your mLearning solutions based on this info. If your learners have a wide array of devices, aim for the lowest common denominator: Use voice and text-based solutions rather than fancy animations, web-based content, and downloadable applications. There are podcasting solutions that allow for delivery via phone call, and there are SMS text-based learning solutions that can be quite effective, too. Remember Occam’s razor: "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

I hope all of this doesn’t come off as being too negative, but I’m trying to be very open about my experience. Please chime in - I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This happens to me every few months: I’ll hear about a great conference that took place for learning and technology professionals just a few days after it occurred. Bummer. So I wanted to open up this week’s post to get your input (please!). What learning and technology conferences have you attended, and would you recommend them?

I’ll go first: I made it to the Training Magazine 2006 conference and thought it was great. They had fantastic keynote speakers and the sessions covered a wide spectrum of topics. I’ve also been to several of the eLearning Guild’s conferences (Annual Gathering 2007 and 2008 and DevLearn 2007). These have been my favorites, especially in terms of networking with colleagues and seeing excellent example/case studies. I don’t plan on missing any of these going forward.

Now it’s your turn: I look forward to your input!

(P.S. - I wrote this blog post on my phone, so please excuse the lack of links in the post and any weird formatting issues.)

Over the past few weeks I’ve built a few small mobile learning (mLearning) applications and I’ve learned several lessons along the way. Here’s a brief recap:

• First, as I’ve mentioned before, the point of mLearning is not to create a 45-minute course that can be accessed on a cell phone. mLearning is best used for performance support: quick, easy look-up tools for your learners are a good place to start.
• Second, it’s easier than I originally thought. I’ve found that a small web page - when formatted properly - can be the simplest way to start with mLearning. Give it a shot: Create a basic HTML page, put it on a web server, and then go to it using your phone (if the phone is web-enabled). That’s it. Of course, if you add images and Flash, things get more interesting. Take it one step at a time and you’ll see that it’s not too bad. (Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some parts of implementing mLearning that get complicated, but I’ve found the hardest parts are related to politics and logistics.)
• Third, people get really excited when you demo what you’ve created. After doing a demo of your work, ask people to start thinking of additional mLearning tools that would be helpful. I got some great ideas from colleagues just by giving them a quick demo and then following up with questions. I kept hearing, "It would be really cool if you could (do XYZ)."
• Finally, Adobe’s Device Central is very helpful for testing. Device Central is an emulator that allows you to test your mLearning apps on your PC and see how they’ll render on a variety of cell phones.

Have you tried building mLearning apps? If so, share some tips here!

I ran across a great post over on the Learning Reflections blog this week that presents several tips for ensuring good working relationships with vendors. The post is The 7 Top Tips for Implementing Learning Technology. The Vendors View!

When working with learning technology vendors (ex. LMS providers, service providers, etc.), I often find myself thinking, "Our organization is unique, and we need things implemented our way." I tend to forget that vendors usually work with many, many organizations and they probably have a better idea of how to run the implementation than I do. Just because it’s my turf, I (mistakenly) think I always know better.

Be sure to check out the post. The tips are also useful because they help ensure long-term success, after the implementation takes place.

Whether you call it Learning 2.0, eLearning 2.0, or Social Learning, there’s a relatively new wave of tools and technologies that allow people to communicate and collaborate in a surprisingly easy and effective way. Some of these tools and technologies include wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, and social networking. Well…I’ve run into a situation recently that I believe will be encountered more and more by people who try to implement social learning at their organization: I’ve realized that you need to be very careful of how and where your organization’s information is stored. If you’re not careful, you may end up accidentally leaking confidential and/or proprietary information out to the public.

Most social learning tools are web-based, and the social (or sharing) aspect generally means that the information you submit is likely to be available to other users that may or may not be affiliated with your organization. So if you’re using these tools to store or communicate sensitive information, you may be in for a big (bad) surprise. Make sure you clearly understand all aspects of the tool before using it at your organization. I know, this seems like common sense for many people, but I think it’s important enough to bring it to light. People that aren’t technically-savvy may not think in these terms, and this is an area where one small mistake could lead to a large problem.

In terms of being ready for business use, blogs and wikis appear to be ahead of the pack. It’s very easy to find blog and wiki software to install behind-the-firewall, where your organization’s information will be safe. But social bookmarking and social networking tools are lagging behind a bit. This means that we may find wonderful social learning tools that we unfortunately cannot use safely at our organizations. Some examples are Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook; to my knowledge, these applications don’t have a separate, secure, option for private business use. I hope this is just a speedbump for social learning, and I hope we start to see more options for social learning tools that can be considered safe for business use. These may be open-source options, behind-the-firewall installations, or even protected/secure options for internet-based applications. But either way, just make sure you do your homework before rolling out any new tool that communicates out openly to the internet.

Does this ring true for anyone? Or can you suggest how we can use social learning tools without these risks?

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation from the eLearning Guild’s Online Forums, titled "Working Harmoniously with Your IT Department (Yes, It Can Be Done!)." I think we had around 27 participants and good discussion was shared.

Here are the handouts from the session. (PDF)

Good luck working with your IT department!!

If you’re interested in Mobile Learning (mLearning), check out Clark Quinn’s free white paper titled, "mLearning Devices: Peformance To Go." (Get the PDF or read his blog post.) Clark presents his theory of mLearning and explains why mLearning is important to consider as an option for our learners. He states that mLearning is more about doing than about learning. He says, "We learn to accomplish something: to get better at things we need to do, to better perform those things we want to do, to be more effective, more efficient, smarter, even wiser."

Clark also dispels several common misconceptions about mLearning, including:

• My employees don’t have mobile learning devices
• Those small screens are too limiting
• Too hard/costly to program these things
• Limited to (smart) phones
• I don’t know what (devices) employees have
• Mobile devices aren’t secure

Clark then outlines the types of mobile devices that are often used for mLearning, including cell phones, digital media players (ex. iPods), GPS units, handheld gaming systems (ex. PlayStation portable, Nintendo DS), and PDAs. He avoids classifying laptops as mobile learning devices, mainly because they function the same as a desktop PC when internet connectivity is available. (As an aside, I once heard Judy Brown state that mLearning takes place on portable devices that are within arm’s reach and have untethered power supply that can last for at least a day. I thought that was a pretty solid definition.)

The white paper then goes into some of the specific functions and connectivity options available in mobile devices (ex. GSM, CDMA, WiMax, IR, Bluetooth, WiFi). It’s a great little summary, especially if you’re not familiar with these technologies.

I have high hopes for mLearning, but I still have a few logistical concerns about it. They include…

• Do all employees at your organization have a mobile device (ex. a cell phone)? Sure, I know most people do, but will an organization buy a phone for the few that don’t currently own one?
• Will organizations make their employees use their personal devices (phones) to access mLearning materials? What if people aren’t comfortable with this?
• What if employees don’t have a data plan on their personal phone? Will the organization pay for their data plan so they can access mLearning materials?
• Is it unfair to make mLearning materials available to a lucky few in the organization who have capable devices? Could the left-out employees complain if they don’t have access to the same learning materials as everybody else?

Organizations are working through these scenarios now. I’m guessing best practices will emerge in the coming months. Please chime in if you have thoughts on this!

I usually don’t get very excited about new applications, but I’m pretty pumped about Jing. Download it now if you haven’t already: both Mac and PC versions are available. So, what is it? Jing is a free application that masterfully lets you take screenshots and record desktop capture videos (up to 5 minutes long). What’s so special about that? Jing then automatically uploads your screenshot (as a .png) or video (as a .swf) to a location you specify - and then it copies the item’s URL to your clipboard. You can have Jing automatically place your captures on an internal server at your organization, or you can take advantage of a free account at ScreenCast.com and post your work there. Jing is incredibly easy to use, and I think you’ll see its value within the first minute or two you use it. In fact, this description is more complicated than actually using it. So I’m going to stop there. Go download Jing now! (And, no, I wasn’t paid for this endorsement!)

Jing is brought to you by TechSmith, the makers of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio. Special thanks to Anton Bollen at TechSmith. I met Anton at AG08 and his excitement about Jing was obvious…and contagious!