What makes eLearning fun? Well, if your experiences have been like mine, not much! I am aiming to improve this experience, and you are as well or you wouldn't be reading this. Hopefully by now you have figured out the platform you'll be using to host your LMS, and potentially have identified a flexible authoring tool or development company that is going to do some cutting edge work for you. We aren't done yet though, we need to bring this all together so the user experience is enjoyable, memorable and promotes significant learning!
Let me pose another question to you. Do you enjoy playing games? OF COURSE! The best way to bring the entertainment to the learning environment is through"edutainment". New word? According to Webster, and his amazing dictionary, edutainment is "entertainment (as by games, films, or shows) that is designed to be educational" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). If all you're doing is planning on pumping your students through an endless animated power point they will be disappointed.
There are many options to entertain your audience (that's a different concept than student isn't it?), with the use of games, simulations and even video depending on your application. The use of simulation is the most complicated, and potentially most expensive. In my research I have found that the medical industry and rescue (firefighters, and police) have heavily adopted simulation as a means of training. One company I found that is producing cutting edge simulations is Designing Digitally (www.designingdigitally.com). They also do 3D rendered games, and virtual world development to aid in realistic scenario based training. Their list of clients is impressive, and includes several government agencies. The benefit to simulation is that if your business has high overhead related to training (disposal items, or items that can't be reused), or if your business involves lots of people for training, then simulation can be a cost effective alternative to using resources and man hours for realistic training.
Simulations are great for those high overhead scenarios, but a more generally acceptable method of "edutainment" are games. The beauty of games is they are fun even if they are simple. Think of Jenga...a few blocks off wood, and all the fun in the world. But then again complicated games are also a blast. It just goes to show that games are games, no matter how simple. The authoring tools I recommended earlier all have game wizards for the simple games. If you want to go with more complicated interactive games, or graphic rich games you may want to enlist the help of your LMS provider, as just about all of them would be happy to develop the games of your dreams for a few bucks.
One of the most difficult aspects of creating the simulations or games, is simply coming up with the ideas. I have found that my imagination is far more limiting than the capabilities of even basic game wizard programs within a good authoring tool. For inspiration, I recommend searching around the web a little and you'll come across a gold mine of examples. For starters, I recommend www.smartbuilder.com/elearning-examples/ and you can surf to your heart's content! One you get some ideas, you can begin incorporating your business or products into games and simulations.
By bringing this level of entertainment to your LMS, your users will not only attentively participate and reach your learning objectives, they will anxiously await the release of your next creation! The best sign of a good LMS, is people using it. The best way to get people to use it, is to use edutainment. Fun word isn't it?
Resources
DesignDigitally.com (www.DesignDigitally.com)
Smart Building (www.SmartBuilder.com)
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Disconnect...but stay connected!
Throughout the history of education one thing has been steadily evolving and that's the location flexibility of formal education settings. From a formal college settings, things started in big cities, then smaller cities, then towns, then even smaller towns with satellite schools. The first big push to having options as to which school you may attend was the automobile in the 20's (Chesapeake.edu). Once we are out in the rural community with brick and mortar schools, we still had plenty of room to expand right?
About the same time the automobile was able to move students around, we start to see technology being integrated into the classroom. The filmstrip projector in the mid 1920's, followed by the radio and then overhead projector got us into the 1940's. The first signs of eLearning may have been introduced by Mr. B.F. Skinner with his teaching machine allowing students to work at their own pace. Television, punch driven testing sheets, and graphing calculators and the CD-ROM came through the classroom in rapid succession through the 1960's, 70's and 80's (C. Wilson, 2010)
My point of focus for this is the next generation of learning tools though. I could easily launch into a history of the adaptation of computers as they morphed into smart phones, smart watches and smart glasses. The technology is coming faster than I can keep up (I think there was an advancement while I typed this paragraph). What can this newest generation do to enhance learning? That's what we are talking about this week.
If the general trend of making education more available by moving from big city universities to small towns. Then the natural progression of technology should follow the same path, and it has. "Classrooms" are available from anywhere with a cell phone signal. This means that the smart phone is, for all intensive purposes a classroom held in one hand! The benefits of smart phone technology can allow a student to research, collaborate, and report on their findings from anyplace. It's an untouchable asset to a student on the go.
There is a sense of a disconnect however, when using a phone to collaborate via an online school. Which is where something with a higher end camera and microphone may be just the ticket. cell phones do have cameras but are frequently subject to 3G or 4G cellular networks. Using a wifi based device like a laptop of tablet can actually bring other students and yourself to one common place, face to place...if you know which video conferencing software to use.
When most people think of video conferencing they picture board rooms with very expensive equipment or they picture their cell phones with pixelated choppy video and sound that pauses and skips. This just means you haven't done your research yet. There is video conferencing software available that is compressing high definition video like never before. The job of video conferencing equipment or software is to compress the video and audio, transmit across the internet and then on the other end the person's software that you're talking with decompresses the video and audio and displays the image and plays the sound. This is why video conferencing hardware and software is referred to as a "Codec", compression and decompression.
High quality codecs used to be large machines, like a big desk top computer. But that has changed and now your tablet or laptop running good quality software can bring incredible, reliable high definition video to you and your classmates. It's the next best thing to being there in person. Some of these codecs cost money, but it's money well spent. I recommend looking into some of the big hardware manufacture's solutions in the new software market. Polycom's RealPresence desktop license is about $70, and they have solutions specific to Android and Apple platforms as well. LifeSize has a great new option called ClearSea, and as a newer player in the industry is looking to gain traction and cost could be a good way of stealing customers from the big companies (their prices aren't available online).
So, if you're looking for a new way to connect, and have had bad experiences video chatting with your family on your iphone, don't loose hope! There are amazing solutions out there for every thing mobile you take pride in.
Resources
Unknown Author. The History of Education in America. www.Chesapeake.edu. Retrieved from: http://www.chesapeake.edu/Library/EDU_101/eduhist.asp
C. Wilson, 2010. The Learning Machines. NY Times Online. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/19/magazine/classroom-technology.html
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Social? Media? What of it!?!?
Been on FaceBook lately? Of course, probably in the past six minutes if you're like most people using a computer or smart phone. But what can social media do for adult learners? Let's examine this topic, in all its confusion.
Using technology as a means of enhancing the adult learning process isn't a new concept, in fact it's pretty old! When it comes to social media things are a little less developed and still in "flux" as to what the benefits of social media can offer, and if they are necessary. I am not going to lie, I haven't found many things FaceBook can offer an adult learning group that can't be accomplished with other tools that have less of a stigma around funny pictures, and political rants as FaceBook. FaceBook is an amazing tool for socializing with friends and family, but how does it play in the educational arena?
In researching different practical uses for FaceBook, I couldn't help but smile at the opening paragraph of the "FaceBook" chapter of Will Richardson's (2010) book titled Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. He states what is my number one concern; "Make it clear to your classes that your use of FaceBook is "interest-based" not "friendship-based". This goes directly against all that FaceBook was built on, it is FRIENDSHIP based! So to take that away, seems weird and unnecessary, which is why I lean to other web tools rather than this traditional social media site. But I digress. If you're determined to be trendy and cool, and need FaceBook in your classroom let's find some uses for it!
Creating a totally private FaceBook group for your students may not be a bad idea. It is, after all, in their faces nonstop, so you know your class will be up to date on the class happenings. If you are looking for a good means of constant communication around dead lines, assignments, meetings, and collaboration, a FaceBook group might be a good idea. However, you still have each student looking at every other student's profile page, pictures, "about section" and there is potential for distraction.
So, maybe FaceBook is for you, maybe it isn't. What else can social media offer our classroom? Well, lots of things! Take for example www.academia.edu. Don't get to confused, the .edu is not actually what it appears. This site is not an educational institution, they just got lucky enough to nab a .edu address before there were regulations around who could use that URL address. Academia.edu is a social media site for sharing, and discussing research papers with the masses. From what I can tell, it's the fastest way to publish research papers on the face of the planet. With nearly six million users, and almost two million published papers on the site, there is a lot to look at it. I would recommend adding this site to your daily surf habits, as you might find it to be your new favorite research site. It's like Google Scholar, but with the ability to ask questions and discuss what you're reading.
So with that, I have laid a couple ideas on you. There are hundreds more of social media sites out there, and those are the public ones. Companies are now rolling our their own in-house social media sites, which sounds like a fun way to keep up with other employees without having them seeing your weekend antics on FaceBook.
Resources
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
www.Academia.edu
www.FaceBook.com
Using technology as a means of enhancing the adult learning process isn't a new concept, in fact it's pretty old! When it comes to social media things are a little less developed and still in "flux" as to what the benefits of social media can offer, and if they are necessary. I am not going to lie, I haven't found many things FaceBook can offer an adult learning group that can't be accomplished with other tools that have less of a stigma around funny pictures, and political rants as FaceBook. FaceBook is an amazing tool for socializing with friends and family, but how does it play in the educational arena?
In researching different practical uses for FaceBook, I couldn't help but smile at the opening paragraph of the "FaceBook" chapter of Will Richardson's (2010) book titled Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. He states what is my number one concern; "Make it clear to your classes that your use of FaceBook is "interest-based" not "friendship-based". This goes directly against all that FaceBook was built on, it is FRIENDSHIP based! So to take that away, seems weird and unnecessary, which is why I lean to other web tools rather than this traditional social media site. But I digress. If you're determined to be trendy and cool, and need FaceBook in your classroom let's find some uses for it!
Creating a totally private FaceBook group for your students may not be a bad idea. It is, after all, in their faces nonstop, so you know your class will be up to date on the class happenings. If you are looking for a good means of constant communication around dead lines, assignments, meetings, and collaboration, a FaceBook group might be a good idea. However, you still have each student looking at every other student's profile page, pictures, "about section" and there is potential for distraction.
So, maybe FaceBook is for you, maybe it isn't. What else can social media offer our classroom? Well, lots of things! Take for example www.academia.edu. Don't get to confused, the .edu is not actually what it appears. This site is not an educational institution, they just got lucky enough to nab a .edu address before there were regulations around who could use that URL address. Academia.edu is a social media site for sharing, and discussing research papers with the masses. From what I can tell, it's the fastest way to publish research papers on the face of the planet. With nearly six million users, and almost two million published papers on the site, there is a lot to look at it. I would recommend adding this site to your daily surf habits, as you might find it to be your new favorite research site. It's like Google Scholar, but with the ability to ask questions and discuss what you're reading.
So with that, I have laid a couple ideas on you. There are hundreds more of social media sites out there, and those are the public ones. Companies are now rolling our their own in-house social media sites, which sounds like a fun way to keep up with other employees without having them seeing your weekend antics on FaceBook.
Resources
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
www.Academia.edu
www.FaceBook.com
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Learning Management System and How to get it done.
I am in the midst of my second LMS roll out, and although I am certainly no expert, I've failed enough times to potentially save you some time and heartache. There are several very big questions that come up when a company or organization is looking to move their curriculum to an elearning environment. The first is "what LMS is right for me"? The second, which will follow immediately, is "which authoring tool is right for me"?
There are many websites comparing many LMS products as well all of the authoring tools out there. I can't say that I am an expert on any of these items, but I have enough experience around a couple to offer you some short cuts to success. I will start with the LMS I have recently selected and then the authoring tool, and you can make the judgement as to if these might meet your needs.
When selecting an LMS, there were a few perameters I need to stick within. I needed something affordable, easy to use, with great support, and a company that didn't mind someone completely new to LMS'. I found all of these expected values in TraCorp and have since found even more unexpected values in their services. TraCorp is a relatively small LMS provider. They offer a very catered feel, to a very generalized product. Don't take that wrong, one of the best things about their LMS product is that it is simple and generalized. TraCorp offers a rarity in the LMS industry, by offering a "community based LMS". This type of LMS means that every LMS customer of TraCorp shares the same LMS platform. If one customer wants to make a change to the platform, they are quoted a price and if they agree and pay for it, all the customers get the benefit of the change. It's an amazing system for a company looking for to ride the coat tails of larger companies as they pay to make improvements to the program. TraCorp also provides this service for an incredibly nominal startup fee and the hosting fee is next to free in my opinion. Customer service has been spot on as well. So, if you're looking for an LMS that will grow and improve without you sinking money into it, TraCorp just might be the ticket.
In my search for an LMS, I tried the big ones as well. Moodle and BlackBoard. These are very different products. Moodle is an open source LMS, meaning anyone can write code and develop for the platform. I think this is a great feature, if you know how to harness that sort of power...I don't! Another option is BlackBoard, which is a proprietary LMS, making it the polar opposite of Moodle. These two are the equivalent of Apple versus Android and there is no "right" answer. It's a preference. I felt that TraCorp being a smaller developer, could offer me more assistance and support than I would get from either of the big companies, which is why I opted for them.
Authoring tools are your next hurdle. I shopped Lectora, Captivate, and Storyline. They all offer similar services, but what really swayed me was simply calling the phone number to all three and seeing what kind of service I got. I ended up having a lengthy conversation with a sales specialist at Articulate (the manufacturer of Storyline), and was very impressed. Upon a quick inquire to TraCorp to verify Storyline was a good choice, I pulled the trigger and my company invested the $1300 for the software that we would use to develop our curriculum modules. Have no fear though, TraCorp would be happy to completely author and develop your curriculum if you would like them to.
I hope you find these two recommendations for TraCorp and Storyline to be helpful. I have included links to all of these companies website in the resources section.
Resources
www.TraCorp.com
www.Moodle.com
www.BlackBoard.com
www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html
www.Lectora.com
www.articulate.com/products/storyline-overview.php
There are many websites comparing many LMS products as well all of the authoring tools out there. I can't say that I am an expert on any of these items, but I have enough experience around a couple to offer you some short cuts to success. I will start with the LMS I have recently selected and then the authoring tool, and you can make the judgement as to if these might meet your needs.
When selecting an LMS, there were a few perameters I need to stick within. I needed something affordable, easy to use, with great support, and a company that didn't mind someone completely new to LMS'. I found all of these expected values in TraCorp and have since found even more unexpected values in their services. TraCorp is a relatively small LMS provider. They offer a very catered feel, to a very generalized product. Don't take that wrong, one of the best things about their LMS product is that it is simple and generalized. TraCorp offers a rarity in the LMS industry, by offering a "community based LMS". This type of LMS means that every LMS customer of TraCorp shares the same LMS platform. If one customer wants to make a change to the platform, they are quoted a price and if they agree and pay for it, all the customers get the benefit of the change. It's an amazing system for a company looking for to ride the coat tails of larger companies as they pay to make improvements to the program. TraCorp also provides this service for an incredibly nominal startup fee and the hosting fee is next to free in my opinion. Customer service has been spot on as well. So, if you're looking for an LMS that will grow and improve without you sinking money into it, TraCorp just might be the ticket.
In my search for an LMS, I tried the big ones as well. Moodle and BlackBoard. These are very different products. Moodle is an open source LMS, meaning anyone can write code and develop for the platform. I think this is a great feature, if you know how to harness that sort of power...I don't! Another option is BlackBoard, which is a proprietary LMS, making it the polar opposite of Moodle. These two are the equivalent of Apple versus Android and there is no "right" answer. It's a preference. I felt that TraCorp being a smaller developer, could offer me more assistance and support than I would get from either of the big companies, which is why I opted for them.
Authoring tools are your next hurdle. I shopped Lectora, Captivate, and Storyline. They all offer similar services, but what really swayed me was simply calling the phone number to all three and seeing what kind of service I got. I ended up having a lengthy conversation with a sales specialist at Articulate (the manufacturer of Storyline), and was very impressed. Upon a quick inquire to TraCorp to verify Storyline was a good choice, I pulled the trigger and my company invested the $1300 for the software that we would use to develop our curriculum modules. Have no fear though, TraCorp would be happy to completely author and develop your curriculum if you would like them to.
I hope you find these two recommendations for TraCorp and Storyline to be helpful. I have included links to all of these companies website in the resources section.
Resources
www.TraCorp.com
www.Moodle.com
www.BlackBoard.com
www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html
www.Lectora.com
www.articulate.com/products/storyline-overview.php
Saturday, November 2, 2013
PC Only and Animated Heads? BORING!
Welcome to the future! What a cliche'
line that has become, yet each year a new fancy technology appears on the news
and we are inundated with reviews and advertisements. Whatever it replaced
becomes nothing more than a 20 page craigslist search result for 1/4 what it
retailed for.
What are most used to seeing is consumer electronics, but there is another massive technology boom happening at work, that you may not even know about. Learning Management System or LMS as it often referred to is rapidly becoming a common method of curriculum delivery and curriculum management. I really wish I just say an LMS is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and we could all forge on with our basic HR training modules on the computer. However, that would mean we were stuck in 2003, because those basic HR modules are a thing of the past.
Within the eLearning arena we are seeing some amazing technology advancement and my goal with this blog is to share a couple of those ideas with you, so you don't spend all your time implementing old school learning tracks when there is an entire world of eLearning wonder right in front of you! This week, let's just scratch the surface with two ideas that you may not be familiar with.
First, let's talk bootstrap. Bootstrap you say? Twitter bootstrap is a hot new code writting system that is takign the LMS industry by storm. There are two angles to understand Twitter Bootstrap from, the developer side and the learner side. If you are a developer...you've wandered to the wrong blog; but it is said by www.sitepoint.com contributor Sayhed Ryman that "Some people call it a boon for web developers with zero designing knowledge, while others call it a blessing for the designers. Whatever it may be, it does things easier and faster."
Let's break it down as simple as we can. When you use an LMS on a computer, it's well laid out, organized, with menus down the left side (usually) and your options across the top, with a central area for the content. Have you ever tried to open that same LMS on a tablet, or even a cell phone. It's a nightmare. What Twitter Bootstrap does, when coded into your LMS, is break your entire LMS into five distinct boxes that are independent of one another. On a full size computer screen it will look normal, however your LMS now pays attention to the window size. If you're using a cell phone it will rearrange these five boxes the best way possible to keep the LMS looking terrific. Twitter Bootstrap coding will even go as far as to take text and mash it together into a convenient drop down box where there just isn't even space to display all the options. This might sound a bit confusing...until you see it at work the first time. Just imaging, no matter what device you are on, ipad, iphone, android, blackberry, mac, PC with a 60" monitor or a 7" montior....your LMS will adapt to that screen size like it was built for it. Twitter bootstrap coding does all this work!
What are most used to seeing is consumer electronics, but there is another massive technology boom happening at work, that you may not even know about. Learning Management System or LMS as it often referred to is rapidly becoming a common method of curriculum delivery and curriculum management. I really wish I just say an LMS is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and we could all forge on with our basic HR training modules on the computer. However, that would mean we were stuck in 2003, because those basic HR modules are a thing of the past.
Within the eLearning arena we are seeing some amazing technology advancement and my goal with this blog is to share a couple of those ideas with you, so you don't spend all your time implementing old school learning tracks when there is an entire world of eLearning wonder right in front of you! This week, let's just scratch the surface with two ideas that you may not be familiar with.
First, let's talk bootstrap. Bootstrap you say? Twitter bootstrap is a hot new code writting system that is takign the LMS industry by storm. There are two angles to understand Twitter Bootstrap from, the developer side and the learner side. If you are a developer...you've wandered to the wrong blog; but it is said by www.sitepoint.com contributor Sayhed Ryman that "Some people call it a boon for web developers with zero designing knowledge, while others call it a blessing for the designers. Whatever it may be, it does things easier and faster."
Let's break it down as simple as we can. When you use an LMS on a computer, it's well laid out, organized, with menus down the left side (usually) and your options across the top, with a central area for the content. Have you ever tried to open that same LMS on a tablet, or even a cell phone. It's a nightmare. What Twitter Bootstrap does, when coded into your LMS, is break your entire LMS into five distinct boxes that are independent of one another. On a full size computer screen it will look normal, however your LMS now pays attention to the window size. If you're using a cell phone it will rearrange these five boxes the best way possible to keep the LMS looking terrific. Twitter Bootstrap coding will even go as far as to take text and mash it together into a convenient drop down box where there just isn't even space to display all the options. This might sound a bit confusing...until you see it at work the first time. Just imaging, no matter what device you are on, ipad, iphone, android, blackberry, mac, PC with a 60" monitor or a 7" montior....your LMS will adapt to that screen size like it was built for it. Twitter bootstrap coding does all this work!
Now you have an idea of how to make
your LMS adapt to the many different
devices your students are using, but what about the media they are watching on
the LMS? Are talking animated heads still your favorite, or maybe just text? It’s
time to step up to another trend in online learning. Video! Do you know what
the second most popular search engine is right now? You would never guess it,
but according to elearningsolutionsmag.com, it’s youtube. People don’t want to
read anymore…sad but true. Our learners want to see expression, see examples,
they want to see video. We will get into this topic more, but for a few bucks
you can have an HD video camera, wireless mic and start dropping terrific
quality video content into your LMS to spice it up. The animated head has gone
the way of the Do Do Bird.
Resources
Rahman,
S, (2013, July 15) Twitter Bootstrap Tutorial – Handling Complex Design .
Retrieved from: http://www.sitepoint.com/twitter-bootstrap-tutorial-handling-complex-designs/
Clothier,
P, (2013, October 28) Interactive Video: The Next Big Thing in Mobile.
Retrieved from: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1292/interactive-video-the-next-big-thing-in-mobile
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