Teknologiiest blog

Some great responses to this month's big question New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills .  I'm learning a lot from the posts.  A few random reactions and a few of the nuggets I've pulled out from the discussion. Caveats to Multitasking is Generally Bad for Work and Learning See my post on Multitasking for a summary of this.  Or better, take a look at Ken Allan - Binge Thinking .   Or Clive Shepherd's How should presenters address multitasking? simple statement: Multitasking is an illusion – we are simply not capable of doing it. But some caveats to this general rule. Multitasking Doodling and Notetaking are good. Binge Thinking I have learnt to take notes while giving nearly full attention to a presentation. It’s one multitasking practice that I’m good at. Better Presentations = Less Multitasking A log of the responses point out that a distracted audience is first a symptom of the presenter's ability to engage the audi...

I was supposed to be in Vancouver right now for the eLearn Conference .  The conference has a diverse attendee list and I was very much looking forward to my keynote presentation: Changes in Knowledge Work and Implications for Workplace Learning. Unfortunately, some very sad news in my family as my wife's father, a man beloved by everyone who met him, passed away on Thursday.  So, I won't be able to go and make my keynote presentation.  I do want to thank the conference organizer, Gary Marks, for being incredibly understanding.  And if you've been a long-time reader, you know that I'm not particularly adept at things like What to Say When a Colleagues' Family Member Dies .  So, I'm not sure what to say or do in this situation either. But I had to do something because I had scheduled a series of tweets to coincide with my keynote presentation time slot.  This is something I did before and it was both great as a planning tool and received great feedback ...

The first round of the Digital Habitats Twitter Contest had 94 entries and the winner was: @ChristyATucker Congrats Christy!  I'm now a bit jealous as you are getting a book that's going to be sitting by your desk for many years and it's signed by John and Nancy. I think that the contest has already been successful, but there's still another chance to win.  Go here: http://bit.ly/MYIw to find out how you can still win. By the way, even if you don't win a copy of the book, you can still come hear Nancy and John at LearnTrends 2009 .  In fact, John is doing two sessions.

I saw an interesting post by Mark Oehlert "Learning 2.0" and why that name suddenly is torquing me off...   Mark's main complaint and one that I've seen voiced before is that people are not really learning differently: I really don't believe that humans are learning differently - meaning, I think we are constituting memories, adapting behavior, practicing new skills - those activities that typically make up learning from the human standpoint - in much the same way as we have for hundreds if not thousands of years. I'm talking about our internal processes. This is pretty much what was discussed in New Way of Learning and the general answer was that it's doubtful that there's really a new way of learning, but there certainly are many related metacognitive tools and methods that have changed and that we need to adapt. Still, I believe the crux of Mark's concern and where the disagreement comes … So there is no "Learning 2.0" ...

I've been asked numerous times over the past couple of years by various types of people and companies a very similar question: I plan to or have been conducting and charging for training workshops for clients. I'd like to creating this as self-paced eLearning possibly with other capabilities as well. And I want to charge for this. How can I do that? Two years ago, after quite a bit of discussion with most people who had this general question, I would figure out that it was going to be relatively easy for them to figure out how to author the eLearning courses, but it was going to be a harder decision on how to get that posted somewhere and available to their existing or new clients. I was just asked the question again the other day. It's a company that has been offering 3-day workshops and now they want to put some portion of that content online. Ideally, they would offer it both publicly for fee and as well to particular clients. While there are a lot of di...

We've put up a preliminary schedule for LearnTrends 2009 . You can find the conference description, preliminary schedule and session descriptions at: LearnTrends 2009 Conference Agenda Topics and Speakers include: Introduction: Convergence in Learning - George Siemens, Tony Karrer & Jay Cross The Immernet Singularity - Tony O'Driscoll Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations - Charles Jennings & Andy McGovern – Thomson Reuters Reinventing Organizational Learning - Clark Quinn & Jay Cross Enterprise 2.0, Convergence, & Innovation - Deb Schultz & Jerry Michalski Building a Social Learning Environment - Jane Hart Breaking Down Walls - Laura Overton Convergent Learning and Web Squared - Jon, Jay, Clark, Charles, Jane, Harold Merging Information, Learning and Social Media - Christy Confetti Higgins - Sun Microlearning - Janet Clarey Personal Knowledge Management - Harold Jarche Challe...

Just a quick note that I will be up in Vancouver for E-LEARN 2009 - World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education. If you are attending and see this post, please drop me a note. It's always good to connect with people face-to-face at events.

I received an inquiry from a reader and I'm hoping that people can chime in on their thoughts. It relates to my post about eLearning Costs , which bases cost estimates on seat time of the eLearning course. So, the basic question is: We current provide a two day (16 hour) classroom training course for our employees. We are planning to prepare an e-learning course based on this classroom course. How should we estimate the e-learning course duration for this lesson? What are the important criteria in estimating eLearning duration when its based on a classroom course? Conversion Estimation Some resources on the conversion of Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to eLearning / Web-Based Training (WBT) – found through eLearning Learning using Convert ILT as the starting point: In What Training Costs Part I: Converting Content from ILT to WBT , they discuss compression of ILT when its converted to eLearning: Compression ratio : What would the length of the course be if it ...

I've had a similar discussion several times over the past few months.  These discussions center on what requirements should go into an LMS RFP and more broadly how the LMS should really be integrated into the organization. Initially, the conversation was about having learning content appear on the enterprise portal.  Many LMS vendors provide portlets, gadgets or widgets that allow for access of learning content (most often meaning courses and courseware) through the corporate portal.  Assuming that your learning audience regularly visits the enterprise portal, then its great to be able to show employees upcoming learning events, training requirements, content that might be of interest, or other similar things. This has been a common requirement for a number of years.  And it's definitely a nice thing to have done.  It's certainly better than putting a static link to your LMS somewhere on the corporate portal / intranet. But this only scratches the surface...

I wanted to share some discussions I've recently had around an interesting project where the company provided the sales team a collaboration, content distribution and expert access portal.  Do you have a case study for me? I'm hoping to do a lot of case studies over the next 6-12 months looking at interesting examples of the use of social/informal/web 2.0 learning.  If you have an example, please drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com .  Another example of this is: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank . Background I can't reveal the company used in this case study at their request.  They are a large, distributed organization.  Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets. Traditionally, the sales team searched for information on topics such as government regulations, product support and technology through a confederation of five Web-based collaboration and document man...

I must say that many back-to-school nights are a bit painful.  For those of you who are not familiar with this, it's an evening where you go to the school (without your children) and the teachers tell you a little bit about how they will approach the year.  This year, I attended three different back-to-school nights for my three children (elementary, middle school and high school).  Most teachers hand a sheet with all the information they plan to present (which is good because there are often lots of links and other helpful information).  And then they proceed to walk through it.  I'm sure most of you can relate.  You are sitting there while the teacher reads what's on the sheet to you.  You could have got the sheet delivered to you and then just visit the teacher another time.  Of course, I'm not exactly the best audience and there's no Session Hopping available at back-to-school. I believe that many teachers will tell you that it's equally ...

As way of background for this month's big question - <Insert link to Big Question>, I went to eLearning Learning and looked up Multitasking .  Found some great posts.  But the basic gist is that Multitasking Generally is Bad for Work and Learning Clive Shepherd - A challenge to the multitask assumption tells us: According to work conducted at Stanford University and reported by Constance Holden in Science NOW Daily News under the heading Multitasking muddles the mind , "cognitive performance declines when people try to pay attention to many media channels at once." Clifford Nass, co-author of the study, claims "the study has a disturbing implication in an age when more and more people are simultaneously working on a computer, listening to music, surfing the Web, texting, or talking on the phone. Access to more information tools is not necessarily making people more efficient in their intellectual chores." Also disconcerting, he notes, is th...

I've known Nancy White and John Smith for quite a while. Nancy has been my go to person for all things Communities and Networks and worked with me to create Communities and Networks Connection . So naturally when Nancy and John (with Etienne Wenger) put out the book Digital Habitats; Stewarding Technology for Communities I was very excited. And I've got to say that I agree with the recent comment in a post I saw: Whenever I get stuck I’ll contact my friends at CPSquare: Etienne, Nancy and John. And while I know they all have a deep understanding of CoPs I tend to ask Etienne the theory questions, Nancy the technology questions and John the group dynamics questions. Together they are a formidable team. Sadly I think their new book, Digital Habitats, will give them strong cause to suggest I should RTFM: Read The Flipping Manual. This is a really awesome book. I almost think it's more a performance support tool than a book. You really should get a copy and put i...

eLearning Learning continues to improve, but I'm hoping to find people who want to work with me to make it even better. How eLearning Learning Works I've described all the elements of eLearning Learning before, but never in that much detail.  I've pulled together the following diagram to hopefully help explain it a bit better. Curators Topic Hubs like eLearning Learning start from a group of Curators deciding what content should go in.  We currently have several different groups of Curators. Calendar Curators – they find free eLearning webinars that will be of interest to people interested in eLearning.  They add these into a calendar that then gets pulled into the topic hub.  I've announced a couple of the people who are contributing this way: Second Calendar Curator Joins to Help with List of Free Webinars , and Brandon Hall Free Webinars Added . Blog Curator – right now this is me.  I try to find the best blogs that will flow into the to...