ProtonMedia.com has been on my radar for quite some time. There was a time when 3D virtual environments were all the rage...think SecondLife. Then the fad dropped, but the reality that lies in the usefulness of these tools remains.

Like every other technology used for training, it's not meant for every training problem. But if you have the right training problem and capable users, then I believe interactive 3d environments can prove to be highly effective.

Check it out!

ProtoSphere 2.0 Trial Download here.

So, if you are one of the people mad about the EULA for iBooks2.  And you are convinced that companies will not use Author for training materials? THINK AGAIN!!!


MacTrast posted "Level 3 Looks to iPad to Reinvent their Sales Team".  They are relaying the story from Information Week's article "iPad's for All: One Sales Team's Story".
While neither article specifically mentions iBooks as part of the intended use, I can bet that it's coming.  I mean, why not? Right? 1,300 Sales people outfitted with iPads means the delivery channel is ready and the sales team will expect it.

The last paragraph of the article states:

What's next for Level 3's iPad app? Taylor doesn't pretend to know. "Enterprise IT is dead," he likes to say--meaning IT needs to take the consumer tools people like to use, watch and learn how people work best, and then provide systems that fit. He's convinced there's something important and different in how efficiently people interact with the tablets' interface, and that "we've only scratched the surface of using that." 

If you work for Level 3 in the training department will you please contact me :) 

The eLearning Guild released it's highly anticipated TOP TOOLS report today.

Get the download here.

Ever since the Apple education announcement I've been blown away by what this means for our industry.  In the process of scanning the new and improved iTunesU I found this interesting podcast.  It's called "What Great Bosses Know".  Here is the description from iTunesU...

"Jill Geisler heads the Poynter Institute's leadership and management programs. In these Poynter podcasts, she shares practical leadership for managers who want to be great bosses."

Episodes 13 titled 10 Training Tips caught my eye.  It's only 4 minutes so I listened.  Here are her tips.

1. Adults learn differently than young people
2. Make learning practical
3. Interactivity is better than passive learning
4. Do not use Powerpoint as a teleprompter
5. Each person learns a little differently
6. Always tap into the wisdom of the room
7. Don't embarrass people
8. Have fun
9. Always end with next steps in mind - What will the students DO after the class
10. Always include evaluations in your teaching

The Adobe Captivate blog's new post is titled Course Companion for Adobe Captivate.   According to the blog post a preview has been launched at the Adobe Labs.

Get the free download here from Adobe Labs.

The blog post says...

You will be able to - 

• Track usage of content
• Track learner behavior
• Get feedback on the course by tracking the learner metrics
• Track progress of the course as you roll it out
• Track effectiveness of the content

VERY interesting!  What do you think?  Is this something you are excited about seeing?

Obviously the Captivate team feels there is a need for this type of tool.  Is this something the Captivate community requested?  If you are a Captivate user, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This morning Apple held a press event to announce their entry into the world of textbooks.  Everyone knew this was coming.  It's just been a matter of when and what will it look like.  And basically, what it looks like is a complete game changer.  Not just because the iBook Store will now sell you interactive textbooks via your iTunes account, but because they also announced a new authoring tool...and it's FREE!

I think digital books with integrated media were an inevitability.  After all they've sort of already existed in other forms such as websites, and apps, and pdf files, etc.  So, the big story is really about how this effects the billion(s) dollar industry of textbook publishing.  Apples iBooks will sell for no more than $14.99.  So, if the publishers are looking to keep their profits at current levels that most likely means someone is going to get cut out of the deal.  It's obvious that someone is the author.  But the good news is that with a free authoring tool and the iTunes/iBook marketplace, I think the authors may end up getting the better end of this deal.

I've been it for several years now but I'll say it again, "Teachers will be the next millionaires".  With today's technologies, and the new technologies just around the corner, there is no reason why a great teacher couldn't produce content for sale, and mentor students for a fee, and make a very good living.

I've only taken about 20mins to review iBooks Author (direct download link iBooks Author).  But the exciting thing is that if you are familiar with Apple apps then it won't take much more than that for you to start writing a fully interactive textbook of your own.

The starting templates are beautiful...very similar to templates in Pages with clean elegant designs.  I started with the Contemporary template and just started clicking around.  It's so easy to get started that really wish I has some sort of textbook project to be working on.

It's easy to incorporate videos, images, and other media by simply dragging and dropping.  But like I said, this is an Apple app and that's just how you do it. No fuss.  You can also add shapes, tables, and charts which is also similar to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

The new features are in the form of widgets:  Gallery, Interactive Image, Keynote, 3D, HTML, and Review.  You'll be happy (or not) to know that the Review widget is simply a multiple choice quizzing tool. From the Apple web site...

"Let readers test their knowledge using a variety of question types: multiple choice, choose the correct image, label the image, or a mix of all three. Authors can include six possible answers to each question."

 The accepted 3D format is COLLADA or .dae.  It's been a while since I've worked in 3D and so this format is new to me.  But according to wikipedia it looks like all the major 3D creation apps support the standard.

I'll let you go off and explore the Apple site and other places to get more details.  For the sake of this blog I want to know if you think this is revolutionary, or a game changer, for the work that you do?  Would you consider iBooks to be eLearning? Are you concerned about SCORM compliance?  Or how about LMS connectivity?  Many of you work in Windows only environments so does this make you think a little harder about buying a Mac?

mLearnCon is only about 5 months away.  If you are planning on creating iBooks between now and then let me know and we can figure out a way to showcase your work.  This is big news for Mobile Learning so we will most definitely be talking about it at mLearnCon.  mLearning is only just beginning!

This YouTube video shows Interactive Computing being demo'd in 1968! Wow! That's the year after I was born.  I had NO idea computing was that far along in the late '60s.  It's a long video to watch but just speed ahead every few minutes and you'll see some amazing technologies... considering the historic perspective.



Douglas Engelbart demonstrates interactive computing, at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco: mouse, on-screen windows, hypertext and full-screen word processing. 
9 December 1968.

[UPDATE - Just wanted to give credit to the Social Learning Community on Yammer for inspiring this blog post. I think this topic is important to the eLearning community as a whole and so I'm happy to extend the conversation to the readers of this blog.]

As a member of the eLearning/learning/training/education community it feels like the alphabet soup of terms has become muddled again.  I suppose all industries go through this to some degree, and while it's mildly frustrating, going through the exercise can reveal some insights and help us focus our work.  So let's take a look at what happened.

The short version is that training departments, for many years, got very little respect.  We, as a community of professionals were convinced that a rebranding needed to occur and we wanted to become LEARNING professionals and not TRAINING professionals.  After all, training seemed to cheapen our work as adult learning practitioners and instructional design architects...and all the other fancy names we like to call ourselves.

But now it appears that we've come full circle.  With the growing discussions around informal vs. formal "learning", we've come to realize that, in fact, we DO NOT create learning.  And yikes! Learning actually happens without our interventions.  So, to say that we "create learning solutions" or something like that is actually quite silly.  Our bodies, mostly our brains, handles the learning side of things.  The human body is a learning machine.  I hope this isn't shocking to anyone.

In our current corporate culture our job is to make sure that certain bodies (employees) are exposed too, and learning, certain specific things.  These bodies will do the LEARNING on their own IF the correct CONTEXT is provided for them.

Let's stop the conversation right here because at this point we could go off in many different directions.  All I want to do at this point is to get you thinking about Training vs Learning.


I think it's safe to say that our job is to manipulate a person's environment in such a way that we are simply directing, or manipulating WHAT that person's body is being exposed to with the hope that their body's learning response is activated.  I know this sounds very rudimentary but if you think about it this way then TRAINING really does start to sound like a better catch-all term for the work that we do.

Here's wikipedia's take on Training:

"The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of technology (also known as technical colleges or polytechnics). In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, observers of the labor-market^[who?] recognize as of 2008 the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications: to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within many professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development."

I understand WHY we so desperately want to be learning professionals and NOT Training Specialists.  But the reality is that what we create is best suited to the term training and NOT learning.  If for no other reason then the fact that nobody can actually create learning.  But we can understand how the human brain learns and optimize the environment of a person needing to learn something specific.  And so it's that understanding of how the human body learns that makes us better at what we create.

So, can a Learning Professional be a creator of Training...um...things? Yep! But are we confusing the market by mixing the terms? Maybe. Does it matter? I don't know.

And now this starts another conversation, "Should it be eTraining instead of eLearning".  Oh boy...<sigh>

The kids are home from school today and it's easy to just think about it as another day off for them.  So I thought we'd quickly Google "I have a dream speech".  As you might imagine there are a lot of resources popping up...

Wikipedia entry
Full text and audio on American Rhetoric
MLK Online

...and of course on YouTube...



While I listen to the speech...again...and again...and read the text I feel moved yet sadly disconnected.  I was born 4 years after this speech was given and have no memories of the '60s and only fleeting youthful memories of the '70s.

I've listened to Nancy Duarte speak at The Learning Solutions conference about how she studied the speech and I've read her book on the pattern of a powerful speech. And it is a powerful speech.  The speech is truly moving on so many levels and gives us an emotional look at the struggles of America at that time.

That brings me to thoughts on context.  The speech was the right speech given at the right time.  And today, I wonder if we'll ever truly hear something this moving ever again.  Today's context is a digital cacophony of the connected world's voices.  It's a flood of speeches, rants, and raving, from everyone with a grievance and then some.  And while this is empowering, and can be viewed as a great equalizer and opportunity for many, we struggle to find nuggets of trusted wisdom that so many crave.

My hope on this Martin Luther King day is that we can all use the wonderful power of the internet to not only learn from one man, but for every person to feel empowered to share their voice with the world.  Because while I don't think there will ever again be ONE powerful voice, or speech, I do believe the connected collection of the world's voices will some day be a chorus we can all appreciate and participate in.

As long as I'm posting about digital textbooks, I might as well mention Apple.  Rumors are swirling around the Apple invite that has gone out to press saying,

“Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple.”

 According to the Mashable article Apple is partnering with textbook publishers.  It all makes sense to me.  After all, why not utilize the now mainstream distribution channel of iTunes and iBooks, and start selling iTextbooks.

I think the bigger question for instructional designers and developers is how can WE publish into this system?  We also want to know if there will be interactive components to the textbooks.  At the very least I hope we're able to embed hyperlinks to YouTube videos, blog posts, etc.  I think some bonus functionality would be something like selecting some text within a textbook and posting it to social networks like twitter, or facebook, or google+.  This increases the factor of engagement significantly which is what students really need.  It's one thing to just sit and read a book.  But it's a significantly better experience if what is read can be shared and discussed with others.

Apple is not very good at the social thing yet.  Ping is lame and iCloud is still clunky and frustrating for many users.  However, they do understand the desire to publish content to other social systems and they have embraced that capability.  So, I'm hopeful they will continue along that path until they can get their own social network functioning...if they ever intend too.