This post is not directly interested in Web 2.0 in its wider context but more on the opportunities available for learning of which there are a good number. Talking to Learning & Development people and the industry in general, I get the comforting feeling there is quite a buzz regarding web / learning 2.0 and when you invest time to investigate some of the products like wikis, blogs and networking sites etc it is quite easy to see why.

I like the fact that learners can drive their learning from the bottom up. I like the idea that someone can ask a question and the list of potential answers can be found worldwide. I like the whole notion of cumulative learning as per a wiki or a forum conversation where someone can pose a question and then a collaboration of views, answers, experiences and ideas spring up voluntarily forming a whole new base of otherwise unshared knowledge.

 

The tools offer new opportunities to learn

The benefits of web 2.0 technologies in relation to learning are something I think I need to spend some time fully researching and documenting because when you read the statistics within this following article issued by the Chartered Management Institute, you suddenly realise how difficult it is to get organisations to lighten up and start to recognise that these social technologies are going to have a significant impact on the performance of their business like it or not.

 

The report – Cyber cynicism hinders consultancy sector says UK employers will fall behind their international competitors.

The data confirms long-held views about ‘internet policing’ and indicates that the failure to allow widespread use of technology will hinder business in the long-run.

The findings have been published in the wake of wider research showing how so-called ‘new media’ learning is growing in popularity. A report called ‘Learning at Work: evolution or revolution’ revealed that 51 per cent of directors now say they use online videos to develop new skills (up from 21 per cent 12 months ago) and one-third (34 per cent) also use social networking sites to boost their knowledge, compared to just 12 per cent, last year.

However, the research reveals that employers across the consultancy sector view Internet activity as a ‘massive timewaster’. Two thirds (64 per cent) monitor employee internet access and 52 per cent block ‘inappropriate’ websites. A significant number (16 per cent) also retain tight control over access by imposing curfews on internet usage.

Well I have to hold my hand up here! As a Managing Director of a training company I have imposed some of these controls myself but in my defence it was a few years back, web 2.0 didn’t really exist and it was only after I had initially and deliberately avoided restrictions that I then found that the freedom was abused terribly so I had to create some limits and restrictions. With this in mind I do appreciate the view of managers running a company who are concerned about the actions of those who are hell bent on taking advantage. Every company will have employees like it!

The report asked the employees to highlight why they want to use the Internet, the majority focused on its use ‘for professional development’ (60 per cent). 57per cent claimed freedom to use the Internet is ‘useful for research’ and 48 per cent argued it helps ‘for doing work’.  I would concur with these views too. I use

An easy and relevant feed of information

Google alerts to provide me with information of relevance to my work all day. The alerts lead me to a host of different sources such as Blogs, articles, YouTube and wikis. From that source information I am either developing my own knowledge, sharing it with clients or passing it on as per this blog post. It makes complete sense to learn through these tools that are there to help us.

The data, published in association with Ordnance Survey, also reveals wide use of applications across most of the working age groups (all be it the different age groups have different usage patterns). In particular, there is evidence suggesting management and student respondents want to use business networking sites such as LinkedIn (and yes I use that too but have not yet found its real value). The implication is that employers must change their attitude towards technology, or risk alienating their future managers and leaders.

Jo Causon, director, marketing and corporate affairs at the Chartered Management Institute, says: “Quite clearly, organisations need to harness the comfort levels these individuals have with Internet-based resources, because failure to do so will lead to frustration and the loss of top talent at best, or worse, an open door for competitors to build advantage through a better equipped and enabled workforce.”

Analysis of the data confirms that many respondents believe their enthusiasm for web-based technology is not yet matched by employers. Just 3 per cent in the sector claim their organisation ‘falls in love with the latest trend’ and 41 per cent say their employer only ‘takes up things once they’re tried and tested’. Worryingly 10 per cent go as far as describing their employer as ‘dinosaurs’.

There are of course those who will see the risks that Web 2.0 tools pose to the organisation. Key issues tend to be security, policy compliance, information reliability and licensing. There are a number of solutions arriving through enterprise focused tools to alleviate some of these understandable problems but after years of dealing with IT departments I cant help feel that maybe the problem is more deeply seated in their psyche.

Jan Hutchinson, director of HR & corporate services at Ordnance Survey, says: “The low level adoption of new technology is in tandem with employers’ belief that Internet usage is a ‘time waster’. It’s something that must be looked at because the longer this situation is allowed to remain unchallenged, the greater the likelihood UK employers will fall behind their international competitors.”

I am sure there are plenty of companies who are embracing the new technologies and probably a whole lot more that are looking in to them with a serious view to implementation. This would be an interesting statistic to see as it would give a much better view of the way things are likely to be over the next 12 months as I am sure that while there is initial resistance there is also a great deal of hope and influence.
The source article discussed above can be found in its original form on Consultant-News.com

Please share any views on the use of web 2.0 technologies in support of learning within your organisation as there are few examples out there for people to read at the moment.

There have been a number of requests about the running of training sessions to help companies make their own in-house video for use within your own learning programs. We think this program could be great fun and of value so we are happy to run some initial FREE 2 hour workshops depending on interest.

Please help us formulate our thinking by completing our short poll.

If you would be interested in attending this sort of workshop then email us at info@dimensionlearning.co.uk or visit our web site www.dimensionlearning.co.uk and we will keep you up to date on progress.

Hi All

I recently found this very useful tool called Jing which you can use to grab images and video easily and then publish them on to a blog or networking site or simply save to your PC etc.

The main reason I reference to it is that I often need to grab images for training material development plus I think there is some useful web 2.0 functionality that could help in developing some of the more informal learning environments.

The Jing applications is FREE from http://www.jingproject.com/ which is always good. Its easy to download and install with no problems.

It sits on your desktop as an always ready application although you can of course exit it if you don’t need or want it running in background.

There is like a little bulb sat at the top of the screen which you move your mouse over to select Jing options. The available options extend out which you can then click to select as appropriate. The main two being Capture and History.

 

Select your own image area

 Capture then enables you to highlight a given area of the screen you want to capture. The amount of area you want to select is very flexible and easy to do. It will automatically select zones on your screen and application but you can easily select your own specific area as per my examples

 

 

 

 

Jing history viewer

History is as it would seem. You can see all the images and video you have previously captured, allowing you see them all in one place regardless of where you have saved them. From here you can easily annotate and manage your files.

 

Back with the Capture option, once you are done with setting the capture area you can decide if you want to capture an image or video.

 

 

 

Easy annotation provided

The image option grabs the frame area you have selected and then gives you the opportunity to highlight and annotate the image you have captured before providing a number of options relating to what you might like to then do with the image such as embed within Flickr or save to disc.

The only image save option I can find is png which is a bit limiting but its easy enough to open in Office picture manager or similar and format as say a Jpeg.

 

The video option is pretty easy to use too. Like the image option, you highlight what you want to record, click video and the software starts to count you down to start recording. Once you press the stop button it the gives you options to send to a URL, ftp or save to disc. The video can only be 5 mins in length and is saved as an swf file.

I have had a reasonably good play around with it and it seems stable and gives good quality output.

If you are someone who needs to capture screen shots for training or presentations then its well worth giving a try out too.

Can you recommend and alternative? Let us know.

Author information

If your not in to medical education the title might lack in interest. But with so much interest in video for learning yet so little formal references and statistics available I feel this is worth highlighting.

Lets focus on the conclusion and then if your interested you can read the other bits. Please note this is not the full article. Take this link to get access to full reports

So, as promised…

CONCLUSIONS:
Students who watched video clips were more active in using collaborative eLearning tools and achieved higher course grades.

This report was published as follows:

Author/s: Romanov, Kalle (K); Nevgi, Anne (A);

Affiliation: Research & Development Unit for Medical Education, University of Helsinki, Finland. kalle.romanov@helsinki.fi

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Medical teacher (Med Teach), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jun; vol 29 (issue 5) : pp 484-8

Dates: Created 2007/09/21; Completed 2008/03/13;

PMID: 17885978, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

BACKGROUND:
There is controversial evidence of the impact of individual learning style on students’ performance in computer-aided learning.

AIMS:
We assessed the association between the use of multimedia materials, such as video clips, and collaborative communication tools with learning outcome among medical students.

METHOD:
One hundred and twenty-one third-year medical students attended a course in medical informatics (0.7 credits) consisting of lectures, small group sessions and eLearning material. The eLearning material contained six learning modules with integrated video clips and collaborative learning tools in WebCT. Learning outcome was measured with a course exam.

RESULTS:
Approximately two-thirds of students (68.6%) viewed two or more videos. Female students were significantly more active video-watchers. No significant associations were found between video-watching and self-test scores or the time used in eLearning. Video-watchers were more active in WebCT; they loaded more pages and more actively participated in discussion forums. Video-watching was associated with a better course grade.

Dimension learning are up for creative ideas and anything that encourages learning and in particular anything that encourages further informal learning along side formal learning which Second Life would seem to do.

I like the idea of Second Life and it does catch my interest but what is really involved in getting it up and running in any meaningful way?

 

 Is it a big investment? Do you need specialist development skills and resource or simply an open, creative and explorative mind?

 

 Interesting article below from the Training Zone on what it is, how it has been used and what’s the future but I would love to hear from anyone using second life in a learning function about what is realistically involved in getting up and running and how it has been received.

 

Training Zone

 

Picture this: Mermaids tweaking the finer points of a business plan with jet-propelled business people wearing turbo-charged loafers. Welcome to the phenomenon that is Second Life. Avatar playing in virtual worlds is taking off apace, but can this really be learning or is it just time-wasting gaming? Annie Hayes reports.

 

 

 

 

---

What is it?

Second Life is a dimensional virtual space where someone can choose to appear as normal or alternatively and popularly as a flamboyant avatar of themselves. It’s a world where fantasy and fun can at the same time create real-live learning experiences and spaces for knowledge-sharing and collaboration, bringing together industry folk scattered across regions and the globe.

Yet Anne Bartlett-Bragg, managing director of Headshift, Australia – a social-computing consulting outfit based in the UK and now also operating on the other side of the world – tells me that virtual learning is not new: “In the late 90s learning was very much web 1.0 and was driven by a transmission model. What’s happened since then is that social software enables us to bring back the social component of learning – there’s a difference between information and learning.”

Today there is a plethora of virtual learning spaces from collaborative publishing spaces such as weblogs, or blogs, and wikis – which Bartlett-Bragg says have been at the core of the increasingly popular applications in organisations – to podcasts, the newer versions including video or vodcasts which are gaining momentum as a corporate communication method. Social sharing and networking applications are evolving rapidly too, says Bartlett-Bragg and drawing substantial attention in the media, particularly publicly available sites like Facebook.

Who’s doing it?

“ Second Life is one of the virtual worlds available out there, there’s lots available externally. It’s primarily used for employee orientation, for example in China it’s used very strongly, there’s a programme called Fresh Blue which exists to help new staff learn about culture. Mentoring is another use, staff get to meet very senior executives swimming and flying around a virtual space. It removes some of the barriers to getting together.”

Kevin Farrar, academic initiative leader, IBM.

Knowledge-intensive firms such as law firms and Universities are heavily involved in the virtual learning sphere and popularity is growing outside these industries too. Bartlett-Bragg has recently been involved in a project to bring together regionally dispersed female entrepreneurs: “Distance is an issue in Australia. We developed a wiki platform for this group to write their own blogs, give each other feedback and they now even meet once a fortnight at our webinars. They love it!”

And much can be learnt from computing giant, IBM who’ve been a fore-runner on this. Kevin Farrar, academic initiative leader for the firm explains their approach: “Our strategy begins at an early age. We’ve developed PowerUp, a free simulated 3D game for students from primary level. For secondary students we have launched a game built in collaboration with the New York Hall of Fame which is set in a virtual world with an energy focus on solar, wind and water – it’s well received and driving up the number of students interested in science and technology.”

There’s a heavy focus at undergraduate level too, all designed to get the Generation Y up to speed: “Innov8 is a business game in which players take on the role of an outside consultant, it’s set around a call centre scenario and the players teach business process management whilst interviewing characters in the game such as a sales director, business analyst etc. If they want to then go and complement this with lessons from the classroom they can.”

Farrar tells me that IBM staff are actively encouraged to engage with the Universities and many appear as ‘guest lecturers’. It’s a plan that has resulted in an extended offering, the Virtual Innovation Centre, which produces around 800 online training courses.

A further tier is Second Life which is used for internal training. The IBM Centre for Advanced Learning looks into new technologies, runs pilots and virtual worlds – blogs and wikis. “Second Life is one of the virtual worlds available out there, there’s lots available externally. It’s primarily used for employee orientation, for example in China it’s used very strongly, there’s a programme called Fresh Blue which exists to help new staff learn about culture. Mentoring is another use, staff get to meet very senior executives swimming and flying around a virtual space. It removes some of the barriers to getting together,” says Farrar.

Of course it’s an ideal space for those already engaged with technology. IBM’s Academy of Technology brings together technology leaders from around the world. They recently held their first conference in the virtual world using Second Life. A total of 150 people attended, with 20 countries represented. Run behind IBM’s firewall the conference included poster sessions and walk around presentations.

Yet Mark Oehlert, an associate at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton speaking to Workforce Management said: “The importance of this is going to go far beyond IBM. It’ll definitely be a major spur for companies to at least begin looking at virtual worlds.” And many more ‘less-obvious’ companies are picking up the gauntlet. LanguageLabs.com, for example, is a foreign language school that operates in Second Life, says TrainingZone.co.uk’s technology editor John Stokdyk in a View to a Kill: Training in Virtual Worlds. Unlike its physical organisation in Boston, LanguageLabs can accommodate students from multiple geographies and time zones. And technology market analyst Gartner has predicted that by 2011, 80% of all web users will have an online ’second life’, it’s a figure that is mind-boggling.

Does it work?

“It won’t happen if staff are not encouraged to collaborate. There’s also the technological infrastructure to consider, it might not support a virtual world and you’ve got to work within firewalls. Added to this is the issues around the learners themselves, if they’re in pressured jobs, they’re conditioned to quick-fixes.”

Anne Bartlett-Bragg, managing director, Australia, Headshift.

So is it useful? Bartlett-Bragg says that sadly there’s still a lot of people doing elearning badly: “There’s pressure from higher up the food-chain, they just pump it out. And I say ‘yes you’ve got it out there but what’s the end result?’ It’s incredibly powerful and particularly useful. It needs to be strategically planned.”

Bartlett-Bragg says there’s a big list of things to watch out for including organisational culture: “It won’t happen if staff are not encouraged to collaborate. There’s also the technological infrastructure to consider, it might not support a virtual world and you’ve got to work within firewalls. Added to this is the issues around the learners themselves, if they’re in pressured jobs, they’re conditioned to quick-fixes.”

Farrar admits it’s difficult to measure the returns too. Their investment in grooming the future generation from primary level upwards is a leap of faith but what they’ve found so far is that students are very receptive: “It’s a world they’ve already grown up in and are familiar with – gaming, texting etc,” he says.

Yet at the same time Farrar admits that the intention is not to replace face-to-face interaction – which is often a criticism thrown at the virtual world tsars. Farrar says that what they are doing is simply ‘adding’ another dimension.

What’s the future:

Bartlett-Bragg says that the world of virtual learning is simply pandering to what the learners want: “It’s exciting if we can just embrace it, there’s so much information on the internet there’s the possibility of engaging with people on different levels.” Andrew Unsworth, head of egovernment for Edinburgh City Council, talking at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s recent annual conference, agrees with Bartlett-Bragg and says this type of learning is a direct result of what young learners are now demanding. He said that this group of virtual learners is not defined by age, gender or social demography. The trick according to Unsworth is understanding how to make Web 2.0 applications work within conventional business models and add value.

IBM has come up with yet another ‘value adding’ model, its virtual Forbidden City launched in conjunction with the Palace Museum of China. Participants are invited to create an avatar of themselves and walk around the Forbidden City. To have put so much time, effort and investment into virtual learning, it’s clear that the senior players at IBM are on board and Farrar says it’s been driven by their realisation of its potential. Yet for Farrar there’s still more to be done and he looks forward to a time when all virtual worlds are integrated into a 3D visually, rich environment. And as for the sceptics who dismiss flying and tail swishing avatars as ‘time-wasting gaming’ Farrar says ‘just try it.’

We have not long completed our latest video showreel covering the Dimension learning products and services.

The showreel is short and punchy with a voice over taking you through the headlines of our client offerings.

1. e-learning design & development
2. Bespoke training development
3. learning technology consultancy & project management
4. High impat team and communication and collaboration training
5. Video for learning

It’s kind of funky and it fits its purpose.

Let us know what you think. Happy viewing.

To view the video take this link to our home page www.dimensionlearning.co.uk and press the play button on the video player.

The video was created using our own in-house video production team and encoded for Flash using Adobe Flash CP3

Video for use in learning

You don’t need to be personally doing the filming and editing for this article to be relevant. These are more about issues to be considered in the make up and format of the video. If you are using an outside agency or member of staff then all these points are worth considering before you communicate with them.

If you are going to use a video production house, try to use a company that is used to working on training programs as the right experience will make a big difference to the speed and cost of the project.

1. Get the Script and storyboard right - Spend maximum time here. Don’t transcribe from the manual. It needs to be short, succinct and written in the same language understood by your audience. Just because it is a video doesn’t mean you don’t need instructional design. Think about what you are presenting and who you are presenting it to and then apply good instructional design to a story board much like you would do for e-learning development
2. Keep them interested– Shots don’t have to be wild and whacky but try to vary the shots being used. Mix in graphics and titles, a variety of shots, voiceover and animation.
3. Tracking – Decide if you need to know if the audience have viewed the video. Does it need tracking or is it informal learning
4. Content – Make sure you have considered all the material you need and get plenty of extra video shots (cut away shots) done as they may help at the production stage.
5. Work out your style – Are you going to use actors or staff to act? Do you need a narrator to talk through what is happening on screen or use an on-screen presenter? What addition images, charts & graphs etc are required.
6. Location – Where should the video be shot – studio, your offices, outdoors, on location?
7. Highlight Important Messages- The vision and the audio need to be telling the same story. The audience will lose the message if the vision doesn’t match what the voiceover is saying. Titles can be added at the post production stage that coincides with the narration. Particularly, information such as statistics and names of certain procedures.
8. Do as I say, not as I do – Try not to be tempted to show the wrong way to do something. Sadly people will remember the wrong way (Think NLP). I feel the best method of training is to show the right way to do something and that’s it.
9. Format – Can the video be incorporated within e-learning, can it be streamed from a server or Learning Management System or does it need to be served on disc such as a DVD?
10. Test their knowledge – Give consideration to ways in which you can test the viewers knowledge after the video if necessary. Easier to achieve if the video is incorporated within e-learning.

Suffice to say there are a lot of other more detailed considerations but these are vital to do upfront before you go any where near the lens cap!

I personally believe there is a huge opportunity to use video within learning & development programs but I would say that because I make video so we decided what you need is an independant perspective.

Our independent expert isnt referring directly to video in learning but if the online market for video exists then you can bet your pounds, shillings and pence that it will be of value to the learning & development industry also.

So…. are people really in to video online?

This guy really seems to think so!

I know what your thinking….

It doesnt get any more conclusive than that!

I want to share an amazing find we made on the Internet recently.

 

While we were working on a rapid e-learning project we needed to embed some video content we produced in to the e-learning pages.

 

The rapid development tool already had a player and required the video content to be encoded to very specific criteria. While we do often use Adobe Flash CS3 we were looking for an encoding product that could allow us more options for importing and exporting different file formats.

 

My colleague Andy stumbled across this excellent FREE tool called SUPER © and it has panned out to be the bees knees.

 

If you want to transfer content from one format to another. For example, an AVI file off your digital video camera in to Flash flv for use on the internet then this is a product that will allow you to do it.

 

I have to admit when I went to the web site I felt a little uncomfortable about downloading the product. It’s a busy web site where fancy design and layout is not a big factor. The way it navigates and is laid out didn’t give me a good feel but these guys clearly know their subject. With the persuasion of my colleague my mind was settled and I went forward with it.

 

I have gone through the process of downloading and installing it twice now and both times it has been easy to do with no problems so don’t have the same fears as I did.

 

You can find it at http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

 

 

 

Its not very pretty but it works really well.

 

If you need a comprehensive, yet relatively easy tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file with outstanding results, then SUPER © is what you need.

 

We have used it to convert some AVI files in to Flash to play in our online e-learning tool and it produced some very light (small in terms of file size) flv’s of an excellent quality.

July 14, 2008 |

Apple really did a great job coining the terms “podcast” and “podcasting.” In some ways, these terms have become as widely used as when we say “Kleenex” instead of “tissue,” or “Xerox/Xeroxing” instead of “making reproductions on a copy machine.” A podcast is really just a type of digital media file which plays audio in a browser or on a portable device.

But podcasting has gone high-profile! Which do you think sounds better when you’re at an e-Learning conference surrounded by other learning and training professionals?:
“Why John, we have been using podcasts for a while now in our online training programs, how about you?”

“Why John, we have been using audio for a while now in our online training programs, how about you?”

As many people know, the two most popular podcast formats are mp3 files and m4a files. If you are an Apple enthusiast, you will say Apple’s m4a file is really the only true podcast audio file, but when most people talk about podcasts or podcasting they are referring to mp3 files as well. And it just so happens that the mp3 file format is more widely used and supported.

In the last few months, a couple of academic papers and studies have questioned the learning effectiveness of podcasts. While most students, learners, companies, training managers, and instructors seem enthusiastic about using and applying this technology, other factors can inhibit their effectiveness and use. For example, the podcast medium (by nature) is one-sided, because most learners are listening to only part of a lecture—an explanation or briefing—which is not an interactive activity in and of itself.

Creating a podcast also requires decent equipment, extra software, and knowledge of how to record and edit audio files. So podcast creation is a skill many e-Learning developers may not have. It also helps to have your own voice talent or (if you are doing video podcasting) access to professional models. Let’s face it, your company’s subject-matter expert may be the most knowledgeable person in the entire industry on XYZ circuits, but they may not present very well in audio or video.

Additional factors, relating to the type of information in the podcasts, can complicate their execution and deployment. For example, the:

Type of audience (such as field personnel who use mobile devices exclusively).
Level of security needed (such as secure RSS).
Delivery methods required (such as product briefings via Blackberry).
Most training project managers understand that such factors translate into additional money that will be needed to develop their training.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Dave, you’re pretty down on podcasts!” And that is not true! I am proud to say that SyberWorks has three different podcast series:

The SyberWorks e-Leaning Podcast Series.
The SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series.
The e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series.

In our e-Learning development division, we produce all types of audio and video for our clients as well.

But now, you are saying, “Okay Dave, but can podcasts work with a learning management system (LMS)? A good LMS can track and manage all types of web content: audio, video, podcasts, synchronous or asynchronous e-Learning, instructor-lead training, web conferencing, study helps, or traditional offline training. The SyberWorks LMS tracks and manages all of these types of web content, and more.
So where might podcasting fit, in your own e-Learning environment? I see podcasting as one of many items in the tool box that supports your online training and overall training objectives. It can be used as a study-help aid, or as a performance-support tool that can be integrated into online courses and larger training programs. Finally, podcasts should be developed and integrated with the same level of diligence and care that is used to create any other study-help materials, performance-support information, or learner evaluations. Okay, so that should settle it, I really do think podcasts and podcasting have a place in e-Learning, and in your company’s training programs.

Dave Boggs is the founder and CEO of SyberWorks, Inc. (http://www.syberworks.com). He has been involved with computer-based and web-based training for more than twelve years. Before founding SyberWorks, Dave was the VP of Sales and Business Development for Relational Courseware. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Union College in Schenectady, NY, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

Article Source: How does podcasting fit into a company’s training programs?