Jane's E-Learning Pick of the day

I have been on the look out for some more interesting iPad apps - here's one for students. The CourseNotes website says: "CourseNotes lets you take notes during your classes and keep them organized by subject and class meeting. Review your notes later and search through multiple class meetings and notes all at once. Miss a class? Need to print or share your notes with a friend? CourseNotes lets you share your note sessions via email or peer-to-peer networking with... Jane Hart

The iPad hit the UK shops over the weekend so I bought mine on Sunday. I asked my Twitter followers for suggestions for apps to install and was off to a good start.

One of the apps I purchased was Keynote and I love the way presentation slides look on the iPad, so am going to be using this a lot with clients, but how to get all my existing PowerPoint presentations on to the iPad or access them in some way online, as embedded Flash-based Slideshare shows  don't display?

I then discovered MightyMeeting.  I can upload the presentations into MightyMeeting and then present them from the iPad app.  Perfect!  What is even better is that you can set up online meetings with others and present directly to them with chat functionality too. 

(BTW MightyMeeting works just as well with the iPhone and iPod Touch.)

MightyMeeting

UPDATE: Saurav has mentioned the Slideshare mobile site (in the comments).  This displays images rather than Flash - however, some of my slides don't display properly on it :(

The iPad hit the UK shops over the weekend so I bought mine on Sunday. I asked my Twitter followers for suggestions for apps to install and was off to a good start. One of the apps I purchased was Keynote and I love the way presentation slides look on the iPad, so am going to be using this a lot with clients, but how to get all my existing PowerPoint presentations on to the iPad or access them in... Jane Hart

I've been aggregating all my resources about using social media for learning in the Social Learning Academy area of my C4LPT website.

Here you'll find some social resources and guides like the Introduction to Social Media, and How to Use Twitter for Social Learning, as well as many of the presentations I have produced, e.g. What is Social Learning: an explanation using Twitter, Choosing the right social and collaboration platform     and the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009. 

You'll also find the links to many different examples of the ways learning professionals are using social media for learning, as well as other examples including my own 140 University, which has become quite popular over the last few months and lists of 100+ places to find out anything and everything and how to learn a language online.

Come and take a look - and let me know what else you'd like to see there.

Social Learning Academy

Just for the record the other main areas of the C4LPT website are:

• ToolsZone - that includes the Directory of Learning Tools and the Top Tools for Learning
• Connexions - which is a Directory of Learning Professionals Online
• Consultancy Services - where I detail the services I provide to both business and education

I've been aggregating all my resources about using social media for learning in the Social Learning Academy area of my C4LPT website. Here you'll find some social resources and guides like the Introduction to Social Media, and How to Use Twitter for Social Learning, as well as many of the presentations I have produced, e.g. What is Social Learning: an explanation using Twitter, Choosing the right social and collaboration platform and the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009. You'll also... Jane Hart

Here is a roundup of the articles and tools added to the main Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) site in May.

Articles/postings added to the Reading lists

I added 31 articles and resources to my selected reading in May.  By feeding the titles into Wordle you can see that the dominant theme of the month was about the future role of the LMS. (Click the image below for the full size Wordle).

If you haven't got time to make your way through the whole list of articles, here are what I think are the 5 must-reads.

1. Build trust, not control, The Performance Improvement blog, 3 May 2010
2. Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh), Eric Qualman, Socialnomics, 5 May 2010
3. LMS is no longer the centre of the universe, Harold Jarche, 5 May 2010
4. When to LMS, Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 18 May 2010
5. ID - Instructional design or interactivity design in an interconnected world, Charles Jennings, 28 May 2010

Tools added to the Directory of Learning Tools

Here are three tools added to the Directory last month:

1. Micromobs - Start a micro-mob around a topic or group - Free, Hosted
   Listed in Micro-blogging tools and Twitter apps section
2. Sync.in - Sync.in is a web based word processor for people to collaborate in real-time. Free/Commercial, Hosted
   Listed in Document and presentation tools section
3. Saywire - An educational collaboration platform that fosters individual /group learning through formal and informal methods giving flexibility to students and teachers. £, Free Trial, Hosted
   Listed in Instructional tools section

Latest tools listed in the Directory appears here.

State of Learning in the Workplace Today

This article has also been updated again this month in particular to reflect the discussions around the future role of the LMS.

Here is a roundup of the articles and tools added to the main Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) site in May. Articles/postings added to the Reading lists I added 31 articles and resources to my selected reading in May. By feeding the titles into Wordle you can see that the dominant theme of the month was about the future role of the LMS. (Click the image below for the full size Wordle). If you haven't got time to... Jane Hart

Barry Sampson told me about this elearning news aggregator that he put together when revamping the e-Learning Network's website.

If you don't want to subscribe to individual feeds, it provides an aggregated feed you can subscribe to (in fact Barry says he's replaced all his individual eLearning related subscriptions with the feed from the site).  He therefore sees this as a key starting point; it's an aggregated feed of content that he hopes will appeal to people who don't subscribe to individual blogs.

Barry also wants the content to be crowd sourced; and encourages anyone to submit feeds that they think will be of interest to the eLearning community.

Whilst they currently do nothing, Barry believes the Channel feature has great potential for the future. Rather than manually selecting certain feeds, the site can dynamically create channels based on key words.  He will start creating these once he sees the kinds of thing people search for. Again, if people want to make suggestions on search terms for the channels, be is very keen to receive them. 

I've already subscribed to the aggregated feed.  Want to take a look? - go here

Barry Sampson told me about this elearning news aggregator that he put together when revamping the e-Learning Network's website.

If you don't want to subscribe to individual feeds, it provides an aggregated feed you can subscribe to (in fact Barry says he's replaced all his individual eLearning related subscriptions with the feed from the site).  He therefore sees this as a key starting point; it's an aggregated feed of content that he hopes will appeal to people who don't subscribe to individual blogs.

Barry also wants the content to be crowd sourced; and encourages anyone to submit feeds that they think will be of interest to the eLearning community.

Whilst they currently do nothing, Barry believes the Channel feature has great potential for the future. Rather than manually selecting certain feeds, the site can dynamically create channels based on key words.  He will start creating these once he sees the kinds of thing people search for. Again, if people want to make suggestions on search terms for the channels, be is very keen to receive them. 

I've already subscribed to the aggregated feed.  Want to take a look? - go here

Barry Sampson told me about this elearning news aggregator that he put together when revamping the e-Learning Network's website. If you don't want to subscribe to individual feeds, it provides an aggregated feed you can subscribe to (in fact Barry says he's replaced all his individual eLearning related subscriptions with the feed from the site). He therefore sees this as a key starting point; it's an aggregated feed of content that he hopes will appeal to people who don't subscribe... Jane Hart

There have been two important blog posts today that are must-reads in my opinion - both of which contain references to the work of Dr Hermann Ebbinghaus, who pioneered the experimental study of memory.

The first is by Charles Jennings - ID - Instructional design or interactivity design in an interconnected world .  Charles starts his post in a very powerful way:

Instructional design is not only seen as a core competency for learning and development/training specialists, but it’s a huge industry, too. Most learning vendors tout their ‘expertise in instructional design’ as a key reason as to why we should engage them to produce learning content. If we do so, then almost invariably their approach is around developing content in an ‘instructionally-sound way’ to produce a set of ‘learning interventions’.

I have a real problem with this approach and the thinking behind it.

It simply isn’t appropriate for the needs of the 21st century knowledge industry, and is arguable even more inappropriate for those whose work is carried out with their hands rather than with their minds.

Charles then goes on to explain that the mindset should be about process-based learning and not event-based learning, and how "the vast majority of structured learning is content-rich and interaction-poor".

Charles also reminds us that "knowing something doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve learned it", and states that "Dr Ebbinghaus’ experiment revealed we suffer an exponential ‘forgetting curve’ and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice".

But this all leads to the main point that Charles makes ...

"We need designers who understand that learning comes from experience, practice, conversations and reflection, and are prepared to move away from massaging content into what they see as good instructional design. Designers need to get off the content bus and start thinking about, using, designing and exploiting learning environments full of experiences and interactivity."

Donald Clark in his posting,10 techniques to massively increase retention, picks up on "the  ‘forgetting curve’ by Ebbinghaus"  and states that it is

"a fundamental truth in memory theory, totally ignored by most educators and trainers. Most fixed ’courses’ or ‘lectures’ take no notice of the phenomenon, condemning much of their effort to the world of lost memories".

Donald then provides 10 tips and strategies to enable spaced practice.

These are two powerful blog postings that every learning professional should read and digest.

There have been two important blog posts today that are must-reads in my opinion - both of which contain references to the work of Dr Hermann Ebbinghaus, who pioneered the experimental study of memory. The first is by Charles Jennings - ID - Instructional design or interactivity design in an interconnected world . Charles starts his post in a very powerful way: Instructional design is not only seen as a core competency for learning and development/training specialists, but it’s a... Jane Hart

There have been two important blog posts today that are must-reads in my opinion - both of which contain references to the work of Dr Hermann Ebbinghaus, who pioneered the experimental study of memory. The first is by Charles Jennings - ID - Instructional design or interactivity design in an interconnected world . Charles starts his post in a very powerful way: Instructional design is not only seen as a core competency for learning and development/training specialists, but it’s a... Jane Hart

Yesterday I gave a short webinar to the Learning & Skills Group. Don Taylor, Chairman, asked me to talk about how you choose a social and collaboration platform, as he thought this would be a topical discussion in the light of some people's concerns with the changes at Ning. 

So this webinar looked at 10 criteria for considering such a platform (and used Ning as my benchmark), then I gave a tour of 3 very different platforms, and finally compared them against the 10 criteria I had listed up front.

The first question that was asked after the presentation was how it all fits together with other systems in the organisation, and in particular the LMS, but it also seemed clear to me that many participants were still focusing entirely on creating and managing e-courses , rather than thinking about how they could support learning in all forms that take place in the organisation.

So since this is very much my view and the angle from which I approached this presentation, if you haven't already read my article, State of Learning in the Workplace Today, I would recommend you do so before viewing the presentation, since it summarises how I, and many others, believe that workplace learning is evolving. 

The presentation appears below, and sites mentioned in the presentation as well as other supporting resources appear  on the manin C4LPT site on this page.  I am also about to create a short whitepaper on this topic that incorporates the slides and my notes, so let me know if you'd like a copy, when it is ready.

Choosing the right social and collaboration platformView more presentations from Jane Hart.

Yesterday I gave a short webinar to the Learning & Skills Group. Don Taylor, Chairman, asked me to talk about how you choose a social and collaboration platform, as he thought this would be a topical discussion in the light of some people's concerns with the changes at Ning. So this webinar looked at 10 criteria for considering such a platform (and used Ning as my benchmark), then I gave a tour of 3 very different platforms, and finally compared... Jane Hart

Another week; another presentation! 

Today, Tuesday 25 May,  I am at TrainingZone Live in London, and will be leading 3 Workshops on Social Learning.  I shall be using Twitter to try and create a highly participative social learning experience to explain what social learning is all about. 

If  you would like to participate on Twitter, the sessions are scheduled to run as follows:  10.35-11.20, 11.50-12.35 and 13.35-14.20 (all times BST).

I will be using my @140academy account for the tweeting, and the hashtag will be #tzljh

The presentation slideset I will be using appears below, and all the links and resources mentioned in it are listed on my website here. 

Social Learning: an explanation using TwitterView more presentations from Jane Hart.

Another week; another presentation! Today, Tuesday 25 May, I am at TrainingZone Live in London, and will be leading 3 Workshops on Social Learning. I shall be using Twitter to try and create a highly participative social learning experience to explain what social learning is all about. If you would like to participate on Twitter, the sessions are scheduled to run as follows: 10.35-11.20, 11.50-12.35 and 13.35-14.20 (all times BST). I will be using my @140academy account for the tweeting,... Jane Hart

Another week; another presentation! Today, Tuesday 25 May, I am at TrainingZone Live in London, and will be leading 3 Workshops on Social Learning. I shall be using Twitter to try and create a highly participative social learning experience to explain what social learning is all about. If you would like to participate on Twitter, the sessions are scheduled to run as follows: 10.35-11.20, 11.50-12.35 and 13.35-14.20 (all times BST). I will be using my @140academy account for the tweeting,... Jane Hart

Another week; another presentation! Today, Tuesday 25 May, I am at TrainingZone Live in London, and will be leading 3 Workshops on Social Learning. I shall be using Twitter to try and create a highly participative social learning experience to explain what social learning is all about. If you would like to participate on Twitter, the sessions are scheduled to run as follows: 10.35-11.20, 11.50-12.35 and 13.35-14.20 (all times BST). I will be using my @140academy account for the tweeting,... Jane Hart

My posting last Thursday explained how I was in Athlone, Ireland to deliver a keynote to the Irish Learning Technology Association's EdTech10 conference.  As my presentation was to be about social learning, I didn't want to present in the traditional way, but to try and make the experience as social and collaborative as possible, so I blogged and tweeted about the event and invited others to participate. All in all it worked out very well, and afterwards, Juanita @JFJ24 tweeted:

"will you be blogging your reflections on the experience. Think it woud be interesting"

I tweeted back that I would - just like I had blogged my experience using Twitter in a face-to-face workshop - so here is how I planned, prepared for and delivered the collaborative keynote.

Planning the keynote

Just like most keynotes, it was to be delivered using the presentation format, so as I planned my PowerPoint presentation, I needed to consider how to make it  as collaborative as possible.  I decided to make use of Twitter, as I knew there was already a backchannel  tag for the conference #edtech10 - and that meant many of the participants would already be using that.

However, I also needed to bear in mind that the audience would (probably) want to listen to as much of the presentation as possible, so I didn't want them to feel they were being distracted from it by tweeting too much.  I therefore wanted to build in some short questions that (a) could be answered in one word answers rather than huge long sentences, and (b) give them time to do that, as well as (c) time for me to review the Twitter stream.

But I wanted participants outside the room to be able to join in if they wished too, so I created 6 slides with the questions on them and the type of one-word responses I was looking for, and  I used Timo Elliott's SAP Web 2.0 tools for PowerPoint to set up the tweets that would be auto-tweeted out when I presented. 

This is very simple to do: in the Notes area of each slide, you simply enter the tweet in the following format:

[twitter]the message to be tweeted out[/twitter]

So, for instance, here's the slide with Question 1 (as it appears in PowerPoint's editor)

I also added in a few auto-tweets that only those reading the stream would see - aimed at external participants, firstly inviting people to participate, and then asking them to introduce themselves to the ILTA conference.

Although Timo's PowerPoint tools includes a Feedback slide where you can aggregate tweets, I decided I would use the normal Twitter search mechanism to display the real-time tweets in the #edtech stream.

I then set up the Auto-Tweet add in with the details of myTwitter account as well as the hashtag to be used at the end of each tweet

I tested that the tweets were all working live with a dummy Twitter account (so they didn't confuse my normal Twitter followers), but, although I have a number of other Twitter accounts I use for activities like  this, I decided to use my normal @c4lpt account to send out the tweets at the event - to try and get the widest possible participation. 

Preparing for the keynote

As I was hoping for participation in the event from others outside of the ILTA conference, I needed to advertise the fact that it was taking place, and invite  others to participate and contribute if they wished.  As my presentation wasn't taking place till 4 pm (BST) I blogged and tweeted about it first thing on the Thursday morning. - Social Learning : help me deliver a collaborative keynote. There were a good number of re-tweets, so I was hopeful for some external participation.

One of the things I thought long and hard about, was whether I should release the presentation in advance.  Although I would have really loved to do this, I was a little worried that people might start to tweet their answers straightaway. This would have been great, but I was concerned it might confuse the flow of the #edtech10 Twitter stream, so in this case I decided to withhold the presentation until later..  (Note: in other events I have used a hashtag I made up myself, to keep all the activity quite separate from a general conference hashtag - and I think this works best when the presentation is in a separate conferecen track).

So I kept the presentation "private" on Slideshare, and hoped I would remember to make it public just before the event.  Well, as you will know if you participated, I did in fact forget to do this!

Just before the presentation began, I tweeted the following message:

Help me create a collaborative keynote. Presentation is at http://bit.ly/cgCSea Tweet yr answers when questions appear #edtech10

There were a few early tweets that said they couldn't access the presentation, so I quickly changed the status of the presentation on Slideshare to "public". 

Delivering the keynote

As I went through the presentation, the auto-tweets went out, and there was a huge amount of participation, and so lots of tweets went into the #edtech stream, which we reviewed from time to time. 

Finally, at the end of the presentation, just as I was taking questions, the fire alarm went off.  Fortunately, a few people tweeted the fact which meant that those outside the room understood why the session had been interrupted.  We did however, resume, a short time later and finish off the Q&A part.

After the keynote

I took a look at all the tweets that had come in during the event and answered some of the questions I hadn't been able to address during the event itself.  I wanted to make sure I tidied things up on Twitter. 

Reviewing the keynote

A number of people have asked me how I managed to co-ordinate so much at one time.  Well, I believe carefully planning and rehearsal is vital  However, I nevertheless found it an exhilerating experience as a presenter - it kept me on my toes - and hope that others enjoyed the event too.. 

What will I do differently next time?

• make the presentation available in advance - it's just one of those extra things I won't need to have to worry about
• make much more time to review the Twitter stream during the session and answer any questions or comments arising - which means reducing the presentation down quite considerably if I think there will be a lot of participation

But I would just like to take this opportunity of thanking everyone that contributed to the presentation to make it a valuable exercise in collaborative learning - and also to demonstrate the power of Twitter for such events.  There may even have been a few Twitter-sceptics out there who we converted!.

Finally, here's the presentation slideset - which includes an embedded YouTube video - that I didn't get to show in the live presentation itself.

ILTA KeynoteView more presentations from Jane Hart.

There was obviously quite a lot of activity about the event and the presentation, as I got an email from Slideshare telling me that the presentation slideset was being tweeted more than any other on Slideshare, so it was put on the Slideshare front page.  Again it shows the power of Twitter to spread the word virally.

Want some more information on using Twitter in a presentation?

If you'd like to try this out for yourself, then take a look at my How to use Twitter for Social learning free guide.  On the Incorporating the Twitter backchannel in a presentation you can find out how to do this for a class or presentation.  Other pages of the guide explain how to use Twitter for other aspects of social learning (as demonstrated in the presentation, above).

UPDATE

Here are some write-ups of the keynote by others who participated in the event

• Chris Jobling
• Cathy
• Eugene O'Loughlin