Funny Blog Post

This is yet another blog that I read from the Common Craft.  I thought it was sort of funny.  Also someone posted a comment and a link to this article. I just thought that with the technology we have today, you'd think airport security would be a little tighter.  Check it out...but not if you're flying anywhere for the holidays!

More from Google Labs

When I logged into my google account this morning I saw a message that google labs had cooked up a couple of applications that I thought might benefit the group--at least anyone who uses a google account.

Their first offering is one that acts as a task function

Keep track of what you need to do with a lightweight task list right inside of Gmail. Just click and type to add new tasks, convert emails into tasks, and (most satisfyingly) check them off as you're done.

The second is pretty cool. It allows you to send SMS messages from your gmail account...

Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

sort of like twitter in reverse.

These quotes were taken from this announcement page.

Google Operating System on the way?

An article on the Boy Genius Report states that there are signs showing Google may be working on it's own operating system. Recent net traffic from Google headquarters shows about 1/3 of Google's employees are accessing the web with an operating system that has had it's identifiers removed. Whether this is a sign of Android coming to desktop, an all new OS or Google just playing with our minds remains to be seen.

Instructional Game vs Computer Game

I was working on the 10 blog posts required for the class with Dr.Kapp where i came across this interesting post about the comparison between a Computer Game to a Serious or an Instructional game.
When a designer or developer looks from the angle of the gaming, two formats of the game are meant for entertainment, but interesting debate would be does serious game has to compete with a computer game to make it more captivating and motivating? Certainly it would be a designer's dream to build an application that would be designed to perfection showing rich graphics and animation. But when analyzing this component one has to focus on certain factors like the time frame for the project, hardware used, learners, type of organization and the instruction itself.
Looking at these factors from a designer's perspective will certainly lock the components that can be used to make the prototype work. But certainly a designer has varying options to make the solution interesting and appealing for the client. Even the budget allocated for the project can lock the hands of the designer. But a good designer can figure out ways to create an attractive and working solution within the allocated budget. The key to achieve this goal, pretty much depends on the common sense, and the good or bad experience from the past projects. To be more precise its all the life experiences will make one grow perfect.
To sum up, instructional or serious games can take certain inputs from its elder brother(computer game) to build an interesting and attractive game to captivate and motivate the learners keeping without loosing the very purpose of instruction.
Please check this interesting post related to the current topic.
Learning circuits Blog

Keeping Employees Engaged - eLearning Alternatives

In the September/October 2008 issue of ELearning Magazine there was an article title Motivating Employees with Online Learning. The article focused on the low employee retention issue faced by FedEx Express with it's "frontline employees." The article mentions this issue was addressed in 2004 and continues on to discuss some of the key "factors" according to HR Development Manager Karl Guenther. The article then talks about the next steps taken, thenthe solution that was implemented, and finally the outcome as of 2006.

The "factors" that Karl Guenther points out in the article can be true for any large corporation. Because FedEx has over 290, 000 employees, it made recognizing and fixing those "factors" more challenging. The factors mentioned were:

• Productivity - Most employees were permenant part-timers and not eligible for "on the clock" training and if they weren't working they weren't productive.
• Motivation - This lack of eligibility caused employees to be less enthusiastic about self developing.
• Marketability - The current program only allowed for those with higher education more promotional chances or career opportunities.
• Resource Contraints - Because of the lack of finances and/or time availability, the employees didn't seek company educational opportunites.
• Low Awareness - Employees just didn't know about existing educational offerings such as "Skill soft" or "Tuition Reimbursement."

In the end, FedEx created the College Credit Consurtium, which works with 17 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. By creating this consurtium the program offers things like:

• Free college credits for sucessful completion of e-learning courses.
• Deferred billing.
• Ability to skip terms without penalty during peak work seasons.
• Flexible degree progams.
• Custom curriculum development.

According to the article this blended approach to employee education has shown an increase in employee participation and ultimately employee retention. In 2006 the article states that participation was up to "15,000 employees" which is about "75%" of the FedEx Express division. This out of the box approach to e-Learning should be a model for other midsized to large corporations to help retain the talent they have.

Second Life's Hype Cycle

This picture shows the Gartner Hype Cycle graph for 2008. I wanted to point out the position Second Life (and other public virtual worlds) is at in the cycle. This was the most recent depiction that I found with virtual worlds. It shows VWs (Virtual Worlds- not Volkswagens) past the Peak and heading into the Trough of Disillusionment. The basic idea is that VWs are at the make-or-break point right now. The near future will tell whether or not Second Life and other VWs will find their niche in the public sector. I'm curious to see what Linden and other VW companies will do to market their products as effective tools in order to be productive technologies/applications of technology.

The Debate on Instructional Design Models

I know I've mentioned this site in class, and I'm sure Dr. Nicholson has as well, but in case you haven't checked it out already, I thought I'd post a bit on Elliott Masie's LearningTown.

Elliott Masie is an instructional design guru-founder of the MASIE Center, and essentially the go to guy when it comes to cutting edge learning development and best practices.

LearningTown is a huge online forum that brings together people from all walks of the instructional design and technology industry. Members have individual profile pages and use the site to network, participate in threaded discussions, message each other, share resources, and join groups of like minded professionals. As part of a class activity in Dr. N's eLearning Concepts and Techniques course, we all joined the site and did some perusing and investigating.

There are tons of interesting discussions on nearly any topic related to instructional design and technology you can think of, but the one that stuck with me the most was a question posed by Elliott Masie himself: Do We Need A New Instructional Design Model?
Follow the link to follow the discussion.

Various professionals talk here about the "real world" of instructional and course design, what works, what doesn't, and how the industry is changing. It's a great way for students and professionals to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry, pose questions to a large community, or just read a lot of interesting opinions and resources.

Holiday E-Cards

It is that time of year, and I have not found a more fun site than http://www.elfyourself.com/. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I had made a card of my kids and I dancing in elf suits. OK, maybe I've been hitting the holiday e nog to hard, but this was funny, I don't care who you are. give it a try and I"m sure you will be the hit at your next get together.
Enjoy,
Bill

Class Information for the week of Dec. 1st

Hi everyone!

Wow - just 2 weeks left in the semester!  I do want to talk about the final activities and schedule for our class.  I've been sending emails to everyone today with information but thought I would post on this blog as well.

• We will definitely meet in Centra this Thursday with Heather, Zakia, Carl, and Eric presenting.
  
• We will definitely meet in Centra next Thursday for the One Slide - One Minute presentations. 
  

So speaking of One Slide - One Minute, here is the specific information for this activity:

1. I would like for you to create one PowerPoint slide that is a summary of what you have created and learned in this class.  You may use any design and include any information you like.  During our last class on Thursday, Dec. 11th, each person will have one minute to talk about their one slide.
2. Please submit your one PowerPoint slide via Blackboard, in the Assignments area by Wednesday, Dec. 10th, at 8:00 pm.  (Yes, I really do mean Wednesday because I need some time to collect the slides and create the Agenda file for class on Thursday).
   

Now, about the Summary Paper.  Yes Virginia, there is a summary paper due!  Here is the information:

1. Basically I would like for you to respond to the statement:  What I learned about online teaching and what I would do differently next time".  This paper is truly a reflection of your experiences and what you have learned about online teaching - the technology, design, and implementation.  Please be specific citing examples and stories to support your thoughts and ideas.  And be sure to address both synchronous and asynchronous online teaching formats.
2. I would like for you to consider and address three areas as you write your final paper:
   

• Technology - What have you experienced and learned about the role, influence, and impact technology has on the success of an elearning environment?
  
• Design - What have you experiences and learned about writing and designing online materials?  What did you learn about creating and delivering synchronous presentations?  What is important when designing recorded presentations?  Be sure to address the design of the course or presentation framework, lessons, and interactive activities.
  
• Implementation - What have you experienced and learned about actually implementing an eLearning presentation and course?  What does it require in terms of communication, time management, record keeping, and scheduling?

Submit your Summary Paper via Blackboard in the Assignments area by Thursday, Dec. 11th, at 5:59:59 pm.

Looking forward to reading the papers and seeing the slides!

Talk to you all this Thursday!

Cheers, Dr. N

Sony Playstation Home

This week I was given the privilege of beta testing Home for Sony Playstation 3. It is very similar to Second life, the characters are customizable and the overall feel of the community is the same.

The MAJOR differences are the PS3 has HIGH QUALITY graphics and SECURITY that comes with Home existing on a protected game platform.

I have not used either platform enough to say who the winner will be. I think that this could be a more protected environment that schools could take advantage of in the future.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Home

Alternative to Photoshop

Paint.net

So this blog could have come about two or three weeks ago for the purpose of our Blackboard project. For me, I had trouble coming up with a course banner, and even something for the group Wiki project. I don't have Adobe Photoshop and have no idea on how to use it (I hear its difficult). Adobe Photoshop is not free, but Paint.net is! It is compared to Photoshop and Microsoft Paint and considered the free alternative. "It is a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins." (from Wikipedia) There are tutorials that show you how to create excellent graphics. I watched the tutorial on how to create a collage. Check it out! (here is a snapshot of the interface)

instructables.com = Greatest. Site. Ever.

I recently stumbled upon the site of instructables.com, and it may very well be the greatest stumble I have ever had.

instructables.com is a site where you can learn to make just about anything... And I do mean anything. There is a step by step tutorial for making such necessities as "Build the Starship Enterprise from useless office supplies" or "build a (somewhat) historically accurate Viking Costume " or "how to make a Universal bike light battery out of a Parmesan cheese container."
I eprsanlylam excited to try the USB Batman Spotlight, where you can make the bat signal out of a USB lamp.

This site is like the Red Green show on steroids.

Instructables

What's the Best CMS?

Having just created a course in Joomla, I am curious about the other content management systems. This CMS was difficult to work with mostly because I had a lack of training. From the way it sounds, udutu would have been much easier to work with. Joomla also had several templates from which to choose and start. Changing things around did not so much require knowledge of programming languages, but rather an understanding of the infrastructure. There are so many interactive things I wanted to incorporate but did not know how and could not have learned on my own in a timely manner. So, this post is more or less to pose a few questions: Which content management systems you have used and which have been easy to work with? Which ones were best for interactivity?

Free Course Authoring Tool

I found a free web-based elearning authoring tool with a WYSIWYG interface. The tool is called udutu (pronounced (You do too). The nice thing about this tool is that you don't need advanced programming knowledge because there are several templates available for use. Aside from content development you can develop interactive quizzes, scenarios and assessments and provide instant feedback to the users of the system. Often as trainers there is a need to collaborate with SMEs and since this tool is web based with no need to install software, collaboration is made that much easier. As you add items to udutu you are also developing a library of reusable objects. No more reinventing the wheel. Publishing is also a breeze because udutu is SCORM compliant and you can either host on your own LMS or post on their site for a fee. Take a look at a brief overview here.

Microsoft Releasing Free Anti-malware Tool

Microsoft in the second half of 2009 will be releasing a free anti-malware (rootkits, spyware, trojans and viruses) tool code named “Morro”. They are releasing this suite of software due to the increasing demand of PC security.

The current consumer security offering, Microsoft Live OneCare will be discontinued at the latest on June 30, 2009. The new Morro suite will use many of the same technologies found in Live OneCare. It will lack several features currently found in the Live OneCare suite (printer sharing and automated PC tune-up) in order to minimize the use of system resources.

The package will be able available for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems via download.

The only problem with this suite is many independent reviews have found Microsoft’s current offerings for Anti-Malware, the OneCare Anti-Virus and Windows Defender, lacking in capability and often missing infections. Let’s hope that Microsoft has improved their overall product for this release.

Source: Microsoft discontinuing OneCare, will deliver free security offering instead

SearchWiki

I will freely admit that I'm addicted to Google. I'm not sure how I survived without gmail, Google Docs, iGoogle page, Google Maps, and even basic Google searches before the site was around. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't use Google for something. It seems that they are always adding new features and apps that make using Google even more fun and useful.

I noticed when I logged in the other day that they've added yet another new feature called Searchwiki. Basically, this will allow you to customize your search results, save your results, and make notes about the search pages that you find. This brief video from Google can explain it better then I can.



I haven't gone and played around with this at all in my own Google account, but I thought it looked interesting. It seems like a form of social bookmarking. I could see myself using this to save the sites I go to often or to make a note to remember something about a site. The possiblities could be endless!

Sloodle

+ =

Sloodle is an open source project that brings together Moodle (an open source course management system) together with Second Life (3D Virtual World) to provide interactive game-technology and various tools for supporting learning in the virtual worlds.

Moodle and Second Life as illustrated by the following image:








To learn more about Sloodle, YouTube has many videos explaining how they work together.

Here is video that will walk you through Sloodle. There are many, many videos posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bkKumVecK0&feature=related

There is also a Sloodle wiki that will include many resources for Sloodle.
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl/index.php/Sloodle

If you are interested in learning more about Sloodle, there are introductory classes that run in Second Life every Wednesday at 5:00pm EST in the SLOODLE classroom.

--Lynn

Google Chrome

I guess you might have seen Google Chrome doing big roars in the world of bites for being the new light browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Features of this new browser include:

• One box for everything
  
  Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.


• Thumbnails of your top sites
  Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.


• Shortcuts for your apps
  Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.


• Safer downloads


• Better crash control......But I am not sure how long will this last. As we all know firefox was very efficient for crash control when they started in 2004 but after all those plugins its now a heavy application almost capturing more than half of my memory resources and susceptible to wild crashes.

Check out the notes from the developers themselves on why they built this browser.
"A fresh take on the browser
At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.
Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.
So today we're releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.
On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.
Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.
This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We've released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we'll continue to make it even faster and more robust.
We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.
The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.
But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself."
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.....................................
You guys simply rock what would be Google's next project. A Operating System?????????????Who knows time will tell.........Sayonara....adiós....GoodBye folks.

It all adds up!

In lieu of a burgeoning finiancial crisis, (if you really consider it a crisis, and not just a media ratings driver) it seems sensible that training directed at financial and money management would be piggybacking this "crisis".The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) is a nationwide network that leads in promoting economic literacy with students and their teachers. They have actually created an interactive learning game (sans poor graphics) that is targeted at teens to help them do basic personal finance tasks, such as understanding credit, interest rates, how to live on a budget, etc.

It's called "it all adds up" and it's a serioes of games and simulations geared with a pedialogical approach to teaching personal finance.

After playing a few of these games, it's pretty clear that these games are not just beneficial for teenagers. in fact, if more people understood some of these basic concepts, we probably could have avoided the housing crash, IMHO.

It's actually practice on basic common sense practices that get lost in the shuffle a lot of the time. The only downside is the games are hardly but free, whoever created them perhaps rushed a little bit too much putting this stuff together, or maybe they just didn't have a budget. it's hard to say. Still, it's worth a run through if you still think you can afford that BMW. :)

It All Adds UP!

http://www.italladdsup.org/

http://www.ncee.net/

Pretend this was posted last week....

I've been reading the eLearning blog that Dr. Nic suggested and it's really interesting. First of all, I was surprised by how informal most of the posts are. I guess I thought that because these people are presenting at the conference, they would be very professional and well, kind of dry. But they are far from it! I think I even saw a smiley face " :) " in one of them. Ha ha. I enjoyed Patti Shank's post about Past Promises and Present Challenges of eLearning, found here. And also, the comments in response to her post by Curts Bonks. I even enjoyed reading Thomas Reynold's post about j-walking and open container laws in Las Vegas. The interview with keynote speaker, Dr. Ellen Wagner is great, too. She even shows us some of the produce she grows in her garden! It's hard to imagine her getting busted for j-walking in Vegas. If you haven't checked it out yet, do so, there's a lot of great information.

Thinkfinity!

Thinkfinity is an educational resource provided by the Verizon Foundation and all materials are absolutely free. There are eight resource providers shown below that are currently affiliated with Thinkfinity - each image is a link to that tool. All of the tools allow you to search for lesson plans by state standard, by grade level, by interactivity, etc and most of the lessons offer interactive media resources and some even have primary sources digitized for viewing. Such incredible resources! Link directly to Thinkfinity or check out sites of interest below:

Job Hunting during an Economic Recession

If you are like me and graduation is fast approaching it is Job Hunting time! However, the current global economic situation is dicey at best and jobs might become difficult to come by. Here are some helpful tips. Happy job hunting and good luck!

Find a Job You Love
onmoneymaking.com's advice in finding a career you will enjoy.

Use the Right Words
A CareerBuilder CNN article that lists 25 words that could actually hurt your resume and hinder your application.

Job Search Rules
A CareerBuilder CNN article that discusses seven exceptions to job search rules.

Use RSS Feeds
A Lifehacker article describing on how to set up RSS to email feeds for job searching

Example Resumes
Emure, a resume site, aids "first-timers" in developing resumes and cover-letters.

Create a Video Resume
Education Portal's tutorial on creating a video resume.

Get Ratings and Reviews of Companies
glassdoor.com is a site dedicated to what current employees have to say about their employer.

Does Client Size Matter?

I've been selected as the Lead ISD on a project with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and I must say, I am a little nervous about working with this client because of the size of the corporate university and the size of the contract. This paper, titled "Size matters—but not
in the way you think" that I stumbled across, explains how Instructional Designers should use the size of their client to their advantage. The author says that for all of us who plan to become Instructional Designers and create courseware for large organizaitons, there is nothing to worry about. I consider this to be good information for recent graduates in the field of Instructional Technology.

Second Life vs. Reality

Where are priorities placed?

I don't know about you folks but I have enough trouble trying to keep myself sane in reality let alone in a cyber-relationship too. This article and its related links go to show how wrong things can go either in real-life or with a fantasy relationship. This article and the links with it just blew my mind. Now I see why I haven't visited this Second Life site. I guess you can take anything too far. I want to know where these people find the time to spend on developing these online relationships when real life is so time-consuming. They must not do anything with their free-time other than this Second Life site - affairs, divorces, rehab, killings... these are all a bit much for me to understand. Read this article and the associated links and see what you think.

Second Life Affair ends in Divorce

Instructional Gaming Presentation Resources

Here are some of the resources I used for my November 13th presentation.

Discovery Education Hidden Message Puzzle program (Classroom Resources tab) retrieved from http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/ on 2008-09-10.

Soapbox: Learning to Play to Learn - Lessons in Educational Game Design retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050405/zimmerman_01.shtml# on 2008-09-12.

Games in Education Video retrieved from http://www.seriousgames.org/ on 2008-09-12.

Teaching Facts and Concepts with Online Games podcast Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://iit.bloomu.edu/dit/pages/podcasts.cfm on 2008-09-12.

The Effectiveness of Instructional Games: A Literature Review and Discussion.pdf, Hays Robert T., Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division retrieved 2008-09-14.

Casual Games and eLearning for Adults breeze presentation Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://breeze.bloomu.edu/casualgames3/ on 2008-09-24.

Designing Interactive Sites/Online Courses

It is amazing how much we learn by experiences we encounter! During this course, we have discussed many issues regarding the development of online courses in terms of planning, reusability, interactivity, styles of e-learning and more. One topic that we have not talked about is color.

In observing a student teaching a lesson to a class on Monday night, I saw a great lesson on adjectives and adverbs. The student prepared a descriptive paragraph and color the adjectives and adverbs. All of the adjectives were type in red, and all of the adverbs were typed in blue. The students were asked to find things in common among the red words. At this point, I watched a student quickly begin asking questions to his partner. A few minutes later, we realized that the student was color-blind and couldn't identify which words were in red text.

Ah! How does this play into the development of online courses? I think it brings about a very important topic of which I need to consider when I develop an online course. To provide a little more insight on the topic, I would like to pass along a website that was sent to me. It provides suggestions from a gentleman who is colorblind.

Enjoy thinking about a new dimension of design that could help a student be more successful! http://particletree.com/features/interfaces-and-color-blindness

Repurposing Tools

Somehow or other, the wonderful and convoluted maze of hyperlinking led to me elearnity, which is a UK-based consulting service for corporate learning innovations. Like most corporate entities with an online presence, elearnity maintains a blog. I confess that I find most corporate blogs to be boring regurgitations of corporate speak, designed to market to a target audience. The Rapid E-Learning Blog, for instance is so biased in how it filters in comments, and while I enjoyed my first 6 months of reading it, eventually I realized that it's author was basically just writing variation after variation of leveraging Powerpoint and how great that is for a tool like Articulate. I realize the author is employed by Articulate, so some marketing copy is bound to be on the blog, but if you already know how to do some great things with clipart and the pixel real estate of Powerpoint, and you can appreciate a good job aid over a full course, the Rapid E-Learning blog gets old pretty quickly.

Sometimes however, a corporate blog throws you a curve ball and comes up with something really interesting.

In this case, the elearnity blog suggested tapping into the power of viral marketing and using it as a learning tool. Specifically, the author noticed SplashCast, which creates "embeddable entertainment." The full text of the blog post can be found here.

What interested me about the post wasn't so much SplashCast as it was the idea of repurposing tools that have already proved their success. We're often on a race to find the newest, most cutting edge web 2.0 tool, and there's certainly a lot to be said for bringing these tools and their innovations to learners, but what about using something else, that's already proved effective or even addictive, and using it for eLearning rather than its intended purpose? Kind of like repurposing a game for elearning, but in this case, taking the ideas behind viral marketing, and repurposing the marketing tool for socially transmitted education.

NASA - A Great Website for Educators and Kids Who Love Science, Math, and Technology!

I found a terrific website for anyone who is interested in Science. NASA has a website that features video clips geared to kids K-5, 6-8 and 9 to 12th grade. They are short, 5 to 10 minute video clips that are designed to inspire kids to learn more about science, technology, math, and engineering and are free to every student and teacher in the country! There are over 220 NASA eClips that range in topics (K-5) from What is a Tide, What is Weather, Digging in Moon Dirt, and The Math Behind How Gears Work. For 6th to 8th graders the topics cover subjects such as Lunar Habitats, Hurricane Hunters, Scale Models and Ratios, and Solar Power on Earth. Ninth to twelfth graders can learn about Space Food, How Global Positioning Systems Work, NASA and NASCAR, and Invention of the Doppler Radar. There are also videos for the general public such as how NASA technologies help archeolgists discover ancient artifacts in the NASA 360: Episode 4 video. I watched a few and they are fascinating and I learned a lot like there are always 24 satellites circling the earth but 12 only available to you (for GPS) because the other 12 are on the other side of the world! And the new applications that scientists are finding out that GPS is useful for that it was never designed for! Curious? Go check out the site, there is something for everyone!

Web 2.0 or Web 2.No?

I found this interesting article referencing the economic crisis and what it could mean for Web 2.o technologies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7714453.stm

Online Design

While reading chapter 10 in the William Horton book, I chuckled a few times. The section on unnecessary scrolling made me think immediately about those 2-column articles as PDF’s that are sometimes required reading. Not that I am lazy, but I find it difficult to determine where to scroll to and so I just print out the articles. If the document is a book’s length, I try my best but do not usually get a full understanding of what the piece may have said. Times like these make me reflect on the assignments I give my students and whether some don’t do their homework because it is more of a hassle than it’s worth.
One other thing I considered when reading this chapter was to redefine my terms of legibility. I make it clear to students that if it is not legible, it may very-well be marked wrong. (Unless this is a learning disability, in which case we find another way to communicate). This term “legible” implies the ability to read the text or neat handwriting. There is always that one person who wants to write yellow on white paper and argues that they wrote very neatly! Some of these online design ideas really do apply to pen and paper settings as well. A contrasting color scheme is necessary not only for the visually impaired or colorblind, this is one design element that is crucial for everyone.

R5 Productions

R5 Productions
This website is, in my opnion, the best compilation site for indie shows in Philly. R5 allows users to access info using Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. Some of the Philly venues that are listed on this site are the 1st Unitarian Church (my favorite venue!), Starlight Ballroom, Johnny Brendas, and The Barbary. The site displays show-listings for each day, offers sample music downloads for the bands playing in that show, a link to purchase tickets to the show, and a brief review of each band. This is a great site for finding new music on the indie scene. Since R5 uses "social networking" tools, I figured it was a good opportunity to post about the site. Enjoy!

Needs analysis experience

This week I wanted to share my views on my favorite part of the instructional design process, the needs analysis. During the past summer I worked for a large Scandinavian insurance company in Finland, and I was responsible for conducting a needs analysis for upcoming development projects for the company’s intranet. My task was to analyze the use of the intranet from the customer service representatives’ point of view. The proposed problem, as presented to me, was that the information necessary for the call center customer service representatives is too scattered and difficult to find while they are communicating with the customers over the phone.

Needs analysis is a vital part of the instructional design process. Needs analysis is conducted in order to really pin down the client’s problem, or the gap between the current and desired situation, as accurately as possible. Knowing the gap will help instructional designers to create training, which will solve the problem or answer to the training need more efficiently. If the needs analysis is not completed and compiled thoroughly, even the best training can completely miss the purpose and be useless in terms of the actual learning results.

Clients, who are not familiar with the process of designing systematic instruction, often doubt the importance of the needs analysis process. They have an opinion as to what the problem is in their minds and they see the proposed needs analysis as an irrelevant t extra cost on the budget. However, as instructional designers, we have to emphasize and explain the importance of the needs analysis to the client as it is in their benefit that it is completed. Even though the client has an idea as to what their problem is, often there is a bias underlining that thought. The client can’t be objective to the problem and on top of that might not have considered all the different angles of it.

I was hired for the intranet development project last summer to bring an outsider’s view to the problem. With very limited knowledge in the field of insurance and no previous experience in using the company’s intranet I was able to look at the situation objectively and with a fresh set of eyes.

During the eight week period I was assigned on the project I tried to compile as much information as possible and from as many sources as possible. I utilized

• observations
• interviews & discussions
• surveys
• website statistics
• information mapping

to find out as much information as possible. I talked to Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) who were involved in the use of intranet in different ways, for example;

• customer service representatives (working in the call centers as well as in person)
• intranet updaters (insurance specialists responsible for creating content for the intranet)
• web-masters
• call center internal trainers
• call center team managers
• “insurance support center” personnel

After asking millions of questions, spending hours observing, compiling notes from numerous meetings and interviews, crafting website inventories and structure maps, I finally compiled a needs analysis document with my opinion of the problem and suggestions on how to solve it. As a major conclusion I found that the underlying problem was the fact that the process of developing and updating the intranet was very unstructured and not standardized. The customer service representatives are dealing with a vast amount of information to begin with, and as the information is organized and presented in an inconsistent manner, locating it becomes very difficult.

From my analysis, the company gained relevant information for their intranet development projects, and last I heard the efforts were directed towards providing training and better guidelines for the intranet developers as well as creating standards on how the information will have to be structured and organized in the intranet.

I thoroughly enjoyed the needs analysis process and I was genuinely excited as I was able to solve at least a part of the problem for a company. Even though the result of the analysis was not a pure instructional need, the experience I gained from all the SME interactions and tools I used to gather data were wonderful for me.