Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

Just arrived at the house of Arun, a colleague in Atlanta. I wanted to share two experiences from my trip from Atlanta to here.

1- On the Disney Magic Express they magic your brain all the way to the airport. One of the commercials on the bus showed a kind of virtual online world of Disney: Virtual Magic Kingdom. I'm not going to check it out but is seems a kind of Second Life experience for the major theme park in Orlando, an online version of the Magic Kingdom. So now you can go visit Disney World from your home.

2- On my Delta airlines flight I enjoyed the personal screen in front of me with free games. One of the games was in-flight trivia. The quiz shows 20 questions. First you get the multiple choice question, then the correct answer and some extra info 'in case you are interested', then you see how everyone else in the plane that is playing answered and your score. What a fun way to do trivia together on a plane! Maybe I should build something similar when there are enough questions in the about2findout.com database. BTW, I came in first for my second game, in spite of the sports questions :-)

Labels: disney, trivia

The Learning 2007 Conference is over. I had a great time and some new things to follow up upon. The general sessions were a mixture between a personality show and learning related topics, and with some great speakers. I saw Arch Lustberg before on the video's of last year's conference, but he makes a great performance with an important message: in this digital age, how you present yourself and your story to people remains as important as ever. I also remember the very insightful talk by Don Tapscott. He didn't give the intended talk on his book Wikinomics, but talked about talent 2.0 and how the generation that now enters the workforce differs. On site over the past 3 days 4 students have developed two learning games. They will be on the public domain soon. One is on pandemics and one on new hires. But I also got to play with someone's iPhone and see that magic. And I got to test out my site on different systems and browsers as the computer room up here has Macs, Linux and Windows machines brotherly next to each other.

The braindump:

• ROI is caca
• empathy is hard to outsource and hard to automate
• pecha kusha (however you pronounce it) are fun ways of presenting
• Gaming can be done on top of everyday technology such as blogs, podcasts, email etc
• Fail your way forward (learning games)
• Rapid learning: if we as a learning service don't do this, they will do it themselves. (which is not necessarily bad, lets enable and get out of the way)
• Google Docs now has presentations as well as text documents and spreadsheets
• learning is flat(ter): peer to peer
• The lines between knowledge management and learning are blurring
• For learning 2.0 to work, the learning service needs to evangelize the tools
• Unified collaboration
• A lot of learning time is spent in meetings
• Someone (Dan Pink?) is going to publish the first business manga book next year
• ROI: what if your children ask to get an ROI on your parenting?
• 48% of our families don't know what we do as a learning professional

Now my holiday really starts. I'm going to visit colleagues in Atlanta, then explore the state of Florida all the way down to Miami beach. Back on November 5th.

Labels: learning 2007

The learning 2007 conference has started yesterday evening and is now at full speed. During the opening session there was an interview with Doug Lynch from Wharton university. He claims ROI is a false number and the learning profession should move towards other forms of evidence to prove its value. Actually he used a quite strong word to describe the significance of an ROI number but I'm not going to repeat it here, both because I didn't get it well and because it's a dirty word that would bring down the level of this blog :-).

I went to his session this morning. Here is my dump:

• We live in a knowledge economy and more people learn in companies than in schools. However there are no peer reviewed studies of ROI in companies. That is worrying.
• It is not that ROI cannot be done, but it is very complex to do and not necessarily meaningful. A quick poll of the audience says 71% say their companies do not have an accurate ROI measurement in place.
  
• Learning is accounted for under GAAP as an expense, even if we talk about it as an investment in people
• Some reasons why ROI is not what we necessarily need: ROI is outcome based but in a learning organization for example it is the process of continuous improvement that matters. For ROI you need to define, measure and monetize all variables that make up the benefits and the costs of learning, while controlling for all variables except for learning. What goes into ROI is also very specific to the company and context.
  
• All things being equal, what is the impact of learning? Well guess what, all other things that affect performance are not equal, performance is affected by lots of things we cannot control for in the calculation.
  
• What we are actually are talking about is the IMPACT of learning, and evidences of that instead of the financial number related to outcome benefits and associated costs ratio.
• So we should all be like researchers and find evidence and validate that in a scientific way. Work with the evidence you can gather or with what is easily quantifiable.
  
• Americans are typically asking a lot of questions and interrupt the flow of the presentation and go into side discussions much more than you will see happening on European conferences. That is not necessarily bad, but at this point I lost it so I don't really know what we could do instead ROI. We did not get to the end or half of the slides, but they will be on the learningwiki.com site later on so maybe I'll get the point of the session later.
  

At a previous conference I remember in a similar session some people and vendors boosting on how they got a number and cracked the holy grail on proving learning value. Then the last speaker came and declared that mankind has been teaching each other stuff since the dawn of time, and we still do not know how to measure its value, although we all feel it does matter. So who started the whole ROI saga in learning anyway? Was it the business that noticed learning and wanted to manage it like any other service or investment? Or was it the learning function that wanted a place at the table and decided it should come up with a ROI number to achieve that?
At the end of the session I'm still as confused about the ROI debate as before. I have more reasons to believe that ROI is not the unifying answer. But I still have no idea as to what other evidences to replace it with. So hopefully I'll get it later and in the mean time stick to Kirkpatrick.

Labels: learning 2007, masie, ROI

Mobile learning is on a lot of lips in the learning industry. It's not new, but still experimental with too small adoption rates. This is my braindump from the deep dive session on mobile learning hosted by Judy Brown, David Metcalfe and Fabrizio Cardinale at the L7 conference.

• Think about linking people with people instead of people to a device.
• What is the definition of mobile learning? Are laptops mobile learning? Is reading a book in the bus mobile learning? For me it is a subset of e-learning but on particular devices as delivery medium. So all the usual characteristics as AnyX learning would apply as it is general for e-learning as a whole, but specific to small and portable devices. Those characteristics include reduced screen size but also presence awareness. Turns out the definition exercise is bringing us nowhere so use your own or the one on Wikipedia. Flashback to the days where we define 'what is a learning object?'. Don't get stuck on a perfect definition, move on.
• Non-office audiences make a great target for m-learning. Think of field technicians, field researchers, sales people. It is easier to bring work to learning than to bring learning to work.
• Tip: look for a pilot project where the devices are already there for example sales training or executive training on blackberries.
  
• Also a lot of potential for m-learning outside of the west. Think Africa and Latin America where mobile phones are the prime device and not computers.
• Problems with standards, networks, platforms. As any experimental product there is some room for standardisation. It is not long European cell phones will work in the USA. There are 700 different platforms and devices to build for, and they will be obsolete in 6 months. How do you deal with that? Carriers, platforms, devices all need more standards. Also m-learning benefits from standards such as separation of content in XML files, SCORM and OKI or SOA webservices.
  
• Not to mention the cost of mobile connections being a barrier. But those things are improving.
• Lot of interest for m-learning comes out of the health care industry.
• M-learning cannibalizes events and meetings.
• We saw lots of examples: performance support systems, pandemic preparedness training, museums, pod casts, city guides, job aids and checklists, class notes, games, wearable learning
  
• Blended approach: blend m with other forms of e-learning for example do the assessments via mobiles but the richer media forms via PC.
  
• An issue still remains: how to track the use of m-learning or podcasts? Some tools offer tracking or LMS like capabilities, but this remains an important item when selecting the technology and setting up the project.
• How to make m-learning that is as sexy as online gambling or sex? What will be the killer app?
• If you don't spend your dollar the right way, you will have to spend it again in some years.
  
• Elliott Masie dropped by. He predicts most of the m-learning applications will be in the field of performance support (knowledge in the hand). The device will connect to content, context and community.
  
• Elliott quote: "The office is one of the worst places to learn."
  
• M-learning should not just be about squeezing things onto smaller screens. In any innovation we first mimic another technology and set up a metaphor that limits thinking outside of the box. It will happen here as well.
• New hardware features coming: projection in devices, voice recognition, convergence of networks and devices.
• Some tools and sites: hotlava (also some tracking), zirada, iWriter, iQuiz, mob5, mobisite galore

In the end, I was wondering what stopped adoption of more m-learning. Then it hit me that I never do it either. So why am I not learning the m way? I see two reasons: I don't need it and it costs to much. I have a computer everywhere I go: at work, at the customer, at home even here at the conference. Why go back to a more inconvenient device? So I might not be the target audience for big m-learning. And although I have an expensive e-ten Glofiish Windows Mobile 6 phone, I'm not paying the prohibitively expensive UMTS or other data communication subscription to it.
In short: m-learning has a future and a nice one, but we need to figure out what the best applications are and some barriers such as standards, the multitude of devices and technologies and cost schemes need to be addressed before the tipping point can occur.

Labels: learning 2007, mobile learning

Well, it took me a while to get here (two hours delay of my flight, 5 hours waiting for my connection flight) but here I am at the computer room at the Learning 2007 conference in Orlando, Florida. The land of endless opportunity, everything in big size, women with bad haircuts, men with white socks and where the bushes sing Disney film tunes! My cell phone doesn't work in this country so it seems but at least there is free internet in this big room full of different computers. I'm next to a big Apple screen btw, next time I'll try to get me one of those just for the fun of it.
Over the next few days I will share my experiences on the conference. The reason I'm attending this one out of my own pocket is because it promises to be different. So far I got my badge and program bag and guide. That's pretty standard. But I also got an electronic voting device. Every participant gets one for the duration of the conference and I guess it is going to be used for interaction during the general sessions. There is also a special notepad with a template for taking notes in a structured way (visual map, notes, links for follow up...). And we can select from ten different social buttons to pin on our T-shirt. I'm currently wearing pins on e-learning, "I'm new", Friends Wanted and Blogger.
As for content, I'll be particularly interested in anything 2.0-like, learning effectiveness and e-learning in corporations. I'm off to start with a free one day seminar on Mobile Learning before the official opening this evening. To be continued...

Labels: learning 2007, masie

This Saturday I'm leaving for Orlando, Florida and I'm not coming back for 2 weeks. So I took the opportunity to create a little quiz with 9 questions on Florida. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=VKPLF

Labels: about2findout, florida, quiz

For my friend's birthday some weeks ago I ordered a bunch of Moo minicards based on 100 of his Flickr photo's. Moo is one of these new 2.0 businesses. That means the name doesn't give any clue what the site is actually about :-) . Moo loves to print. They are specialised in printing these original mini-cards (like half the size of a business card) or sticker books based on 100 different pictures, texts, etc. The order process is smooth, the price is fair and the quality is excellent. The site also links with other popular places like Flickr, Second Life or Facebook and can directly import from those sites. Just select the pictures you want, position on the area you want on the card, and you're done.

It's also the little things I like. For example after ordering you get status e-mails from the robot 'little Moo'. And they try to be environmental friendly.

The other day I decided to buy 100 text minicards with 'about2findout.com' in all kinds of layouts and colors. They web site ordering had a bug that day, but afterwards I did manage to order. I'm anxious to see the result. I'm going to use these minicards as business cards for people I meet at the Learning 2007 and Online Educa Berlin conferences.

Labels: moo.com

In about 2 weeks time Elliott Masie's Learning 2007 conference starts in Orlando, and I'll be one of the participants. The preparation for the event is going on at full speed, and I must say I'm impressed so far with the building up to the event.

One of my colleagues describes conferences as 'the cult of the wicker man'. He means that on typical conferences, people gather from all around, have a couple of days of intense information sharing, networking and festivities, and then burn it (the wicker man) all down to the ground in a big closing ceremony. Nothing but memories remain and the whole thing starts over the next year.

Learning 2007 does its best to break away from that: there is for example a learning wiki where all sessions have their page, is free for the world at large to view and remains open after the conference. As part of the pre-conference building up there are various mails, YouTube video's, an RSS feed for updates and the social network site I blogged about before. I had a quick look at it again and I found in my circle of 500 closest people not one other Belgian, but a few Dutch people, some people interested in quiz, ... I hope to meet other people that have experimented with 2.0 stuff in learning so I can take some of that into my very own 'social quiz/learning' site about2findout.com when it opens in December.

It remains to be seen how much of this wicker man will remain in November, but the signs look good. As conferences are an annual thing anyway with a lot of the same attendees, why don't they all encourage a more continuous conversation and networking that results in a yearly cumulative point?
Oh, and I enrolled in the Sunday pre session on Mobile Learning for two reasons: it is interesting, and it just became free (thanks!). I guess I'll see Disney backstage another time.

Labels: learning 2007, masie

The development site about3findout.com is 6 weeks old, and already got its third major user interface redesign. This time I tried to apply the most common principles of web 2.0 interfaces. Hope you like it and find it easier and more intuitive to navigate. It's still not done completely, but hey, it's 2.0 so perpetual beta :-) .

In this article I want to point you to the various places on the Internet that helped me to reshape the site.

First of all I redefined the color schemes for the site. I still have four separate color coded zones Quiz zone, Author zone, Club zone and Help zone. But the very bright and painful pink and green colors have been replaced. I went from a 3-color scheme to a 2-color scheme. For every zone there is one color 'letter' for the characters, and one softer color 'lightshade' for the background. There are a lot of color sites out there on the mighty Internet, and these were most helpful to me:

• The color toolbox lists useful sites that will learn you about colors on the web
• Color combos: this is the site I used to get matching color pairs in pink, blue, green and yellow. You can create and share color palettes on this site. Nice initiative.

The next site that helped me a lot was the 'Web 2.0 How-do-design Guide' on webdesignfromscratch.com. It inspired me into applying the following design principles:

• Simplicity: (As good as it gets - don't think users won't find their way and clutter the screen with useless information)
• Central design: My previous interface could scale across the screen. This one has a fixed body of 800 pixels so it should fit on 800*600 screens. Larger screens will have white margins.
• Two columns: one main body and one navigation and command column on the right
• Separate and clearly visible top section: I now have a big black belt on top so the body stands out from the header. The logo is always 'in your face'.
• Navigation: clear navigation sections in the colored boxes on the right.
• Big text: average font sizes have increased on the Internet since web 2.0
• And then things like the 'beta' star, the rounded corners, the gradient backgrounds,...

And luckily these days you don't need to be a graphical artist yourself to create nice logo's, boxes, gradients, backgrounds or tabs. All that is available for free on the net. Here is what I used and recommend:

• Tabsgenerator.com : nice site to generate tabs in various formats and colors
• Stripegenerator.com : from the same makers as tabsgenerator.com, this site lets you very easily create the o so popular striped backgrounds
• Web20badges.com : didn't use them yet, but if I ever need a badge or 'new' star sign, this is the place to get it
• LogoCreatr : the web 2.0 logo was created with the logo creatr. There is another popular logo creator site here, but I found the logocreatr better because it allows for multiple designs and more configuration options such as colors, size and transparency.

Labels: about2findout, design, interface, web2.0

I added a new question type to about2findout.com today. From now on you can create multiple choice with multiple answers questions. The way you create them is identical to multiple choice with 1 answer, except for the fact you need to check the correct answer boxes.

When the question is played, you get two tries if you answer incomplete the first time. All the rest is the same.

For this type of questions, you can have either 0, 1 or up to 6 correct answer options.

You can find a sample question here on the cities of the state of Florida.

Labels: about2findout

I've designed the site from scratch as a multilingual site. Boy, has that been more work than I anticipated. Today I want to explain how I see languages in about2findout.com. It's more than just the interface.

But there is of course first and foremost the language of the user interface. At present the site's interface is completely translated into English and Dutch. You can set the language at the top bar and the setting is remembered when you next log on. For anonymous users the language is the one from the browser, with English as default language. Multilingual interfaces are very common across the Internet, but most sites keep it at that.

The dynamic content (the questions that is) that users make can be in one of six languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Users can take any of these when they create new languages and also spell check is provided in these languages.

And then there is something (I think) new: I'm not assuming people only speak one language. There are basically only two countries in the world where it is a safe choice to only speak one language. In most other parts of the world you'll need to understand 2, 3 or more languages. So in your profile, you can indicate all languages you understand. Regardless of the interface language choice, when you opt to get a random questions you will be offered in any of the languages you understand. Also the search screen will automatically filter for the languages you understand.

BTW, doing questions in languages you don't completely master is also a nice learning experience. My friend for example currently flickrs (is that a verb?) in Spanish, to learn the language.

Labels: about2findout, languages, multilingual

I want to share with you what I think is one of the best examples of learning 2.0 that I have encountered this far: javablackbelt.com.

It is a Java certification site maintained by a community, and not by a vendor. You can earn belts by taking exams and prove your Java skills in various areas that way, but you can also contribute to the exams with new questions, improve and comment on the current questions, take beta exams, etc.

There is also a commercial aspect to the project: on a separate site companies can use this platform to assess job candidates and freelancers.

I'm really impressed by the initiative, and I'm even more impressed to say it turns out to be a Belgian initiative founded by two former colleagues at IBM Learning Services: John and Nicolas. Well done guys and good luck!

Thank you Geert for pointing this out to me and good luck as a brand new Java consultant.

Labels: javablackbelt, learning2.0