Tech4learning

The Social Media Handbook

A tip off from Amazon.com led me to order a new book from the UK website, based purely on the title and a very brief synopsis.  So when it arrived, not really sure what I was going to get, I was intrigued by The Social Media Handbook.

It's a large book, just over 500 pages and larger than A4 - more like a musical score in size, or one of those popular "games that trainers play" volumes.  Flicking through the book I saw pages and pages of footnotes and references and some interesting "font" discrepancies in places, alongside a variety of graphics in different "house styles".  Was this the result of a student project?  Then I studied the preface and rear cover and realised this was a true collaborative effort.  To quote directly from the text:

Topic relevant selected content from the highest rated Wiki entries, typeset, printed and shipped, combine the advantages of up-to-date and in-depth knowledge with the convenience of printed books.

So the many short and easy to follow chapters, with their frequent references and links to related sources of information, are in fact pieces of content from other digital sources, interpreted and assimilated into a paperback book.

The "handbook" is really a digest of a wide variety of social media tools.  Starting with a series of "articles", the contributors discuss the main themes of social media from "user generated content" through to blogging, wikis and "crowdsourcing", which was a new on on me.

The following sections highlight some of the most popular and not so well known tools in the categories of Communication, Collaboration and Multimedia, Reviews and Opinions and Entertainment.  For each tool, there is a summary table, followed by what can only be described as Wikipedia-like narrative.

You get quick tours and background information to tools such as Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; and Ning, Plaxo and Meetup.com.  You can read up on Wikipedia, Wetpaint and Delicious and learn more about Google Reader and Digg.  Flickr, YouTube and last.fm are also featured, along with Epinions and Yahoo! Answers.  Finally, you can look further into Second Life, The Sims Online and Forterra Systems.

If you're researching social media and their use for learning and development, then this is probably a good starting point.  The contributors have certainly done a lot of the groundwork for you. 

Rapid E-learning - Clearly Articulated

For a developer of a rapid e-learning authoring tool to have an independent publisher commission a book to explain how to use their software is testimony to the market domination of that tool.  To have that book's team of authors led by e-learning development expert, Patti Shank, is proof that this tool can be used to create high quality and instructionally sound content.  And for the book to be over 1,000 pages long and weigh 1.75kg clearly positions this tool as a feature-packed package.

So I was pleased - after quite a few months' delay - to get hold of my copy of Essential Articulate Studio '09.

This book provides a very complete guide to using the four elements that make up the Articulate Studio '09 suite, namely Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage and the Video Encoder.  Each of the different aspects of the software are covered - and I mean "each" - so you won't miss out on anything.  In fact, if the book wasn't so long, I would love to read it cover to cover, as although I've used this tool for over four years now, I know I've only scratched the surface of what it can do.

The first chapter provides a quick overview of the tool, including how to install the software.  The next chapter then goes on to look at the topic of rapid e-learning development, including the preparation required before embarking on a project.

In Chapter Three, the authors introduce the main part of the tool, Presenter, and as well as providing a brief introduction to this part, they also look at what to include as part of your project and good project management techniques.  The next four chapters cover all the elements of this application.

Chapters Eight to Thirteen focus on the Quizmaker software and again begin with some of the background preparation when it comes to creating quizzes and surveys.

From Chapter Fourteen to Twenty Five, the book devotes a lot of pages to individual explanations of the different types of interaction that can be created using the Engage program. 

Chapter Twenty Six brings together the publishing aspects of each of the three main software applications, before the final chapter puts the Video Encoder application through its paces.

The book also includes a CD-ROM that contains a 30-day trial of the software itself, together with a copy of the vendor's own documentation, plus links to some of the support resources on their website.

What I most appreciated about this book was the clear explanations provided at each step and the frequent illustrations.  As a frequent user of Articulate Studio, one of the barriers that has held me back from pushing the tool to its full potential has been the uncertainty about what would happen if, for instance, I tweaked something.  With this book, I don't need to worry about the impact something I do might have - I can see it illustrated for myself.  In particular, thanks to the content of Chapter Seven, I now feel much more confident in customising the player templates.

As well as the step-by-step instructions, the book is full of hints and tips on to get the most from the application.  This is probably the closest the book gets to providing some instructional design coaching.  If anything, given the background of the authors, I was expecting more of a focus on how the software could be used to reinforce sound instructional design techniques, but that's my only "minor" criticism of what is certainly a must-have resource for both novice and experienced Articulate Studio '09 users.

Grow Your Own Social Network

For many of us, our first attempt to create an online social network has been based on pointing our browser to Ning.com and fumbling around seeing what happened when you clicked here or there; and all the time comparing our first efforts to other established networking sites or other Ning-based networks that always looked so much more inviting than ours.  Now I'm the sort of guy who likes to have a sense of where he's going and what's possible, so I was delighted last year to notice that the For Dummies series was planning to tackle this piece of web-based software.

The book finally saw the light of day a few weeks ago and I've been reading it in phases.  My first impressions were so favourable that based on what I had read that week, I encouraged another fledgling Ning site developer to persevere with her endeavours.

After giving you a quick tour of a typical Ning site, the author encourages you to join an existing Ning site so you can explore further before even beginning to think about your own site.  Still from the perspective of a regular site member, you are shown how to get the most from the network you joined, including adding multimedia content, communicating with the other members and interacting with others.

Only when you've truly experienced the potential of a Ning site, does the book go on to show you how to take the plunge and create your own network.

You look at the structure and appearance of your site, before going on to customise your home page and organising your members.  You are shown how to exploit forums, notes and chats, as well as how to manage the different types of multimedia you can use, together with getting the most from membership groups and events.

As your site grows in popularity, the author provides you with guidance on the appointment and management of supporting administrators, before looking at some of the ways you can find new members and promote your network.

A high level but still practical chapter on using Google Analytics to learn more about the performance of your network is followed by tactics to keep your network alive and kicking.

The final section looks at how you can further leverage your Ning site by purchasing some of the site's premium services, how you can overhaul the look and feel with CSS code, use the Language Editor to localise the site for different nationalities and embed so-called OpenSocial Applications into the site.

As always with a For Dummies book, the last "Part of Tens" chapter summarises different ways to make money from your site, add further spice to your network and find tools to help manage the environment.

Overall, this book combines both the mechanics of building a Ning site, with a more general discussion of how to successful establish and nurture a successful social network site.

To Twit or Not To Twit...

This article on the BBC News website has stirred up some discussions on some training forums.

It would seem that the vast majority of postings are from a small minority of users and that many users fall into the categories of either those who visit the once only, or only post every few months.  To date, I'm very much in the latter camp as I too have struggled to really get going with this as a communications or social networking media.

I've struggled with its usability and - to be honest - its purpose.  And I've not really seen any evidence of its wide-spread adoption in corporate learning and development solutions - even as a pilot.

But I've recently added two books to my bookshelf in an attempt to get "under the bonnet".

The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein (hashtag #TwitterBook - read the book to find out what that's about) was my first investment - hot of the press as it was only published a few days ago.

This is a very quick read - it keeps moving apace - and works by using a written commentary on the right-hand side, opposite one of more screen grabs of real Twitter examples.  I liked the honest of the authors when they wrote, "[Twitter] can be surprisingly hard to figure out.  The screens aren't particularly intuitive, and the jargon and symbols are obscure.  Even more vexing, it's not clear at first why people are so enthusiastic about Twitter."  Given the results of the recent survey and my own thoughts, this one comment made me want to read the book so I could be enlightened.

The book covers the basics of getting started, goes on to get you familiar with "listening in" to existing Twitterers, then leads you through posting your own comments, using the service to share information and ideas, enhancing your personal profile and finally looks at how Twitter can be used for business purposes.

As I mentioned earlier, it's a fast read and maybe - at times - some of the detail was skipped, which meant I was still unable to fully comprehend some of the aspects.  I realise though, that that's a personal thing.

But my interest was definitely stimulated, so I went on to add "Twitter Tips, Tricks and Tweets", by Paul McFedries to my collection.

This is a more traditional "how to" book.  It's very detailed, with clear step-by-step instructions and illustrations that helped me to begin to appreciated the concepts covered in "The Twitter Book".

The content is similar - how to get started, customising your profile, sending Twitter updates and following other Twitter users - but then goes much deeper into areas such as using Twitter on your mobile phone (which is less useful for UK users), searching for information on Twitter, displaying your Twitter feeds on other sites (I'll be trying that out on this blog) and becoming an advanced Twitter user by using the ever-growing range of tools and applications that extend Twitter's power and reach. And there are some really interesting ways to make Twitter a very powerful tool.

This book is marketed at both the novice and more experienced user.  Again - and refreshingly given the "hype" - the author writes, "If you hate Twitter or are simply mystified by the whole thing, I hope this book will show you that although Twitter isn't the life-changing event that some folks make it out to be, it is useful and entertaining if you use it in a way that suits you."

Based on these two books, I will certainly be taking more time to explore its potential as a corporate learning and development tool.

E-learning 2.0

It was with great interest that I started to read this new book.

Not only because I used to work for the publisher's sister company in Europe, but because this was one of the first books I'd seen focusing on e-learning 2.0.

If you buy this book, get it for the good up-to-date chapter (3) on what constitutes e-learning today, including synchronous (live) e-learning and some comprehensive coverage on the "new" phenomenon of rapid e-learning and when you might use it versus the more "traditional" forms of e-learning.  It must be mentioned that the author runs a company that sells a rapid e-learning authoring tool, but although the examples in the book do reference this product, overall, there is little "hard sell".

Buy it for its reference to the concept of social networking in the business world and among adults (chapter 4) and its discussion about podcasting (chapter 5); also for the first specific coverage I've seen in a book about the use of m-learning within the corporate learning arena (chapter 6).

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on what makes a successful e-learning course and if you're using a rapid e-learning authoring tool, then the clearly presented discussions about all manner of design issues will provide a crash course in creating an effective course.

Chapter 9 brings the book to a close with another "first" for an e-learning book - a good attempt at demystifying the world of standards and integration, in which AICC, SCORM 1.2 and 2004 are clearly and simply explained.  I also welcomed the author's realistic take on the subject of reusable learning objects and her honest view - shared by me and others - that there are probably few real good situations where a "pure" learning object strategy would make sense.

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I did struggle with my first reading of chapter 2, in which the author explains the stages that an organisation will go through with an e-learning strategy.  The discussions here seem to align e-learning with website development, which I've never really seen myself, but that's not to say there weren't some good observations.

There is one section though - the author's review of audio within e-learning courses - where I have to use my own 15-plus years of experience to provide an alternative viewpoint to her comment that you should "think twice about deploying audio for your courses".  And I can only speak from my own experience, but from my days of deploying e-learning to over 70,000 staff at a large retail bank (where staff openly requested courses with audio, over those without);through consulting into large multinational organisations; working with two Brandon Hall award-winning e-learning development houses where audio was used throughout every title; to my more recent projects of rejuvenating Captivate-authored software training modules by re-purposing them with audio narration, I can testify that audio does make a very positive difference to an e-learning module. 

This doesn't mean (and here I agree with the author) the narrator reading word for word what is presented on the screen.  Instead the narration should only be reinforced with short bullet points or appropriate graphics.  With in-house rapid e-learning projects, including the voice of the subject matter expert can add the authority and credibility that some learners need to "trust" the content. 

In response to the comment that audio adds considerably to the production times, with my own rapid e-learning projects, it generally take two hours to record an hour of final audio and less than half that time again to perform any edits.  I'm currently able to produce a finished hour of content with audio in about 6 to 8 hours, which is less than half the time mentioned in the book.

But that aside - and thanks for bearing with me and my own personal opinions above - this is a good book for anyone new to e-learning and who's looking for up-to-date messages, which are lacking in the other books on the subject, many of which are now dated in terms of their messages.

Wondered about Wikis?

I've just finished a newly released book - most likely the first to actually tackle the subject of how do you use a wiki as part of a learning programme.

Now the Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning make no apologies for being set in the context of academic studies, but from time to time, I find some of their messages just as relevant for the corporate learning and development arena.

Using Wikis for Online Collaboration, although illustrated with higher education examples, nevertheless, contains a lot of useful material for anyone wondering how they could use a wiki as part of their training programmes.  It's also a very easy read.

It starts off with a basic introduction to wikis, including choosing the right tools and getting started using one. Then the authors go on to examine the practicalities of using a wiki for learning purposes, including the all important preparation of the learners to take full advantage of something which for many will still be a new tool.

The bulk of the book it devoted to how you could use a wiki to support three different types of learning.  And here, the book bases its content on the work of Bloom's Taxonomy - which I have to say - is one of the first times that his work has come alive for me.  So you can learn about different ways to construct knowledge, practice critical thinking and, most importantly, develop the contextual application.

For a corporate learning project, I found the critical thinking and contextual application uses to be the most relevant - including techniques such as "What if...?" scenarios, case studies and nominal group technique ... and process map, team challenges, respectively.

The book finishes with some ideas of how you can integrate the use if wikis with other forms of learning technology.

All in all, this is a good starting point for anyone keen to leverage this element of Web 2.0.

Bullet-proof Rapid E-learning

I've just finished reading one of the latest additions to my e-learning library, "Better Than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging e-Learning with PowerPoint", by Jane Bozarth. 

This book shows you how you can use PowerPoint itself to create e-learning modules, together with how you can improve the source presentations you might use in a rapid e-learning authoring tool, such as Articulate and Adobe Presenter (the two main tools she highlights in her many examples).

As someone who is still trying to find their way around PowerPoint 2007, the book provides frequent "how tos" based on both the latest and previous versions of the software.  And there are plenty of worked examples on the CD-ROM that comes with the book.

Given the space taken up by the many examples, the book is actually very easy and quick to read.  In essence, Jane shows you how to take a basic (and maybe "typically dry") PowerPoint presentation and apply good instructional design principles to it and how to use the many different features of the software to create powerful e-learning modules.

I particularly liked the sections on adding animation and interactivity - it's amazing what you can do - and how to add in narration, even if you're not using a rapid e-learning tool that also has this feature.  She also shows how you can link in external testing services such as Quia (which will be the subject of my next posting), to add in more sophisticated assessment.

And - thank you Jane - she shows you how to use a standard PowerPoint feature to remove the background from an imported image, so that you don't have a piece of clip art, stuck on, say a white background, on top of your lovely corporate-coloured background.  One of my personal dislikes!

Finally, even if you don't have access to a rapid e-learning tool (which usually does all the hard work for you), Jane shows you how to you publish your PowerPoint e-learning to the web and other destinations.

The Big Wide World of Web 2.0 in Your Pocket

I've got a number of books on the go at the moment...and too few long train rides in which to finish them...but my latest learning technologies book arrived this week and having gotten over how small it was, compared to the picture on Amazon, I was amazed to see how much content had been fitted onto its small pages and how easy it was to read.

And it's packed full of new information for anyone who is looking to see how they could embed Web 2.0 technologies into their learning solutions.  "Blogs, Wikis, MySpace and More" is big on the "more".

Each chapter starts with a good overview of a handful of the main players in that area.  So in the blogging chapter, space is given over to Blogger; Del.icio.us takes pride of place in the tagging section; whilst Second Life and MySpace lead the virtual worlds and social network chapters.  But at the end of each section, the author lists out a much wider range of alternative players in that area and for me, that's where the true value of this book lies, in revealing a wealth of numerous other providers who could offer services for corporate learning...even it they don't yet know it themselves.

I'll be particularly looking at the chapters on Web 2.0 for education and knowledge, personal management tools (some great collaborative scheduling programs in there) and the wikis and collaboration section.

A Blueprint for Wiki Success

I've just finished reading this very accessible book about getting started with the use of wikis in corporate environments.  There's not much out there at the moment about wikis (although that is set to change in 2008, with a number of new books in the pipeline), but this is the first non-technical book to very clearly give sound advice and suggestions for setting up and embedding a wiki in your business. 

Up to now, the books I've seen have come at the subject from the standpoint of the technology, usually "adopting" one wiki tool as the software of choice throughout the text, with not much attention paid to what you might actually do with one.  All the more credit to the author who works for a leading wiki vendor, who doesn't let this fact get in the way of his very useful commentary.

WikiPatterns by Steward Mader could be described as a primer for the great website that he's developed, www.wikipatterns.com.  This site - a wiki itself - goes into much more detail about the concepts of patterns and anti-patterns that he introduces in the book. 

Expressed simply, patterns are those behaviours that you see on a wiki that should be encouraged; anti-patterns are those behaviours that left unchecked, could undermine the use of the tool.  He breaks the two types of pattern into two further sub-categories, people patterns and adoption patterns.  The former describe the behaviours that people show when they interact with the wiki; the latter refers to those things you can do - and shouldn't do - to help the wiki to grow successfully. 

The book begins with a good introduction to wikis and provides a very useful discussion about how wikis address many of the failings of other "knowledge management" systems and approaches.  What struck me in these days of "informal learning", was the need to ensure that wikis don't become too structured - as was the case with knowledge management systems - as when things are too regimented or regulated, they become unusable for many and simply wilt away, which sounds an all too familiar scenario.

Throughout the book, Stewart promotes a slowly-slowly approach to introducing a wiki.  He provides a step-by-step approach to undertaking a serious pilot, drawing on the desired positive patterns, before rolling the wiki out further in the organisation, but again steadily, avoiding any "big bang" launch and taking into account the not so welcome anti-patterns.

Each chapter concludes with one or two real case studies (admittedly some of these were from academic settings) and the book itself concludes with a useful list of FAQs that in part repeat some of the content dotted around the main text.

This book has opened my eyes to how we could use wikis as part of our corporate learning solutions - the patterns provided me with lots of "light bulb" moments - and I'm looking forward to trying out some of my thoughts.

Are We Agreed? Using Consensus Applications in Webinars

Almost a through-away comment on the last page of my latest great read, The New Virtual Classroom, led me to today's findings.

I'd not really heard of the term "consensus applications", so I decided to Google the term.  After a few pages of results, I came across a number of solutions, firmly in the collaborate decision making arena...that all shouted "learning application" to me.  Most are based on a simple five-step approach, that we use time and time again in our face-to-face classrooms:

1. Present the issue
2. Brainstorm answers
3. Sort and categorise
4. Prioritise
5. Make action plan

So why not integrate these into our webinars - I truly believe that webinars should be about creating content there and then - not being preached at - or maybe even run them outside of any web-class?

The first "top end" solution I saw was ThinkTank from GroupSystems.  They declare they offer the technology standard for brainstorming, decision-making, consensus building and collaboration and having reviewed their on-line demo, I can see that they offer a sophisticated solution. 

You can choose from a number of templates depending on the objective of your on-line session, from a simple brainstorm to a comprehensive strategic planning.  Once you've set up your event logistics and invited your group, your participants can use a clever application of chat window technology to brainstorm new ideas.  After that stage is complete, the group can then collectively organise the ideas raised into a range of easily determined categories.  At any stage, you can add additional comments to a particular idea.  Then you can begin to weed out the good ideas from the less appropriate, but permitting everyone to vote on them.  If needs be, you can go one stage further and get the group to jointly prioritise the ideas, as well as casting their votes, i.e. a rank order vote.  You can even dig deeper and use multiple criteria to produce an analysis of alternatives.  Finally, you can create action plans around each of the chosen ideas and share the plans and all the event results in a range of reports with a wide variety or graphing and presentation styles.  Very comprehensive indeed.

The next solution I found was FacilitatePro from Facilitate.com.  Their approach follows a very similar process but they also highlight the surveying abilities of their service too - useful if your facilitators want to be better prepared for the session.  Their website walks you nicely through the various steps and their colourful interface and modules that address each stage in the process. 

Price-wise, both would appear to be very similar.  Whilst Facilitate.com publish their pricing on the website, an earlier third party review I found of ThinkTank quoted a similar amount, albeit for an earlier version.

I did find a third option....much simpler...and free...but one that could easily emulate the processes already discussed.  The interestingly named Thinkature offers a free hosted meeting space, characterised by the use of virtual sticky notes that you can post, move (aka sort) and prioritise in a rudimentary way, but no different from what we'd do on a flip-chart in a classroom.  You can chat too in the room and this can be both live and asynchronous and you can use annotation tools as well, which opens up additional learning possibilities.  I signed up to test it out and here's a screen grab of a mocked up brainstorm event.  Click on the image to view it larger and apologies for the fuzzy quality, but I hope it illustrates the tool's possibilities.

So whether you decide to use your webinar's application sharing or integrated web-tour/Internet browser feature to facilitate an on-line consensus building session or use these tools on a standalone basis, it's good to see that we can increase the interactivity of our web-based learning sessions in this way.