link to website
from the UK
"Ready for Work has been designed for young people starting out and can help you make a successful transition from education into employment.
If you are in full-time education in the UK (or were within the last 12 months) and are planning to become an employee, the Ready for Work programme is for you.
registration required
Courses available:
* Ready to learn
* Thriving in diversity
* Showing respect at work
* Be enterprising!
* Managing stress at work
* Health and safety in the office
* Making email work for you
* Working with the internet
* Data protection at work
* Drugs and alcohol at work
* Be a responsible emplyee
* Me and my career"
link to website
from Godfrey Parkin
"Training, as we have known it, is not driven by consumer demand, has uninteresting ROI, provides really fuzzy benefits, and cannot be easily differentiated. But that can change. Education focuses on helping people know more; training focuses on helping people do more; Google focuses on helping people find out more – when they most need it."
Screen Sharing Tools: The Best Low-Cost Solutions - June 2005 Update from Robin Good
"If you want to show your computer screen, a presentation or a set of documents to someone connected to the Internet who lives across the ocean, you need to use a "screen sharing" software or online service."
A working paper from acirrt at Uni of Sydney that discussed the impacts of trends in the construction industry that have changed apprenticeship patterns. These include decreased public construction organisations, the move to subcontracting, unionisation, training markets and licensing.
"An open access, peer-reviewed, community journal on knowledge management in development - for and by development practitioners and researchers.
KM4D Journal focuses on knowledge management in development. It includes diverse knowledge management approaches in development organizations, large and small, in the South and in the North, and aims to facilitate cross-fertilization between knowledge management and related fields.
KM4D Journal offers peer-reviewed practice-based cases, analysis and research concerning the role of knowledge in development processes, and provides a forum for debate and exchange of ideas among practitioners, policy makers academics and activists world-wide. By challenging current assumptions, it will seek to stimulate new thinking and to shape future ways of working.
The journal is strongly related to the KM4Dev community of practice but aims to promote KM knowledge and approaches in the wider professional development community. Wherever possible, we will link up with existing kindred communities or networks."
vlog 3.0 [a blog about vogs] » link to website
From Adrian Miles
"These are the notes for the video blogging workshop that was held as a part of BlogTalk DownUnder. They consist of general notes (that won’t make a lot of sense without having attended the workshop!) and links to useful material.
The structure of the workshop is:
* Getting material
* Capture
* Editing
* Copyright Issues
* Compression
* Embedding
* Publishing and Enclosures
* links"
link to website
Albert Ip proposes a Maximum number of posts requirement in discussion boards for courses: "Setting a lower limit as a hurdle requirement does not promote quality and may be viewed as a requirement for the sake of a requirement."
this blog post from Jay Cross has a neat graphic of workflow learning as performance support.
"Knowledge is of two kinds.
We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
Quote from Samuel Johnson
Presentation by Dr. Gary Woodill on Effective Management of Distributed Online Educational Content
list of possibilities:
1 Advising/Counseling Tools
2 Arts-based Experiential Tools
3 Automated Online Assessments
4 Blogging
5 Collaboration Tools
6 Communications Tools and Artifacts
7 Competency checklists and challenges
8 Complexity Modeling and Information Visualization
9 Computer Assisted Assessment CAA, Computer Based Assessment CBA
10 Data Mining Tools for Learning
11 Digital Galleries and Museums
12 Digital Libraries
13 Educational Portals
14 e-Learning Grids
15 e-Portfolios
16 Flash-based Educational Materials
17 Industrial Informatics
18 Integrated Electronic Problem-based Learning
19 Intelligent Search Engines with Dynamic Categorization
20 Interactive Instructional Programs
21 Learning Objects/Sharable Content Objects
22 Mobile Educational Content
23 “Modding” Modifying online games
24 Online Courses
25 Online Laboratories
26 Online Publishing
27 Parameterized Content and Quizzes
28 Peer-to-Peer Content
29 Playing Online Games/ Simulations/Scenarios
30 Podcasting
31 Rich Site Summary RSS
32 Semantic Web
33 Streaming Media – Audio and Video
34 Survey and Polling Results
35 Virtual Agents
36 Web Quests
37 Web Services
38 Webinars/Live Online Conferencing or Social Events
39 Wikis
40 Workflow Learning
link to website
from Jay Cross
"Of course, this model is ever-changing to fit with shifting requirements. More appropriate for Flow Learning is a model that works over time"
This article/post includes some interesting diagrams showing the flow.
link to website
From Ted Cocheu's Rapid Elearning Blog
"Informal learning is essential and inevitable and trying to formalize it past a point seems counterproductive and silly. But making it more efficient by providing more specific knowledge repositories and more precise tools to access them makes a lot of sense—and the payoff, in terms of increased productivity, would be enormous."....
link to website
Stephen Downes reports on a conference presentation about elearning in call centres. The approach takes advantage of slow or down time in call volumes and focusses on 15 minute sections of learning. Through integration with other systems in the call centre, the training presented to the learner is individualised in relation to their performance. SImluation and observation of experts is one of the learning methodologies. Strong student tracking is incorporated.
Maarten Cannaerts writes a blog called Conference Blog - Towards a learning society which records thoughts prompted by the conference. Many leads to follow up here.
link to website
From Learning Circuits two interviews about mlearning in which Clark Quinn says, in response to the following question: In your opinion, what is the ideal type of content to be delivered via mobile learning?
'Minimal! It can be any content, but it can't be a lot. I don't think m-learning is e-learning lite, however. I think it's a different relationship. For one, it's closer to performance support. What it can and should be is an adjunct to some initial concept presentation, but one that keeps the learning active over a long period of time with smaller bits, something we don't do with e-learning.'
From my viewpoint this also requires that the device that is used must also be part of that person's world for other reasons eg phone, pda. Part of workflow in preference to part of a person's social life.
I suspect I may already have linked to this page, there are a number of resources here, many examples are more for the school sector but the concepts are the same. Includes templates and checklists in the Training Materials section.
What looks like a comprehensive guide to various Flickr related tips, tools and applications.
link to website
I'm thinking about how this could be used? The map needs to be large enough scale with sufficient separation between the points to differentiate between the items.
"Google Maps' integration of satellite imagery is now wasting thousands of hours of office productivity. People are spending hours Google sightseeing, memory mapping, and discovering that the satellite images hold many delights that we've never realized existed before. Planes mid-flight, love letters carved into cornfields, and even a crowd gathered at a Sunday football game make for some spectacular images. Satellite imagery has been around for years, so why is Google Maps that revolutionary? It's simple, Google Map's AJAX interface is dramatically easier and more fun to use than the page-event interfaces that preceded it. As tools and interfaces continue to evolve, people begin to discover all sorts of magical things that have been there all along. With games like geosense, a9.com photographing all of our neighborhoods, and geocaching growing in popularity, geography hasn't been this fun since Carmen Sandiego stole the Eiffel Tower."
link to website
from the Mind Tools website
"Creativity Tools
Develop creative solutions to the problems you face
This section of Mind Tools explains a wide range of techniques you can use to come up with creative and imaginative solutions to the challenges you face.
The section starts by showing you how to use three systematic approaches to creativity. It then discusses some important lateral-thinking based approaches, which can be used to come up with startling and original solutions to problems. Finally it explains how to use two powerful and important problem-solving processes."
I found this quite a good basic introduction to mindmapping.
"How to Use Tool:
Mind Maps are very important techniques for improving the way you take notes. By using Mind Maps you show the structure of the subject and linkages between points, as well as the raw facts contained in normal notes. Mind Maps hold information in a format that your mind will find easy to remember and quick to review."
I'm cleaning out my Bloglines account - Lately I've been flagging articles that look interesting but not getting back to them.
I'm focussing this afternoon on Learning Design....
As long as we focus on lectures/ instructor led workshops for our staff development in-house, we will do little to shift staff members perception of what is an effective learning experience - yet this requires a real focus on making the new staff development activities more engaging, interactive and exciting. Alan Levine talks about the difficulty in getting staff to share their expertise in a less formal way.
He also mentions the Groups feature of Flickr which enables members of a group to discuss images. This would be an easy way, coupled with one of the Flickr uploading tools for teachers to share images with students and be able to have discussion linked to them. I have been thinking about the use of the image database tool in WebCT but that is a more of a standalone tool. I wonder about permissions etc for publishing photos to this site if they include students. I guess there are controls such as being able to restrict access to specified people. I also note from an earlier post that the notes can take html, and add hotspots to photos so you could get as fancy as you desired really.
Alan Levine also has some thoughts about podcasting, only a few of which I am referencing here. As with a screencast, the tools to record audio by itself have been around for a while. But what is different about podcasting is the pull technology where items of interest (or import) are gathered for us by the computer. As he duly notes though, one of the challenges is to draw teachers away from the 'recorded lecture' format. I have been thinking about how podcasting may work in the vocational education sector and would like to try to use it, especially as a means of drawing out some of the underpinning theory from workplace practice. The actual gadgets for delivery are part of the challenge - while with a cd-rom we can offer library computers to access a multimedia rich resource, devices to play audio recordings are far more a personal item.
This page
lists resources for a course in Continuing and Distance Education with a focus on Instructional Design.
Brenda Wisniewski & Kevin McMahon write about "formalising informal learning" with the examples being about integrating knowledge bases and collaboration tools with elearning into the workflow. The examples focus on companies where it sounds like access to up-to-date information is critical and employees see themselves as knowledge workers.
via George Siemens:
An e-toolbox lists a variety of tools available to be used by educators many of which come from JISC projects in the UK. Categories include Assessment Content Creation Communications Learning Management System
Mobile Learning Multi Media Networking Repurposing
Repository Videoconferencing VLE Application Web
Whiteboards, with products noting whether they are commercial, freeware or opensource.
Thoughts about what learner-centred means: "On the periphery, we periodically talk about the learner. This is changing, of course, as concepts of "learner-centered" gain momentum. Yet even this development assumes that our main task is one of giving learners control. It's not. Learner-centered is about designing from the learner's perspective; ensuring the course/content is reflective of the needs of the profiled end-user."
link to website
by Ellen D. Wagner
"The heightened interest in mobile possibilities for teaching, learning, and research can be attributed to a number of factors: the continuing expansion of broadband wireless networks; the explosion of power and capacity of the next generation of cellular telephones; and the fact that mobile telephones, a familiar tool for communications, are already fully ingrained in contemporary life as part of our social practice. In other words, unlike most other mobile devices used in education, devices such as PDAs or tablet computers, there is very little extra effort required to get people to adopt and use mobile phones. Rather, people can be offered more things to do with the mobile phones to which they are already attached and with which they are already reasonably competent. "
This article notes the shift from mlearning being mainly about laptop or handheld use to the possibilities opened up by the 3G netwprks and their potential rich media transmission. She notes that people will already have knowledge of their smart phone devices rather than learning another device such as a PDA, the question for me is about people learning another way of percieving that smartphone device, and the cost issues in 3G. The idea of using txt for communication with students is great, but many detractors will raise the question of who pays if the txt communication is required to participate in the learning experience. Maybe this issue will slide away as cost of accessing the internet will? Coming from a public education inistitution many teachers will be concerned about passing increased costs to students - afterall we can always point students in the direction of Online Access Centres or libraries as an alternative whereas access to txt messaging is far more a personal gadget embedded in people's social lives. Maybe for this very reason cost will not be an issue as long as other means of communicating with other students and teachers is available and we should just do it! as many are already, quietly.
link to website
From the Tasmanian Government Project Management Site
Project Management Fact Sheet:
Language Matters
Version 1.0 (May 2005)
"There is a number of language conventions used in the project business planning process. Using conventions assist in the precise and accurate expression of objectives, outcomes, outputs etc and make it easier to differentiate between project terms.
The conventions do not have to be followed and there are other, equally valid, ways to express a concept. However, using a common language allows all people involved in projects to understand each other more clearly."
link to website
from Dave Pollard
"So if you want to set up a comprehensive Continuous Environmental Scan you need to put a bit more work into it, and you may have to be prepared to spend some money to access some material. And then you need to be patient and perseverant -- it takes some trial-and-error to get the keywords right so you don't get drowned in 'false positives' or more than you can read, and so you don't miss crucial articles. "
link to website
Dave Pollard provides a summary of a presentation about organisational knowledge management in a FAQ format.
I came across Dave Snowden at a session about education.au where his thoughts on social complexity were flagged of being of interest. Since then I have noticed his work being referred to in a couple of the business/innovation/knowledge management blogs I read on a regular basis. So this is the start of a collection of links that I will then be able to sit down with and trawl through properly.
Dave Pollard talks about Dave Snowden as well as Appreciative Inquiry here
A website from 2003 that includes many presentations gathered under headins such as Values, Future Stories, Springboard Stories from a group of experts in the field.
another website with a wide range of gorgeous lights but they only seem to ship to US, Canada and Europe at present.
some lights that can be joined together as modules, even come as rechargeable units. Based in France, need to email for shipping costs. Could be a good birthday present for Robin!
a discussion about the things that worked and didn't work when converting Hot Potato quizzes onto a Pocket PC.
link to website
From myfuture.edu.au comes a planning tool that "guides you through activities to help you explore your career. You will answer questions, explore career suggestions made by myfuture, select career favourites, clarify your career direction, and then, create an action plan to help you reach your career goals."
Registration is required to use the planning tool.
Workflow Learning Gets Real
by Jay Cross
Given That Workers in most American factories spend just 20 percent of their time making things. Supervisors spend no more than 20 percent of their time doing things that appear in their job descriptions. Knowledge workers spend just 20 percent of their time adding core value; the rest of the time they're looking for information, re-writing reports that have already been written, trying to get their computers to work, or attending meetings.
a compilation/ annotated bibliography about student reactions to educational technology including 'what students say'.
a very quick quiz to help determine an adults learning style with brief descriptions of the styles
link to website
A short article which outlines some sensible guidelines for bloggers wanting a repeat audience.
link to website
by Stephen Downes
"Probably the best indicator of what works in informal e-learning is what works on the web in general. After all, this is where much informal learning is already taking place. And the web is a medium that supports informal, random-access on-the-job training. Probably much of what counts as learning from the web is not even recognized as learning at all."