Doctorate Degree Online: Hot List - April 1, 2009 to April 11, 2009

Coming back after a week of being mostly disconnected I'm woefully behind on email and even more so on my reading. Luckily, I have a short cut to seeing the stuff that is generating interest across most of the top eLearning bloggers. So, here's the hot list for April 1 - April 11 via eLearning Learning ...

Top Posts

The following are the top posts from featured sources based on social signals.

Top 100 eLearning Items- eLearning Technology, April 7, 2009
Interesting that my own post got the top spot.
My top ten tips for getting started with eLearning:- Ignatia Webs, April 6, 2009
It ain’t always easy to dive into eLearning. It always looks much easier than it is. Although everyone learns most from their mistakes, it does save a lot of money if you keep some tips in the back of your mind. If you are indeed considering to start with an eLearning project, you might want to demystify some eLearning myths...
Building Better Learning Games- Learning Visions, April 9, 2009
Interested in building casual games for your learners? Read on for notes from a webinar today, April 9, 2009: Building Better Learning Games: Leveraging Game Design and User Testing for Results Our hosts today: Enspire Learning (Ben Katz) Doorways to Dreams D2D -- financial entertainment. Work with and for consumers how to better manage their money. Focus on casual video games. (Nick Maynard) Skillpoint Alliance (Kristy Bowden) Partnership of profit and non-profit organizations.
Communities, PLEs, small groups, & power- Adventures in Corporate Education, March 31, 2009
My mom loves telling the following story about me, to emphasize the fact that I have always been bossy. I am the oldest, and I have one brother who is 16 months younger than me and another who is 3 and a half years younger (there are seven of us in all). Apparently, we all played together very nicely until my brothers discovered that they didn’t have to play exactly they way I told them to play. Once they figured this out, they would let me play with them as long as I didn’t try and dictate the rules.
Solar power for your small and big mobile devices!- Ignatia Webs, April 7, 2009
While trying out different types of solar panels, I began to like the set of solar panels mentioned below. Just imagine having to go abroad and no longer having to worry about electricity... ah, what bliss! With solar powered technology you will get all the workspace and electrical independence you need, even in your back garden. This sounds a bit like a sale pitch, so I have to warn you in advance, there are a lot of other solar panels for different equipments out there.
Brain rules #3- Clive on Learning, April 1, 2009
Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently In this chapter, John Medina explains how every brain is different from every other: "When you learn something, the wiring in your brain changes." "What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like." "Our brains are so sensitive to external inputs that their physical wiring depends upon the culture in which they find themselves." "Learning results in physical changes to the brain and these changes are unique to each individual.
Why mobile learning is on the rise and benefits diverse populations- Ignatia Webs, April 3, 2009
In January 2009 Carly Shuler (a fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center ) came out with a fabulous paper on the benefits of mobile learning entitled: pockets of potential - Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning . Although the document focuses on mobile learning for children, you can easily deduct the benefits for all learner groups. Carly Shuler recently graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with an Ed.M. in Technology, Innovation and Education, where she studied how new media and emerging technologies can be used to effectively educate children.
US surveys show e-learning on the rise as training budgets fall- Clive on Learning, April 2, 2009
Thanks to Kineo for pointing me to the Market Update recently released by Ambient Insight which forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 16.3% from 2008 to 2013 for learning technology products and services. The report notes that "the market is favorable for learning technology suppliers, despite, or perhaps because of, the recession." The report forecasts especially rapid growth for collaborative e-learning, mobile learning, self-paced learning, and simulations and games.
Informal Workplace Learning: paradigm changes - more- The E-Learning Curve, April 2, 2009
I'm looking at some influences which are contributing to the emergence of informal and non-formal learning in the workplace. In my previous post on this topic, I outlined five change factors: ... The E-learning Curve blog shares thought-provoking commentary and practical knowledge for e-learning professionals. Find out more... ...Tags: nonformal learning workplace learning organizational learning non-formal learning definition of learning organizational development informal learning.
Working With Online Learning Communities- Blogger in Middle-earth, April 1, 2009
This article was first published on Futurelab in January 2008. I've reproduced the text of the article here. Some links to resources are now no longer current. What is an online learning community? Since the end of last century, government initiatives throughout the world have sponsored the development of online learning communities in schools and other learning institutions. A community can be classified as a group of people, each with different expertise and with access to diverse resources, in which a sharing occurs so that individuals within the group can benefit from each other.
Why call it ‘eLearning’ when it is clearly NOT eLearning?- Don't Waste Your Time, April 1, 2009
This has been brewing for some time now. I don’t apologies in advance if you see yourself in what I’m about to say. You know what really gets my goat? It’s when people keep talking about eLearning when they actually mean ‘distance’ learning, or ‘online delivery’, or computer-based training (CBT). In the same way that everything has [...] ...Tags: eLearning Academia Academia 2.0 Blog CBT Distance Learning University 2.0 Web 2.0 Wiki.
Book: Mobile Communication Studies, edited by James E. Katz- Ignatia Webs, April 9, 2009
Before jumping into the Easter holidays: another informative book. If you are into communication, culture and mobiles, this book will be a good buy. The Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies was released by MIT Press in 2008, it covers 485 pages and the book is edited by James E. Katz. ISBN: 9780262113120. The variety of researchers and topics make this into a worthwhile book if you are looking to get a deeper understanding of what mobile roads are being explored right now and all over the world.
Top 9 Posts You May Have Missed- eLearning Technology, April 8, 2009
Since I'm out, I'm thinking this is a good time to point you to some past posts. The last post was what I've been writing this year that social signals say is good reading. Today, I want to point you to some posts that you may have missed along the way and a bit about why it might be worth reading. #1 Social Learning Models and LMS and Social Learning I've changed the title of the first post to make it more enticing. While it talks in terms of SharePoint, really the patterns described relate to all different types of tools.
Big Question: get your innovative eLearning ideas out no matter what others think!- Ignatia Webs, April 2, 2009
Big question of April launched by Tony Karrer via the Learning Circuits Blog is: stuck/unstuck or how to cope with old-school learning when your head buzzes with new eLearning methods and ideas. eLearning is fun, great, innovative, wonderful…. up until the moment you meet – most of – the clients (corporate or educational) feedback. While talking with a teacher-centered drilled client, your initial eLearning models and suggestions can be downsized in a way that leave you feeling bewildered.
Systems approach of designing instruction- Adventures in Corporate Education, April 8, 2009
I’ve posted before about the Dick & Carey method of instructional design - while I was taking a class based on the Dick & Carey method. This method of instructional design is very popular because it represents a systems method of designing instruction. Click on the image below to see a diagram of how this method works: But what does a systems method of designing instruction actually mean? The definition of system is: A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. from thefreedictionary.
Top Ten Annoying Tech Phrases- Kapp Notes, April 7, 2009
This post is inspired by Oxford Researchers List Top 10 Most Annoying Phrases and Wayne and Garth. I thought and thought but still came up two short...please...help me out with the last two annoying tech phrases, please add. 10. No, no move your mouse to the left (or right or anywhere "Back-seat computer driving") 9. Are you a Mac or a PC Person 8. I thought I sent you an email about that! 7. No, I didn't get that email, can you resend? 6. Didn't you read my Tweet? 5. Sent from my Blackberry (or iPhone) 4. That's so old, I blogged about it last week. 3. Are you on Facebook? 2.
Prezi goes live- Clive on Learning, April 6, 2009
Prezi is the most exciting new presentation aid I've seen in ages and today sees its formal launch. Prezi is a Flash-based tool that does away with the traditional slide show metaphor. Instead you arrange your images, text, audio, video and PDF files on one great canvas that you navigate throughout your presentation. What makes Prezi exciting is the way you pan and zoom from object to object, either on a pre-defined navigational path or at will. Until now, all editing was conducted online, but the release version now includes a desktop editor, which synchs up to your online account.
Top 20 Posts for Q1 2009- eLearning Technology, April 6, 2009
One of the best things about having kids is getting a Spring Break with them. I'm fortunate enough to be doing that this week. So, rather than doing my normal posts, what I decided to do was to go back and do a couple of best of posts during the week. Of course, I cheated and used eLearning Learning to help me come up with these.
Rapid Performance Analysis- Blender - Training Solutions, April 4, 2009
Rapid performance analysis, is there such a thing? In a discussion with a LinkedIn connection, the topic of a quicker way to complete an effective performance analysis came up. His company frowns on spending time up front completing an analysis and wants him to dive into course development to "Save Time.
New Webinar: Overcoming the Top 10 Objections to Social Learning- Engaged Learning, April 3, 2009
photo credit: youngthousands ( WEBINAR REGISTRATION LINK ) This one is going to be good! (As if the others have not been….) But I am particularly excited about this one. It is based on a topic I love AND there is more audience participation. Let me explain… At DevLearn08 I presented this live session. But what made it even more fantabulous is that earlier in the week I attended Dave Wilkins’ session on social learning. We talked afterward and were SO on the same page.
Can Your People Pass the Banana Test?- Bozarthzone , April 2, 2009
I'm researching an upcoming live-online session, "Tips for the Positive Deviant" and just ran into this anecdote: During a positive deviance workshop designed to surface strategies for curtailing the spread of AIDS/HIV in Myanmar, "The group consisted of prostitutes -- nearly all of whom insisted she faithfully made her clients use condoms. The moment of truth occurred when each participant was asked to apply a condom to a banana. Varying degrees of dexterity quickly differentiated the pretenders from the practitioners...
The Power of a Network in Action- Engaged Learning, April 1, 2009
Remember this? I originally created and posted this a few weeks ago . It shows the possibilities of having a strong social network. Notice the happy face on the right in the middle? Ya - that’s me. The difference between the right and the left is something I talk about in the conference sessions, webinars, keynotes and trainings I do, what I write about on this blog and talk about in the webinar. This power of the network has been valuable to me in many instances.
April 2009 - Getting Unstuck- The Learning Circuits Blog, April 1, 2009
Last month's big question got quite a great response. I'm very much looking forward to the response this month. The inspiration for this question comes straight from Gina Minks' post - I think grad school is making me crazy . She is in a graduate school program and is a great self-directed learner: I’m learning about things like instructional theories, learning theories, how to tie learning to performance, how to tie learning to business requirements, and ways to measure all these things. I’m learning that my technical skills are important as learning moves to a web 2.0 platform.

Top Other Items

The following are the top other items based on social signals.

Steve Hargadon: Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education, April 3, 2009
web2.0 education technology learning collaboration elearning trends nscc_learn.
SMBs and Social Learning Technologies, April 2, 2009
Here are slides from the presentation I did yesterday. The session was hosted by SumTotal Systems. SMBs & Social Media (Sum Total) View more presentations from Janet Clarey . Some notes: Polls: Most attending work in L&D with some HR, IT, and learning services providers Most attending work in organization with 2000+ ee’s but several were SMBs (under 2K ee’s for this presentation) Current learning delivery channels primarily ILT classroom and ILT online as well as a fair amount of self-paced e-learning.
Top Tools for Learning 2009, April 4, 2009
As mentioned in earlier posting, this year I am building two lists - Top Tools for Learners and Top Tools for Learning Professionals based on contributions received. Although this year's activity has only been open for a few weeks we are seeing some clear leaders.
Beware of Social Learning Backlash, April 11, 2009
I’m finding out that the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” has some major significance when it comes to introducing social learning (specifically, social learning tools) at an organization. In fact, even worse things can happen if you don’t market your offerings correctly… When introducing social learning tools and concepts, it’s easy to get excited and anxious to share our findings.
Build a Learning Portal Using WordPress, April 3, 2009
I’ve written before about learning portals and how they can be a great way to improve access to learning materials for users. I wanted to provide a more in-depth post that shows how you can create your own learning portal using the freely available content management system, WordPress . So, let’s get started… Refresher: What is a portal? (This paragraph is from a previous post .) A learning portal is a web site that contains links to all different types of learning and training materials for employees at an organization.
Here’s An Easy Way to Create Whiteboard Lectures for Your E-Learning Courses, April 7, 2009
I’m a doodler. It helps me think. When I present or talk to people I like to use a whiteboard. I feel like I’m better able to get my ideas across as I map them out visually. Not only does this help me express my ideas, it kind of forces me to lay them out in a manner that’s easier to understand. Dan Roam talks about this in his book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures . He shares his ideas on how to tell your story visually.
How to Find Pictures for Your eLearning " Engaged Training, April 2, 2009
Engaged Training My Ramblings about Training, Leadership, and Learning Home Subscribe Entries (RSS) Comments (RSS) Recent Posts How to Find Pictures for Your eLearning Social Learning: A Heart Issue What Are Some Good Survey Questions for Social Learning Adoption? Does Certification Mean One Is Qualified?
The Twitterprise - 2009 is about our Corporate Cultures, NOT the Technology, April 9, 2009
I follow @marciamarcia on twitter...and have done so for a while. Totally forgot that she also writes for FastCompany . Sorry, Marcia ;-( She wrote an EXCELLENT article titled "Twitterprise: Bringing Whole Selves to Work" . So much great stuff in it that you must follow the link to get it all in. The reason I like the article so much is that it truly gets to the heart of all this 2.0 stuff. After the honeymoon buzz of new technologies wears off, we are still left with the realies of dealing with the people in our organizations.
Learning Twitter Chat!, April 6, 2009
Blame it on Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), who’d been participating in Twitter chats for journalists and editors. She found them educational, and prodded a couple of us that maybe we should create the same sort of thing to talk about learning. We visited a few other chats, and it seemed worth experimenting with (it’s our duty, after all!). One thing led to another, and here we are: The first learn chat happens *this* Thursday , 5PM - 7PM PT, 8-10 PM ET. What do you have to do?
Changing how people and organizations interact, April 5, 2009
Jon Husband has recently published a paper, What is wirearchy? In case this is a new term, the definition of wirearchy is posted on the top right of my site. In the paper, Jon starts with the origin of the framework: In that context of ubiquitous impact, reams have been written about the erosion of the effectiveness of command-and control as the dominant model for leading and managing purposeful organized activities in business, education, government and governance, politics, culture and the arts … all the areas in which humans act together to create and get things done.
My Prerequisites for IDs, April 6, 2009
Ellen Wagner is a learning industry analyst with a passion for sustaining innovation and accelerating enterprise adoption of technologies for education, training and performance support. This is her blog. My interests in this ongoing discussion about instructional design competencies are both professional and personal. I have always been drawn to the way that one can structure, direct and produce a learning experience very much in the way that one can construct a museum exhibit, or art-direct a photograph, or write a screen play.
Social Media Goals, April 2, 2009
I spent yesterday touring the Web 2.0 expo (part of the time with fellow miscreant Jay Cross ), and it led me to think a bit more about social media tools and approaches. After touring the floor, having lunch, and touring the floor some more before the keynotes, my reflections have to do with hybrids and implementation. We were prompted to visit Blue Kiwi , which is probably the leading European social media platform. Talking to them, and the others there (Vignette & Lithium) has me reflecting more broadly.
ScreenCastle, April 6, 2009
Here's another online screencasting tool, that caught my eye. The reason it headlines with "One click screencasting" To launch the screencast recorder and record a screencast directly from you browser, just click the button on the right of the screen here : ScreenCastle [67 other screen capture or screencasting tools on this page of the Directory of Learning Tools] ...Tags: Tools.
Here’s What You Need to Know About Mobile Learning, April 1, 2009
Every few years it seems that there’s some hot new trend in the world of training. Right now it appears that mobile learning is all the rage. The world of mobile gadgets is converging with an always available wifi network. This gives us instant access to all sorts of information which fits in well with on-demand training. Since this part of the industry is so new to many of you, I thought it might be best to hook up with an expert in the industry to learn more. So I called one of my mentors and a real pioneer in the elearning industry, Dr. Werner Oppelbaumer, to pick his brain.
Chatting, April 10, 2009
Last night we held the first #lrnchat , a Twitter learning chat. As mentioned before, it was an idea from Marcia Conner based upon her previous experience with other chats and enthusiasm for Twitter. It was an interesting experience, with it’s plusses and minuses. There were great topics, and some interesting technical issues. The latter first: I finally ‘graduated’ from TwitterFox (a plugin for Firefox , and a great way to start Twittering) to TweetDeck, an AIR application.
Conceptualizing the Performance Ecosystem, April 9, 2009
So I’ve been playing with rethinking my Performance Ecosystem conceptualization and visualization. The original had very discrete components, and an almost linear path, and that doesn’t quite convey the reality of how things are tied together. I believe it’s useful to help people see the components, but it doesn’t capture the goal of an integrated system. I’ve been wrestling with my diagramming application (OmniGraffle) to rethink it. My notion is that systems, e.g.
Climbing the collaboration curve, April 8, 2009
Jon Husband sent me the link to short post by John Seely Brown, John Hagel, and Lang Davison on The Collaboration Curve. Everybody knows about network effects: the value of a network increases exponentially with the addition of each new node. ( Metcalfe’s Law .) Imagine what can happen if those nodes are people. Each new node gives them more opportunities to learn and to perform better. When people are actively pulling in learning resources rather than taking what’s pushed at them, the value of the network goes turbo, an effect the authors call the collaboration curve .
Model learning, April 8, 2009
On Monday, a hearty Twitter exchange emerged when Jane Bozarth quoted Roger Schank “ Why do we assume that theories of things must be taught to practitioners of those things?” I stood up for theory, Cammy Bean and Dave Ferguson chimed in and next thing you know, we’re having a lively discussion in 140 characters. With all the names to include, Dave pointed out we had even less space! One side was stoutly defending that what SMEs thought was important wasn’t necessarily what practitioners needed.
Push the Reset Button, April 11, 2009
Charles Jennings made a comment on Corporate Learning Trends that got me thinking about the need for a reset of the whole training function: Baldwin, Ford and Weissbein’s research (20 and 10 years ago, respectively) showed that the USA spends around $100 billion on training every year, but only about 10% of the expenditures result in transfer to the job. I’m sure if the research was re-run today the results would be similar, whether in the US, in Western Europe or anywhere else, for that matter.
Community Portals, April 3, 2009
Looking back at lessons learned from community portals (2005) I would say that the transactional portal is the only one that still makes any sense to me: Transactional: sites which are accessible, complete, thoughtful, and coherent; and with more than one type of on-line interaction (e.g. payment, application, consultation, bookings). RSS has blown up the content-only portal funded through advertising but the wide adoption of Twitter is giving content publishers a new push mechanism to get eyeballs to their sites.