I wasn't sure of the best way to organize my thoughts from the eLearning Guild conference so I decided the easiest thing was just to mine my notes and jot down the highlights (and in rare instances, the lowlights). So here goes…- Scorm Packager, which packages Flash, Dreamweaver, and Captivate pieces into a Scorm-compliant package.
- Adobe Air, which is a run-time player to run elearning content from the desktop (as opposed to the Web).
The demo also included new features in Captivate 4:
- Variables (e.g., for entering a user's name)
- Right-click functionality
- Inline text caption editing
- Widgets (e.g., certificate of course completion)
- A new feature to import PhotoShop files and then select the layers you want to use
- T2S (text to speech) feature (didn't see this one demo'd so not sure about the quality of the audio)
- Project templates that use placeholders for various things on a slide (not impressed with this one – see note below)
- A new feature so that reviewer comments can be inserted in the SWF
A side note about the Adobe presentation: At one point they flashed a bullet up on the screen that said, "Project templates help SMEs create instructionally sound content." As if that's all it takes is a template! Talk about insulting an audience full of instructional designers. Adobe lost a lot of credibility promoting their eLearning suite with that comment, and I e-mailed them and told them so. I got a robo-response back. Guess I showed them.
Then the first sessions began and it was a struggle to pick one with about 12 sessions running concurrently. I hadn't been to one of these conferences since 1998 so I decided to follow a "what's new" track. So the first session I attended was "Learning 2.0 for Beginners." Yes, if you didn't know, there is a Learning 2.0 as a result of Web 2.0. This session was disappointing because I was hoping for Learning 2.0 examples but the focus was on Web 2.0 (another case of the presentation not living up to its title).
The next session, "The Current and Future Mobile Learning Landscape," was excellent. The presenter, Judy Brown, really knew her stuff and provided lots of info, examples, and resources (many are on her web site). Mobile learning, or mLearning, involves using PDAs for learning. It looks like the most successful uses of this so far have been for executives and sales people. A good example of a job aid for these devices was epocrates, a program that provides medical info.
In the afternoon I attended another eLearning 2.0 session, but this one had meat. Omar Nielson from Genentech presented a case study, "Leveraging Online Workplace Communities for Learning and Development." The online community is called "Gene Pool" (I thought this was a clever name) and they've successfully used it for the onboarding of new employees (with discussion forums) and for informal learning and knowledge capture using wikis and blogs. The session immediately after was also excellent. Tom Stone from Element K presented "Blending Web 2.0 Technologies with Traditional Formal Learning." He distinguished between formal and informal learning, which helped me to wrap my head around where all the eLearning 2.0 stuff fits in (informal). He also made some interesting points about using wikis for best practices, FAQ's (where wikis are helping to reduce help desk calls), tips and tricks, lessons learned, etc. A best practice he mentioned was to "seed" wikis with content from existing repositories (in other words, don't send people to a blank wiki and expect them to magically start adding content). I asked him about using SharePoint's wikis and blogs and he said they were pretty primitive.
The first night was the only time I really had to explore the product expo so I didn't get to see as many of the products as I wanted. I stopped by the TechSmith booth to tell them how much I like SnagIt and to see if Camtasia is any more interactive than it used to be (it's not). TechSmith has a new product that is pretty cool. It's called Jing and it enables you to take screen shots or create screen movies and then upload them to their sharing site called screencast.com (or to Flickr, etc.). And it's all free. Another booth I stopped by was The Narrator Files. You can send them a script and for $20/page they will record the audio professionally and turn it around in a matter of days.
Thursday
Thursday's keynote speaker, Bill Tancer, was interesting and had a great dry sense of humor. He is the author of "Click: What Millions Are Doing Online and Why It Matters." He was so interesting that I bought the book and stood in line like a groupie to have it signed. He works for Hitwise, a company that collects and analyzes massive amounts of Internet search data (he emphasized that it's all anonymous and they only look at the aggregate). He also writes columns for Time and the Wall Street Journal. One interesting tidbit I picked up is that you can look at Google search trends at trends.google.com. His stories about porn and prom dresses were very funny but you'll have to read the book. He also brought data that showed that searches for eLearning have steadily increased especially during the economic downturn. He speculated that people who have been laid off are looking for opportunities to learn new skills.
I only attended two sessions Thursday because we were presenting during block three and opted out of the last block to go to Epcot. The first session I attended was lame -- basically a product demo and not a good one -- and nothing to write about. The second session was excellent presented by Tracy Hamilton, who drew on her own experience to show how to create a blog. Her enthusiasm prompted me to start my own blog. I also learned about some other useful eLearning blogs out there that I've listed on the side.
Our own presentation Thursday afternoon went well but it was sparsely attended (14 to be exact). But our topic was very Web 1.0 so in retrospect, I'm not surprised.
Friday
The final session I attended, "Will They Stay or Will They Stray? Strategies that Engage…," was presented by Allison Rossett, a professor at San Diego State. I have seen her name at a lot of conferences as a presenter and now I know why: she's very dynamic. The key point from this session was that to engage learners, they must feel the program has high value and feel confident in succeeding. Relevance and opportunities to be active, social, and successful aid in engagement. She also stressed that managers should also play a big role in engagement by guiding and monitoring progress.
The closing keynote speaker, Todd Maffin, was energetic, very funny, and wise. As soon as he started talking about "the myth of multitasking" I knew I was in love. He discussed the brain as a serial processor and when forced to multitask, it expends most of its effort on the act of concentrating, leaving one feeling fatigued but with no more accomplished. He presented evidence that this all results in a long-term loss of brain cells. Amen, brother. What does this mean for eLearning? That it's better to take a course in a "learning lab" on a PC that is free from the distractions of one's office. On a separate point, all week long I was immersed in Web 2.0/eLearning 2.0 and all the buzz was about Twitter so it was refreshing to hear him warn against "shiny object syndrome." In other words, don't jump on the bandwagon just because it's a shiny new object. Finally, he predicted that the top three opportunities in eLearning are custom development, content conversion to mobile (mLearning), and media services (e.g., video). He also stated that health care is the biggest user of mLearning.
So that's it. I learned a lot and met a lot of people doing interesting things. There was so much going on I always had this nagging feeling that I was missing something. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to go and I owe it to my colleague and co-presenter, Lani, for nudging me into it. I also owe it to her for getting us bumped into first class for the flight home. A happy ending indeed!
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