Where have I been?

It seems social media, web 2.0, and technology is everywhere! Where have I been? Before this class I had never even heard about Web 2.0 - now I see and hear it everywhere. The cloud? Only clouds I knew about were in the sky, but now there are commercials about editing pictures and putting them in the cloud. Social media for me was Facebook, which I never access and LinkedIn, which I never access. Now everyone, including organiztions, are making the leap into social media. It is so much more than I knew - it is a way to collaborate, network, and learn.
Suddenly I have a heightened awareness about technolgy and it seems to show up in every part of my life. How did I not see it before?
It seems I am headed in the right direction now; I am a bit overwhelmed, but excited to see how I can use all these new tools in future training and in my personal life.

Thoughts about weekend three

Within one weekend I have gone from: I can edit video?? to  - I can edit video! It is unbelieveable! In fact, not only can I edit video, but I can convert video clips to a number of differnt files and even sort of know what they mean. Yep, I now can throw around MP4 and AVI as if I know what I am talking about. 

I am so excited about the new world this opens up for me both professionally and personally. The opportunities seem endless. Hard to believe we can grab any YouTube video or any other video file and convert them into a file we can use; even VHS to DVD. Oh and all of this can be done in a reasonable amount of time. I still think it is crazy we were able to put together a video in less than a half an hour.  Check it out.

I thought it would take me weeks to make a video, which I am sure you could edit for weeks, but the ease in which you can produce a video makes this a great option I will consider when designing training.

My department at work has not historically used video, so I am excited to see how we can beginning introducing some audio files into our deliverables.  I will keep you posted on what we are able to do.

R Phones Dead 2?

Jeewan blogged about the death of books. What else is going to become extinct due to technology?

Jeewan's blog reminded me of an article I read about the death of the phone. The author pointed out an important feature the phone is missing: information about status. You have to call a person to determine if they are available to take a call. People now us text, IM, and social networking to have conversations or even as a way to determine if someone is available to talk. It was interesting to read about the how the number of calls and the length of calls have decreased.

Do you think the phone conversation is an endangered communication option? Or do you agree with the author that "the calls we do make will be longer, reserved for the sort of deep discussion that the medium does best". Can technology actuallly help use identify the most appropriate way in which to use tools old and new?

Got Wiki?

It appears Wikis are everywhere. Yep, I am the one that said they would never be used in my company due to the lack of reviews needed to post informaiton, but it appears others did not get that memo. I have heard more about wiki's in the last 3 weeks then I have ever heard about them in my organization.
As with many new technologies, it appears the newly found ability to create a wiki on our internal project sites has made this the greatest invention ever. Sounds great, but unfortunately I think we are missing the mark. Only a few have access to add to the wiki and even fewer know how to add to the wikis that have been set up. Ithink this misses the point of what and why a wiki is used.
I love the attempt at using new technologies, but it seems the newest hotest things get overutilized and they often are not used as intended.

Do you guys see people jumping on the technology bandwagon to often and without an understanding of how to use the tool effectively?

From what I have seen, I think we are missing the point. We have overused the term wiki,

1. They are not really wikis - they are uses as anything from discussion boards to blogs
2. Only a few have access to add to the "wikis"

Social Learning in the Future

                                                           by Elias Bizannes

I stumbled upon an article that supports everything we are learning in this class, and emphasizes the importance of technologies for learning in the future.   In fact, the authors believe if learning and development professionals do not embrace and utilize technologies to create a new way of working and learning, the learning function will become irrelevant.   The article provides 10 predictions of what social learning will look like.

Looking Ahead at Social Learning: 10 Predictions

By Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd

Prediction 1: Augmented reality learning emerges

Prediction 2: Most learning incorporates use of a mobile device

Prediction 3:  Games and simulations are used for every content area

Prediction 4: We will have a huge appetite

Prediction 5: Peer-to-peer learning blossoms

Prediction 6:  Expert and credibility ratings create trusted search networks

Prediction 7: Search bots go on the prowl for you

Prediction 8: Governments will become more involved in ensuring that its citizens have access to training and retraining

Prediction 9: The learning function's focus shifts to accreditation, with less emphasis on the learning process itself

Prediction 10: You will be rated publicly, much like a Yelp or Amazon rating for people

Some of these predictions were things I might have expected. For example:

Prediction 2 – most learning incorporates use of a mobile device. But many of the authors’ predictions were things I had never heard of and still cannot quite wrap my mind around.  Such as Prediction 1 – Augmented reality learning emerges. In fact, you will have to read about it yourself since I cannot even summarize in my own words how it works. I would need to copy it word for word to ensure I explained it right.

I thought this was a great article that gave me a lot to think about. Hope you like it too.

More thoughts about audio...

Once again I am thinking about how much we can do with audio.  It seems so simple, but we don’t use it as much as we could/should?

Meeting the training needs of our sales staff is a continual challenge. It is increasingly harder to balance between providing the knowledge needed with the time they have in the office or at a computer.  How can we do a better job of using the “window time” they have in their cars?  Audio seems to be the answer; whether it is an actual podcast that is created weekly or bi-weekly or audio files that provide just in time training on hot topics.  I think we have an opportunity to create some new training deliverables, using audio, which can still provide the knowledge needed but in a format that allows the sales team to take it on the road.

Could I Really Be Considered "Techy"?

I know. I find the idea of me as a person with any technology skills a stretch as well. However, I have to share that for the first time in my life I found myself in a situation where I felt borderline "techy".
It all happened during a staff meeting last week. We were brainstorming about what we need to do better. As you can image, technology came up a lot. By the time our session was over we had a list of "new" technologies my department thinks we should learn to use. The list read something like this:
                                                                                                            Photo by Dean Johnson

• Podcasts
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Skype

This is about the time I started to find myself in unfamiliar territory. I not only understood all the "techy" terms people were throwing out, but I know how to use all of those technologies. The list created at work looked very similar to the syllabus that was create the first night of class. Had I not taken this class I would have been very intimidated with that list of technology, but now I am excited and cannot wait to help find ways to use these technologies.

Editing Audio: More Than Just Fun

                                                                 By Tim Patterson

Last week I had a chance to see firsthand how important it is to have the ability to edit audio files. Using adacity and editing audio was one of my favorite activities from the second weekend, but I have to admit it was my favorite because it was fun not because I thought it was something I would do a lot. But last week I saw how editing audio saved my department a lot of time and money. Let me explain.

I have been working with our e-learning developers on a CBT that was due this week. As part of the CBT we asked two leaders to record the introduction. This was used to try to provide the WIIFM to the learner and show how important this topic is to the senior leaders. You may have noticed I said senior leaders. For any of you in the corporate world, you know how hard it is to schedule time with senior leaders and to add to this one of the leaders was in an outside office. Lucky for us we were able to get the time to record scheduled and just by chance there were others in our department going to our outside office the exact time we needed to go - so we tagged along to record the audio needed.

Sounds like everything was falling into place - right? Well, did I mention that compliance approved the scripts we used for the audio, however, when the recording took place one of the leaders made a few changes. Seems harmless, but compliance did not like the changes made and wanted us to remove some information. Oh no - now we have to schedule more time with the senior leader to re-record the entire script, we have to drive 2 hours to do this, oh and we only have 2 days to get this done.

Or ...

We can edit the current audio file we have to remove the information. Lucky for use the information that needed to be removed was at the beginning of a sentence and there was a comma after the information. This provided a natural pause that made removing the information easy and clean. I knew the information was removed, but when I listed to the new audio file I could not tell is had be edited. It worked!!

Editing the audio took minutes, while re-recording audio would have taken days. The ability to edit the audio file save us both time and money. I am learning the ability to edit audio is more than just a fun thing to do - it is a valuable skill that really helped us out last week.