Posts From: Technologies

With the introduction of new authoring and delivery technologies, integrated fully with social networking platforms, the learners experience is changing. Now when we want to learn something new, the first thing we do is “Google it.” Using a search engine is so engrained as our first source of information and knowledge that is has achieved the ultimate status of being recognized as a verb instead of a destination.

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Software as a Service (SaaS) is certainly is not a new technology, and the benefits of SaaS are extremely well documented for those of you where this is a new concept. However, the importance of receiving superior customer service before, during, and after your SaaS implementation has become a hot topic for organizations looking to take advantage of the flexibility and decreased costs of SaaS, yet still demand superior customer service.

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Several years ago, we transitioned from being “training professionals” to “learning professionals.” I think this transition was a more effective representation of the role learning professionals were beginning to play as self-paced e-Learning and blended learning solutions became more widely used. Our role of actively training workers changed to the role of creating the tools and environment that gave workers the opportunity to learn. In this change, the worker took the active role in gaining knowledge and was no longer a passive recipient. As an industry, we stopped using the term “training professional” and began using the term “learning professional.” At this time, e-Learning or technology-based learning was still a small percentage of most businesses learning content portfolios.

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If you were in the training industry in the mid 1980's, you may remember one of the earliest LMS products to hit the market. It was a standalone computer program called Registrar® and was designed as a training administration package. Since then, the technologies have changed considerably, and I believe we are entering a new evolution of LMS technologies.

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In a recent article, in the Huffington Post titled Microsoft's Kinect Selling Twice As Fast As The iPad. It was stated that while the adoption rate of the iPad was fast, Microsoft has sold more units of it’s Kinect product faster than the iPad. It has sold over 2.5 million sensors within the first 25 days on the market.

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As if social media didn’t have a hard enough time getting off the ground in corporations, the repercussions of the WikiLeaks drama will certainly put a damper on organizations thinking in terms of internal correspondences. First people might confuse all wikis with something like WikiLeaks which is not the case. Wiki is just the name of a web site that is fast and easy to update. Second, and more importantly, social media might get painted in an unflattering light based on the actions of one web site.

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Online education offers many opportunities for learners, for managers and for organizations. But that value is entirely dependent on the quality of the design and its effectiveness in engaging virtual students. When planning online learning, today’s savvy instructional designer keeps an eye on learner support, especially when no instructor is in place. To ensure the outcomes you need, consider learning objects, help options and monitoring as solutions for delivering and tracking online training.

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Most people of a limited view of the possibilities of a 3D virtual immersive environment. They don’t understand all the benefits such an environment has to offer to an organization or the many application. Often they think of just a virtual classroom with virtual seats and virtual PowerPoint. They consider it a simple replacement for a 2D webinar. The fact is that VIEs offer much more than simply a replacement for 2D virtual classrooms.

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3D virtual immersive environments (VIEs) do not have to be 100% realistic. In fact, take advantage of the fact that you can do anything in 3D worlds and leverage that advantage. For example, if you want to create a gathering place for avatars, you don’t need to put it under a roof or even have it indoors. Since weather is not a factor in 3D VIE you don’t need a roof over your head. Also, put things close together that aren’t normally close together. If you are creating a corporate campus to mirror your own corporate campus, you don’t need large distances between buildings. Also, consider creating concept spaces instead of actual spaces. For example, if you want to teach about surgery. Create a giant surgical theatre that is larger than the real space so that lots of avatars can gather around and watch.

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It’s official. Jobs are coming back. In a speech given last Friday in Charlotte North Carolina, President Obama made a statement about jobs that "We are beginning to turn the corner!” He cited the latest data from the Labor Department adding that the economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest increase in three years. A quick couple of Goggles’ (or a “Topeka” if you caught the April Fool’s joke Google played) looking for local proof actually supported this claim and among the largest gainers…IT workers. In fact, companies are hiring IT workers at the highest level in quite some time. No surprise as those unemployed have taken advantage of retraining opportunities and IT leads the way there too.

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