eLearning Roadtrip

Lines are being drawn...over learning technology standards and specs?

Interesting article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus about a growing shitstorm around learning technology standards.

Per Jeff Young, author of article in question: "The issue centers around a single line of the 53-page grant guidelines for the program, known officially as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program: “All online and technology-enabled courses developed under this [program] must be compliant with the latest version of SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model).”

So what's the big whiff?

And then I read a little bit further and all became clear: Dr. Rob Abel, IMS Global CEO, is pitching an absolute hiss over this particular requirement. Why? Because his group supports a different standard.

There is a rich and storied pissing match history that has developed between Dr. Abel and the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative of the US Department of Defense over the past several years, and I am very sorry to see that the stains are going to get all over this exciting new collaboration between the US Departments of ED and Labor. 

A bit of perspective -The federal government made a decision 11 years ago to develop SCORM as a specification to serve as a cost-saving criterion for RFP / vendor selection. ADL/DOD have been the keeper of SCORM on behalf of all the Feds. So it seems to me that the US Dept of Labor is well within their rights to adhere to their own government spec. Especially since the SCORM spec is built upon the standards coming from IMS Global, and other standards bodies, including AICC, IEEE-LTSC, and ARIADNE.

Hats off to Dr. Abel, he has done a great job persuading .edu that the IMS Global is the only standard that really matters. I mean that sincerely. IMS's Common Cartridge helps institutions get better value from LMS vendors and publishers. Even the most technically skilled educators don't want to worry about learning technology standards. The tap dances required to get things to interoperate in the old days of LMS ops were excruciating. Common Cartridge is a good thing, and he should be commended for his leadership on offering a solution to the big audacious higher ed  problem of content distribution and management.

But CCCT is a whole different initiative, one of several federal projects designed to force issues of openness precisely to have the different conversation. Because the IMS conversation only addresses part of the new opportunities. And the CCCT efforts are about tying education to training, jobs and development. Not the other way around.

(inserted note - SCORM dominates in corporate and government and  non-profit learning platform tech as an RFP "checklist" item. IMS dominates in higher ed. They are not mutually exclusive. They are different.)

It is pretty amazing to watch the lines getting drawn. Time to pull up a chair, grab some popcorn and get ready for some great pyrotechnics. 

Getting Ready for #ASTD TechKnowledge - #TK11

I am looking forward to being back in San Jose next week for the ASTD TechKnowledge 2011 conference. This is ASTD's dedicated event for learning professionals who are responsible for or interested in elearning and learning technologies methods, new media and other forms of digital solutions in learning, development, HR and beyond.

We will be at the San Jose Convention Center February 2 - 4, 2011. I'm personally quite pleased that Kara Swisher from All things Digital and Karen Wickre and Ann Farmer from Google will be joining us as keynoters. I'm looking forward to the cool things that my fellow committee members (Ed Prentice, Michelle Lentz, Steve Villachica, Kris Rockwell, Jonathan Halls, and Cammy Bean) have planned. I am looking forward to seeing Twitter and Facebook friends up close and personal.  I'm very excited about the mobile app we'll be using for our conference program. After a year of planning it's always fun when these things come together.

Cammy Bean has just posted a nice advance organizer of our event here. You can find out more about TechKnowledge, including how to register on site, by clicking here. Hope to see you there.

There's a New Sheriff in (US Higher Education and Labor) Town

Dr. Darcy Hardy has been appointed to the Office of Assistant Secretary Jane Oats, Employment and Training Administration (ETA), United States Department of Labor. She will be supporting the recently announced Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (CCCT) Grant Program http://www.grants.gov ) that plans to award approximately $2 billion over the next four years.

She has taken a leave from her current position as Assistant Vice Provost for Technology Education Initiatives, University of Texas at San Antonio, Office of Information Technology, and has moved to Washington DC for her one year appointment.

I am very pleased (and relieved) that she will be able to continue on my WCET Executive Council during her time with the US Labor Department.

You many remember that, a few months back, Darcy and I had a bet over the World Series baseball championship. The loser of the bet was to present a webcast on a topic of the winner's choice. (There were a few other details of the bet, but we'll come back to those in a future post). Lucky me, I won the bet. I have asked Darcy to please plan for a WCET webcast in late February to tell us about the new CCCT Grant program she is heading up. 

Her first day on the new job is Monday January 24th. Let's give her a few weeks to get settled, then we'll get something scheduled. We'll be sure to announce the dates on the WCET website. And I'll post something here. 

January 24th is also Darcy's birthday. Isn't it great how the stars aligned for that to happen. Happy Birthday my friend!

Your online learning minions are here to serve. Sign us up.

 

 

Why Electrowetting may be good for Flash

Electrowetting is a type of screen display technology. Engaget has called electrowetting the Holy Grail of display: flexible, foldable display surfaces offering full color, high refresh rates, visibility in all lighting conditions, and low power consumption. 

The reason I know this is because I just saw a press release announcing that Samsung bought Liquavista, a company that specializes in electrowetting technology.  Yes, that would be Samsung of the television display, computer display, mobile-telephone-with-display company.

It made me think about how cool it would be to be able to unfold a screen stashed in a purse and put it out on the table when you want to show your friends, say, a sports game in progress. NOT on an iPad. On a full-on, foldable screen.

Well here's how and where two unconnected puzzle pieces may connect. I often touch base with Diana Helander (@flashair) from Adobe's Flash Platform team to stay on top of all things Flash: Flash and iPhone and iPad,  Flash vs HTML5, Flash on mobile devices, AIR, standards such as H.264. Flash is very important in elearning. Diana shares my belief that developers need to know what's going on.

Diana recently reminded me that, as fellow members of the Open Screen Project, Adobe and Samsung and lots of others are looking at this notion of excellent screen experiences from an industry wide perspective. Flash continues to be an important part of that conversation. Not the only thing. But still very much a part of today's interactive Web.

The Liquivista acquisition underscore that Samsung is continuing to focus on display experiences. And  THAT world continues to accommodate the need for interoperating with Flash content. At least as we all figure out the migration path to HTML5.

I'm still not ready to give up my iPhone. But now I WILL actively consider Samsung tablet alternatives to iPads while anticipating big things in electrowetted screens.

Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Do YOU care about 4G?

I was amused by the reaction of several friends who saw yesterday's blogpost about QR codes fly down their Facebook feed. "What happened to you?" teased one of them I've known since high school."You used to be fun."

I agree that my interests in QR codes are a little tech-ish. It's just that I've been seeing them around a lot lately, and seeing them in the strangest places. They remind me of stories from the 1930s Depression when traveling hobos would paint symbols on the fence near a house to tell others about the person who lived inside, and whether it was safe or worthwhile to knock at the door and ask for work or a meal or whatever.

But the real reason I care about tech stuff is that so many people in my various personal and professional circles really don't care very much about tech stuff. They depend on me and people like me to care.

Here is a case in point from today's Silicon Alley Insider's Chart of the Day. Apparently a lot of people don't care about 4G. Which, considering how much people want broadband services on their phones, you would think they WOULD care. But no.

To that I say "au contraire, mes freres et soeurs!" You need to care! Because this is the kind of thing that makes a difference when you are trying to make up your mind about what kind of phone to buy, and are getting barraged by ads for HTC Evo Sprint 4G phones or Samsung Android phones with Flash, or Verizon iPhones or AT&T iPhones.

Crash course: 4G is very high speed broadband services for your phone. It will make phone web surfing and video viewing much more like the experience you have on your laptop. There isn't a lot of 4G available in the US yet. That will change, but it's still fairly new. Just be aware that if you live in the 3% of the country that AT&T ads say are not yet served by 3G it's gonna be a while before you see blazing fast speeds. Also be aware that while 4G and LTE are talking about the same basic thing -  high speed wireless broadband -  they are different specifications. And that will make a difference in the phone you buy and the carrier you select. Consider Verizon. They will continue to use a specification that only works in the US, the CSMA standard. This is different from the 4G extension of 3G, which is used in the majority of countries around the world. Might not matter if you don't travel. If you do you need to pay attention.

The iPhone situation....well, before you get a Verizon iPhone, just read the Consumer Reports news on the topic. 

Don't even get me started on data plans. We can save that for another day.

A QR Code of Your Very Own

There must have been something in the water this weekend - seemed as if everywhere I turned I found myself talking about QR Codes.

QR codes are the machine readable badges - basically overlapping barcodes - that are starting to appear on ads, billboards, in print media. They capture information such as a name, a phone number, maybe a url.  QR readers are apps on mobiles phones that will scan and decode the QR code and act on preprogrammed instructions - such as, to call the scanned phone number, or to click on the scanned website url.

So I knew the universe was speaking to me earlier today when I read a tweet from @HansdeZwart about a post on QR codes he'd made in George Siemen's open access SCoPE course LAK 11 - Open Course on Learning and Knowledge Analytics. 

Then I saw a recommendation from Allison Kipta to read David Hopkins' blogpost on QR Codes: The Nuts and Bolts, a very nice article that summarizes the basics of QR codes, how they work, and why you should care.

I was so inspired I made a QR code for eLearning Roadtrip. It looks like this:

If you have a QR Code reader on your phone you can scan this image and it will automatically take you to my blog site.

Kinda cool in a very geeky way.

I strongly encourage you to read David's post on the subject. It was quite good. Lots of ways in which this simple tool can be used to engage learners. If you can't wait, here is a link to a QR code site to get you started. Kaywa.com. But then go back and read the post. This is a cool way of sharing information that more elearning professionals need to know about.

Trust Me

I'm not really sure why some are so surprised to find that we elearning pros frequently work with and for people who don't "get it" as well as we do. Of course they don't. Our practice is to help our stakeholders do a better job using (1) technologies in their learning practices and (2) learning technologies in their business practices. That's what we do. It's why our customers give us money.

Of course it's easy to get aggravated at the mis-steps, the voluminous RFPs, the jerk project manager, the spread-sheet-brained executive devil. Creepy association people. Of course it feels good to vent. Social media users have found that Facebook status bars, Twitter posts, and  blogs are easy ways to share just precisely how one feels about everything, to everyone, in an instant. 

I just want to go on record saying that I think a well crafted, snarky dart is a thing of beauty. Sometimes one must loudly and proudly proclaim a principled position and bitch-slap the opposition. And sometimes people say stupid things and deserve to be called on the stupid things they say.

I really haven't been able to come up with a good reason for people to completely lose their good manners just because it is possible, even encouraged, to say whatever one wants to say on the Internet. A rude remark is no less rude just because it is digital.

Lest anyone think I am sprouting a halo and wings, rest assured, I am not. My quest is rooted in enlightened self interest. It's all about trust.

Chris Brogan talks about the emergence and importance of Trust Agents. His and Julien Smith's book on the subject is based on the premise that while it is easier than ever to reach your customers, it's also less likely that they will listen unless they trust you. Trust is the most valuable online currency today. Trust comes from reputation. Reputation is built a variety of variables -  competence, commitment to excellence, discretion. The ability to conduct civil discourse.

Civility. What a concept. 

These days I am paying attention to what it takes to build and maintain trust. And a lot of what I am seeing seems suspiciously like common sense. Behaving toward others with the same courtesy that I would like them to behave toward me. Thinking before writing down the snide remark, and thinking twice before hitting send.  Being mindful of the impact of snark, and to remember that what I think is hilarious and witty can sound hurtful and mean to someone on the receiving end. Remembering that tweets and facebook posting do tend to have a life of their own, and to never forget the value of discretion. To never really believe one's own press releases, and maintain a sense of humility (even when you know you are right). And doing one's best to rise above the petty and the personal. 

It will make a difference. Trust me.

Maybe the "E" Really Does Matter

Today's (January 13, 2011) early #Lrnchat session was loosely oriented around learning technology standards. As happens during #Lrnchat sessions on Twitter, moderators post questions for participants to discuss in 140 characters or less. One of today's questions asked participants to speculate about elearning in the future. In responding to this question my good Twitter friend Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson) remarked:

"In ten years, God willing, we will get rid of the silly "E" in front of stuff. (And maybe the "I", too)"

And all of a sudden, these words flew from my fingertips: "Consider this: Maybe the "e" matters. Designing for "e" demands technical acumen AND knowledge of learning", I wrote. And in writing that, I realized that I have completely flipped my point of view on this topic. Some might even say that I have flip-flopped. But that's okay. I prefer to think about it as being "enlightened".

Because these days I DO believe that the "E "- as in, what you can to to engage learners you  deploysoftware and hardware that plugs into power outlets or batteries or whatever  - matters.I don't know why people who are reasonable savvy consumers of electronic entertainment get so simple when it comes to thinking about what we can and can't do with that "E" for learning facilitation and support. Or that it might actually take some time to learn how to use some of the tech tools that are so easy to talk about.

These days, we simply can't afford for theoretical expertise and expert practical knowledge to be trumped by one's lack of technical acumen. Now that I am back up to my eyeballs in online learning and learning content creation I've come to believe that maybe the "E" really does matter, after all.

(As an aside, Dave and I chatted today, and we agree far more than we disagree on this topic. Didn't want anyone to think I was snarking about Dave. Oh, no I'm not.)

With all due respect to the theoretical and avocationally passionate among us - if you can't work with the tools, then  you really aren't a learning technologist. Anymore than the most techie among us, who wouldn't know a learning theory from a white paper, can be considered a true learning technologist, either.

These days working near the intersections of pedagogy, creative expression and technology, with the business chops to keep things running smoothly, requires a higher degree of technical acumen than ever before.  All of which is a long way of saying that the "E" really does matter, maybe even more that we care to admit. Because if there is one thing we have all learned over the years it's that it takes more than passion, great intentions and an LMS for the "E" to work in service of learning.