Conference-only Discounts Extended

We've extended the conference-only discounts on Flashform Rapid eLearning Studio through August 25. To get $100 of either the Professional or Standard Edition, enter 'devcon06special' in the Customer Code field when ordering and you'll get the discount.

More Information & Purchasing

Conference Presentation Materials

Hi Everyone,

What a great conference! Thanks for all of your participation. It was so great to meet so many of you that up until now I have only known via email or on the phone.

There have been numerous questions about the presenter materials. They are available and online. We sent an email to all attendees with information about the materials. In summary, we are asking that you complete a short online evaluation of the conference and at the end you are provided the link and username/password to the conference materials.

If you haven't received the email about this for some reason, please contact Anna Alcoser by email or phone (801-766-2585) and she'll make sure you get pointed in the right direction.

Thanks again to all of you presenters. This year I actually got to GO to some of the sessions and they were excellent.

Your friend and colleague in e-learning,

Garin Hess
Conference Organizer
garinhess@rapidintake.com

Conference connections - continuing the conversation

Hi conference attendees!
I spoke with so many wonderful people while in Utah and hope that you will all stay in touch.
Even if we didn't get a chance to connect after one of my sessions, please feel free to contact me with any comments, questions, or ideas. You can email me at either brentschlenker(@)gmail.com, or brent.t.schlenker(@)intel.com.
As I mentioned in my sessions if you want to just get inside my head for my latest musings you can always check out the Corporate eLearning Development blog.

Also, if you will be attending DevLearn2006 in S.F. in Oct, I will be giving 3 sessions and sitting on a featured session panel discussion. The panel discussion is going to be quite exciting titled e-Learning 2.0: The Next Great New Phase or Just Hype? As you can tell, I have a few opinions in this space, and I've had some spirited, thoughtful discussions in the blogosphere with Tony Karrer already. So I would really like to get some of your open honest feedback from my Learning2.0 session so I can prepare this event. I'm really looking forward to incorporating all of your wonderful feedback and improving on these sessions.

Many thanks!

Web2.0 Starter Kit

The Web2.0 Starter Kit by Intel colleague and blogger Dawn Foster. 
This is some great stuff.  The Web2.0 idea and it's related brother Learning2.0 are huge concepts to swallow.  So following these steps and breaking it down into small workable chunks makes it less daunting. 
Step 3 is absolutely the most important step.  During my Learning2.0 presentation I use the following quote from the matrix to make the same point.

"nobody can tell you what the matrix is, you have to experience it for yourself." - Morpheus

Without a doubt, your world will change after engaging in Web2.0.  But you MUST engage.  Reading about it is great, but trust me when I say that DOING it is a completely different mind-blowing experience. 

If this Starter Kit doesn't get you going then contact me and I will help you...really!

eLearnDevCon2006 additions to the blogosphere

Just giving a shout out to new bloggers who attended my sessions at eLearnDevCon2006.

e-Learning Visions
I love the idea of eLearning Visions.  Nice work, Geradine!  I'm looking forward to reading more about your visions.
EvidenceSoup
Evidence-based ______________ (you fill in the blank) is all the rage these days.  I'm very glad that there are people out there driven enough to make the research happen.  I tend to go with my gut most of the time which has served me well over the years, however when making a sale, or convincing management, or investors to believe in me, that data sure does come in handy.

I am glad you both enjoyed the conference. Thanks for helping continue the conversation.

Why Learning2.0 changes EVERYTHING! A real world example

Since Corporate universities and training systems have been devised based on the traditional educational system, its not that great of a leap to think that what this teacher is going through will be the same transformation of corporate universities.  His post on Progressive discourse is a must read for all training/learning professionals.  I will say no more to give you time to spend at his blog.  Its just that great!  Check it out!

Who is blogging about the eLearnDevCon2006?

Hi attendees,
Who besides Matthew and me are blogging about their experience at the conference?
I would love to start a list. Add your post or link to the comments here and then we can all link to each other. Welcome to the edtech blogosphere.
Cheers!
Brent

eLearnDevCon Tuesday update - Games, Corporate YouTube

After giving my Wikis and Learning presentation (coming soon to a podcast near you.) I floated around the sessions poking my head in and out.  I stopped off at the Games for learning session and was impressed with the content.  At least the content I was there for.  One thing I would like to add for those of you new to my blog and/or attending the conference is Raph Koster's book... A Theory of Fun.  This is a fabulous book with so much learning theory in it that it should required reading at all EdTech schools.  And I love sharing this quote from Marshal Mcluhan:

"Anyone who makes a distinction between games and learning doesn't know the first thing about either"

Then...I hustled over the session talking about video, MPEG4, Flash video, etc.  That is where I discovered the golden nugget I had been looking:  Corporate YouTube!  On2 Flix has a server engine product that allows you to create a web app for users to upload video clips...it then compresses the video to flash video...just like YouTube.  Hopefully this "YouTube" style compression and user-generated video content system will not bog down corporate bandwidth.

Wikimania at eLearnDevCon

My wiki session just ended. I rcv'd lots of possitive feedback. Thanks to all who attended. For those of you that missed it, I will be doing it again tomorrow afternoon. You should also consider attending my Learning2.0 session tomorrow morning.
Some items of interested that were discussed today:
Tiddlywiki
Mediawiki
OpenWiki
The Heavy Metal Umlat video by John Udell
List of opensource wiki engines
Some interesting points for me were that there are some IT departments that DON'T know what wikis are. Other companies have IT departments that are afraid to even implement a wiki on their intranet. The only thing I can think of is that there are other political/power struggles occuring within those companies. Here are the experts talking at Wikimania2006...
this from Andrew McAfee

Ross Mayfield said that in four years of building wikis for corporations Socialtext has seen precisely 0 trolls and 0 instances of vandalism. I was astonished by this and polled the entire room. No one reported even a single instance of counterproductive behavior on the wiki.

As I've written before, one of the advantages the Intranet has over the Internet is that people within companies share a culture and norms, and are usually quite reluctant to overturn them. In addition, vandals and trolls can usually be easily identified behind the firewall. So perhaps I shouldn't have been so suprised that employees aren't using corporate wikis to act out.

Check out the following blogs to hear more about the wikimania panel discussion on enterprise wikis:
Josh Bancroft, Ross Mayfield, Andrew McAfee, Ned Gulley, Michael Idinopulos

The Blogosphere 100 x bigger than 3 years ago

David Sifry (founder and CEO of Technorati) has posted is latest State of the Blogosphere report.  As a blogger, I feel compelled to pass this info on to the elearning community.  As the ONLY blogger blogging the eLearnDevCon I feel even more compelled to share.  Let's start with the stats summary:

• Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs.
• The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.
• From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
• About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
• About 8% of new blogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
• This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
• The most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time

I was going to start into why these numbers are important to the elearning community but I promised to start blogging about the 2 HOWs (How to use the new technologie, and How it effects our jobs).  First of all these numbers should help as part of the data for pushing our cause.  This data combined with evidence-based learning defining how blogs can be used for learning should also help the cause. 
Hey, Kevin!  Any studies for blogs and learning in the works?

eLearnDevCon2006 Keynote with Kevin Kruse

Kevin Kruse from e-LearningGuru.com.

Industry threatened:
1) Industry is threatened: lack of measurable results
2) Vendors are threatened: clients don't choose quality
3) You job is threatened: by those who can do it cheaper

Kevin is talking about the web2.0, social networking, or Learning2.0 and asks if anyone is blogging the keynote right now.  So I raise my hand...I'm the ONLY one!  So he calls me up in front to promote elearndev.blogspot.com.  But the best part was the $100 bucks..."who says you can't make money blogging".  Actually, I'll send the money to a charity that takes PayPal.

Back to the keynote...Evidence-based Learning inspired by evidence-based medicine, but encouraged by evidence-based management.

Check out e-Learning and the Science of Instruction.
I'm thinking about the theories he is highlighting from the book and how they are supported in a complete learning ecosystem...a blend of formalized and informal learning methods/tools with just the right mix of user-generated content.  Of course this is just what's going on in my head while he talks and demos some good interactive activities.

I love the points he is covering.  Yet much of it is applied to what WE do today...create courses.  My new task is to map this evidence-based ISD theory and apply it to the user-generated world of web2.0.  Because my reaction to Kevin's msg is that some of this is what the "knowledge harvester" of the future will be doing.  We will begin to monitor the social networks and pull out the nuggets that can benefit from applying the theories into more formalized activities, or learning nuggets.

Print design study:  new learners should learn better from a magazine layout as apposed to a book style.  Just a thought but they wanted data so they did a study...(cue drum role)...the answer is that the layout did not matter from a learning standpoint.  Motivation still counts for more. 

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curves:  This will be the future study that he will be undertaking this year.
I can't wait to see the results of applying evidence-based learning in this space.

Vlogger session at eLearnDevCon2006

Cool new tool from Serious Magic called Vlog it!
Vlogit looks like a stripped down version of Visual communicator which is a little more expensive.
$50!  You can't beat that!  As Garin points out the coolest part of the software is the integrated tele-prompter.  Yes, the other visual stuff is cool too. 
When the presentation is over I will post some shots of the setup Garin Hess created.  The lighting solution from Home Depot is a GREAT idea!  $50 bucks for the lighting rig too.  So, $100 gets you software and lighting.  $20 bucks gets you the cheap green screen, but Garin is using the $200 folding screen but its very cool. 
Then of course you need a video camera.  But even the cheapest camera will do.  You can even use a web cam when vlogging yourself.
Vlogit is just another example of how user-generated content is changing the landscape of learning. 

Wikimania 2006 and Wikiversity

As it just so happens, the Wikimania 2006 conferense is in full swing at Harvard.  Fellow blogger and Intel colleague Josh Bancroft is blogging the event at tinyscreenfuls.com .  Check out his flickr stream here.  Sounds like lots of great conversations going on.

Also, Mark Oehlert over at e-clippings points me to the Wikiversity.  Tons of wiki goodness here.  Wikibooks is fabulous in and of itself but the addition of wikiversity makes me smile.  My daughter is a big fan of our solar system and she loves this.

Get ready for a lively discussion on wikis at the elearndevcon2006.  I'll be leading that discussion and look forward to your participation.