There’s more than your top lip under your nose…

Earlier this week I commenced an online programme, devised and facilitated by Google on, well, using Google! In particular Google Search.

The purpose of this blog post isn’t to review the programme as a number of other people including Jay Cross and John Curran are already doing that, although I will say that I disagree with John to a degree over his comments on the decor of the room that that facilitator is being filmed in and the quality of the Google Presentation slides (not PowerPoint). For me the content of this particular programme is what interests me, not the aesthetics. I guess you could say that from a ‘care curve‘ perspective, I ‘care’ enough about the content/substance to overlook the aesthetics/style.

The trigger for this blog post has been the realisation or maybe a re-realisation of how much we overlook the everyday things, the things that are under our nose, the things that we take for granted.

None of the tools/techniques that have been revealed in the programme so far are ‘hidden away’, none of them require you to dive into the settings or to hack your way around the ‘accepted’ way of doing things!

They have been right there, hiding in plain sight, under my nose, under your nose!

This got me thinking about what else we overlook in our lives that we could use to enhance our or others learning. It’s a tricky question as I’m obviously asking myself to know what I don’t know – a tricky feat, but I am going to make more of a conscious effort to look more closely at the tools/platforms/devices etc that I am using and see if I’m missing anything.

What about you? 

Do you have any example of where you have missed a blatant opportunity to use a functionality/approach/method  that was staring you in the face?

How did you find out about it?

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Jumping on the bandwagon. My predictions for 2013…

As the end of a year approaches it’s time for the blogging fraternity to turn to the tried and tested ‘Top ‘this that and the other’ of 2012? and ‘My predictions for 2013? blog posts.

Far from me to turn down the opportunity to poke a little fun, here are my 2013 predictions / absolute cast iron guarantees…

My Twitter stream will continue to be bombarded with Instagrammed photos of hot beverages and food. Fortunately I use Tweetbot which allows me to permanently block hashtags. Unfortunately hardly anybody tags their #instagram photos.We will see a new word being made up within the L&D fraternity.Certain bloggers will still rant on about ‘killer apps / platform / piece of hardware. Why can’t things just be ‘good’, ‘effective’, ‘worth having’?Any podcast with ‘week’ or ‘weekly’ in the title is unlikely to ever be that, beyond its 5th episode.I will unsuccessfully use facts, data and research against gut feelings and anecdotes.2013 will be the year of mobile. Again.Apple will release an ever-so-slight modification of a product. Tech bloggers will work themselves up into a crotch-twitching, salivating frenzy reporting….. erm…. on the ever-so-slight modification.We’ll continue to have a L&D wide survey released approximately every 4 daysMany vendors will continue to ignore the native functionality of mobile devices whilst blowing their trumpets about how they are ‘leading’ in the mlearning world.A ‘free to use’ service will change its Terms and Conditions. Users will form baying mobs and burning torches will be seen.Certain ‘thought leaders’ in our field will use ever more bizarre diagrams to explore their concepts. It’s cos they’re clever see….

I’ll see you in 2013…

… no doubt saying ‘I told you so‘

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I have another cap to wear…

… and that is of Social Media correspondent for Nuclear TV.

This is a ‘title‘, I hasten to add that I have not bestowed upon myself but as the nucleus of Nuclear TV sits within my immediate team (and I never stop harping on about the benefits of engaging with Social Media), I guess it was inevitable that I was going to end up with that role!

This interview was the first (of what I hope will be many) insights into how a highly-regulated, security-conscious sector such as the Nuclear Industry is engaging with Social Media, the challenges that it brings and the rewards that it can bestow.

I must admit to being slightly nervous about conducting this interview, not about appearing in front of a camera, but about speaking on a subject such as Social Media, when there are far more knowledgeable, influential people out there who are already commenting on Social Media far more eloquently that I could hope to do..

… what do you think?

… did I get it right?

… did I miss anything?

…would you have done things differently?

If you have any feedback, it would be great if you could provide it in the comments area below, as this will allow me to ensure that future commentaries really do reflect ‘current thinking’.

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Twitter to G+

So it’s been a whole weekend since I decided to step away from Twitter and concentrate my energies in G+.

As with most reflective exercises, the first weekend has presented me with nothing that I didn’t already know, but it has brought them to the forefront of my mind.

Firstly, I feel that I have used Twitter for 3 purposes to date:

The posting of links to my own online contentThe discussion of professional areas of interestMindless, banal waffle (which rather interestingly was one of the contributing factors to me ‘going off’ Twitter – was I a part of the problem???)

Whereas in comparison G+ had only ever (with a handful of exceptions) been used as a place to tout links to my blog.

I hadn’t really looked at other peoples contentI hadn’t gone out of my way to seek out and follow new peopleI hadn’t engaged in any conversations.

This realisation has confirmed that my decision to engage with G+ on a deeper level has been the right one, in fact my plan (at the moment) is to completely transform my usage of the 2, so I’ll still be posting blog links etc to Twitter but expect to see less conversation and waffle (I can hear the sighs of relief from some of you now) instead if you want to engage in that, then why not head over to G+ and say Hi….

Photo source.

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Homework time… CWCCM Task 4.3

Podcasting? That phrase has come about as a result of the rise in popularity of the iPod, right?Well actually, No! That is however a popular misconception brought about, more than likely, as a result of the inclusion of ‘pod’ within both terms. The podcasting community generally accepts that the first person to use the term was Dannie Gregoire on September 15th 2004 who took the phrase ‘programming on demand’ and created the acronym ‘pod’ – hence podcast.

I’ve recorded some audio clips and placed them on my organisations intranet, am I podcasting?

Technically, No! A ‘true’ podcast is one which allows listeners to subsribe to it’s feed and subsequently receive updated podcasts from you, as and when you publish them. Just placing an audio clip on a webpage or emailing it to somebody, falls a little way short of a true podcast… BUT… you are doing more than a lot of people, so keep up the good work.

Surely you need a lot of technical equipment to Podcast, I mean just look at a radio studio.

You’d be surprised at how little equipment you need to podcast. In fact, services such as Audioboo and iPadio both offer Smartphone apps that allow you to record audio and then upload it onto their website, which then provides a feed that listeners can subsribe to… Voila! a podcast! For those of you without Smartphones, iPadio even offers a London based number that allows you to ‘dial’ into an audio recording system, which again publishes a feed. So you’ve got no excuse!

I like the idea of podcasting, but I doubt that anybody would want to hear what I have to say.

How do you know until you try? On of the most successful podcasts of all time was the Ricky Gervais podcast in which Ricky and Steve Merchant just engaged in conversation with their radio producer Karl Pilkington. Nobody ever expected it, but that unscripted, conversational, humorous dialogue has proven to be a killer formula. If you’ve got a subject that’s close enough to your heart that you feel passionately enough about it to talk into a phone or microphone for 5-10 minutes every week, then you have enough material for a podcast. Go for it, you never know!

I like the idea, but want to do a bit more research, where should I start?

A great starting point would be to pick up a copy of ‘Podcasting for Dummies’ which provides easily understood, humorous, technical advice for beginners onwards, whilst if you are searching for some good examples of podcasts (particularly if you are responsible for the education of others) then why not have a listen to some of James Clays podcasts.

View the original article here

So there I was, wandering around YouTube, minding my own business….

…. when I stumbled upon the ‘edit video detail’ toolbar at the top of the page. Now I had seen this previously and had chosen to ignore it as my video editing is done in either Flipshare or more recently in Windows Movie Maker.

What an oversight on my behalf!!!

Within the video editing options there is an option to add annotations. Now this in itself is nothing startling as many video editing tools allow you to annotate on top of the video footage, but what this allows you to do is to add a ‘spotlight’ on top of anything that is being shown in the YouTube footage.

This spotlight (imagine a hot spot) will then allow a URL (including another YouTube video) to be added to it.

This then allows your YouTube video to become interactive in so far as the viewer can be steered towards making a choice which then jumps them from one YouTube video to another to another etc etc depending upon their choices. For a far more in-depth account as to how to do this then check out this blog post.

Of course I almost fell over myself in an attempt to try this out so I hope you’ll all be able to see past the poor lighting and dodgy camera angles to the real potential that this approach to using YouTube can bring. My only niggle at this moment in time is that upon completion of the clip it  jumps (as any YouTube clip does) to a ‘related videos’ window, this in turn stops the viewer from making any on-screen selection at the end of the clip, so it prevents the viewer from being able reflect upon the available choices.

Confused?

Then try watching the following short clip without making any selection and you’ll see what happens at the end of the video. Then you can replay the video and start taking part for real…

So what do you think?

Is this something you could use?

If so, what for?

View the original article here

What Learners Want – Part 1 – The ‘why’

Towards the back end of 2012, my organisation formally entered into a working relationship with Towards Maturity to help us better understand our Benchmark results and help us work towards creating an L&D strategy.

During one of those initial meetings Laura Overton made an almost throw away remark about a ‘Learner Audit’ (I’m not overly keen on the name, so we’ve labelled it as a Learner Survey) that she had undertaken some time in the past and that she was considering resurrecting as an offering.

Unlike the Towards Maturity Benchmark survey, which tends to rely on answers by those in an L&D role/perspective, the Learner Survey allows every single employee in the organisation the opportunity to comment on

how they access content that supports themfrom what devicesfrom what locationswhat methods and media they find most effectivewhether they are members of social networking siteswhether they are/would be willing to share their knowledge and practices with others etc

My eyes lit up at this point as I am about to assist in the development of our L&D strategy, so of course being able to hear from about our learners about their preferences, expectations, etc would be hugely beneficial.

Needless to say we took Laura up on her offer which as this press release explains made us the first organisation to do so.

If you’d like to hear more about the rationale behind the survey, here’s a short video of Laura explaining further.

In my next blog post in this series I’ll go into a little detail about the construction of the survey and how we worked together to provide a bespoke survey that would still allow multiple surveys to feed accurately into a wider-benchmark.

View the original article here