DIYEL # 4 - Adopt a tech kid from your local community college. He knows more than your IT person.

Introduction
Table of Posts

Seriously, the typical IT person in your company is not the guy you run to for eLearning advice, especially if you don’t know squat. You must think of your self-preservation. Think of your job security. And if you are a contractor, think of your reputation and income.

The basics of eLearning cover the essentials of the Internet, authoring in PowerPoint, Flash, audio recoding, image editing, video production, FTP (file transfer protocol), servers, HTML, security, logins, reports, etc. The Do-It-Yourselfers avoid learning the basics from their IT folks or attending an expensive seminar. Safely away from the office, the Do-It-Yourselfers hire or bribe a young tech expert from the nearby community college. You are lucky if your own child, or maybe a niece or nephew, can be your tech guru.

Constantly hold coaching sessions with your tech kid. Humble yourself. This is when you can be a dummy without fear of backlash. Learn the definitions, the basic operations, and try demo software. Complete the proof of concept with your tech kid. You will be amazed how ready you will be to talk with your boss or the IT team when the time comes. (This is a series of post from my book "Do-It-Yourself eLearning 2009).

Related Blog Entries:
The Master SME: How to become one? How to work with it?
Cut to 30% eLearning Development Costs

Ray Jimenez, PhD
http://www.vignettestraining.com/
http://www.simplifyelearning.com/

"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Recorded Session: Elearning Magazine and Adobe Webinar on Rapid e-Learning Deployment

This is a recorded session of my presentation on Rapid e-Learning Deployment.

The event was sponsored by Elearning Magazine and Adobe.

I was told this recording will be available for one year. After March 20, 2009,
the link may not work.

https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a227210/p18857080/

Key ideas:
> How to increase speed of elearning development
> Difference between "Working Competency" and "Full Competency"
> Laying out content.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Do We Really Need to Go to Our PCs to Do Social Networking?

Do we really need to go to our PCs to be in social networking?

I have been testing social networking on the move or mobile ...
I tried http://twitter.com/ --which allows me quick exchanges and frequent contacts.

Trutap http://trutap.com/ enables networking with my cell phone.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

www.TrainingPayback.com, Social Learning Tool, Used by Training Leadership Summit

I am proud to share with you that a web 2.0 tool - www.TrainingPayback.com, which I helped developed, is now being used by Training Magazine for its upcoming Training Leadership Summit scheduled May 5-7, 2008.

Visit the sites:

Training Leadership Summit

TLS Training Payback Social Networking


Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Digital Natives - Who They are, What They Do

The videos below tremendously helped me understand the world of Digital Natives. Digital natives are born with technology as ubiquitous part of their lives. Digital immigrants are those who have to learn the technology.

From the Institute of Social Research.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Twitter # 20 - Pleasant Surprises, Unexpected Areas

Most successes in the application of technologies are found in unsuspected or unexpected areas.

For example, the TV remote control was the first consumer tool that allows consumers to opt-out of advertising.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Twitter # 19 - Why Integrate Web 2.0? Let it Be!

There is no immediate need for trainers or e-learning leaders to think of "how do I integrate the Web 2.0 in my formal programs?"

Learn, experiment, discover and see how it works in small tests. Integration might not be needed. The strength of Web 2.0 is its flexibility. Once integrated, Web 2.0 tools may become the legacy system which we all disdain.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

How can We Train People on Web 2.0 and Social Networking When They are All Just Emerging Now?

Through Ray Sims' blog I found this video of Matt Moore with relevant ideas on adoption of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

Matt's metaphors illustrate simple and effective key points we can learn from.

1. Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are tools that improve what we can't do in the email and Word document approaches or phase of collaboration.
2. Social media and Social Networking simply allow us to collaborate better, faster, and cheaper. But it is all about collaboration.
3. Technical people can figure out the technologies, but have no clue on how users should use the technology.

Good question: (From Ray Sims) how can we train people on Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 when all of the skills, tools and attitudes are just emerging for ALL of us? This comment I find most interesting since it poses a hard question to trainers and e-learning developers. How do we?

Matt Moore - the author of the Engineers Without Fears blog.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Some Web 2.0-Like Tools in LMSs Extend e-Learning into Social Networking and Community Sharing

The following are Web 2.0-like tools in LMSs. If added or incorporated, these tools help learners use LMS content as a resource for sharing ideas in networks and communities. See how they work:

1. Google-like search - allows learners to search ALL text in the LMS content.
2. Bookmarking - allows learners to bookmark specific pages as references, keeping a bookmark list.
3. Send a URL - allows learners to send email of a specific page in e-Learning content.
4. Note-taking - allows learners to make notes for every page as they wish and download or print the notes. Notes can be searched.
5. Learner-driven learning - allows learners to record their own desired learning paths which may contain a combination of company- provided e-learning, informal learning, postings from blogs, Wikis, and others like readings, personal projects, etc.
6. Comments - allows learners to add comments to e-learning content to be shared with all learners.
7. Ranking - allows learners to rank relevance of content and present them to all learners in a ranked format.

Although these tools may be restricted by companies and may not fully operate as networking tools, having these tools provide your learners some exposure to Web 2.0-like tools.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Knowledge Management Landscape

Ray Sims has a very helpful map, the Knowledge Management Landscape. The map provides an observer a good way of understanding the different tools, practices and thoughts that impact knowledge management. In e-Learning, Knowledge Maps are valuable since they help learners instantly grasp the context of the content.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com "Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Consequences of skipping formal learning

San Jose, Ca, Airport: Mobile log

I am curious and have to research this issue. Please help.

Do Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 offer solutions for supporting formal learning, specifically micro-learning? I do not refer to classroom training.

I am referring to what happens from the time the learners pick up the information and knowledge (from collaboration and sharing) to the time the learners APPLY the idea.

Self expression, sharing and collaboration are great learning agents. But how do we help the learners apply what they learn and become skillful? What should they do to reduce errors and speed up learning?

Please let me know if you have thoughts and research on this.

Ray Jimenez, PhD
3-Minute e-Learning
http://www.vignettestraining.com/
http://www.trainingpayback.com/

Managing SMEs for Rapid e-Learning

Based on a study on Rapid e-Learning published by e-Learning Guild, one cause of delays in e-learning development is the difficulty in working with subject matter experts (SMEs). I have interviewed and worked with hundreds of SMEs and one thing is clear to me, e-Learning developers don’t provide SMEs enough tools and guidance in producing the content efficiently and at the fastest time possible.Here are some tips which I have used and have worked for me.

• Most SMEs are focused on the completeness and accuracy of content. They are not necessarily concerned with what the learner needs to know to perform. Your role therefore is to convert the content into useful learning tools. Try to get an agreement with your SMEs on your respective roles.
  
• Your focus is to convert content that allows learners to perform their jobs as quickly as possible. To achieve this, you need to introduce a process that will allow SMEs to provide you content to get your end results – learner performance.
  
• The process needs to cover:
  
  Agreement of principles on why the process meets the best learning results, reduces cost, and speeds up delivery of the program.
  
  A set of questionnaire that you can use to interview SMEs with or that SMEs can use as guide to write their content.
  

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Rapid e-Learning: Increasing Speed of Development, Reducing Cost and Meeting e-learners' Needs

Special Issue, 120-Page Article

This article presents a series of strategies and tactics which help you answer these questions:

• How do I respond to rapid business needs for e-Learning?
• How do I decide which approach can dramatically increase the speed of development and how do I calculate the returns?
• How do I work effectively with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to obtain content?
• What strategy ensures that the software meets rapid development and cost objectives?
• And many more topics.

Excerpts from the Article:

› Rapid e-Learning as a term is an oxymoron. Inherently e-Learning is rapid. Its principles are all about speed and quality. It provides immediate learning, and its tools and software are fast, inexpensive and have more capabilities than we can even imagine using. It provides personalized and just-in-time learning at its best.

› Our e-Learning programs are at least 50% heavy (too much content) and at least 75% cumbersome (too much control) than what is required by e-learners.

› We need to present an architectural plan or infrastructure so that all the contributors to our e-Learning program can follow a process.

› Remember “Garbage in, garbage out”? We can add one more: “The more the garbage, the slower the speed and higher the costs – and the quality stinks.”

› Software developers and suppliers have their own “religions” borne out of their backgrounds, origins, interests and skill sets.

› Add interactivity only when it matters.

› This architecture provides clear direction for design, processes, and software and resource requirements - that lead to clarity of standards and streamlined decision making.

› Reducing the number of content to focus on “must learns” increases the speed of development, reduces the costs and meets e-learners’ needs.

› This ability to randomly select allows e-learners to learn or apply ideas rapidly; it cuts down by 75% the burden of forcing learners to go page by page.

› Assist SMEs to organize, categorize, write and display the content that meets the standard of your architecture (structure their contribution so it is easy and time efficient for them).

› You can also maximize the full capability of the software when you know the end results you wish to derive.

› Not all content should be in an interactive form. Don’t put in interactive format content which you can put in plain text, images and references. If only 20% of your content needs to be interactive, then you drastically reduce the time to develop it. You also help the learners focus on what is truly important and what matters – which is one of e-learners needs.
And many many more useful and practical ideas.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"