Author: iangardnergb

My name is Ian Gardner and I am interested in various topics that can be seen as related to learning, technology and information. To see what I am reading elsewhere, follow me on The Old Reader (I.gardner.gb) or LinkedIn.

The month in Learning Technology: January 2015

Following on from my suggestion that a ‘news’ podcast for learning technology could be both informative and entertaining, I thought I would start a new series of blog posts where articles and links I find useful get a home on this site.  The posts will be updated as a month progresses and include a certain amount of aggregation from my shared items on the Old Reader and Twitter.  I will try to add some thoughts alongside the links as a form of reflection and maybe, one day, I’ll extend that out to audio.

  1. The UK press have started 2015 as they mean to go on, by being obsessed with the general election.  The education discussion continues to center around money and the provision of places, rather than quality of learning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30981137
  2. Learning difficult processes fun through play and gamification: Wikipedia’s gamification orientation – sounds like a great idea to an on-boarding that was really always overly complicated in my opinion.
  3. The Learning Technologies 2015 conference was my first LT winter conference, rather than just attending the exhibition.  Backchannel links are here.  Lots to think about and longer posts to follow.
  4. One theme for me at LT15 was the move to bigger talent issues than simply learning, as talked about in this NetDimensions press release.
  5. The other big event in January is always BETT, although I did not make it this year there were some good headlines coming out.  Items catching my attention included MUV Interactive’s ‘Bird’ (great name too) which is a new approach to interaction in the classroom.
  6. Another consistent factor for early in the year is the Blue Eskimo survey of learning professionals, no real surprises this year:
  7. A challenge for the LMS/VLE has always been finding a position within the organization as a tool people actually want/need to use.  One problem often articulated, especially in Higher Ed, is that the VLE becomes a file store as people still live/produce content in Office.  A new integration between Moodle and Office365 might offer a way forward.
  8. Citrix and the Internet Time Alliance recently published Jay Cross’ latest views on “Why Corporate Training is Broke and How to Fix it“.  Hard to disagree with a lot of the article – not least that the terms L&D/trainers use don’t help and make the business see L&D as out of touch and out of date.  The stress on “getting things done in the collaborative organization” is really centric to my views on trying to work learning into the wider aspect of having the organization develop in a way people actually want to work within (Cross identifies culture, infrastructure and motivation alongside learning in this).
  9. Personalization (including via big data).  Various developments in this space are continuing along, INSEAD’s YouTube covers some developments (in the below video).
  10. Global Edtech Investment Swells to a Record $2.3 Billion in 2014 – pretty crazy when you can argue if learning/ed tech is needed at all.  Fears of a bubble, especially around China, seem fairly valid.

Thoughts on Google Maps changes and use in MOOCs

A few years back, I was a big fan of using custom Google maps.  I made a few, including ones for my employer at the time and to record things such as walks and day-trips:

Paris day trip map

Recently, if you made such maps in the past, you will have seen them appear in your Google Drive (obviously that is if you use Google Drive as well).  This makes sense in that the custom maps tool was one of those Google hid away a bit and it was not obvious from the standard Google Maps that they were possible.  Indeed I had probably presumed that my custom ones had died/been retired in one of Google’s purges of services, possibly when the Google Maps UI changed.

The latest MOOC I have signed up for are making use of the Google Tool to compile a map of participants.  This is a nice idea but immediately raises a number of issues with the use of Google/public tools in communities/courses:

  1. Something as important as personal address is, at best, riskily shared on a public site – I would be happy to put the town centre of where I live but probably not the exact Google Map location.  Sure, someone can probably get this information easily enough but for personal ID fraud I wouldn’t want to post my exact location.  I would be more willing to do this in a traditional online course when you get to know the majority of your cohort and faculty (as I did with my MSc).
  2. The instructions given for populating the map don’t actually appear to work for me.  It looks like they have been compiled for ‘classic’ maps and the new UI doesn’t work the same.  If I cant work out how to do it in the new model I doubt many others can (although the map is well populated).  I did try adding the classic maps suffix to the URL but that has not helped.  Potentially an example of the risks of using non institutional tools that may change out of your control and no longer be suitable.
  3. Predictably, there seems to be a certain amount of spam listings for shops and the like, although this might be participants putting up less open posts (due to concerns such as mine in point 1).

Overall, I remain a huge advocate of open and free tools over building in house or over engineering.  However, in this case it doesn’t not seem like Google Maps was the best option.

Explaining my tweet on those two tweets

Don’s original post (link in the tweet above) brings together two tweets that, as he says, nicely summarize the state of L&D.  My tweet’s comment around the difference between L&D and external ‘training’ really comes from my own background – having moved from working for a training provider in the HE space to L&D.

I think we need to a much better job, as learning (technology) professionals working in different sectors to explain the value in continuous learning via:

  • day to day work activities (that will happen anyway and L&D can help support develop unconscious learning)
  • specific learning activities (with their added value of being a distinct activity away from work and often with some form of accreditation)
  • personal learning networks (for many graduates these will start to be built at university and everyone in formal/informal learning roles should be supporting PLN development by our people).  I would argue reflection is key in this, making people aware of their unconscious learning and adding value for others by communicating around this learning.

In 2015 we need to ensure the above all continue to develop and learning professionals support them appropriately to stay relevant.

Microsoft Sway: first impressions and possible uses

I first mentioned Sway back in October when I requested access.

Well, I’ve had access for a week or so now and have been able to spend about an hour on it.  First impressions:

Pros

  • it does what it is says it aims to, being an easy design tool for authoring/converting documents into a more appealing format
  • the inclusion of options to import Creative Commons licensed media are nice – it might be of most use for schools in keeping pupils away from images they should not be copying
  • offers a more web friendly format than the traditional document (to Flash) conversion tools, Yudu having been my tool of choice in the past
  • options between document forms (one of the promoted examples here) and more of a pinboard style (my first Sway embedded below).

Cons

  • private/public limit for published content realistically limits corporate use beyond marketing or personal use for presentations
  • still beta speed at times whilst it searches, imports, etc.
  • advanced search options would be appreciated when looking for content
  • clearly is deliberately limited in options, to the point where you suspect “oh that’s a Sway” will be a phrase that becomes as common as “well its a Prezi just for the sake of it”
  • my one attempt of an import (from an old PPT file) doesn’t seem to have worked very well – although there would be scope for tidying it up it seems like text and imagery should be imported separately
  • I have been using it on a Mac where you have other options such as iBooks – there’s no doubt a full comparison piece to be done, albeit it a tricky one as Sway develops.

Overall, yet another example of a tool the industry would see as ‘productivity’ (the excellent Mary Jo Foley’s thoughts are here) but certainly has capacity for learning uses.
https://sway.com/s/OP4b1UXKafYRJqFx/embed

Here comes 2015 – implications for L&D

My last two posts looked at some of the recent reports around L&D and some possible future learning technology trends.

Catching up today on my Old Reader RSS feedshas thrown up a multitude of other points related to both of these (as tends to always be the case).  Of the more interesting ones:

A survey by CEB

Donald Taylor’s 2015 L&D priorities

  • What will be big in workplace learning 2015 vote
  • My idea for the evolution of peer learning really cuts across KM, curation and collaborative learning but I think it will be key – we need to make peers open to each other and avoid the feeling that attempts to ‘move up the ladder’ lead to risk adversity.  Organizational cultures need to be doing a better job of rewarding those who support organizational development, not just those in money making roles.