Category: Learning Technology

CILIP London Tech Meet Up: June 2015

Bit of context

One advantage of being based in London is the multitude of events that you can go to of professional interest and for networking.  The events come from a wide array of organizations and I once sat on the CILIP in London committee, helping to organize events for LIS professionals.  Indeed one aspect of my role was in setting up a number of digital profiles and initiatives, including a calendar which sought to aggregate London events of interest from CILIP and other bodies (partly to stop us booking events on the same dates as other events!).

I left the committee largely due to time commitments and since then I have not done very well at attending in-person evening events (although I continue to attend large numbers of webinars and have managed to make a number of events ‘in work time’).  Anyway, I did manage to make an event this week (partly as Wednesday is by far the best day for me) and a few notes are below.

The event

The Tech Meet Up promised a number of quick 3 or 7 minute presentations on technologies that people are using which might be of interest to a wider audience.

It was a fantastic example of:

  1. How innovative people can be in thinking of new ways to serve their users/businesses via tech
  2. How varied CILIP’s membership is and the value in the sharing of ideas amongst it.

Presentations included:

  1. Aurasma – for adding augmented reality around displays, guidance, via QR codes to explain how physical tech works, etc.  I particularly like the idea of using augmented reality on a final product to trigger videos showing how it was produced, stills on the production process, etc.
  2. InMagic (new to me) – for easy creation of bespoke databases.  The tool looked ugly but easy to use and, as the presentation stated, it is possible to use it for what would otherwise be expensive systems (for example on independence checking relating to clients).
  3. RSS – this went beyond the basics of RSS (as you might suspect considering the audience – although a number of people admitted abandoning RSS post Google Reader) to how the presenter is using RSS to monitor 2500 companies across 60 countries.  As one might guess considering that scale, he is hacking together a number of tools including the BASE search engine, FireFox plugins (such as Bamboo), twitrss, feed43 and RSSMix.
  4. Learning Apps on VLE – how you can use LearningApps.org (new to me?) to easily create learning objects for embed into a VLE//LMS.
  5. B.scroative (new to me) – audience response with a very nice interface for quizzing with pros/cons vs other systems such as Kahoot.

On top of the above, and a discussion on eBooks, I did a couple of presentations…

My presentations

I let the organizers know that I was happy to do a number of presentations on different tech areas I have been working on.  What I ended up doing is roughly captured in the embedded Slideshare presentation.

I deliberately avoided creating any content myself – instead sourcing the presentations from online sources (please excuse ignoring of creative commons) to talk about the issues related to the space and the kind of technology solutions that can be brought into play.

  1. Learning communities via Enterprise Social Networks (ESN), specifically Tibbr.  A consideration of how ESN functionality has evolved what we can do in relation to online community support.
  2. Capability/competency frameworks and the impact on learning support, including targeting resources, courses, coaching and other support at a more granular level.  Interestingly, “Workplace learning and competency-based frameworks” was a title of an article in the latest CILIP Update.  The article’s suggested approach seemed a sensible evolution, from my more manual mapping using tools such as those in SuccessFactors LMS’s CDP module, to a more data automated approach.

The month in Learning (Technology): April 2015

The ongoing aggregating of some of the stories catching my eye:

  1. McGraw-Hill continues developments in adaptive learning.
  2. New Corporate Training market report (albeit very expensive).
  3. A piece on what changes to the online learning market may mean for the University of Phoenix.
  4. eLearning Age on size of global education sector.
  5. H5P – might we finally be rid of SCORM?
  6. New Federal Guide Recommends Kaplan’s Approach as Best Practice for Evaluating EdTech Products.
  7. RemoteLearner UK taken over by Blackboard.
  8. Educause report on next gen digital learning.

The month in Learning (Technology): March 2015

Not too much grabbing my attention this month:

  1. Dale Carnegie Training using badges
  2. “No major wear off found on engagement, motivation, concentration and learning.” – nice to see some research seemingly confirming that student response and gamification, in class, are not sure fads but offer ongoing benefits.
  3. A Checklist for Success, or nice summary of things to consider, in relation to LMS Selection in High-Consequence Industries.
  4. Must admit that I don’t think Ive read too much from Karl Kapp of late, but his summary of the current status of gamification here is good.
  5. More buys by Blackboard.
  6. More research evidence for including physical activity within and around learning events.

The month in Learning (Technology): February 2015

Moving on from January, here is the live post for Feb:

  • snow, snow, snow – closing schools across parts of the US, Canada and UK – reinforcing the value in online delivery and electronic ‘home work’ to avoid snow days.
  • OpenLearning expanding their MOOC offerings through $1.7m investment – implications for Instructional Design market and other MOOCers.
  • Not just an LMS but a Unified LMS – iCohere has drawn some attention for tying up with ADB partners (presumably similar to when providers like Blackboard have looked to expand their Instructional Design and research based practice):