Written by Jessica Batz View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.   Additional Resources: The Essentials of High Performance Organizations The Steve Jobs Way Beyond Performance, By Scott Keller and Colin Price The Nordstrom Secret Revealed Memo to the CEO: Customers Are the Key to Growth   The Happiness Culture

Last night the Adobe eLearning User Group: DC, Maryland, and Virginia met at the Adobe offices in McLean, VA (and online for those folks that couldn't join in person). During the meeting, the group was treated to an awesome presentation on creating eLearning Voiceover Scripts by Jennie Ruby. And while the Connect session gave us fits (it kept crashing poor Jennie's computer every time she tried to screen share), everyone who attended virtually was still able to hear Jennie's talk. (Special thanks to Lori Smith for serving as the go-between for the onsite audience and the virtual audience.) If you attended (or listed to the audio portion of the presentation), you learned 10 valuable tips for create effective voiceover scripts including who's talking, who's listening, the value of consistent naming of screen objects, and effective use a style guides and script templates. Of course, the pizza was awesome too (especially that vegan, gluten-free one... what was that one again AJ?). Our next meeting is early November. Stay tuned to our Meetup page for more information on that. If you'd like to speak at one of our sessions, please let me know (we're always looking for sponsors as well).

(Image Credit) http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/595881566 For the last few weeks, I have been reading and watching everything I can find on Microsoft’s Surface Tablet and Windows 8. My biggest fear is that with the upcoming launch of Windows 8 and the Surface Tablet, Microsoft is trying to UNDO everything we have accomplished in Mobile since the mobile revolution began back in 2007. Everything that is beautiful, pure and simple about mobile and touch computing, Microsoft is attempting to sabotage in the name of keeping their waning Windows PC business alive. Microsoft Office Apps is exactly what we don’t need in Mobile One of Microsoft’s selling points in Windows 8 and their Surface Tablet, is that we will be able to run the exact same Productivity apps we know and (love or hate) from the old PC era. I say that’s exactly what we don’t need today! Right now what we need is to embrace change and ‘reimagine‘ everything we have done for the last 20 years in computers. Only by doing so will we be able to take full advantage of this blank canvas that mobile presents us and innovate forward. Surely we are only a few weeks away from someone tweeting a screen grab of the dreaded blue screen of death right from their Surface Tablet. USB Ports on Tablets, really? Our goal right now should be to do everything in our power to wean people off old PC habits, and putting USB ports on Tablets is exactly the opposite of that. Are we really going to plug mice into a Tablet, when Tablets are supposed to remove any interference between us and our mobile experience? Don’t do it. A better usb webcam? A better usb microphone perhaps? A memory stick instead of embracing the cloud? For the sake of the future of mobile, don’t do it! In closing I will say that I don’t wish any company bad, goodness knows we need jobs in this country and around the world, and while I’m also pretty sure that Microsoft will sell quite a few PCs with the new Windows 8 OS, and also more than a handful of Surface Tablets, I just hope it doesn’t become a serious roadblock for the amazing progress we have made in mobile thus far. What are your thought about the upcoming Windows 8 and Surface Tablet?

While there is a little bit of controversy about posting these lists, I'm continuing to use the capability of using social signals to make sure I'm finding good stuff. So here's what came up via eLearning Learning from last week. But I'm keeping it to a bare minimum. And I must say that these are pretty good - it would be a shame if you missed them.Top Posts The following are the top posts from featured sources based on social signals. Twitter Job Aid - work in progress- Adventures in Corporate Education, April 12, 2009Reduce Searching Start Talking- eLearning Technology, April 14, 2009Solve problems with screencasting- eLearning Acupuncture, April 14, 2009Augmented Reality in Learning- Upside Learning Blog, April 15, 2009 Top Other Items The following are the top other items based on social signals. Determining the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com, April 15, 2009The Web: Design for Active Learning, April 17, 2009The (changed) information cycle, April 17, 20093 Things to Consider When Building Your E-Learning Courses, April 14, 2009Effective knowledge sharing, April 15, 2009conversation matters: What Do We Get From Conversation That We Can't Get Any Other Way?, April 14, 2009 Top Keywords 2009 (108)Screencast (5)Audacity (4)Learning Management System (6) eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording. How to Build a Business Case for Online Employee Training - Webinar 07.09.14 from BizLibrary Additional Resources: Article from CLO and the ROI Institute: How Executives View Learning Metrics. Poor leadership practices cost companies millions of dollars each year - equal to 7% of annual sales...by negatively impacting employee retention, customer satisfaction and overall employee productivity. - At least 9% and as much as 32% of an organization's voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills. - Better leadership can generate a 3-4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a corresponding 1.5% increase in revenue growth. - Most organizations are operating with 5-10% productivity drag that better leadership practices could eliminate. * SOURCE: Making the Business Case for Leadership Development, The Ken Blanchard Companies, 2011.

When: September 22-25Where: McCormick Place, Chicago (Part of the Online Learning Conference Certification program) There are multiple tools available that will let you create compelling eLearning content including Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, TechSmith Camtasia Studio, and Adobe Presenter. But which tool is the best, most affordable option for your needs?Once you select your eLearning tool, what's next? How do you get started creating your first eLearning content? Once you start, how long is it going to take you to finish? What's the real cost for your effort? Are there hidden costs? How will you be able to measure the effectiveness of your eLearning?Join IconLogic's Kevin Siegel for an intense, tool-agnostic, hands-on workshop where you'll get a jump start on  building your first eLearning course.Among other things, you'll learn: Strategies for building effective eLearning The eLearning development process How to create an eLearning script and/or storyboard How to get started on creating eLearning content using Captivate, Storyline, Camtasia or Presenter More information.

(image credit: http://bit.ly/S8kPXp) I’m fully convinced that mobile devices, especially Tablets, will eventually replace our traditional desktop PCs! Crazy talk you say; we need full versions of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Avid Studio and Final Cut Pro running on Tablets in order to do that, oh and plenty of USB ports on my Tablets so that I can plug-in my hefty Excel spreadsheets in order to work on them in the train ride on my way home from the office. There are plenty of articles that include a long list of things Tablets still need in order to replace our PCs, here’s an interesting one that lists 8 things Tablets still can’t do, among them, the need for more storage (probably why Microsoft is putting USB ports on the Surface), not great for games (really?), printing problems, no optical drives (for backups I suppose), and that they won’t run power software, including Adobe Photoshop, Avid Studio, and Microsoft OneNote. Personally I think that most of these articles miss the bigger point, namely the fact that most people think that Tablets replacing our PCs will require a 1:1 task-replacement approach. I don’t buy this argument. I actually believe this quote gives us a clue of how this whole thing will take place: "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us" - Marshall McLuhan I think a more sound argument is that Tablets will replace our PCs because the mobile revolution is "redefining" the term productivity. In other words, we are currently shaping our mobile tools and soon these amazing devices, along with the incredibly creative apps that accompany them, will shape us and redefine every single task we do from here on out, including learning design, image editing, web design and yes every productivity task as well. Perhaps the future isn’t about writing long documents using a full version of Word on our Tablets, maybe the future calls for shorter and simpler writing, and apps like Pages is all we need. And just maybe we don’t need to run the full version of Photoshop CS6 on a Surface Tablet via Windows 8, maybe the future calls for simpler edits to our photos and either Photoshop Touch or Instagram will suffice. What are you thoughts? Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.  

Written by Jessica Batz View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.    Additional Resources: Learning About Learning Agility 10 Hot Job Title That Barely Existed 5 Years Ago Gallup State of the American Workplace The Importance of Agility - HR Exec Online Hacking Leadership by Mike Myatt Return on Impact: Leadership Strategies for the Age of Connected Relationships by David Nour   The Social Leader: Leadership Development for Growing Your Next Generation This complimentary eBook discusses the social leadership model, influential factors that may mitigate in favor of adopting this model or even parts of this leadership model for your organization, the characteristics and traits common in effective social leaders, and emerging competencies that might be important to develop in social leaders in your organization.

As part of the Tools Set 2009 series, my first post was Browser Keyboard Shortcut Basics.  I was a little surprised that this didn't come up as one of the more popular items recently when I did my Top 20 Posts for Q1 2009. Now I've got a couple of additional things to add to this information, and it raises a question that I often face: What do you do when you have an update to a prior post? I feel like each of my options have drawbacks: 1. Update the original post and create a new post with a link back Originally, I was going to do this.  Just go back and update the original post with the additional information and create a post to say to go look at that for the information. The advantage of this is that the original post becomes an increasingly rich source of content on the topic.  If you want information on that there's only one place to go. The disadvantage is that people who subscribe to my blog will not see the information in their RSS feed or in the daily email.  They have to click.  And my belief is that they will not click unless the information is really valuable.  Thus, it somewhat gets lost. The other disadvantage that is completely self-serving is that each post I create has a chance to serve as bait for organic search traffic in the future.  I'm pretty sure, but not 100% sure, that long term traffic would be higher by having two posts with different titles than a single post with more links to it - but it only has one title.  There are a lot of variables, but since the title and URL are so important for SEO, I think having more titles is generally better. 2. Update the original post and create a new post with the additional content and a link back This is a variation of the above.  I would do the same thing, but would also include the new information in the new post as well as in the original post. The advantage of this approach is that subscribers will get the new content in their feed or email. The disadvantage is that if I later need to update the topic, then I probably should update both posts - the original and the update post.  Otherwise, update posts will be wrong. Likely, the update post will not be as good for SEO since links will probably go back to the original.  However, this is probably in the middle. 3. Put the new information in the update post and add a link to the original post In this case, I only put the new information in the update post and I edit the original post with a link to the new post. The advantages here are that subscribers get the new content in their feed or email and that I only have one copy of the new information running around. The disadvantage is that content on a topic will be scattered around on my blog.  If you want to find browser keyboard tricks, you likely will have to visit several posts.  My gut tells me that this is not nearly as satisfying for search visitors.  It also means that there's additional work to keep track of all the different posts on a topic.   What do you think?  Is there another Effective Pattern?  Which option would you say is best for me (not too much work) and my subscribers and my search visitors? eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content

For the last few weeks, I have been busy delivering webinars and workshops on the topic of mobile learning, and throughout, the one question I hear constantly has to do with people asking me for mLearning examples. This got me thinking about the true meaning of that very popular question. In other words, I was thinking about what most people really expect to see as mLearning examples? In my experience, most people who ask to see mLearning examples are going to only be fully satisfied if they see the same old traditional eLearning courses (that we know and love) running on a tablet, for example, the iPad. If you show people something much simpler, without all the flying text and animations, you will often hear ‘but that’s too simple, where’s the rest of the text and everything else?’ if you show people something a bit more complex, people ask ‘yeah but does it support SCORM tracking?’ if you show them prototypes that prioritize content over navigation, they will invariable ask how they can incorporate more buttons and more navigation and everything else they currently have on the desktop PC? Unfortunately, there isn’t much to show at this point that is uniquely mobile, most examples today are basically eLearning courses converted to HTML5 and shrunk to fit the smaller screen. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having these expectations. Mobile in general requires a new mindset and change is something we are not very comfortable with.  For the most part, when presented with uncertainty we often retreat to our comfort zone. The more I think about mLearning, interact with clients and deliver mLearning workshops, the more I’m convinced that mobile technology and the inherent constraints of dealing with multiple screens isn’t our biggest challenge on the way to the promise mLearning land, but rather the real challenge is embracing change in order to reimagine the future of learning, rather than simply retrofitting what we have today on the desktop into the small screen. Because of this epiphany, I spend quite a bit of time during the mLearning workshops I have been delivering to companies, doing several hands-on exercises, that help learning designers reimagine their current eLearning for the new multiscreen world. Furthermore, I also have my students go through several sketching exercises using various templates for smartphones, tablets and desktop PCs. The goal in all of this is to wean participants off old PC design habits and begin adopting new mobile design principals. Initially most people end up sketching out smaller versions of what they already have on the desktop, however with some practice people tell me later that these exercises have helped them think different about designing for this new mobile shift. In closing, I leave you with the same advice I give my students, namely to be open-minded and don’t be too quick at dismissing something you aren’t comfortable with. Mobile changes everything and for all of us to be successful, it’s going to require a new mindset and the sooner we realize this and embrace change, the more successful we will be!