source: bluebugle When you consider that the average smartphone user checks his/her device 150 times per day, it doesn’t take much to realize that the next big thing will be wearable computing. Smartphones are incredibly smart, they help us in so many ways throughout our day (maps, reminders, status updates, etc.), but we still have to pull them out of our pockets or purses constantly, and therein lies the advantages of wearing them in some way. This is why it isn’t surprising to me that Almost every major consumer electronics manufacturer is now working on a smart watch. However smart watches only get us half way there, for one thing we will still have to raise our hands to put them at face level, or look down at our wrist to see the same notifications we already get on our smartphones. Secondly, today’s smart watches aren’t a viable replacement for our smartphones, most of the videos I have seen of smart watches show they merely serve to display the same notifications we get on our smartphones. The killer apps in the wearable computing era will be to make the experience so seamless, you forget you are even wearing them. Enter Google Glass! I don’t yet have a pair of Google Glass, but I have watched enough videos and read enough articles about it, and used plenty of smartphones and tablets to know this is the future of computing. This is also why I’m not surprised that in 2012, Time called Google Glass "Best Invention of the Year." To get an idea for how Google Glass works, take a look at this short video: I’m a big believer in that the best user interface is the one that gets out-of-the-way, the one we don’t see or even notice, the one that just works. Smartphone are great but they still require us to get them out of our pockets, look for and launch the right app and use their awkward onscreen keyboards as input methods. Wearable computers like Google Glass will provide a more seamless computing experience because they will always be there when we need them and will understand our voice better than Siri does today, and will predict things for us even before we ask for them, based on where we are and what we are doing. There’s something magical about recording video or taking a photo without using our hands and that’s one of the many things Google Glass will empower us to do. I recently bought a couple of electric scooters for my son and I, and it has been a lot of fun to enjoy the outdoors with my boy. But I wanted to record the experience so I went ahead and purchased a GoPro Hero 3 camera, along with a chest mount harness, and you won’t believe just how steady the hands-free videos come out. I suppose this is the closest I have gotten to wearing Google Glass. A screen shot of a hands-free video of my son riding his electric scooter using a GoPro camera and a Chest Mount Harness, while riding my own scooter. In the Connection Economy we live in, Google Glass is going to revolutionize how we learn new things and share what we know almost instantly. Imagine all the how-to videos that are going to be recorded and shared, it will be like everyone wearing the best screen recording software all the time and sharing the world around us. Google Glass will no doubt be a game-changer for Education and Mobile Learning and this is why I’m very excited about it! I leave you with this video I use when I teach my mLearning workshop and recently played during my keynote presentation for the ASTD Houston conference. via Explorer Story: Andrew Vanden Heuvel [through Google Glass] - YouTube. Upcoming Events: Here’s a list of some of my upcoming events and conferences: August 13-14: From e-Learning to mLearning Design Training [6-hr Online Workshop] http://bit.ly/SxiAN6 If you are looking for Speakers for your 2013 eLearning, mLearning and Mobile Events, please contact me http://bit.ly/xP46WP Here’s a recent Keynote Presentation I delivered for ASTD Houston: http://bit.ly/153Vr8C September 5-6: I’m teaching a two-day Articulate Storyline class online: http://bit.ly/14uc02j

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.

This morning I received an email from Motorola with the subject Moto X. Ready when you are. I mostly ignore emails telling me about new smartphones, but the copy inside the image definitely got my attention today. Here’s what it says in case you didn’t get the email: Moto X responds to your voice - no touching necessary. Instead of a generic, unhelpful blinking light, information important to you quietly appears on the screen. When you pick it up, Moto X is curved to fit in your hand. Twist your wrist twice, it becomes your camera, and gets the shots you’d otherwise miss. Moto X is the first smartphone to be designed and assembled in the USA, so it’s close to you before it even gets to you. Once you turn it on, Moto X is all yours. Three things caught my eye, namely: Moto X responds to your voice. Instead of a generic, unhelpful blinking light, information important to you quietly appears on the screen. Twist your wrist twice, it becomes your camera, and gets the shots you’d otherwise miss. For a while now, we haven’t seen much innovation in smartphones, the newer ones are for the most part faster than the previous generation, and their batteries last a big longer. Or in the case of Apple and the upcoming iOS 7, a design that goes from skeuomorphic to flat, and not much beyond that. In other words, there hasn’t been much to get excited about. In fact, things on mobile are beginning to get complicated as they did in the PC era, and since Mobile is about simplicity, this cannot be a good thing. Think about it, we now have an excess of apps and we are constantly struggling to find the right one, we are now swiping too much in my opinion for such a simple task. I actually use the search on my iPhone to find the app I need, that is if I can even remember about all the apps I own. Predictive Computing I for one believe that it’s time for us humans to stop having to adhere to our technology and have our technology cater to us. I feel that we are now ready for truly smarter phones that can begin anticipating our needs based on where we are and what time of day it is for example. This is why I’m excited about Google Now and why I’m concerned about Apple’s future, in part because they don’t have a Google Now-like strategy. Neither does Apple seem to have an answer to the upcoming Google Glass. I will share more of my thoughts on Google Now in a future post, but for now I believe this is the future, predictive computing if you will. Back to the Moto X phone This is why I take notice when I read that a smartphone will wake up when I speak to it, no touching required. Incidentally this is possible in the Moto X because Google Now is built from and center. The idea that a phone can display the right notifications for me exactly when I need them is another exciting microinteraction that I welcome into my mobile experience. Finally, the ability to simply twist my wrist to invoke the camera is one of those ‘why didn’t anyone else think about that before’ concept. This is a great start and I look forward to more manufactures doing more. Thoughts? Here are two videos I found on the Moto X that illustrate these innovations:   via Moto X - Quick Capture - YouTube.   Upcoming Events: Here’s a list of some of my upcoming events and conferences: August 13-14: From e-Learning to mLearning Design Training [6-hr Online Workshop] http://bit.ly/SxiAN6 If you are looking for Speakers for your 2013 eLearning, mLearning and Mobile Events, please contact me http://bit.ly/xP46WP Here’s a recent Keynote Presentation I delivered for ASTD Houston: http://bit.ly/153Vr8C September 5-6: I’m teaching a two-day Articulate Storyline class online: http://bit.ly/14uc02j

Written by Chris Osborn   The development of your high potential employees (or HiPos) is a critical factor in ensuring continued success for your company. Today's Q&A Thursday video provides you with a simple tip to help ease your HiPos into their future roles.   Stay Up-to-Date on the Most Current Business Training Trends BizLibrary offers 7,000+ training videos in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   10 Tips for Marketing Your Employee Training Program In this eBook we’ll discuss you'll learn 10 ways to improve the marketing of your online employee training program and boost employee engagement and participation. BizLibrary's Mobile Learning App meets the needs of today's digital learners. Employees no longer wait for training departments to push learning content to them. Employees are used to pulling information to themselves, when they need it, on their own terms and conditions, and on their own devices. Video Transcription Hi,Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing with BizLibrary with today's Q&A. Today's question comes from Kiera, but it's really more of a comment and suggestion about how to really drive leadership development. Kiera says, I would say that you can give your high potential employees opportunities to grow their leadership capabilities with smaller projects and initiatives. For instance, I've been tapped to lead a change initiative related to our shared drive. I've been given a task force of five members and it has really been a great experience, and really helpful in exploring leadership strategies. Well, we here at BizLibrary talk a lot about the value of action learning projects, or participating in a task force or project team as a way engage high potential employees or emerging leaders in learning, and Kiera's comment, well really it's a testimonial, confirms the value of this suggestion. And why are these approaches good ideas? Let's go back to Kiera's words. "It's been a great experience" "Very helpful in exploring leadership strategies" Well, we learn best by doing. And that's what happened with Kiera. Now let's build on that by adding some great learning content all around the experience. Before the project, provide video courses on the basics of teams, team dynamics, and team leadership. During the project, provide access to mobile content, real time access to content on engagement, coaching and leadership essentials. Then, once the project is completed, perform an after-action review with the participants and their managers to talk about the positives lessons learned and the impact on the organization. Find the wins, and ask how the wins might have been bigger by asking "what-if" questions to explore even more depth and breadth of the emerging leadership skills. Learning is a process, we can't talk about employee learning and development in linear terms, and we can't expect learning strategies that project learning as a linear process to deliver results, especially in today's world. So to really amplify the results of your employee learning efforts, remember, define ways for employees to experience learning firsthand. Be creative, find a task force project for high potential employees which gives your emerging leaders chances to actually practice leadership skills.

Here what eLearning Learning thinks is the most interesting stuff from last week. Actually, it's what all of you seemed to think was the most interesting stuff from last week.Top Posts The following are the top posts from featured sources based on social signals. New Way of Learning- eLearning Technology, May 4, 2009The Ten Commandments of eLearning- Upside Learning Blog, May 8, 2009Avoiding the Virtual Ghost Town- Kapp Notes, May 6, 2009Learning Outcomes- eLearning Technology, May 6, 2009ASTD / ISPI Event- Social Enterprise Blog, May 8, 2009eLearning Tour - May 21 - Free- eLearning Technology, May 5, 2009Brain rule #6- Clive on Learning, May 8, 2009Improved Learning or Business Benefits- eLearning Technology, May 4, 2009Lies, damned lies, and Wikipedia…- ThirdForce Blog, May 8, 2009Profile Photos- eLearning Technology, May 7, 2009The next Web of open, linked data (Semantic Web)- Don't Waste Your Time, May 6, 2009Describing What You Do: Instructional Design- Learning Visions, May 6, 2009iPhone Learning Links- Kapp Notes, May 5, 2009How small is too small for educational technologies to be meaningful?- Electronic Papyrus, May 3, 2009Top Other Items The following are the top other items based on social signals. 9 Free Tools That Help Me Build Better E-Learning, May 5, 2009Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage, May 4, 2009Using Elgg as as Social Learning platform, May 2, 2009Learning with 'e's: e-Learning 3.0, May 4, 2009Learning 2.0, May 5, 2009Become a chief meta-learning officer, May 3, 2009The Future of eLearning is Social Learning, May 2, 2009Are You a Super Learner?, May 7, 2009Learning as a Network, May 7, 2009Is there no room for Informal Learning?, May 3, 2009How to Get the Most Out of a Conference, May 7, 2009New technology supporting informal learning, May 4, 2009Royalty-Free Music, May 2, 2009 Top Keywords Camera (8)Twitter (27)Pipes (2)Desire2Learn (2)Social Network Analysis (2)Learning Management System (6)Mobile (18)FLV (2)Photo (9)ISPI (2)TechSmith (2)Articulate Presenter (2) eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content

by Jen Weaver   Because Mexico is  our neighbor to the south, Mexican culture may be familiar to most Americans. Whether you will find this information new or just a refresher course, let's explore some common cultural facts about Mexicans and their expectations when it comes to Training and Development. Test Your Knowledge of Mexican Culture True or False. The official name of Mexico translates to "The United States of Mexico." True or False. Mexico's official religion is Catholic. Quick Tips for Training & Development in Mexico1: Mexican communications include elaborate and extensive demonstrations of courtesy. Culturally, many Mexicans find it difficult to say "no," so they may agree to decisions or tasks without fully understanding the expectations but will avoid asking clarifying questions. You may find that those with higher levels of education may be more prone to request further details. While generally deemed acceptable in business interactions, intense constant eye contact may be interpreted as aggressive or threatening in other settings. During casual interactions, for example, intermittent eye contact is more appropriate. Authority figures are commonly perceived as corrupt, so most Mexicans will be skeptical of those in positions of leadership. Overcome this by being warm, personable and courteous. Demonstrate trust and goodwill while building relationships and maintaining professionalism. Mexicans are typically risk-averse and highly resistant to change. Subjective feelings on a topic guide an individual's perspective on what is true or right. Generally speaking, however, those with higher levels of education will give greater weight to objective facts than straight emotions or gut feelings when making decisions. Family is highly valued, and individuals will commonly make decisions based on the best interests of their family unit. Even with such a prevalence of machismo in Mexican culture, the mother is typically viewed as the central figure in the family due to her protective nature. However, the father may still garner the most respect. Business opportunities rely heavily upon building relationships, with relationships taking priority over expertise. Take time to get to know your students and key decision-makers in advance, especially when interacting with high-ranking professionals or governmental officials, as this will aid in their receptivity to your message. Priorities in time are given to building relationships, not to necessarily ending the meeting on schedule. While business meetings often end late, they will typically begin on time. So, be sure you are punctual. For casual gatherings, everything will typically start and run later than planned. As relationships develop, your Mexican counterpart may transition to using first names when you communicate. Wait for him or her to make this change; otherwise, use educational or business titles to address each other. Business settings are more relaxed than here in the States, and decision-making is a lengthy process. Build buffers for delays into your class timelines to allow for multiple conversations. Once a decision has been made, implementation processes are usually faster than here in the States, as Mexican businesses face less requirements and paperwork. Be mindful not to publicly criticize anyone, as individual dignity and respect are highly valued. High-end sharp-looking visuals are appreciated, so be sure to use quality graphics in your training materials. Answers The Trivia Above: True. False. Mexico does not have an official religion, although Roman Catholic beliefs are very prevalent. References:   1Morrison, Terri, & Conaway, Wayne A. (2006). Kiss, bow, or shake hands (2nd ed.). Avon: Adams Media.   *** Developing international training and development materials? Contact Jen at Carmazzi Global Solutions. And if you love Jen's articles, check out her new Localization mini courses.

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.     Learn something new! BizLibrary provides 7,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.

We have reached another key milestone in the mobile revolution, which bodes well for everyone involved in Mobile Design and Mobile Learning. A new report by Gartner, which came out today, shows that for the first time, smartphone worldwide sales exceeded those of feature phones in the second quarter of 2013. The report shows that while feature phones sales continue to decline steadily (21% year-over-year), worldwide smartphone sales reached a whopping 225 million units, up 46.5 percent from the second quarter of 2012. I expect that very soon people won’t be able to buy feature phones and instead will upgrade to smartphones and this is a great thing because it means that more people will be able to leverage the capabilities and sensors built into smartphones for Learning. The report has many interesting statistics, including the fact that Microsoft has now become the No. 3 Smartphone vendor, overtaking Blackberry. You can read the full Gartner report here.  

by Jennie Ruby How do you spell the shortened form of the word synchronize? Is it synch or sync? I have seen it both ways recently, so I checked out the Webster's dictionary. I found that sync is the more frequently used variant, but that both spellings are listed. So which one is better?   It turns out that when Webster's lists two spellings of a word, they may have the word "or" or the word "also" between them. The word "or" tells us that the two variants are used equally and often, whereas the word "also" tells us that the second one is significantly less often used.   Meanwhile, the next listing in the dictionary was lip-synch, spelled with the h. Go figure.   How about dialogue versus dialog? The dictionary lists dialogue first, in such uses as for a dialogue in a play, or dialogue between two people. However, dialog box uses the variant without the -ue on the end. So in the software training industry we see the secondary variant far more often.   This week's challenge is not so much a test to see if you can get the answers right, but more a survey to see which is your preference. Survey results (and correct answers to the last two Confusing Words challenges) will be coming soon. During the role-play we set up a dialog/dialogue between two class participants. We catalog/catalogue the results from all of our quizzes for later data analysis. I need to synch/sync my phone with my Outlook calendar. The two devices were already in synch/sync. The professor served as an adviser/advisor for the online class. The high-tech/hi-tec solution did not work. The wifi/wi-fi in our office was down all afternoon. When ready, submit your answers as comments below.   *** If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Check out some of Jennie's mini courses.

Catherine Lombardozzi recent post Coaching informal learning sparked something for me around online coaching opportunities.  In prior posts she identifies the following elements as being needed for informal learning strategy to be effective in the workplace: Motivation for learning. A culture that provides access to other people who support learning in a wide variety of ways Easy access to materials that support learning Skills in utilizing electronic tools to manage learning. In this post, she adds to the list that a "learning coach" is also needed: Many learners will benefit from having someone to coach them through identifying their learning needs, sorting out the options for learning and development, and processing what they learn when they follow any of the available paths for learning. I completely agree with Catherine that we need to be thinking about how learners can get support for dealing with the complexities of informal learning.  There's a new level of responsibility on learners.  Before I get into coaching, let me step back and look at the larger picture. Learning Ignition Points I believe that Catherine is describing the needs around informal learning when it's being used by workplace learning organizations to support learning - but learning somewhat distinct from work.  In other words, possibly supporting ongoing learning to build management skills for a group of new managers.  It's somewhat event oriented.  And likely defined initially in terms of a set of learning objectives. I most often think about informal learning in the context of work objectives.  As I've said many times, for concept workers work and learning are inseparable. For a knowledge worker, generally its something like the start of a new project or a new kind of situation that sparks the need for learning.  We might call these: Learning Ignition Points But these ignition points are generally not coming from the learning organization.  They originate based on the work itself.  Role of Learning Organizations The learning organization's role is to provide support to these workers/learners as they hit learning ignition points.  In some cases, learning organizations may be aware of upcoming learning needs and be able to be out in front.  For example, an organization may make a strategic decision to go after a new market.  The learning organization can get out in front by looking to provide access to information about this market and talk with key stakeholders about possible changes that they may need to support to help accomplish this transition. The vast majority of learning ignition points occur for individuals or teams based on their specific work.  For example, prior to going after a new market, possibly a single individual or a work team is looking at various new markets and trying to figure out what might make sense for the organization.  This is why most learning is long tail learning. The role of learning organizations around long tail learning is to provide tools, support, skill building so that learners can self-serve their learning. Really that's what Catherine is talking about as well.  But the difference in the perspective of work needs vs. learning needs is important.  Learning organizations cannot think about this in terms of "creating informal learning events" … they need to think about … How do I support concept workers when they hit learning ignition points? Coaching There's actually quite a bit that learning organizations can and should do to support concept workers at learning ignition points, but I want to focus back on the idea that Catherine raises: coaching. When a knowledge worker hits a learning ignition point, they may or may not think of this as "I need to learn."  Rather they may think about "getting up to speed" or "finding out about" or … In a prior post, I talked about Dave Pollard's experience with knowledge management (and it's a conversation I've had directly with Dave): So my conclusion this time around was that the centralized stuff we spent so much time and money maintaining was simply not very useful to most practitioners. The practitioners I talked to about PPI [Personal Productivity Improvement] said they would love to participate in PPI coaching, provided it was focused on the content on their own desktops and hard drives, and not the stuff in the central repositories. In fact, much of what Dave talks about is his transition for KM as centralized solutions, to going out to help support and coach.  This assumes that the learning organization or someone has spent time to get to workers ahead of their learning ignition point to provide them with support and to be in position to coach. The reality is probably more of what Catherine talks about when she asks the important question: Who are these coaches?  For workplace learning, this is a critical role of the line manager.   A good manager develops people, and there is no more powerful way to do that than to be an encouraging and demanding learning coach.  If managers take on this role, the question about how to monitor and evaluate informal learning dissolves; managers will be intimately involved in knowing what, how, when and to what degree their direct reports are learning. Likely for many workers when they hit a learning ignition point, they do go to their line manager to ask for thoughts, help, etc.   And I wonder about the skills that most line managers possess around learning coaching. Online Coaching While the line manager and possibly the learning organization may be providing some of the coaching, my guess is that a lot of the coaching comes from quite varied sources that I would roughly say are peers inside and outside the organization. When I look at my own behavior, I take any new learning need and consider whether it's something I can likely just find through search, or if it's more complex, then I quickly move for learning need to the key question: Who do I know who can help me figure out how to learn about this? In many cases, the answer is that I'm not sure who I should talk to about it.  In which case, the first bit of effort is what I refer to as Conversation Seeking in the post: Networks and Learning Communities.  What I said at that time still holds that most often I find myself using: LinkedIn Various learning communities My Blog Twitter And the question I'm asking is always of the form: Here's what I know, but I'm trying to find out X, how should I go after that? Recent examples for me are … Business side of professional speaking Aggregation technology Research on categorization / types of eLearning New Way of Learning In fact, if you run down my blog posts you could consider about half of these to be part of this.  Likely about 10% of my twitter posts are seeking information.  Most of my online coaching seeking activity you don't see because it's one-to-one via LinkedIn. Again, you can go back to Networks and Learning Communities to see quite a bit about all of this. What's interesting to me is how much of what I personally do when I hit a learning ignition point is really seeking and getting online coaching.  But it shouldn't just be me.  It should be all knowledge workers:  Knowledge workers should have the tools and skills to utilize online coaching as they hit learning ignition points. Upfront vs. Time-of-Need Coaching One thing I've realized as I'm writing this is that there is likely two times when a learning organization might be involved in coaching.  One point is prior to a specific learning need in order to help the knowledge worker be ready when they do hit the specific need.  This is really what Dave Pollard is talking about.  Go through the organization and provide tools, support and skill building.  It's worth looking at some of his additional specific suggestions in Knowledge Management: Finding Quick Wins and Long Term Value … His 6 Quick Wins are: Make it easy for your people to identify and connect with subject matter experts. Help people manage the content and organization of their desktop. Help people identify and use the most appropriate communication tool. Make it easy for people to publish their knowledge and subscribe to the information they want. Create a facility for just-in-time canvassing for information. Teach people how to do research, not just search. The other point where learning organizations might be involved is at time-of-need.  A learning ignition point has occurred.  Are you in position to try to help them.  This is a bit more like the role of a librarian.  It's specific help on how the knowledge worker can effective learn about this new area. Actually this raises an interesting question around the intersection of corporate librarians 2.0 and learning organizations 2.0.  Any specific pointers on that? What's Next In looking at this, it's hard to believe that time-of-need coaching is going to happen if we've not done the upfront coaching.  So, the reality is that we need to be looking at Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job - Management Consultant.  Really that's what we are talking about here. I would appreciate any thoughts on this? eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content