One of the best things we can do as social media marketers is to continue our growth and share information with others. Blogs are great for this. They help us stay in touch with others like us. They help us learn from each other and they help us share our knowledge.Social media advice is everywhere. With… Source: www.elegantthemes.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

  As part of my talk this morning to the librarians I shared with them my personal digital network. I use social media on a daily basis, both for work activities and in my personal life. I use Facebook and Twitter extensively; Twitter is mainly for professional purposes, such as: tweeting useful resources, disseminating research, pointing to blog posts, etc. In contrast Facebook is a mixture of personal and professional stuff; you will find an electric mix of pictures of cats and food (#foodporn), interspersed with links to interesting research articles or conferences. I use Slideshare to post presentations, but also sometimes articles I have written. It’s very motivating to see how many people have viewed a presentation! I am in LinkedIn, but don’t really find it very useful. Blogging has changed the way I work as an academic, I have had my professional blog since 2007; I blog about ideas I am developing, interesting notes from conferences I have attended or articles I have read, summaries of talks I have given. I also have a personal blog about cooking and travel, two of my favourite pastimes   Endnote is invaluable as a tool for curating references; it has made writing papers so much easier! I tried other tools such as Mendeley and Zotero, but didn’t really get on with them and found myself reverting to Endnote. Dropbox is great for sharing documents with others, but Google Drive is also useful. Skype is great for video conferencing, either with individuals or for group meetings. I have also used it to give webinars. Other video conferencing tools include Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect and Flashmeeting.  I have recently discovered a great App for my iPad Air; peartrees and I am finding it great for curating useful resources around different tools.    Interesting… when I first put this list together I forgot to include email, Freudian slip? Would be interested to here examples of other people’s digital networks and the reasons why you use particular tools. 

What do you do with three terabytes of geotagged tweets? You map them if you’re a cartographer like Eric Fischer. A data artist and developer at Mapbox, Fischer has been collecting geotagged tweets for the last three and a half years using Twitter’s public API. With more than 6.3 billion tweets [...] Source: www.forbes.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Professional associations have a mandate to present and offer well-organized content and information to their communities of members and practitioners, but the process of creating and maintaining informational schemes that are relevant to end users doesn’t always overlap with designing to meet basic administrative needs. When approaching association learning technology from the perspective of supporting sensible information taxonomy for end users and administrators, there are a multitude of factors to consider. It’s difficult to offer a comprehensive discussion of all relevant inputs and considerations in blog post form, but I want to start a discussion and present a few tips that may help educational directors and technology directors get (and stay) on the same page—especially when it comes to the Learning Management System (LMS). Experts at the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) deal with these types of CMS information management issues for various groups, so that feels like a good place to start the LMS discussion. An AIIM white paper written by Carl Weise, titled How to Develop Taxonomies to Support Navigation, Information Discovery, and Findability, addresses the fundamental taxonomy issues that arise for information domains. As Weise points out, developing and supporting a taxonomy involves weighing the tradeoffs between navigation (creating predictable and sensible structural form), information discovery (developing connections between pieces of information within a domain), and findability (capturing and refining the vocabulary of user communities). For example, a simple hierarchy tree structure is easy to manage and predictable for navigation, but information discovery and findability will suffer. I particularly like Weise’s larger point regarding a fundamental mistake that can lead people to develop poor taxonomies (Weise, pg. 7): "Too often in taxonomy work, you sort things logically into warehouse type arrangements, instead of understanding what ‘relatedness’ means to our typical users in the course of their everyday work. This means you actually force people to go to lots of different places to gather the information they need, instead of finding them all close to each other ready to hand for the work they serve. Understanding our users and their patterns of information use are the only ways you can overcome this." Most groups are aware of these issues. Associations push to create more complex, facet-based taxonomies to satisfy user demands for better search functionality and content sorting on their website and CMS all the time. Users like the tags, recommendations, search filters, and other tools they employ on sites like Amazon.com, so expectations have been raised for the online experience. However, I often wonder if these efforts and concerns are fully translated to LMS side of the operation. After all, the same issues still apply within an LMS environment. A seemingly sensible taxonomy can become an impractical labyrinth of content for end users and administrators if there’s no flexiblity to grouping and connecting information in other ways. Descriptive metadata (i.e., information about an object that people can use to search and locate that object) can add value, so it’s important to seek out an LMS solution with a proper minimum feature set to accommodate (and enhance) these types of tagging, filtering, and sorting operations. Here are a few basic considerations for associations looking to build better taxonomies in an LMS: Explore the feature set of your LMS. Does you LMS allow you to add multiple facets (i.e., tags) to learning assets and objects? It should, because this is a great way to redefine relationships between pieces of information. If your taxonomic structure can accommodate and promote reasonable approaches to "relatedness" as defined by administrators and users, you enhance findability and information discovery. This type of flexibility gives you a wider array of options to consider when developing a structure for content and information. Determine how you can use descriptive metadata to your advantage. Consider a quick example of how facets can work. A single quiz on a specific question in an assessment for a 2014 certification program exists in a single place within a hierarchical structure. Let’s say it’s located in the "2014 Program" folder and the "Quiz" sub-folder. If you know what you’re looking for and where to look, it’s possible to locate that quiz question fairly quickly. But what if you want more information? What if you want to know how it relates to other questions in the same sub-folder, or how it compares to a similar question in the 2013 certification program? The capability to add facets is crucial to providing speedy and useful answers to these types of inquiries. An administrator could add multiple facets to the quiz question for things like difficulty level, subject matter, experimental content, related regulations, etc. These descriptors would then allow administrators to group pieces of information in different ways and create new relationships beyond the basic hierarchical structure. Quiz questions across different programs could be grouped and filtered according to "intermediate difficulty" or content related to "regulation 9.34," or any other relevant connection you could dream up. In essence, facets allow you to define the important characteristics of data so you can slice the same data set in multiple different ways and target the relevant intersections you need to see. The same concept applies to any piece of information in the LMS. Decide how you will manage facets. Facet management is important. Metadata should not necessarily be shared openly. An association administrator may not want to share everything with learners. An administrator may find it useful to add an "experimental content" facet to a quiz question, but that’s not necessarily something a learner should ever see. If learners are allowed to add facets, who needs to see that personalized information? These are decisions you need to make. If you want the process to work properly, you need to decide who should have the power to create new connections between information. Are new facets injecting potentially harmful ambiguities into the domain, or are they enhancing the organizational principles of your chosen structure? If you adopt a robust hierarchical structure, develop a process for controlling the vocabulary of the community. If you allow for the creation of metadata in the form of thesaurus or ontological entries, you need to make sure these vocabularies still connect in logical ways to promote findability. If the new facets and descriptors you create don’t help users or administrators sort and find content, they aren’t adding value. Make sure you develop a plan to capitalize on value of this feature set in an LMS setting. One easy way to help control and promote the chosen vocabulary is to use an auto-complete feature in search bars. This can help shape user expectations and provide useful feedback on relatedness of various terms. Ultimately, taxonomy solutions made to support navigation, information discovery, and findability require careful analysis of the relationships between pieces of information, and an understanding of realistic use-case scenarios. If you understand what learners and administrators need on the LMS side of things, you can seek out a system with a feature set that allows you to build a better information scheme. The post Taxonomy 101 from an Association Learning Technology Perspective appeared first on Web Courseworks.

Image from a blog post  Part of my role at Bath Spa University is to promote the use of technology for learning, teaching and research. I am just about to take over chairing the school of Education’s e-learning group; one of our first tasks will be to articulate a vision for e-learning and a clear implementation plan. We’ve started an initial brainstorm of activities that might be set up to take this forward. I believe that variety is the key, different things will appeal to different people, but as always what is challenging is finding ways to get beyond the usual suspects and enthusiasts to the mainstream. Much has been written about the challenges and opportunities of Technology-Enhanced Learning, see for example an article by Adrian Kirkwood and Linda Price. I think effective use of technologies is for everyone across the university, not just the academics; so this includes: support staff, administrators, librarians, educational developers, IT support staff, learning technologies, etc. I am impressed with the way that Bath Spa is using Google tools effectively and routinely, not something I have experienced elsewhere. Here is my initial starter for ten, not very imaginative I suspect, but tried and tested methods. Any suggestions for other things would be welcome! Activity Benefits Risks Preschool meeting share and tell sessions To enable staff to share how they are using technologies, initial focus on the use of iPads Not enough staff are willing to share E-learning induction programme for new staff To provide an overview of e-learning in the school and indicate where they can get support and training New staff are not willing to engage or the session isn’t implemented Series of external speakers - both face to face and via webinars To bring in external expertise Not able to recruit enough external speakers, poor attendance E-learning festival - a two-hour session with lunch in the Commons, series of posters and stalls of exemplars of good practice To recognise innovation, to showcase good practice, effective use of time Not enough people willing to offer sessions, poor attendance Development projects - competition for a learning innovation development with funding, working with learning technologist to design and implement, showcase at the end of the year Provides a team-based approach, provides support and time out to undertake innovation, rewards innovation through showcase Funding may be an issue, staff may not have time to invest Hands-on workshops, examples might include: Learning Design, Mobile Learning, use of iPads, e-pedagogies, social media Half-day or one-day sessions with lunch, practical hands-on focus, given by experts internally or externally Not enough people volunteer to offer sessions, poor attendance Participation in e-learning sessions advertise via social media, via organisations such as EDEN, ICEM and ICDE Access to the broader e-learning community People may not be used social media, will advertise sessions via education mailing list Encourage presentation and participation in relevant e-learning conferences Access to the broader e-learning community People may need support in working up presentations and need help in targeting the right conferences E-learning audit of existing practice To gain a clear picture of current practice, to highlight good practice and identify areas for development People may not be willing to share what they are doing  

Finding the Right Hired Gun: A Conversation with Elaine Biech CIOs, CTOs, and other technology executives are often saddled with problems that their staff hasn’t demonstrated an ability to solve, either due to a lack of knowledge, resources, or drive. These problems usually have a direct and measurable effect on the business value being delivered by the technology group, and certainly can cause angst amongst the rest of the business leadership. Lack of forthcoming solutions can limit the business’ bottom line, and it can even have a negative impact the careers of the technology leaders. What they are often lacking is a change agent that has the clout, the knowledge, and the wherewithal to "get it done." Hiring a technology consultant may be the solution. I think back to when I managed a stable of consultants in the Milwaukee market. One of my sales people brought me in to talk one of his customers, a Midwest-based department store chain that had gotten off to a very late start in Y2K mitigation. They explained that they wanted to bring in a consultant for a couple of months to get them moving—they really had no time to waste. After gaining an understanding of their technology stack and predicament, I told him that I had an ideal candidate that I would have to fly in from a different part of the country. He asked the rate, and when I told him, he nearly stopped breathing—the rate was four-to-five times the rate he was accustomed to paying for contractors. My sales person had some unkind words for me in the parking lot later, but I’ll tell you how it turned out at the end of this blog post. "My sales person had some unkind words for me in the parking lot…" I recently interviewed Elaine Biech, the author of a series of excellent books about consulting. Her experience isn’t limited to writing; she is president and managing principal of Ebb associates, an organizational development firm with dozens of clients in the association, government, and manufacturing verticals. Her perspective on the value a consultant can bring is robust, so I interviewed her to better understand some of the questions a CTO might have when leveraging a consultant for the first time. The Business of Consulting: The Basics and Beyond , by Elaine Biech 1. How does an organization determine when it’s time to bring in external help? Consultants have both knowledge and skills, and that is why you hire them; they bring valuable options, through the form of advice, based on their experience with other clients, as well as expertise gained from working on other projects similar to yours. Most organizations hire consultants. Know why you are hiring a consultant, because if you do so for the right reason it can be a very wise decision. How can consultants be a good investment? Consultants have the experience, expertise, and time that employees may not. Consultants provide flexibility. They can be brought in for short-term projects. Consultants offer a fresh, objective point of view. Consultants are more efficient for three reasons: They bring experience with similar problems with them. They have the luxury to focus solely on the assigned project or problem. They do not need to deal with the organization’s internal politics or attend meetings. Consultants may be proof of honest endeavor. When other parties are involved, a consultant may serve as a sign that an organization is trying to correct an existing problem, such as a compliance issue. Consultants have both the position and the ability to be change agents. They can move the organization out of established technologies and workflows, and help the organization change to achieve business requirements. 2. Do you have any tips for finding consultants? The best consultants—the very best—are found by word of mouth. I suggest that you contact several people you know who may have faced the same situation that you are dealing with now. Ask them if they can recommend a good consultant. Where do you find these people? Your local association meetings and conferences. Even after you receive recommendations, you will still want to check the consultant’s references with other clients. Don’t get caught up in the idea that you have to be talking to someone from the same industry. You don’t. If someone is adept at setting up a help desk in a manufacturing company, they will be good at setting up a help desk in an association. Call your friends. 3. Should you look outside your local area for a consultant? How large is the city where you are located? A larger city is likely to have a larger selection of consultants with the skills you need. Is confidentiality an issue with your project? Then it will depend on who, from where, and who else they work for. Yep, you will make them sign a confidentiality agreement; you can’t be too safe. How accepting will your people be of external consultants? There is the "100 mile rule" that automatically gives consultants from farther away more respect than those who live locally. Will the consultant have to fly to you for an exploratory meeting? If so, it is customary to offer to pay for their air fare. Don’t make it uncomfortable and wait for them to ask. Just tell them up front you are paying their air fare—I’d limit it to one or two trips, unless you have a million dollar project. 4. What’s in an effective request for proposals (RFP) for a consulting project? The most important job you have as the client is to clearly define the statement of work (SOW). You have to know what you need before a consultant can respond. Test your SOW out by having others in your company and outside of your company read it and tell you what they think you are looking for. You could be asking a consultant to come in at different places of the problem. For example, if you are the client you might ask the consultant to do the following things. Identify the Problem. You may know something is wrong in general (support for a legacy system has a sunset date, communication is poor, turnover is high, and profits are questionable), but you need someone to identify the problem. You will probably need the consultant to gather data, interview people, study the bigger picture, recognize interfaces, and benchmark other organizations. Identify the Cause. You may know what the problem is (IT is overburdened, time from concept to market is too long, or defects are high), but you need someone to identify the root cause of the problem. The consultant needs to understand the basics of problem solving, how to uncover the root cause, how to communicate with process owners, and how to challenge the status quo. The consultant needs to have a heavy dose of expertise in the area. Identify the Solution. You may know there is a problem and have identified the cause (your IT staff is entrenched in your current, dated technology set), but you need a consultant to identify a solution, or set of solutions. The consultant will probably need to research outside initiatives in the same or other industries; may need to ­locate other resources; or to coordinate and facilitate open discussion. Implement the Solution. You may know there is a problem, have identified the root cause, and have determined the solution (you need to attract a new customer base, work better as a team, or improve supplier communication), but you need a consultant to implement the solution or change. The consultant is expected to make things happen. Consultants are asked to install the new, and also to get rid of the old. Consultants will help you deliver information and assist others to communicate effectively. They may supervise installations and reconfigure the work force. Each of these examples require you to know what you are asking the consultant to do. Obviously, there is some of crossover, and if you don’t know, be honest with the consultant. I cannot begin to tell you how many poorly written SOWs I’ve read in my lifetime. Too many. 5. How can I identify a good consultant response? In a good response to your RFP you should expect to see the following things: A clear understanding of your situation The consultant’s experience An approach A project plan and timeline How they will measure success Availability Who (specifically) will work on your project References The investment required (cost) 6. What are some other indications that they are, or are not, going to be able to deliver? Two words: customer referrals. You would be a fool if you did not pick up the phone (yep, the telephone—not email or text) and talk to the references the consultant provided. Tell the other person just a bit about your project and then ask specific questions. What services did the consultant provide? When was the work completed? How satisfied were you with the quality of the work? How well were costs contained throughout the project? How satisfied were you with communication? How did the consultant handle problems that arose? Did you experience any problems that would discourage you from hiring this consultant again? Is there anything I should have asked you about, but didn’t? Don’t hold a single negative comment against a consultant; everyone has a project that wasn’t perfect. Once you complete these discussions, finding a consultant that fits your organization’s culture is an important task. Find someone who comes with good references, understands your problem, and makes you believe you will be able to work with them and build trust throughout the relationship. Let’s face it; you are going to spend lots of money on this consultant. They aren’t cheap. But they do provide value. They will solve your problem. Be sure to ask them if they have time available for your project. There’s no sense hiring the best if they now don’t have time for you. "Caring—truly caring—is a powerful business advantage." 7. How much do learning technology consultants typically charge? What is a reasonable rate in this industry? You know, this is the most difficult question to address. You need to first consider the value these consultants will bring. You also need to determine how you are going to pay them. Is this a time and materials contract or a firm fixed price? I personally prefer a firm fixed price. I don’t have to count minutes, and you can begin to trust me immediately. It is the client’s job to be careful of scope creep—that is, more and more tasks sneaking into the project. Some scope creep is inevitable, however, because you can’t predict everything. If you were a mind reader you would be making a lot more money someplace else! Just be aware of all those little add-ons that come up during the project. This is why communication is so critical. 8. How much should I budget for my total investment? Consultants know that the client determines the acceptable fee ranges. Generally, for-profit companies have more in their budgets for consultants than do nonprofit organizations. Usually, the larger the company, the larger the discretionary funds available. If you are a small company, consultants know that you are able to pay less than if they were working with Coca-Cola, for example. I am most used to daily rates (and that usually means more that you typical eight-hour day), so here are the ranges I uncovered. Based on my experience, daily rates for skilled (not new, inexperienced) technology consultants break down as follows: Typically up to $6,000 per day for corporate projects, but the sky is the limit. Up to $3,000 per day for government/non-profit projects. Note that these figures show a wide range as well as how those ranges change by type of client. Here’s another way to figure out a fair price. Ask yourself: "If this person was on my payroll working in my company how much would I be paying her today?" $75 per hour? Multiply it by three and you have a fair price. I won’t go into all the rationale and reasons why. It works. 9. Once I’ve selected a consultant, how do I manage the consultant’s engagement?  Milestones should have been worked out before you hired this person. You should also know what success looks like for the project. You can certainly ask questions, such as: What could we have done to prevent X from occurring? How can I support you best? What is the best way for us to keep communication open and clear? But you will know you have hired an excellent consultant if the consultant is asking you questions, such as: How does this project fit into the larger organizational picture? How would you define the organization’s culture and values? What observation opportunities exist for me to learn more about X? Who should we talk with in order to see all sides of the issue? When can I meet the other stakeholders of this process? Keep the relationship positive. Keep the lines of communication open. Be completely open and candid with the consultant. A consultant can only be as good as the information she has. Explain the business goals so the consultant understands how the work ties to what’s important for the organization. Request progress reports and be available for meetings. Be a model client. Demonstrate goodwill by giving referrals, offering more work, and limiting demands. Be sure the consultant is paid on time. Demonstrate respect. Be reasonable. Plan in advance and provide adequate lead time. Respect the consultant’s time and resources. Thank you to Elaine for her valuable insights. "The project ends, not the relationship." So, back to my customer with Y2K woes: The customer did in fact move forward with bringing in my consultant—he was in a jam, and it was evident that this consultant had just the right mix of knowledge, experience, and even personality to get the job done. He was still reeling from sticker-shock, so he decided to shrink the duration from two months down to two weeks. Then I got a call after the first week.Their problems were worse than they had understood, but progress had been great, so he wanted to extend the contract to a month. By the time the work was complete, my consultant had been onsite for four months, and the customer said that it was the best money he had ever spent on an external resource.   The moral is: when you find a consultant that is the right fit for your organization and objectives, they can move the Earth for you. The key is to do careful selection work up front, define the objectives carefully, and then give the consultant the executive sponsorship they need to be successful. The post Hiring a Technology Consultant appeared first on Web Courseworks.

Facebook and privacy have a complicated, ever-changing relationship, though things seem to be moving toward stability now that they’ve agreed to make sharing opt-in. Still, some folks may want to walk away from Facebook and leave no trace. Source: www.cnet.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital

Conferences   Last week I gave a keynote at the LINQ conference in Brussels. It got me thinking about the value of conferences and how to make the most of them. So I have put together this list. Is there anything I have missed?   Good way to present research findings and get feedback. Good to disseminate research work and promote the university and the school. Useful in terms of networking and finding potential people to collaborate with and potential work on bids with. An easy and effective way of keeping up to date with current research A means of working towards a research publication. Even if the conference only requires an abstract it is a good idea to work up a paper to take to the conference, which can then be submitted to a journal. Many conferences have an associated journal or print selected conference papers in a special issue. It is useful to go through the delegate list and target people you want to meet. Take notes during the session and in particular useful links and references, and then write a blog post summarising the main points. Twitter and facebook the link. Use a curation tool, such as pearltrees to note useful links associated with the conference presentations. Attend interactive workshop sessions to learn new skills. Be active in using the conference hashtag and connect with others who are also using it and have shared interests. Encourage newer researchers to write abstracts/papers with more established colleagues. Ensure that the abstract/paper aligns to the conference themes; make this explicit if possible. Offer to be a reviewer to get experience at how to write good conference papers.  Take leaflets to distribute about research projects, teaching programmes and PhD opportunities. Use the breaks and social events to network. Good e-learning conferences (primarily tertiary focus):   Networked Learning (Europe) - every two years, excellent high quality conference, selected papers are published as a Springer book. EDEN (Europe) - annual conference in June, good papers and a nice community, has an associated journal EURODL. EDEN (Europe) research workshop in the Autumn. ICEM (worldwide) - long established conference over 60 years, very international. ICDE (worldwide)- large conference very international. ASCILITE - good high quality papers, both practical and theoretically grounded, usually in Australia. Online Educa, December in Berlin, expensive but a good place to be seen in terms of EU projects, commission people usually attend. AECT (USA) - large well-established conference. Edmedia (alternates between Europe and North America - large well-established conference. Sloane (USA) - well-established conference.

Last month, I attended ASAE’s Technology Conference and Expo 2014, held outside of Washington. This was my first time attending this annual event, and I was curious to see if the organizers would be able to focus on technology that pertained to associations, or whether it would be ‘just another technology conference.’ I was pleased to find a great balance of meat-and-potatoes tech talk coupled with highly association-specific details. The sessions were divided into five "Educational Pathways": Content C-Suite Leadership + Management Next Generation Learning Platforms + Applications Since it was my first time at the event, I decided to sample all of the pathways to get a taste for each. The sessions varied widely: some had single speakers while others had as many as five, and they ranged from formal to highly informal. There was even a scheduled "Provocative Discussion." The organizers did a great job of creating a scope that would be attractive to any association executive, and to hold everyone’s attention for two days. Reggie Henry, ASAE’s CIO, opened the general session by talking about the relationship between associations and Information Technology. In the past, IT was merely a necessary expense that helped organizations with the mechanics of membership and book-keeping. Now, it has become a vital tool in capturing and maintaining members through what Reggie described as "Member Engagement," a term that I would hear over and over in most of the sessions I attended. If the association can touch a member through technology, they are more likely to retain them as a member. Educational opportunities and certification testing are key examples of this kind of engagement, Reggie also introduced a fascinating technology that was being tested out by ASAE at this conference. TurnoutNow has created a system in which Bluetooth "Beacons" are deployed across an area to track the movement of participants with the TurnoutNow app installed. Reggie asked everyone to enable Bluetooth on their phones so that the beacons could collect anonymized data to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology. I stopped by their booth on the expo floor, but more about that later. Reggie then introduced Peter High, President of Metis Strategy, LLC, to deliver the keynote address. Peter was an engaging speaker who talked about how critical IT has become to the success of organizations. He pointed out that a paradigm shift in the late 90s brought IT out of the shadows and into the forefront of corporate strategies, often driving growth strategy and business models.   Peter then covered several examples of IT savvy companies completely disrupting stable industries, such as Netflix and Amazon, and then spoke about the opportunity for advancement of CIOs. In the past, CIO was a career’s last stop, but many non-technology companies are now being led by their former CIOs, such as Quantas, Olin, A&P, and even Red Robin. Peter concluded by talking about his book, Implementing World Class IT Strategy, in which he explains his 5-point pyramid strategy. It was all quite inspirational. The first day ended with a spirited "Provocative Discussion" about the future of AMSs (Association Management Systems, the ERPs of the association world). Generally there was a lot more agreement than dissention amongst the knowledgeable panel, which was comprised of Mark Dorsey, David Gammel, Teri Carden, Loretta DeLuca, Sig VanDamme and Mark Patterson. There was agreement that CRM vendors are becoming effective at building association features on top of core CRM products, and that this is leading to a disruption in the sector. Middleware systems are becoming vital to integrating disparate systems in associations’ portfolios, and automatic updates are key to minimizing TCO. There was a discussion about the importance of ‘big data,’ and the general agreement that the data sets that most associations generate are not particularly large, by industry standards. There was more agreement that when developing IT strategies in 2015, mobile technology should be the first consideration, and certainly not an afterthought. Lastly, everyone agreed that there are two factors that lead to a successful system implementation: an effective vendor, and an effective customer. Each panel member was asked to close with a prediction about what is next for AMSs. There was quite a span of ideas presented: Chatter / Yammer Enterprise workflow tools Gamification Adaptive User Interfaces (machine learning) Middleware support Many of the other sessions were quite specialized and engaging. Jeff Cobb of Tagoras did a fascinating presentation on Massive, Micro, and Flipped training. Massive LMSs are generating some stunning statistics. Coursera, for instance, has had over 10 million course-takers. He then gave examples of vendors that provide micro learning solutions, both in terms of content delivery and quiz tools. He wrapped up with an explanation of "flipped" learning—using technology to teach a student through content presentation before the live training, to maximize the value of the instructor’s time. Jeff’s presentation was thought-provoking. Another favorite session was delivered by Dean Comber and Tim Rutler from the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Their topic was the creation and evolution of a project management office (PMO) within an organization, and they were a couple of guys from Chicago who know how to keep it real. They used their PMO as a case study, talking about their challenges and successes as they stood up their successful PMO. They managed to sneak in plenty of beer and Bears references, so they came off as very down-to-earth but effective in their approach to project management. I want to circle back to the TurnoutNow vendor that I spoke of earlier. They were present strictly to be evaluated by ASAE—none of the attendees had to install anything on their phones. They had deployed 267 "beacons" that were scattered throughout the conference hall and session rooms. The beacons collected data from passing phones and then the information got to a central collection system. I stopped by their booth, and they showed me the traffic at my Web Courseworks booth, and the graph correlated well to when I expected traffic in my area, so the hardware technology seems solid. I will be very interested to see what they can do when participants install a conference app on their phones. I imagine that the days of barcodes and even radio-frequency identification (RFID) are short-lived on expo floors. In closing, I want to recommend ASAE’s technology conference to association executives that are responsible for IT, or even general strategy. ASAE’s leadership has done a great job of collecting speakers with topical subject matter, and I look forward to attending next year. The post ASAE Tech Conference 2014: A Recap appeared first on Web Courseworks.

  Teaching Ss their Digital Presence https://t.co/79K09uIBkK via @ictphms #digcit #storify #edchat #esafety pic.twitter.com/HBc0ud7Qab — ICTPHMS (@ICTPHMS) December 8, 2014  

Swift success through sister cities First Impressions Resources (fir), the Brisbane based award-winning training company, announced the launch of their new venture, Swift eLearning, at the 2014 QLD ACPET State Forum in Brisbane today. Councillor Angela Owen-Taylor, the Deputy to the Lord Mayor for International Relations and Multicultural Affairs, congratulated Swift eLearning on this joint venture and highlighted the relationship formed between a Brisbane-based training and education organisation and Swift, an Indian company specialising in eLearning Solutions. "We are very excited to be part of this Swift eLearning launch, an event which celebrates the collaboration between two respected organisations, one from Brisbane and the other from our Sister City - Hyderabad." After an extensive tender process for development of its elearning materials, fir established a relationship with Swift eLearning Services in Hyderabad. Not only were Swift affordable but they were keen to understand fir’s needs. Not focused on selling a product, they took the time to develop a solution. In fact, fir was so impressed with Swift’s service and solutions "we joined forces to create a collaborative business model here in Australia" said Mike Wallace, CEO of fir. AmjadAli Syed was recruited from Swift in India to work with fir here in Australia to establish the business model and provide the technical expertise required. Amjad also acts as the conduit between Australia and India to ensure a smooth service delivery. "Working in the Australian marketplace with corporates and educators is providing us with a greater insight into the needs and requirements of the end-user; an insight that we didn’t have from Hyderabad. Ultimately this will result in learning solutions that are a better fit." The result of this Sister-City collaboration is an e-Learning services company that combines the benefits of a local presence and understanding with the efficiencies and technical expertise of an Indian organisation. Media contact: For further information visit: www.swiftelearning.com.au or contact Mike Wallace on (07) 3236 3322. The post Launch of Swift ELearning! appeared first on Swift eLearning Pyt Ltd.

Don’t let another author commitment sneak up on you. Here’s how to chart out assignments to make them manageable and to tackle them in bite-size pieces. Source: www.entrepreneur.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

  I did a keynote at the LINQ conference in Brussels last week, I focused in particular on the positive and negative aspects of digital technologies, i.e. that there are always two sides to a coin. I began by showing one of the Pearson videos on the future of education. The videos are great as they really give a glimpse of what learning might look like in the near future; personalised, contextual, interactive, and visual.   In general digital technologies are beneficial because they can: enhance, augment, supplement, replace, enrich, expand and empower. They can be negative in that they can: detract, lessen, confuse, overwhelm, infringe and be time consuming or addictive. I then looked at this theme from five perspectives: openness, mobile learning, social media, digital identity and distributed cognition.   In terms of openness digital technologies enable more open practices and in the last ten years or so we have seen the massive increase in the number of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). We have also seen an increase in free resources, tools and expertise being available via online webinars, blogs, open repositories and journals, and social media. Much has been written about the pros and cons of these; positive in terms of opening up access and enabling social inclusion, negative in terms of being primarily elitist and more about ‘learning income than learning outcomes’. The positive aspects of more open practices are that they enable better transparency, afford a greater reach, facilitate equity and social inclusion, challenge existing business models, and result in a disaggregation of formal educational offerings. In terms of negative aspects, adopting an open approach has the danger of ‘laying yourself bare’, gives rise to issues about surveillance and privacy issues, can result in a misuse or misinterpretation of data, raises issues about quality and accreditation, and can raise issues around ownership. I referenced a number of projects that I have been involved with about openness; the 7Cs of Learning Design framework, the VMPass project on accreditation of non-formal and informal learning, a report for IPTS, OpenCred, on recognition of non-formal and informal learning and a current project, MOOCS4ALL which is developing a MOOC to help people design MOOCs.   Smart phones and tablets are now practically ubiquitous, and we have practically near ubiquitous wifi connectivity. They are now much more affordance, robust, light and with a good battery life. There is a range of excellent Apps available to support communication, productivity, curation and learning. The positive aspects of these mobile devices are that they mean learning anywhere, anytime is now a reality, more and more websites are mobile ready, learning is possible across contexts and devices. The negative aspects are that being online all the time means that there is no ‘down time’; people are expected to be online 24/7. We are increasingly dependent on these devices and more and more of our data is stored in the cloud. Finally many learners and teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills to make effective use of these devices for learning purposes.   The third perspective I focused on was social media. I argued that we have seen a shift from a passive web to a participatory, interactive and social web, which is distributed, networked, dynamic, participatory, complex and open. There are now many many tools to support communication and collaboration and we are now part of a global, distributed networked of peers. The positive aspects of social media are that they provide us with a rich variety of ways to communicate and collaborate, enable us to be part of a global community of peers, provide us with access to a vast amount of information, facilitate rapid dissemination of information, and benefits of adopting crowd sourcing approaches. The negative aspects are that there is a lack of privacy, we leave digital traces, which can be negative, there is a danger of misuse of data, being openly online can result in cyberbulling and trolling, and there are issues around privacy and security. Finally they can be time consuming and addictive. I then showed a clip from a film I saw recently, ‘unfriended’, which is a horror move about social media. The film is shot entirely via a computer interface, through Skype and chat.   The fourth perspective was on digital identity. I raised the issue of how each of use presents ourselves online and how we interact with others. I argued that there were five facets associated with digital identity: reputation, impact, influence, productivity, and openness. And also that there was a relationship between identity, interaction and presence. Focusing a little more on presence, I referenced Mark Childs definition in terms of mediated presence (being there, immersion), social presence (projection of oneself, and perception of others, copresence (being somewhere with others), and self presence (or embodiment). The positive aspects of digital identity are that it can act as an extensive of your ‘real self - which can either be the same or different, to enables us to have an extended reach, and offers us the opportunity to explore the medium. The negative aspects are that it can lay ourselves bare, can result in a misinterpretation of identity, can lead to cyber-stalking or identity theft. I recounted my own negative experience of online dating, which I have blogged about before. I am looking forward to talking more about this when I take part in some research Bonnie Stewart and George Veletsianos are doing.   Finally I talked about distributed cognition, referencing Solomon’s use of the term.  In terms of positive aspects I referenced Perkin’s concept of ‘Person Plus’, i.e. our cognition is distributed between our brain and our online digital environment. Today’s digital environment provides us with access to vast amounts of information, and there are more and more sophisticated tools for finding, curating, managing and filtering information. In terms of the negative aspects, many lack the necessary digital literacy skills to harness digital technologies and it is easy to get lost or confused. Technologies are constantly changing and hence there is a lack of permanency. Some would argue that we are becoming over dependent on technologies and there is a growing moving for a call to ‘slow learning’ equivalent to the ‘slow cooking’ movement. Some, such as Stephen Hawkins, warn that with the increasingly sophistication of Artificial Intelligence, there is a danger that machines will take over…    So clearly digital technologies have many advantages and disadvantages, perhaps most chilling though are the words of Paul Virilio in his book the information bomb. He argues that technologies cannot exist without accidents, and that they separate us from real time and space…. Therefore, when not if technologies fail, that is it! Our lives are so utterly dependent and perhaps controlled by technologies. We can’t stop the march of technologies, and whilst we should celebrate the ways in which they can enhance our lives, we should also be aware of the potential downsides.      

Swift ELearning Pty. Ltd. is an Australian e-Learning company announcing the release of e-Learning Templates portal http://etemplate.swiftelearning.com.au for all the e-Learning users across the globe. We offer custom templates using Rapid e-Learning tools like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate and Lectora. The templates includes: Graphical User Interface Engaging Slides Charts and Graphs Text and Graphic Layouts We invite you to download couple of our templates as a try at no cost. http://etemplate.swiftelearning.com.au/tag/free Bulk list of etemplates are in queue, moving forward we will be learning specific needs of the users and will turn our portal as a search engine for all types of etemplates. Do share your suggestions and thoughts at info[a]swiftelearning.com.au The post Launch of e-Learning Templates appeared first on Swift eLearning Pyt Ltd.

1.     Image from http://womensissues.about.com/od/violenceagainstwomen/a/CyberstalkingFS.htm As many of you know I am pretty open on social media and on the whole the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. It’s great to get comments on blog posts, get people replying or retweeting my tweets, participating in debates on fb or remotely following a conference. But recently I have had some experiences that have made me rethink my open policy. In general on fb I accept friendship requests if we have mutual friends or I can see that they are in the same line of work. Recently I have had quite a lot of friendship requests from people I have no connection with, furthermore when I look at their fb page, there is nothing there… Needless to say I don’t accept their friendship request. Another recent incident was that someone I did accept a friendship request from started fb messaging me, for some reason I felt uneasy about this and didn’t respond. Then this morning he started liking literally hundreds of my posts, so naturally I de-friended him. What on earth did he think he was doing? Cyberstalking can be defined as "Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group, or an organization." Bonnie Stewart and George Veletsianos are doing an interesting study at the moment about disclosure online, people who are being staked, or victims of identity crime. I think given the openness of the web and the potential dangers of adopting open practice this is a timely and important study. I look forward to seeing the results. 

Swift Elearning Pty. Ltd. thanks to all the elearning users for making http://etemplate.swiftelearning.com.au portal a success. The huge number of downloads and valuable feedbacks are the most compelling evidences of our success and the need for more eTemplates. As planned, we have added a bulk of new eTemplates to help you develop effective learning experience. The current release of templates are developed in Articulate Storyline and includes following types: Graphical User Interface Effective and relevant learning environments are developed based on the nature and complexity of the topic. Engaging Slides Learner interactions are designed to present content into meaningful chunks and provide cognitive engagement experience. Charts and Graphs Varied types of charts and graphs are designed using suitable colors, animations and font styles. The ultimate objective is to represent the data in a clear and simple form. Text and Graphic Layouts Creative and distinct types of presentation patterns are used to accommodate large amount of content effectively. Once again, we invite you to download a couple of eTemplates as a try at no cost. http://etemplate.swiftelearning.com.au/tag/free Please do share your suggestions and thoughts at info[a]swiftelearning.com.au. The post Ready to use e-Learning templates for Articulate Storyline users appeared first on Swift eLearning Pyt Ltd.

. . Digital CitizenShip: Social Media AND Privacy I wrote already about "Privacy" on my blog posts Privacy In The Digital World-SHOULDN’T We Talk About It!?, Smartphone pictures pose privacy risks … Source: gustmees.wordpress.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital

I am current involved in an exciting EU project called TELL-OP being coordinated by Murcia University. The project focuses on the development of mobile Apps for second language acquisition. We are currently undertaking a survey and would be grateful if you could take the time to complete if this is of interest to you. Here are the details:  Dear Colleague, TELL-OP is a EU-funded Strategic Partnership that seeks to promote the take-up of innovative practices in European language learning by supporting personalized learning approaches that rely on the use of information and communication technologies and open education resources. Our aim is to promote cooperation in the field of language learning and we hope to foster the use of already available web 2.0 services to facilitate the personalized e-learning of languages in the contexts of higher and adult education, in particular, through the use of mobile devices. To learn more about us, you can visit our website at http://www.tellop.eu/. In the framework of our project, we intend to create a mobile application for foreign language learning that includes a selection of language processing technologies. We have designed a survey to help us learn more about the current use of these technologies and mobile devices in the European teaching context. Our survey seeks to explore the spread and take-up of language, and/or text, processing technologies for language learning. Completing the survey should not take more than 10 minutes. By answering the questions, you will be taking part in a European project that seeks to foster the use of new technologies in adult and Higher Education for the learning of languages. You will similarly have the possibility to be among the first teachers to test our TELL-OP app as soon as it becomes available  (during the first half of 2017). Please make sure you leave your e-mail so we can get back to you. Survey in English Survey in French Survey in German Survey in Spanish Survey in Turkish   Thank you for your time, support and feedback!   The TELL-OP team. www.tellop.eu  

Ammonite is proud to annouce a new edition to our course list. TLILIC2001A Licence to operate a forklift truck This is an exciting new course blending the best in online training with face to face training. This course is able to imported into any RTO currently using the ammonite platform and comes with all assessments, completed mapping, continious improvement PDF and trainer templates, practical assessment strategy and training assessment strategy template. Contact us for more information.

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It’s now well known that Ammonite’s TOMS platform is pretty revolutionary in its ease of use, functionality and focus on authenticity and validity but a recently added feature, the Skills Safe Card adds another level of innovation. Click onto the movie to get a quick overview of the power and potential of the Skills Safe card. We are committed to training properly and we have adapted our processes to develop a system that would be great for doing site specific inductions as well. Our guiding principles are simple: To make it easy and cheap to conduct valid inductions To provide workers and employers easy access to up-to-date records of inductions, licences and qualifications on a swipe card (our Skill Safe card) To be able to easily create and modify induction courses as needed The great feedback we've received from Hutchinson Builders who will are rolling out our system on some of their sites has been so encouraging that we feel you might be interested as well. Ammonite, confidence in online training

what is school, #whatisschool, global classrooms, technology, PBL, digital Citizenship, future, teachers, global education, whatisschool, whatisschool, whatisschool, whatisschool Source: candylandcaper.blogspot.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Image source http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Nicosia  A few weeks ago I did a keynote at the internationaalisation, cross-border education and e-learning conference in Nicosia. Here are some notes on some of the other speakers. Michael Gaebel (head of the higher education policy unit, European University Association), gave a talk entitled ‘Trends in Higher Education Internationalisation’. He pointed to a number of useful reports on trends including the e-learning and HE, and argued that internationalisation and digitisation are two key priorities for institutions. He said that there was a wide range of activities around these across institutions and that most did have some form of international strategy, less had dedicated e-learning strategies. A key issue was mobility in terms of quality and the development of student skills. A recent e-learning survey indicates that more and more institutions are developing blended learning and online learning offerings, as well as the development of MOOCs. George Veletsianos reported on some recent studies he has been involved with on learners’ experience and perceptions of MOOCs. The focus was on how students are using social media for scholarship and what challenges arise in new learning environments. Part of the work has recently been published (BJET, 46(3), 570 - 587). Abstract Researchers describe with increasing confidence what they observe participants doing in massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, our understanding of learner activities in open courses is limited by researchers’ extensive dependence on log file analyses and clickstream data to make inferences about learner behaviors. Further, the field lacks an empirical understanding of how people experience MOOCs andwhy they engage in particular activities in the ways that they do. In this paper, we report three findings derived by interviewing 13 individuals about their experiences in MOOCs. We report on learner interactions in social networks outside of MOOC platforms, notetaking, and the contexts that surround content consumption. The examination and analysis of these practices contribute to a greater understanding of the MOOC phenomenon and to the limitations of clickstream-based research methods. Based on these findings, we conclude by making pragmatic suggestions for pedagogical and technological refinements to enhance open teaching and learning. The results of the studies included the following: Successful learners have highly developed study habits Students take notes, if they take more than one MOOC on a similar topic they combine the notes There is evidence of off platform participation via social media or face to face Online learning is an emotional experience; both in terms of excitement and disappointment Life’s daily routines shapes the way in which people participate in online courses, in other words the courses need to fit in with other activities individuals are involved with Finally, drop out rates are not necessarily negative, some learners choose to only do part of a course for a reason George, Pambos Vrasidas and I took part in a symposium on ‘design issues and participation in MOOCs’ in the afternoon. Pambos highlighted the following challenges of MOOCs High student-teacher ratio Assessment Less contact with instructor Learning Design issues High drop out rates Lack of a real college experience The increase of Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) Return on investment  And he listed the following as some of the opportunities Democratisation of education Providing ivy-league courses to everyone Creating a vast pool of data Marketing and recruitment Making quality education available at a distance for a large population New business models are emerging 

CPSISC is once again holding a round of e-learning professional development workshops to demonstrate the latest products and techniques available within the VET sector. Mike and Tim from the Ammonite/Inscope Training Team were asked to deliver a presentation on their experiences of delivering the White Card course using Ammonite’s Validity Assessment Technology which not only identified the applicants but also addressed the issues where students are required to identify hazards, ask questions and participate in general communication. The workshops provided interactive forums that demonstrated and discussed the latest technologies and best practice being used by RTOs to implement Training Packages in the construction and property services industries. The workshops in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane have now been completed but workshops in Adelaide and Perth are coming on the 6th and 7th of November.