A cometdocs é uma aplicação on-line que pode integrar a panóplia de ferramentas TIC usadas como auxiliares ao ensino ou integrar ambientes de e-learning. A Cometdocs.com é uma empresa canadiana sedeada em Toronto. A primeira versão da aplicação foi lançada em 2009 sendo na altura uma ferramenta gratuita de conversão de formatos de ficheiros. Agora, permite também o armazenamento, gestão e partilha de documentos na "nuvem". A conversão de formatos é feita on-line. A partilha pode ser pública ou privada, através de um link próprio. É possível a partilha com outros utilizadores registados e é também possível a partilha anónima não obrigando a registo de utilizador (através de um link válido por 24 horas). A interface da aplicação é simples e funcional. Testando a conversão de ficheiros de formato PDF para DOC verifica-se que funciona sem problemas para textos em inglês mas que não suporta caracteres específicos (caracteres com acento, cedilhas, etc), pelo menos, das língua portuguesa e espanhola que foram as testadas. São diversos os formatos suportados para conversão: doc, txt, xls, pptx, png, gif, jpeg, etc. A aplicação permite a criação de uma conta gratuita com espaço de 1 Gigabyte. Os ficheiros estão limitados a 100 Megabytes, é permitido fazer 15 conversões e transferir ficheiros para mais uma pessoa. As contas Premium e Pro permitem mais espaço de armazenamento, ficheiros maiores, conversões ilimitadas e maior número de pessoas com quem partilhar. Estas contas custam respetivamente 9,99 e 19,99 por mês (curiosamente, não é indicada a moeda. Serão dólares canadianos?). Apesar da concorrência de peso no que diz respeito a armazenamento, como a Dropbox ou o Google Drive, a Cometdocs é uma aplicação muito simpática e simples de usar, funciona inteiramente on-line e acresce a possibilidade de conversão de ficheiros e de partilha de documentos através de um link. As funcionalidades permitidas na conta gratuita são muito razoáveis. Pode ser que futuras versões suportem a conversão de textos noutras línguas que não o inglês. Apesar disto, é sem dúvida uma ferramenta a ter em conta.

Sometime back I had written a post on character driven stories for e-learning. This post talks about including emotions in e-learning that make a great impact on the audience. While strong emotions can make an impact, something light hearted can also make a great impact. I have always felt amazed at how some creative people come up with amazing ideas to include humour and fun in learning. I have also seen that when humour and fun is included in learning, it is always creativity at its best. When you want to use humour and fun in learning, you must think out of the box and you must not be restricted by traditional teaching/learning formats. Here are two amazing videos that illustrate humour and fun in learning. Facebook Manners This video is about dos and don’ts in the social networking site - Facebook. I love the way the dos and don’ts have been presented through a scenario. It is not just the scenario that appeals but the way the element of humour has been used. The video uses style parody of the 1950s to bring out the element of humour. I also like the way the rules are displayed from time to time on the screen. I really can remember every facebook rules taught in this video. This is because every scene is fresh in my mind only because of the humorous interaction between Alice and Timmy The next video is called  Creative Staircase. This is one other video that illustrates how the fun element makes learning happen so well. This video also illustrates well how an idea can be made to put to practice by creating a fun activity. Well coming up with such ideas does require a lot of creativity and imagination. Creative Staircase Hope you enjoy these two videos. Have you ever used the element of humour or fun while designing your e-learning or any training for that matter? I would love to  hear from you

Mais uma colaboração na análise de um caso de estudo de aplicação de gamification, proposto pela Gamfed - International Gamification Confederation. Depois de Disco Flipper, segue-se o TechHub Google Campus Noise Meter, que é um leaderboard (ou tabela de liderança) que mede o "barulho" que cada uma das start-ups presentes no TechHub no Google Campus em Londres. A tabela é publicada semanalmente por Toby Beresford, CEO e fundador da Leaderboarded, já mencionada aqui. A Leaderboarded também participa, ocupando o segundo lugar da última tabela publicada. A Leaderboarded como o nome indica, oferece um serviço de criação de tabelas de liderança a partir de diversas fontes de dados. O Noise Meter tem como objetivo "show who’s making the most noise on the twitterverse each week". É medida a atividade e a reciprocidade de cada start-up. A atividade é medida pela pontuação no Tech Kred Outreach adicionada com o número de posts publicados pela empresa. A reciprocidade analisa as respostas exteriores às atividades da empresa o que inclui o número de vezes que a empresa é mencionada no Twitter, no Kred influence score e nos comentários recebidos nos blogues. As pontuações obtidas na atividade e na reciprocidade são combinadas, com ponderações, para produzir a tabela. Esta é publicada na rede interna e afixada em papel. Atualmente, 60 empresas estão a participar. Para análise destes casos de estudo são considerados os objetivos da aplicação, se se trata de um uso efetivo de gamification, se esta poderia ter sido usada de uma forma melhor, quais as mecânicas usadas, se implicam um envolvimento de curto ou de longo prazo, se foram bem usadas, etc. O prazo para participação termina a 28 de março. Posteriormente será disponibilizado o respetivo white paper.

This post is in response to the Big Question December 2009 - What did you learn about learning in 2009? I guess this year I learnt much more than last year. Let me quickly list some highlights here: I have written better quality articles. I have gained good instructional designing and technical writing skills. I learnt microblogging through Twitter. The Instructional Designers Community of India was formed this year and I got the opportunity to organize learning sessions . I must say I was able to network with a lot of learning professionals through the community. I also gained a lot from these learning sessions. This year has also been very special because The Writers Gateway got featured in eLearning Learning and my post got listed in the Top 125 Workplace Elearning Posts . Also people have come to this blog  and left Thank you messages for the kind of help they found here. This is really exciting and encouraging Well, 2009 is also now very special because this year I decided to become an independent professional. This being said, presenting top posts from The Writers Gateway. Here are the top 10 posts of 2009, first from elearning Learning. 7 Invaluable Thoughts About Film Making that Applies toInstructional Designing too! Why You Should Have User Centric Tutorials for Software Products Have You Thought of Character Driven Stories for Your E-learning? Why Enhanced Reading Comprehension Skills Are a Must for Instructional Designers? My Experience and Lessons Learnt While Creating a Demonstration for a Mobile Application Check the complete list here. Posts that invited lot of discussions  in The Writers Gateway are: Technical Writing vs Instructional Designing - Is it really a tug of war? A "Hello World" Approach to Teaching Instructional Design According to The Writers Gateway Stats, the following posts have also got a lot of attention: Storyboard Templates for Instructional Designing What is a Scenario Based E-learning Course? Game of the Week : FarmVille Top 4 Things That You Can Do to Get Started with Instructional Design How Humour and Fun Work Wonders in Learning. Thank you all for making The Writers Gateway so special for me. Hope you continue to read posts @ The Writers Gateway. regards Rupa

A 15.ª edição do Simpósio Internacional de Informática Educativa (SIIE) encoraja a submissão de contribuições originais de qualidade, em língua inglesa (preferencial), espanhola ou portuguesa, em várias áreas temáticas, que se explicitam, não de forma exaustiva:     •    Conceção, desenvolvimento e avaliação de software educativo    •    Design de Interação na educação    •    Design e normalização de tecnologias educacionais, linguagens de modelação e metadados    •    Data mining e Web mining educacional    •    Web semântica aplicada à educação    •    Sistemas educativos inteligentes    •    Ambientes de aprendizagem personalizada    •    Ferramentas e recursos educativos baseados na Web    •    Jogos e simulações em educação    •    Laboratórios virtuais e remotos    •    Computação ubíqua/móvel em educação    •    Robótica e educação    •    Software Livre, Conhecimento Aberto e Recursos Educacionais Abertos    •    Gestão da tecnologia, conhecimentos e competências na educação    •    Tecnologias emergentes em educação    •    Metodologias de utilização e de avaliação das TIC em contexto educativo    •    Experiências inovadoras de integração das TIC no Ensino/Aprendizagem    •    Aspetos sociais da utilização das TIC em contextos educativos    •    Questões de género, culturais e para públicos específicos    •    Aplicações das TIC para pessoas com Necessidades Educativas Especiais    •    Formação de professores e TIC    •    Educação a distância    •    Web social, sistemas colaborativos e comunidades de aprendizagem.Data limite para submissão de trabalhos: 15 de junho de 2013. O simpósio realiza-se em Viseu de 13 a 15 de novembro de 2013.

A propósito do caso de estudo para o GamFed sobre uma aplicação do Leaderboarded - TechHub Google Campus Noise Meter - ficam aqui algumas considerações sobre o uso deste tipo de mecânica/elemento de jogo no contexto da educação. O primeiro problema tem a ver com o objetivo de usar tabelas de liderança (uma tradução possível para leaderboards). Este elemento de jogo apela sobretudo à competição entre os jogadores (e também ao status individual) mostrando a posição de cada um face a um qualquer critério. A competição entre alunos (que existe mesmo que não se apele a ela diretamente) não é normalmente bem aceite, sobretudo nos primeiros anos de escolaridade. Mas há formas de usar as tabelas de liderança. Em Leaderboards in Education: What are its applications? são dados alguns exemplos que vale a pena analisar. Como exemplos de aplicação são referidos a angariação de fundos para uma qualquer iniciativa da escola (não implica nenhum tipo de competição em contexto académico) ou atividades de grupo (dilui a possibilidade de competição individual). Os outros exemplos implicam a associação a um sistema de pontos, nomeadamente, para premiar comportamentos desejados (p.e. assiduidade). Sobre a associação de tabelas de liderança a um sistema de pontos fiz já uma experiência mencionada aqui e que juntou uma aplicação do Leaderboarded com o ClassDojo (ver o blogue criado para o efeito). A tabela de liderança foi baseada em dados armazenados numa folha de cálculo do GoogleDocs, uma das fontes de dados possível para o Leaderboarded). Os dados consistiam em pontos obtidos individualmente (a partir dos resultados do ClassDojo, premiando comportamentos desejados e penalizando os indesejados) e pontos obtidos em tarefas de grupo. Relativamente a forma de aplicar as tabelas de liderança, estas podem ser absolutas ou relativas (ver Gamification a Little on Leaderboards). Estas últimas têm como objetivo evitar a desmotivação dos jogadores pior classificados (apenas se comparam relativamente a outros no mesmo nível). Sobre a contribuição para o caso de estudo do TechHub Google Campus Noise Meter destacou-se a importância deste tipo de ferramentas de gamification deverem ser usadas em conjunto com outras ferramentas. A aplicação de um único elemento de jogo (a tabela de liderança) não conduz a uma experiência de gamification completa, como é óbvio. Este elemento de jogo integra o que Kevin Werbach designa por PBL Gamification (PBL de Points, Badges e Leaderboards) ou BLAP Gamification (BLAP - Badges, Levels and Leaderbords, Achievements and Points) por Scott Nicholson (ver referências aqui). Este tipo de elementos de jogos apelam sobretudo para a motivação extrínseca e portanto devem ser aplicados numa estratégia de curto prazo e tendo em conta que podem reduzir a motivação intrínseca. De qualquer forma, o apelo à motivação extrínseca pode ser usado de forma positiva e o Leaderboarded é sem dúvida uma ferramenta de gamification a ter em conta. A apresentação abaixo descreve bem as diferenças entre motivação intrínseca e motivação extrínseca e o seu impacto em aplicações de gamification: Gamification - Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Rewards from Playful Wingmen

Hello All, I am pleased to announce a training program on Instructional Design for beginners. You should consider this training program, if you are someone who has no clue about Instructional Design and wants to gain basic Instructional Design skills to get productive at work. This training will adopt a fast-paced approach with emphasis on learning by doing. After the training, you will be able to : Effectively gather requirements for an online training program Conduct  gap analysis Conduct target audience analysis Study and analyze raw content Create  instructional objectives Derive the course outline Design course flow Design Instructional Strategies Design Assessments Create a Storyboard Who should take this training: Aspiring Instructional Designers/Fresh Instructional Designers/Technical Writers/Teachers Total training duration: 10 days ( 6 hours per day), Flexi timings. Mode : Classroom Training Location: Bangalore This training is open to individuals and corporates. If you wish to get more details on this training, please fill this form here or leave your query in the Comments section here.

The 6th World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2013) is an international attempt to promote the dialogue for the main aspects of the Knowledge Society towards a better world for all. WSKS 2013 will be held in Aveiro, Portugal (19-21 June). Submission of papers for Springer Proceedings: May 15, 2013.

I just read a blog post by Upside Learning and got inspired to write this post. What I learnt? Upside Learning has partenered with Skill-Pill of UK and are working on developing 2 minute learning videos that you can access on your mobile. You can access these videos anytime, anywhere. Skill-Pills can cover topics such as leadership. business english, management, personal skills and so on. Here is an awesome video on 2 minute learning videos: Here are some demos of 2 minute videos here. I find this idea of 2 minute videos fascinating. These 2 minute videos can work very well like cheatsheets, or job aids. I think learner analysis and requirements gathering has to be done really extensively because you have to teach someone what they need most in just 2 minutes. I would love to explore more into the design of these 2 minutes videos. Hopefully Upside Learning will post some Meanwhile, please let me know if any of you have created such 2 minute videos. Would love to hear from you.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi é muitas vezes citado em trabalhos que abordam o tema da gamification por causa da sua teoria do fluxo (descrita no seu livro Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience). O fluxo é um estado que leva a que uma pessoa ao estar tão envolvida numa atividade se abstrai do tempo e do espaço. Este estado é muitas vezes sentido pelos utilizadores de videojogos, daí esta teoria surgir no contexto da gamification. Esta procura formas de transportar os elevados níveis de envolvimento e de motivação sentidos pelos jogadores para contextos exteriores ao universo dos jogos de maneira a conseguir mais do que um simples propósito hedónico. Criar condições propícias à geração de experiências de fluxo nos participantes de uma qualquer atividade num contexto não lúdico será uma forma de aumentar os seus níveis de envolvimento e de motivação para executar essa atividade. Um sistema gamificado que inclua elementos de jogos pode ser o que Finneran & Zhang descrevem como um Computer Mediated Environment (CME). A possibilidade de gerar experiências de fluxo num CME provoca atitudes positivas nos utilizadores e o desenvolvimento de condições para uma melhor aprendizagem. Os utilizadores de um CME podem ter experiências de fluxo se usarem esse sistema como se fosse um brinquedo. Com a aplicação de gamification na educação o que se pretende é aplicar na sala de aula e na relação dos estudantes com a escola, os componentes e as técnicas de desenho de jogos que os tornam atrativos e conduzem a elevados níveis de envolvimento e motivação.  O uso de plataformas tecnológicas que constituam ambientes sociais de aprendizagem correspondem aos ambientes mediados por computador capazes de criar as condições de fluxo nos alunos que conduzam aos níveis de envolvimento e motivação que se pretende ver reproduzidos no contexto da escola. O vídeo abaixo é a TED Talk de 2004 em que Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi descreve a sua teoria do fluxo: Existem algumas visões críticas da aplicação da teoria do fluxo como a de Donald Clark - Csikszentmihalyi - don’t go with the ‘flow’! - mas que não retiram a sua importância no contexto dos estudos sobre gamification. Ver também o vídeo abaixo (de Brian Burke da Gartner) sobre a importância da motivação íntrínseca e da geração de experiências com significado em aplicações gamification: video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Consider this story: A girl who works in a call center wants to become an Instructional Designer. Her writing skills are average. However she has this strong urge to learn. She gets motivated by creative work. She is willing to put in lot of hard work. She finds Instructional Design interesting. She has gained some  basic Instructional Design skills and is enthused to apply her skills and is excited about securing a job. Now such a girl goes for a test in a company that is into e-learning development. She goes there sharp at 2 pm. She is made to wait for an hour. She is then given a test. The girl attempts the test and completes it on time. The interviewer tells her she can leave and she will be called for,if she clears the test. By the time the girl leaves the company it is 7 pm. What happened next? The girl got completely disheartened. She assumed that she has not done well in the test because the interviewer did not tell her anything. She got  frustrated that after such a long wait, she got no feedback. What might happen? She might now lack confidence and might hesitate to become an Instructional Designer. My Point A person with poor language skills wants to become a writer. You know it is difficult. You think that person must not try to become a writer and do something else. Have you ever thought it will be great if that person becomes a writer because it is not IMPOSSIBLE? There are so many ways in which we can thwart budding talent and discourage people. There are equally umpteen ways in which we can motivate and instill confidence in people. You can hire the best minds, the best people for your company. You might also be able to retain the best talent. Every other company is looking for "Great Instructional Designers, Great Programmers, Great Writers…. etc. etc." What about the average crowd? What about the so called non-performers? The real challenge is in turning a non-performer into a performer. The real success is in motivating an average mind to turn into a brilliant mind. Are companies ready for this challenge? A few days back Archana had written a post that had some really good guidelines to understand learners. She had written those guidelines in the context of kids and schools. I would apply those guidelines to freshers trying to enter companies. With your permission Archana, I am rephrasing some of those guidelines here for all those who are hiring freshers. You do not judge the capacity of a fresher by their performance in a test or by their behaviour the first time you meet. Never underestimate someone’s capacity to perform. Give people a chance to demonstrate. That’s why you have something called "Probation Period". Do not try to hire the best minds always. The so called best minds might fail to perform. Do not expect people to know everything. Create an environment where people in your organization continuously learn and improve. Do not try to fit people to your requirements. Rather hire people and train them so that they fit your requirements. Do not throw questions at freshers. Try to enter into a discussion and understand how much they know, how much they are interested. The bottom line is "It is not just SKILL/KNOWLEDGE but the WILL to perform and to  put in hard work that makes for a good performer. What say?

I get surprised when I hear people buying virtual stuff. I always wonder why they do it and what kind of satisfaction they must be getting in buying things that they cannot touch and feel. Well, I realize I am not quite different from those people. I get so involved in playing Farmville and get so immersed in the activity that everytime I harvest and make money I feel so happy. When I bought my cottage, I felt as if I had bought it in real life. This is the kind of impact the immersive internet can create. I have always found virtual worlds fascinating and I have always wanted to explore more into immersive learning. I was completely excited when Professor Karl Kapp invited me to be a part of his blog book tour. I was thrilled to read his book: Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration. The book talks about the relevance of immersive learning today and gives ample guidelines to create a 3DLE (3D Learning Experience). In this post I would love to pick up some interesting points from the book authored by Prof Karl Kapp and Tony O’Driscoll. To begin with here is a good definition of 3DLE from the book: A 3DLE is a highly immersive virtual environment in which the learners act and interact in real - time with each other and  with the instructor to accomplish a challenge or task. is a highly immersive virtual environ- ment in which the learners act and interact in real - time with each other and with the instructor to accomplish a challenge or task. The authors  nicely distinguish between 2D and 3D learning environments. In a 2D learning environment, web conferencing tools , chat facilities,  whiteboard, application sharing etc. are used to drive interactivity. Whereas  in a 3D learning environment is a highly immersive virtual environment where learners interact real time with one another and with the instructor and are emotionally involved to complete a challenge or task. I like the way it is said in the book that in a 3DLE, content is king, but context is kingdom. This book has lots of tips for Instructional Designers to design a 3DLE and has a lot of case studies too. I particularly liked the 7th chapter that talks about designing and developing a 3DLE. I loved the use of stories to illustrate what it takes to design a 2D learning environment and a 3D learning experience. Some interesting points in this chapter are: An Instructional Designer should be a Context Designer while designing 3DLE and consider things like building architecture, peer - to - peer  interactions,  informal  learning  spaces,  and  learner - to - object  interactions. When you design virtual learning experience, you need to focus on context, objectives and give lot of scope for collaboration. You must provide opportunity for demonstrating learning. This chapter discusses how you can use ADDIE process to design a 3DLE. To learn more, please read the book. Its worth it. Check out the Learning in 3D webiste and the buy the book here. You can get a discount of 20% by using the code L3D1 at the Pfieffer/Wiley web site Enjoy the book

eLearning Papers: MOOCs and Beyond - Call for papers - extended deadline: April 8. eLearning Papers is currently welcoming submissions which address the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses, a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008. Issue 33, MOOCs and Beyond, seeks to both generate debate, and coalesce a variety of critical perspectives into a fruitful body of research.  Upcoming call for papers:     •    Learning Analytics and Assessment, estimated publishing date, June 2013.     •    Design for Learning Spaces and Innovative Classrooms, estimated publishing date, July 2013. 

Microsoft has launched the prototype of a game called Ribbon Hero which will help people boost MS Office knowledge and skills. You just  have to download and install Ribbon Hero. It acts as an add-in in MS Word, MS PowerPoint etc. How does it work? Every time you use a feature in MS Word or MS Powerpoint, you gain points for it. If you use advanced features, you gain more points. This cool add-in allows you to connect with friends in Facebook, compete and compare scores with them. Here is a video that gives an overview of Ribbon Hero. Here is a snapshot of my scores and progress: Microsoft has also designed a lot of mini games which you will find if you click the Play Challenge button. My View I like the way Web 2.0 has been used to design this simple learning game. Since this is a multiplayer game, it will attract lot of attention and the best thing is  you learn and gain points while you do your regular work. I would give 4/5 for Ribbon Hero for just the idea and concept. I still have to figure out how effective this is going to be. What do you think?

Foi já divulgado o whitepaper do caso de estudo TechHub Leaderboarded (ver este post): Whitepaper Case TechHub_Leaderboarded by GamFed Comentários adicionais que foram enviados na contribuição submetida: TechHub Noise Meter is an application of internal gamification or enterprise gamification. Is is used to improve collaborators' engagement that feel more motivated to participate since they receive feedback from their efforts through the leaderboard. Collaborators are not individually mentioned  or rewarded but they have the sense of participation in a greater cause, the success of their company. From this standpoint, I consider its application as a "best pratice". A leaderboard is a mechanic for short term engagement. It appeals to extrinsic motivation (winning a competition and achieving a better status) and this kind of motivation is for short term engagement. These type of rewards work as long as they exist. If they cease to exist, engagement could fall. They can also reduce intrinsic motivation. I see Leaderboarded as a gamification tool that can be used with other tools to achieve a wider gamification experience. Alone, Leaderboarded is limited to its own specific purpose but combined with other tools it can contribute to a wider experience. I used Leaderboarded in an educational context combined with ClassDojo, a reward tool based on points, targeting students behaviors. Leaderboarded proved to be a very helpful and effective tool.

January 30, 2010 is going to be an eventful day. Instructional Designers across cities in India are going to meet in groups in their own city. This is going to be the first meeting organized by the Instructional Designers Community of India this year. More than 50 Instructional Designers have RSVPd for the meetup. This is a great number to start with. If you are in India, make sure you show up in the location specified in each of the cities below: Update: Chennai meetup is happening at 11 AM  in : Element K India Pvt. Ltd. RR Tower II, 4th Floor (you will need to sign in on 4th floor), Thiru-Vi-Ka Industrial Estate Guindy, Chennai 600 032 INDIA It is not too late yet. RSVP for the meetup here. If your city is in the list, please feel free to gang  up with your fellow Instructional Designers in a coffee shop or park. Do not forget to: Take pics Take the minutes of the meeting Let us have a great time on 30th Jan

Realizou-se em São Francisco, nos dias 16 a 18 de abril a GSummit 2013, um evento que procura reunir os principais atores do universo da gamification. No âmbito deste evento foi lançada uma iniciativa para premiar as melhores aplicações do conceito de gamification em diversos setores (GAwards), entre eles a educação. A lista dos nomeados na área da educação pode ser consultada aqui. Os resultados deveriam ter sido anunciados durante o evento mas aparentemente ainda não foram divulgados. De qualquer forma destacam-se o primeiro classificado nas votações - World of Classcraft - e o quarto classificado - 3 Key Lessons Learned in 5 semesters of College Course Gamification. Este último é um exemplo de aplicação de gamification no ensino superior e podem ser encontrados mais detalhes num post de Steven L. Johnson, o professor que promoveu a iniciativa. Johnson tem ainda um vídeo onde apresenta a sua experiência (47m): Esta experiência é também mencionada no Horizon Report - Higher Education Edition 2013: At the Fox School of Business at Temple University, a professor designed his social media innovation course as a quest in which students earn points for blogging and engaging in social media activities. They are awarded badges, and those that excel earn a place on the leader board. No vídeo, Steven Johnson apresenta também a sua definição de gamification (aos 7m30s): "using game elements in some other stuff", uma versão mais ligeira do que a tradicional "using game elements in non-game contexts" (e mais uma definição a juntar à coleção). Na sua aplicação de gamification, recorreu aos habituais points, badges, achievements, leaderboards e levels, usando um plug-in para o Wordpress no que diz respeito a achievements. A isto juntou o que designa por careful incentive design. A apresentação inclui uma demonstração do portal do curso e uma análise comparativa de resultados (com e sem gamification). São apresentados igualmente os depoimentos dos estudantes envolvidos. Uma análise de diversos plug-ins para o Wordpress que podem ser usadas em aplicações de gamification é também referida na apresentação. Não fica muito claro de que forma é que os elementos de jogos foram efetivamente aplicados. Aparentemente terá tudo a ver com a participação em blogs (do curso e dos alunos). Os resultados apresentados e os comentários apontam para resultados positivos mas ficam por conhecer os pormenores. O portal do curso alvo desta experiência - social media innovation - está disponível on-line.

By ruparajgo | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon Times are changing. Getting a job as a fresher is no longer so easy, I guess. At least that’s what the popular job portals in India tell me.  I was checking some popular job portals and found that most employers require candidates with atleast 1 year of experience in Instructional Design. This does say a lot about the current job market. This does not mean getting a job as a stark fresher is impossible. This means as a fresher with 0 experience in Instructional Design, YOU need to work hard to make it happen. I have been training people in Instructional Design myself and I understand how important it is for them to get a job. This is when I thought of some ways in which freshers might be able to fight their way through this tough market. So here are some tips for freshers looking for jobs in Instructional Design: Decide what you want to do The first step is to spend some time reading through job descriptions and decide what you want to do. Never go for brand names. Always go by job descriptions and your interests. For example, if you like working with technology, you can consider trying for a  curriculum developer role in a software company. On the other hand if you like working on various subjects, you can join a company that is into custom e-learning. At the outset, be very clear about the kind of work you want to do. Remember Instructional Design is very vast! Gain some basic Instructional Design skills If you do not have time to take up a 3 month certification course in Instructional Design, try finding a mentor who can help you out or try a short duration course to gain some basic Instructional Design skills. Understand Instructional Design and what Instructional Designers do It is not important to remember instructional theories. It is more important for you to understand what instructional design is all about in simple terms and have a good understanding of the activities involved in creating training material (online and classroom). Most importantly, try to find out what freshers are expected to do when they join organizations. Get your portfolio ready As a fresher,having a portfolio might be not so easy. However remember times have changed. Employers want to hire people who can deliver and bring out results. Your portfolio can have sample storyboards. Carry some sample storyboards while you go for an interview. If you know how to work with rapid e-learning tools, create a 2 minute learning video and add it to your portfolio. If you do not know how to work with a rapid e-learning tool, spend some time learning the tool on your own. Tools like Captivate are easy to use and easy to learn too. Highlight your interest/knowledge/skills in your CV When you write your CV, highlight your interest/knowledge/skills in Instructional Design. You might have been a lecturer in a college or a technical writer. While you write about your achievements, make sure you also communicate why someone must hire you. Do not expect HR personnels to call you Be proactive. Keep your eyes open for all kinds of opportunities. Submit your CV in all job portals. Contact some HR consultant and inform him/her that you are on the lookout. Do not lose heart If you fail in one or two  job interview, remember that is not the end. Keep trying. Be patient. Things will work out if you work towards your goal persistently. Do not stop learning Let job interviews not distract you. Let failures not discourage you. During your free time, read about Instructional Design, practice writing and take up visualization exercises. Remember the more you practice, you will get better and better. Learn from failures Make a note of the questions asked in the interview. Reflect and think how you could have done better. If you attend 2 or 3 interviews, you will get an idea about the kind of questions people ask and what they expect. Prepare accordingly. Network with Other Learning Professionals Join a community for learning professionals such as Instructional Designers Community of India. Network with learning professionals and try finding opportunity through people. Hope these tips help you. If you want to add on to this, please do it in the Comments section.

Conferência Serious Game Time ! sobre aplicações de serious games e gamification no mundo empresarial.

Hello All, Today I complete 3 years of blogging and it really means a lot to me. This blog now has 222 posts, close to 600 comments and nearly 200 feed readers. I have got some really nice feedback on my posts and my blog. Thanks to all of you who helped me reach this far. When I started blogging in 2007, I never thought I would  learn so much through my blogging efforts. I  got a chance to network with wonderful learning experts across the globe.  I also made friends with my fellow learning professionals in India. This has been possible only because of this blog. I realize the immense value of blogging very much this year especially now that I am an independent instructional designer. This blog has opened up great opportunities for me and that it why it is so close to my heart. Today I would like to call out to every fresh Instructional Designer to start blogging. Take my word.  It really helps! I thank all my readers for motivating me to write more. I thank all my fellow instructional designers and learning experts across the globe for being a great inspiration for me to sustain my blogging efforts. I hope to share all the knowledge that I gain through my learning process the coming year too. Please wish  Writers Gateway a very happy birthday! And yes, please wish me good luck! I need lots of it regards Rupa

Call for papers - ICERI2013, 6th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation.   After 5 years enjoying ICERI conferences in Madrid, this 6th edition will be held in Seville (Spain), on the 18th, 19th and 20th of November, 2013.ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONThere will be 3 presentation modalities: Oral, Poster or Virtual.The deadline for abstracts submission is July 11th, 2013.  OBJECTIVESThe objectives of the conference are to:- Present and disseminate projects about education and emerging technologies- Share best practices and promote international partnership and cooperation- Create an international forum to discuss and exchange ideas about the latest innovations in education and research, applied to all fields and disciplines ICERI2013 Publications will be sent to be reviewed for their inclusion in the ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index. IMPORTANT DEADLINES- Abstract Submission Deadline: July 11th, 2013 (included)- Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: September 2nd, 2013- Final Paper Submission Deadline: October 3rd, 2013 (included)- Registration deadline for authors: October 3rd, 2013 (included) facebook - http://www.facebook.com/iated twitter - https://twitter.com/ICERI_Confhttps://twitter.com/ICERI_Conf

How do you train someone to become a great manager? How easy or difficult is to train someone on leadership skills? Are classroom training programs or online training programs on leadership skills  enough? A great leader  never gets manufactured in a classroom. Why? Because leadership  has lot got to do with behavioral and attitude change and this kind of change cannot be achieved through ordinary training programs. Great leadership skill need to come from within and that is very difficult to achieve. As the saying goes" You can take the horse to water, but never make him drink it".You can give people tips on leadership skills but you cannot get the leader out of them. What if you can persuade people to perform? How about persuading someone to do something that you want him to do? Be it a behavioural change or an attitude change, how about using technology to achieve this? Interesting? Yes, it is interesting indeed. Using technology you can persuade someone to do something that you want them to do. This is not new. This is something that you are used to. You are used to getting persuaded by technology. Online advertisements are persuasive. You go to a website. There is a pop up with attractive visuals that says "Click here to win." The advertisement is persuading you to click on the banner. Facebook is persuasive. The whole site is designed in a way that you feel like visiting the site again and again. Mafia Wars is persuasive. You are feel like playing the game all the time. The examples above illustrate how websites and games are designed to persuade people to play a game, visit a site or click on an advertisement. Let us now look at one other interesting  example of persuasive technology for learning/training. A company called Realityworks offers parenting programs for young people to create awareness about parenting and childcare. So what do they do? They develop robotic babies that behave and act like real babies. If you enroll for this parenting program, you will be given this robotic baby to take care of and the baby must be fed, put to sleep diapered around the clock. The baby will keep track of how well you take care of it and will respond. Interesting?  Strange? Whatever it may be. Technology here is  being used in a innovative fashion to bring about a change in behavior which might be difficult to achieve through an awareness session or through a mentor. Check out these interesting videos about Real Care Baby: The parenting programs designed by RealityWorks is to control teen pregnancy. Read more on this here. Persuasive technologies give you a real experience and can work wonders to bring about a behavioral and attitude change. The study of such persuasive technologies is called Captology. This term was coined by BJ Fogg. I learnt about Captology and  found the interesting example of  Baby Care in this social network called: PINOT. It is really interesting to note the way technology is being used to bring about a behavioral and attitude change. Have you come across some such examples? Please feel free to share it.

I recently came across this website called Amplify that works just like Twitter and other social networking sites. However Amplify seems to be a much more effective tool for collaborative learning than any other freely available learning tools today. I say this taking into account some of the unique features in Amplify. There are top 6 Features in Amplify that makes it an effective tool for collaborative learning. Here is the list: Amplify Add-in : You can integrate Amplify into your web browser and it acts just like a Go button. Every time you come across an interesting article, you can share it with others within seconds without any manual entry. Amplify URL/Amplify Selection options: These options are really interesting. In Amplify, you have the option of sharing portions of a web resource. For example, if you want to share an interesting finding about usage of e-learning from a report, you can highlight a specific portion in the report and share it with others. Add you take option: This is the best option in Amplify. Every time you share information, you can add your 2 cents to it. So when you share resources with others, they get to read your perspectives/thoughts/opinions about the topic. Recommend option: If you find an interesting resource posted by your friends, you can recommend it. You do not have to repost it. Amplify Daily Brief: Every day you receive a list of resources posted or recommended by your friends. So even if you are not checking the site, you get to check the resources through your mailbox. Integration with Popular Social Networking sites: You can sign into Amplify using your Twitter or Facebook accounts. This makes life easy The features above do make Amplify an effective tool for collaborative learning. For example, if four students are working on a research paper, all of them can sign into Amplify and follow one another. During the process of researching, each of them can keep posting resources to Amplify. The resources could be full length articles, quotations from e-books, interesting findings from reports and so on. The resources can be qualified with personal comments/thoughts/ideas. Amplify will help  the students to collate information, discuss and share ideas/thoughts as they work on their paper. Amplify could also be used by organizations for employee training and learning. May be Amplify could be integrated into the corporate intranet or learning portal.  Last but not the least, I must say I love the user interface design of Amplify and on a usability scale of 5, I would rate it as 4.5. Now I would love to hear from you: Have you used Amplify? What is your take on its use for collaborative learning? Please share your thoughts.

Last weekend, we had an interesting online session for the members of Instructional Designers Community of India. During the session, Abhijit Patronobis of Monad Interactive demonstrated an e-learning module on music called Anandadhara. It was a very engaging session and it was interesting to see how music was taught to people using an asynchronous blended learning approach way back in 2003 when e-learning technology was not so well known in India. About Anandadhara Anandadhara was a training program on Rabindra Sangeet. This is Indian music, specifically bengali music. The objective of the training program was to teach songs of Rabindranath Tagore. Anandadhara was designed in such a way that people could learn Tagore’s songs at their own convinience with the assistance of experts. As Abhijit says, "Most Bengali know about 50 to 200 rabindra sangeet (without even ‘learning’ them formally). Almost every Bengali in the age group of 30+ love singing Rabindra sangeet for the sheer pleasure of it, only a handful of them would learn though. There are various reasons, they either dont want to learn or they dont have the time to learn.  Thats because we need to prioritize our needs. So  someone who studies in a college or works full time, will not find a teacher available at that hour when he finishes his studies/work (although he may have an interest to learn and there may be plenty of teachers around). Anandadhara gave  people a chance to learn at their own flexible pace, under the guidance of the best teachers, any time, without having to go anywhere. and that too without having to buy instruments and learning to play them. They could perform any where without any live accompanist. These are some of the benefits that made us popular. The features like listening and looping through lines, the practice mode, the audio clips for pronunciations, the info for explaining the song — these are rich features that one does not get in a face to face class these days. Why? because the teacher does not have the time (and also the capabilities to explain)." Anandadhara Training Approach The training approach used was as follows: The learner downloads the e-learning module  onto their system. The learner listens and practices the songs on their own. The learner then records the song in his/own voice and sends the song in mp3 format via e-mail to the teacher. The teacher gives feedback and suggestions in mp3 format and sends it to the learner via e-mail. This way people across the globe could be a part of this training program on music. Here is a snapshot of the e-learning module on Rabindra Sangeet: You can download the actual e-learning module here. You can also download the recording of the session on Anandadhara here. My Thoughts Today technology has advanced and there are a variety of ways in which you can design and deliver your training. So what options do you have today to deliver training on music: Synchronous virtual classrooms: Using web conferencing tools like Webex, Skype and Adobe Connect, teachers can connect with the learner real time on the internet and conduct music classes. Immersive Internet : In a 3D immersive online virtual environment as found in Second Life,  you can form a live band and the experience of  learning and playing music could be very similar to what you would find in real life. What other technology options can you think of to teach music online? One other question that comes to my mind now is can online training can be applied to visual arts such as painting and drawing? Please share your thoughts and views in the comments section.