Ning announced today that it will soon convert existing customers to a fee-for-service subscription or cut them loose. Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning, announced the shift in the company’s business model while downsizing his company by more than 40%. The first question for most Ning community owners not willing to pay up is "where do I take my online community of practice now"?  Some suggestions follow. First, what does all this mean for the middle school teacher, educator or e-learning professional whose Ning community has amassed months of content and a band of faithful members? It depends. In terms of the platform, open source options abound and here are a few posts from Blackweb20 and Readwriteweb that offer some ideas: Buddypress (http://www.buddypress.org) Pligg (http://www.pligg.com/) Elgg (http://www.elgg.org/) LovdbyLess (http://lovdbyless.com/) Mixxt (http://www.mixxt.com/) Insoshi ( http://github.com/insoshi/insoshi) Xoops (http://www.xoops.org/) Community Engine (http://www.communityengine.org/) Astrospaces (http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrospaces/) If you were truly smitten by the Ning interface and have a blossoming community of practice, you might have been on the cusp of going with the premium option anyway. It could very well be that Ning’s move benefits you the most as they will hopefully be better positioned to grow revenue in a manner more proportionate to their bottom line. Now the implications…Is this the end of third-party, non-open source solutions or simply the fruition of an unsustainable business model? It’s neither and to some degree both. First of all, Ning is simply a blip in the larger unfolding narrative that is open source versus proprietary software. Ning, like many 3rd party, closed-code platforms or tools doesn’t allow one to peak under the hood or customize beyond surface level aesthetics and basic features. This frustrates some and is perfectly OK with  others. However, like many in the proprietary software camp, Ning has tried to make nice with developers by providing more API (application programming interface) access—think viewing your Netflix queue on a 3rd party Web site or phone app. In all honesty, I’m not surprised by Ning’s decision. I wrote about the challenge of the unsustainable social media business model awhile back when discussing the Facebook phenomenon—Ning is not the first to be forced to make this transition and will not be the last…Twitter alert! Matt Freeman at the Vatornews blog sums it up well with his blog title, "Ning exposes freemium’s underbelly"—indeed. That Ning is neither the end of proprietary platforms nor the poster child of an unsustainable business model is apparent when you realize they will still host sites; their community administrators will simply have to verify the viability of their site against their pocketbook—and this could be a good thing for Ning and everyone else. The perceived failing or success of a single platform can often encourage those on either side of the open versus closed curtain to proclaim victory as Matt Asay at the End of the Road Blog suggests already happened back in September 2009. While Matt’s thoughts on this topic are both sharp and informative, his prediction preceded iTunes’ domination of the digital content world (exaggerated, but do look at the Flurry analytics)—accomplished to a large extent in the wake of seemingly worthy open-source opponents that aren’t putting up much of a fight. Of course, prediction could become prophecy and end-users could stop using proprietary software systems altogether, but many closed software (free and for fee) platforms are landing volleys with progressively more velocity and direction, even in light of ever tightening gatekeeping systems tied to their distribution method, i.e. iTunes, Amazon, etc. The only significant loss (beyond some possible migration time) for those leaving Ning will be if the time spent facilitating the community did not result in a greater understanding around what constitutes and effective virtual community of practice. Anthony Bradley lists six principles of social media collaboration that help unpack the characteristics of healthy virtual communities and works by Etienne Wenger and other pioneers on this topic are a helpful aid in winnowing out the principles from the tools that instantiate virtual communities. Ironically, a colleague and I just presented at a conference on the topic of virtual communities of practice and in an attempt to more clearly understand organizing principles of such communities, we administered a poll to the 433 members of the Ning community. The results from the 88 respondents can be found in the middle of the SlideShare presentation below and are interesting. Web 2.0 Tools, Ning and Online Virtual Communities View more presentations from clabelleosu. So, once you’ve done some evaluation on whether to convert to premium or migrate your community elsewhere, hopefully you’ll take some time to reflect on the underlying principles that have resulted in intended outcomes or positive participant behavior and especially those that did not. As Warren Wiersbe once said (albeit in the context of theology and not software), "Methods are many, principles are few, methods always change, principles never do." Hopefully, regardless of platform, we’ll continue to be more concerned about the underlying principles related to transparency, persistence and other factors that boost community participation, digital or otherwise. Otherwise, we’ll truly be beholden to the upgrade treadmill and software migration paths that are necessary in the open and closed code context.

Learning opportunities are often geared for two main groups: those motivated to take a course, either because it is required or would provide advancement in their career or other practical benefit in their life; and those with a passionate interest in enriching their understanding of a subject or improving their skills in some activity. But what about the third group, those without interest or incentive? Educational sites, geared for interest-based and workforce development learning, are often designed to project a sense of comforting credibility and predictability. E-learning hosts must earn the trust of clients and users, or risk losing them. Wanting to make people feel like they are in the right place, a safe place, is an understandable tendency in online learning. But sometimes a more dramatic behavior change or change in perspective is desired. Sometimes the learner may be too complacent to make the bigger jumps in learning that are necessary. Sometimes the learner could benefit more from an uncomfortable, unpredictable, even disturbing learning experience. Antonin Artaud Consider the ideas of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the French writer best known for his concept of the "Theater of Cruelty." Artaud believed that theater should not create comforting entertainment but rather force audiences to question and confront themselves. Is there something to learn here for application to e-learning? Public art has often provided "provocative encounters" for lifelong learners—forcing people to stop and see themselves and the world in a new way. Some artists have even taken the shocking power of their work to extremes that invite criticism and disgust. Marco Evaristti, a Chilean artist working in Denmark, staged an event where he served meatballs made from his own fat that had been removed using liposuction. In another controversial installation, he placed live goldfish in blenders and invited museum visitors to turn on the blenders. Can you imagine the impact on the participants and witnesses? Their views on eating meat, cosmetic surgery, animal cruelty, and the sacredness of life were likely changed more profoundly by this experience than if they had taken a course with traditional online exercises. Certainly they will remember the experience much longer and more vividly. While traditional online educational courses may be well adapted to lead learners toward achieving cognitive learning objectives, unexpected, challenging educational encounters such as those proposed by Artaud and facilitated by Evaristti may have greater potential to fundamentally change the perspectives and behavior of illusive, reluctant audiences. Whether these acts are instructive or destructive can be debated, but they do suggest the rousing potential for educators to shake the assumptions of unwilling learners and force them to confront their reality in a new way. There just may be a time and place for such provocation, possibly in combination with a more conventional curriculum. Can you think of a case where learners would benefit from a strategic encounter with the unexpected?

A recent reference in the New York Times indicates the U.S. Army is close to declaring war on PowerPoint. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who heads U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the Times, "It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable." For many, PowerPoint has become "a way of knowing." But is knowledge always best represented by a linear sequence of bullets? Are there alternatives? The concept of a nonlinear presentation tool has been has been around for a while. Rather than lead your audience in a step-like manner, why not give them more control over the sequence of your presentation? If the group is interested in one or two aspects of your presentation, why should you lead them through four or five others? A nonlinear approach gives you the potential to respond to audience needs by altering your presentation to match those needs. With a nonlinear approach, you can assess audience clues, cues, and questions to move the presentation into more fertile and relevant topics. I attended a very effective presentation on nonlinear storytelling that took it a step further and used audience response system clickers to query the audience on which path they wanted to take through the presentation. How do you create a nonlinear presentation? In earlier blogs we have discussed Pachyderm, a nonlinear multimedia authoring tool. This open source web-based application allows a non-programmer to create media-rich flash presentations that incorporate text, graphics, videos, audio, and external links using a simple template-driven approach. Pachyderm is first and foremost a tool for creating interactive presentations for individual viewing on a browser, but if carefully designed, it could be a means to create nonlinear presentations for smaller groups. The newly released version 2.1.1 offers a toggle to increase font size for accessibility issues and could offer a solution for more intimate small group presentations. Buzz has been growing about Prezi, a cloud-based nonlinear presentation design tool that offers a striking new paradigm for creating and delivering presentations. Rather than a linear sequence, Prezi acts more like a Google map of your information, letting you fly over an information landscape at will, zooming in to objects of interest—text, images, videos, links, etc—to pick up additional details. Prezi offers free access to public and educator versions, with 100MB of storage space. Additional features available are for an annual fee. A Prezi map. In my first attempt at using Prezi, I found that I had merely taken a linear presentation and forced it into a nonlinear template. The result was disappointing. The power of Prezi’s nonlinear delivery was lost: zooming into information became just another transition effect linking my fixed linear slides. I realize now that using a tool like Prezi-like Pachyderm-requires rethinking how you plan and organize your thoughts. For example, rather than an outline, create a concept map. Use that to create a map that you can fly over, zooming in to key concepts and media at will, and in any sequence. Here’s a showcase of Prezi examples. One that grabbed me is "The Future of Video" created by Jody Radzik from the Institute for the Future. Note that Microsoft has just completed a beta test for an add-on for PowerPoint called pptPlex that provides similar nonlinear capacity (PC only). Planning a nonlinear presentation using these tools or others will challenge you to rethink how you organize your information, and to just "let go" and give the audience more control over your presentation. I am not dismissing traditional linear presentations with PowerPoint, Keynote, or other tools; I am challenging myself and others to consider an alternative when the topic lends itself to a new, fresh approach. If you give it a try, let us know how it works for you.

Several months back, I posted a comparison of the iPad, iPod and Kindle from the perspective of e-reader functionality. Now, I’d like to provide some input about the iPad relative to what I  see as its true product category: the family room web device. Alas, I’ve already revealed the true nature of my feelings for this iconic tool now that I’ve assigned it to a floor plan and more specifically to a room where one generally relaxes and interacts with content in a more passive manner. Associating the iPad with content consumption as opposed to production is probably not a stretch as I’m guessing that even the most enthusiastic iPad user would concede the device falls short in terms of input. So, I’m hard pressed to imagine the iPad finding its way into the home office when it is obviously so comfortable in the family room. If nothing else, the iPad has generated some interesting discussions around the state of mobile computing. Case in point: I’ve had discussions about the iPad with my barber, my children, colleagues, Luddites and complete strangers. My barber and several strangers have sworn to me in hushed tone that the iPad has ushered in a new wave of accessibility for elderly readers who use the pincher functionality to increase font size on the fly and relieve strained eyes that have suffered under "pinch-less" monitors for years. Forget increasing font size or display size, from their standpoint, "pinch-to-expand" is the new killer feature that will revolutionize modern mobile computing. All of the OSU college students I’ve spoken to about the iPad believe the device is "OK," but not worthy of the cost since most of them already have a mobile phone with Internet access. Hence, the reoccurring statement from many of the student types, "It’s basically a large iPhone." Steve Job’s recent comment that the iPhone came out of development efforts on the iPad reinforces the connection between the two and form factor similarity.  While the lineage of the iPad is established, its utility to the average user is still less clear in my mind. My own view after seeing it for the first time in March was that it was the ultimate family room device—a tablet device that was more robust than a mobile phone and less obtrusive than a laptop, which could fulfill the typical family room computing tasks: web surfing, email, very light word processing and gaming. To test my hypothesis and provide more substance to my barber banter, I brought an iPad home last week and let my wife and two boys (10 and 5) try it out. The iPad was placed into "circulation" alongside of our laptop and my iPhone—the results? My wife found the iPad virtual keyboard a challenge. Many of the educational games my boys play are Flash powered. With no Flash support on the iPad, their interest in the device dropped significantly. The virtual keyboard was also not extremely intuitive for them. These two constraints pushed them back to the laptop until we were able to load some iPad apps. Cogs HD, ACrawler, TM Zero were well designed, but the selection for iPad-formatted content is still somewhat limited and one would be hard pressed to describe the iPad as a true gaming device, especially for a younger audience. Overall, my impression of the iPad changed after this testing period. It was obvious to me that my wife and children prefer using a laptop when at home or tethered to a wireless network. I also found the virtual keyboard a bit tedious and for some reason (even with two right thumbs), felt the iPhone keypad was more intuitive. On the positive side, I found the iPad’s speed impressive. Like the iPhone, the ergonomics in general are sublime and set the bar for other mobile devices. Magazines like Wired are seeing their iPad subscription base close in on their print-based numbers and this might be an indicator of a new growing demographic of well-heeled magazine mavens who will provide needed consumer viability around attempts to coalesce marketing, content and high-end digital manipulatives around a magazine’s brand and readership interests. In short, the iPad may become one of the crucial pieces needed to change one segment of the online reading experience. However, it’s premature to assume examples like Wired suggest a more broad scale adoption of more augmented reality or digitally enhanced subscription-based magazines is feasible or achievable in the near future. A recent post by Advertising Age unpacks some of the magazine specific enhancements found in these examples and the Atlantic also published a telling article entitled "Is the iPad Saving Magazines Yet?" I’m certain that these examples showcase the potential of online magazines and demonstrate some of the pieces we’ll see in the years to come: more integrated video, 3-D models, the inclusion of social media, content formatted more specifically for mobile or tablet devices. In the meantime, our family is perfectly content passing the laptop around the family room and pulling the iPhone out of dad’s pocket when needed.

Tidbits of wisdom for social media as dictated by the stars, planetary alignment, moon phases, and other Earth-bound sources*. Taurus: April 20-May 20. Not a good day to be boring. Express yourself today about what you know, and do it with passion. Don’t think of the facts, but instead think "story". It’s the most powerful media. And follow your bliss today. It’s infectious. Gemini: May 21-June 21. Try not to "push" your content today: celestial bodies indicate that we are in a "pull" market. Cancer: June 22-July 22. Passing along other’s wisdom is something that is best used in moderation. The planets are concerned that you might overuse hashtagging when you are orbiting in the Twittersphere. Leo: July 23-August 22. You are filled with compelling, creative energy today — so create something new that uses your own voice and expands your personal brand. Virgo: August 23-September 22. Be authentic and put your attitude in your stories. Romance-well, let’s say more effective relationships with your audience- will follow! It’s a good time to make new friends, and to expand socially. Libra: September 23-October 23. You are a major trailblazer today, so get out there and create great content that will bring the eyes of the world to your website. Your audacious spirit can make a big difference for you. Scorpio: October 24-November 21. Today looks auspicious for inserting yourself into other people’s online conversations. Build bridges and contacts by being heard regularly. It’s a good time to show off your connectedness and reach for your potential. Sagittarius: November 22-December 21. Express your essence through your blog today, and know that you will be ushering new contacts to your website. Remember that Twitter and Facebook will work to your advantage to bring new relationships to your blog. Capricorn: December 22-January 19. Your creative energies are in alignment, and you should be ready to make the most of it. Create some new inroads with your use of video, audio, as well as the written word. Experiment a little today; but make your choices wisely and follow your strengths. Aquarius: January 20-February 18. Direct your inquisitiveness outward today. Build your online relationships by asking your clients, "What can I do for you?" Remember, the universe is always asking WIIFM? Your energy will attract all sorts of wildly different individuals your way, so you can expect some interesting conversations. Pisces: February 19-March 20. You are in a good position to create an online space that works for your communication. Be bold, and go where your audience is. But be cautious of those who will confuse policies versus best practices as you build your identity. Aries: March 21-April 19. Your lucky numbers are 9,22,42, and 53. Be aware that 42 is particularly important at the cosmic scale. * All the above aphorisms taken with a grain of cosmic salt from the author’s recent interactions at the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE) annual conference in St. Louis, and from a particularly invigorating presentation there by Gary Vaynerchuk discussing his ideas from his book "Crushing It: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion."

Online teaching takes many shapes and isn’t always conventional in form. One of the more compelling online pedagogical approaches is digital storytelling that combines audiovisual elements and focuses on a human interest story. A well-known medium for digital storytelling is the audio slideshow. Audio slideshows have been around for some time and have been used successfully by reporters and online issues of newspapers and journals. I recently accompanied our department’s photographer on a story that seemed to be a solid fit for an audio slideshow. Our objective was to distill a "day in the life" of a group of laborers, referred to as "Hoedads," who spend much of their day traversing difficult terrain in remote areas of Oregon in order to plant saplings. The "office" of the typical Oregonian Hoedad is expansive and oftentimes stunning-lending itself to the visual medium. Their work can be characterized as much by the sounds of their singing, banter and tools as it can by their weather-worn faces. We felt the audio slideshow format would help us highlight these compelling images and couple them with audio accompaniment. While a layer of narrative can be  added to provide context, some of most powerful stories are those that utilize the ambient sounds and highlight the most salient moments of the event with an appropriate photo. In the example below, the "Bagging Up" section is an example of story without narration. Hoedad Audio Slideshow The Basics Audio slideshows combine high quality photographs with "on-the-ground" synchronized audio. The typical audio slideshows display photographs for 7  to 15 seconds (shorter or longer when needed) and often include audio narrative and ambient sounds that help the viewer identify locale and the slideshow character’s mood, activity, and circumstances. The rate of pacing and the integration of audiovisual elements draw the viewer’s attention to significant and discrete moments in the narrative. The overall quality of audio slideshows generally hinges on several elements: appropriate photographs, high-quality audio, a compelling and appropriate narrative, and accessibility, and usability of the end product. This medium can be used to tell various types of stories, but as mentioned, is best suited for human interest stories. Examples of how audio slideshows have been used to tell such stories can be found in many different online versions of newspapers and journals. Some compelling examples come from the New York Times. New York Times: One in eight million New York Times: Choosing to Stay, Fighting to Rebuild (Rebuilding in Haiti) Other current and potential Extension uses of this tool could include: •    Oral history projects •    Short autobiographies •    Brief narratives about a significant location or occurrence •    Stories of individuals overcoming hardship •    Interesting and relatively unknown jobs or industries that highlight individuals (i.e. Hoedad story) Software Used For slideshow: Soundslides Plus, SoundForge or other audio editing tools For website: Dreamweaver, Fireworks, CSS, HTML and some Flash Hardware Used SLR digital camera, high-end flash card microphone, shotgun microphone with windscreen for long-range audio, computer with sufficient speed to process editing tasks.

On a recent flight to Madrid, I sat next to a glassblower from the Portland area and we talked shop. After hours of discussing the intricacies of blowing and shaping glass, I tried to explain to him where my work as an instructional designer and technologist finds overlap with his occupation. I learned that working with glass requires an eye for the artistic and a concern for the technical. Glass can be stretched, colored, tempered and rendered opaque; yielding common tableware or a postmodern work of art. However, for most glassblowers, artistic concerns often take back seat to the exigency of making a living. So, the glassblower’s primary focus on any given day is to create objects that meet customers’ requirements: price, time frame, color, size and other form-related variables that can be manipulated. While cable TV often portrays the art of glassblowing in showy and captivating clips demonstrating dramatic movement of metal rods shaping molten glass, much of the work of the glassblower is in fact invisible to the customer. In fact, much of the behind-the-scenes process has little to do with the act of shaping glass. The more he talked, the more I realized how much instructional design resembles glassblowing. 1. Like glassblowing, instructional design is systematic. According to my glassblower friend, the customer sees the plate, vase or sculpture and marvels at its beauty while grumbling about price. Like instructional design, much of the cost around producing a deliverable is buried in the process of qualifying what approach to use, the audience’s needs, the scope and complexity of the project, ensuring accessibility and usability, and so on. Business maxims about 9 parts planning and one part execution are as true about glassblowing as they are about course design and production. To some, glassblowing might resemble a systems approach to design (Dick and Carey’s model in particular)—interrelated parts working together towards a predefined goal. 2. Glassblowers generally start their project by determining their patron’s constraints. Time, cost and complexity are most frequently the core considerations that define project specifics. If nothing else, these factors help keep the utility of the produced item at the forefront, prevent scope creep, and help establish project expectations early in the process. While there are glassblowers who spend more of their time creating art, this is the exception in the industry, and for most, constitutes a small portion of time on the job compared to those projects that allow one to pay the bills. Instructional designers also live in a world where constraints matter. Does a customer bring $300 or $300,000 to the project? Do they need it next week or next year? Is the course one hour long or one hundred hours long? Many businesses over the last decade have utilized e-learning as a means to cut costs of travel and this factor also feeds into a systems-based approach to instructional design. Are high-level stakeholders primarily motivated by cost cutting or by instructional concerns? The reality is that both viewpoints tug on a project and help shape its limits, tone, and utility. 3. Glassblowing is technical. Sketching, painting, shaping clay are artistic expressions that are generally accessible to the novice, albeit there are technical aspects found in each art form. Blowing glass requires access to a furnace and knowledge of how to inflate molten glass into shapes that depend on the molten glass viscosity. In short, the skill of the gaffer or glassmith is one that demands attention to the technical. Instructional designers must also be intimately familiar with how the various parts of a course fit together: process, production, editing, evaluation, distribution—and competency in each area should be developed enough to allow one to complete each step of the process with little or no assistance when the project demands it. And so, it might be fair to say that both the glassblower and the instructional designer are misunderstood: The glassblower does inflate molten glass and the instructional designer does design. But, both share a title that captures only a single piece of their occupational focus. There is tremendous variety in what defines a glassblower. Some work in factories, others for cable TV. Some craft art and others are all about utility. At the end of the day, process and technical considerations are what all glassblowers have in common. While my new-found glassblower friend might find my analogy full of hot air, I still think back to our shared conversation and see the similarities between the life of the glassblower and the instructional designer. Like glassblowing, instructional design is both a science and an art. Moore, Bates and Grundlind  believe that instructional design is both a science and an art (2002): "a science because it is rooted in learning theories and an art because the designing of instructional materials is a highly creative process." Dick, Walter, and Carey, Lou. (1990). The systematic design of instruction. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education. Moore, Dermot, Bates, Annemarie, and Grundling, Jean. (2002). Instructional design. In Mishra, Arun K. and Bartram, John (Ed.) Skills development through distance education [on-line]. Available: http://www.col.org/skills/.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.] In our first video blog, EP Blogger Jeff Hino offers some tips for creating ear-friendly podcasts.

As you collaborate with others outside your local network in the development of e-learning materials, how do you share files? As a project manager, I’ve usually found ftp an easy way to exchange files between content providers, production staff, and design contractors. But what if your company or institution does not support an ftp site? There are many file sharing options out there. Selection may depend on whether you need a free service or are willing to pay, what features you need (do you need to allow comments, have associated task/timeline tracking, etc.?), and what if any level of security you need to ensure. Drop.io is a popular "online collaboration and file sharing" service. Creating a drop and downloading files from a drop site are easy and fast. The service is free up to 100 MB per "drop" (a web space where you can exchange files for a given project). Basic and professional accounts, with monthly fees, get you additional storage space and additional numbers of drops. Yousendit is a similar service that offers up to 2 GB for free. The Pro and Pro Plus plans, with monthly rates, have additional features (see http://www.yousendit.com/compare-plans). A Corporate Suite is also available. Email notifications serve communicate recipients about files ready for download. What do you use? Any tips, tricks, warnings, or inside scoops you are willing to share? Thanks!

Greetings Electronic Papyrus audience. The summer posting doldrums are behind us, students are back on campus and we’re feeling like we need to move to a slightly different format with the Electronic Papyrus. In the past, we’ve posted two or three times a month and have generally approached our topics with more depth. Because each of this blog’s authors work in a Higher Education context, we have attempted to balance academic rigor and collaboration with expediency to test how successfully we could straddle both worlds while maintaining a reasonable contribution schedule. Anecdotal input and online evaluations have suggested that we need to tip our scale more heavily towards expediency. Consequently, we plan on posting shorter pieces more frequently. We’ll be posting more short news summaries, thoughts, tips, and we’ll continue to try new approaches to encouraging connection with our audience. We’ll also still post some longer "opinion pieces" from time to time. We hope this will encourage even more dialog with you and allow us to also spend more time reading your blogs and contributions to the domain of new media and e-learning.

For those developing E-learning deliverables, this is THE question. Essentially, it’s all about project scope and assuming that your most conservative estimate is still probably too low—there’s always something else that will need to be added, modified or enhanced. However, you need to size the project using hours, so you reference past projects relative to the requirements of this new deliverable. But are there any industry standards or benchmarks you can point to? Chapman Alliance recently released their data-heavy survey results that provide benchmarks for E-learning development. Their executive summary of the survey states, "Research Participants: 249 companies organizations, representing 3,947 learning development professionals, who have created content consumed by 19,875,946 learners." Their results? In short, e-learning still takes a considerable investment of time to create. The most basic content, which might be thought of as "PowerPoint plus" is listed at 49:1. That means 49 hours of work for every one hour of e-learning product. The other side of the scale is highly complex e-learning output listed at 716:1—think instructional video game for this category. Industry-defined benchmarks remind us that e-learning involves multiple layers of production and iteration. Integrating text, navigation, usability, functionality, learning objectives, and multimedia into an e-learning project, and doing so in a systematic way, takes time. Ultimately, both the process and the output remind us that in most cases e-learning is categorized more readily as instructional software compared to other forms of web-based communication. As the report suggests, interactivity is perhaps the most determinant characteristic of complexity and consequently has the largest impact defining benchmarks. What do you think; do these numbers seem accurate to you?

The Fate of the Book The Chronicle Review, October 1, 2010 Essays by William Germano, Jeffrey R. Di Leo, and Diane Wachtell In the most recent issue of the Chronicle Review, several authors ask: Is the printed book dead? Three cogent essays survey the vast landscape that is publishing and weigh in on the current health and future possibilities of how we will distill our ideas and craft narrative using the ever-evolving suite of authoring and distribution tools. Some quotes from these essays: The overarching goals of publishing have been "universal access to knowledge and building knowledge as a self-correcting, collective exercise." "The real reason that academe has been slow to embrace digitization—is cultural, not material: an attitude rooted in the belief that the printed book is intrinsic to scholarship." "The story of electronic literature and scholarship has yet to be written in full, but before long the growth in digital scholarship will put an end to the myth of the book in higher education." Today, there is a symbiotic relationship between the book and the digital publication: "The way the electronic triumvirate engages with the publishing industry is by selling old-media products via new media." Hence, discussions about revenue structures abound. Is the printed book truly on its way out—residual collateral of cost efficiencies and technological advancement? Has the tipping point already occurred or, as one author suggests, will new publication approaches evolve to a point where the book will be relegated to furniture? What discipline or disciplines will champion the story of digital scholarship? What are your thoughts?

Galloping down the beach, Charlton Heston suddenly stops his horse and dismounts, staring up in disbelief at an object just coming into view. He begins approaching the object before descending into a fit of rage and screaming: "We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you. Damn you all to hell!" Zoom out to reveal the charred remnants of the World Wide Web, half-submerged in the shoreline, revealing that the website he was on was actually an application the whole time, and that the paradise that became The Forbidden Zone was once New York City. A disjarring image, but one that the techno-pundits are beginning to warn us might appear around the next corner. "The Web is Dead," says September’s issue of Wired Magazine, "Long Live the Internet." Increasingly  we turn to applications, whether for communication on Skype, or IM, listening to podcasts, tuning your favorite music on Pandora, or watching TV shows on Netflix. Need the weather forecast? Another app. In their Wired article, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff blame us, the consumer for this massive shift. We are picking apps because they are just better and offer a more comfortable fit to our lives. It is, as Wired observes, becoming "less about browsing and more about getting." The Apple iPad led the way, with dozens of new pads and tablets arriving on the market in the months ahead, boosting the clamor for applications even further into the stratosphere. What does this mean for those of us who design, build and deliver e-learning? Are we looking at abandoning the web and embracing the cloud of single-purpose apps? But apps are currently tethered to industrial giants; if we lose the Web will we lose our noncommercial, free-wheeling access to the learning marketplace? Hard questions, but one thing we can be sure of on the Planet of the Apps: there will be sequels.

Educational models usually stress the importance of clearly defining learning objectives at the outset. How can e-learning balance this doctrine with the great untapped potential of unplanned learning? Can we get any insights to help answer this question from the recent rise in popularity of random online video chatting? After all, with a few clicks, people can now "meet other people from around the world" (Hey-people.com). When you go to a random video chat site like JabberCam!, Google ads appear for a variety of online learning programs. Are people who are eager to meet new people online also eager to learn something new online? Well, of course. Isn’t the desire to grow into a bigger self intrinsic to the pursuit of learning? If, as Mark Twain wrote, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness," can random video chatting be an alternative cure for those unable to travel the world? The Omegle random video chat brand invites users to "talk to strangers!" Embedded in the multitude of reasons why people would want to do this is the human interest in learning from one another.

Treasure maps, letterboxing, scavenger hunts and geocaching all leverage environmental markers to guide a participant from one location to another. Just as geocaching enhanced earlier forms of interpretive tours or location-based hunts to a wider audience, smart phones are pushing the potential of place-based learning into uncharted territory. Some of the recent examples of this are most apparent with augmented reality. Utilizing the smart phone’s camera, GPS and real-time connection to a database allow any number of possibilities for a user to walk, point, and interpret. Much of the initial apps in this space have been tied to marketing, but educational examples are emerging. Here are a few examples that highlight location-specific interpretation of pests, soil, and grass. UF Pest Identification UC Davis Soil Survey University of Georgia Turf Grass Cooperative Extension has a unique foothold in this domain as its organizational typology (county-based offices) and locale-specific topics lend themselves to this combination of technology and instructional approach. Learning is simply too broad (and too important) and technology has become too powerful for education to be constrained within traditional containers. Sugata Matra’s recent TED talk about building Internet-ready PCs into the walls of poor neighborhoods in India might be the extreme version of "kids grow knowledge" while in their neighborhood, but other organizations in New York that are looking more closely at place-based learning echo this need for in situ learning. Katie Salem at Quest to Learn drives this notion home, "We have to move beyond this notion of school as a container for learning," adding that kids pass through many different learning contexts every day. Here at Oregon State University, we recently finished a place-based tree tour iPhone application and many of these instructional issues helped us define our design and development process. I’ll share more about this in the next post. In the meantime, do you have some other examples of place-based learning?

When do mobile devices serve as temporary replacements for tethered devices, and when do mobile devices become primary devices? What is lost and what is gained in the migration to mobile devices? When do mobile devices help us do the things we did before in a new way, and when do they help us do new things? How do you rate the status of mobile technology? As I was thinking about these questions, two aspects of mobility kept coming to mind: convenience and quality. By convenience, I mean portability, compactness, wirelessness, all-in-one-ness. By quality, I mean functionality, richness, usefulness, outstandingness, comparative completeness. Mobile devices clearly have the edge in convenience, but where have they succeeded in quality and where do they still have little or lots of room for improvement? In many ways, mobile devices demonstrate the areas where convenience trumps quality. That is, mobile devices proliferate where convenience is king—despite imperfections. For example, mobile devices have succeeded as devices for storing and playing music, despite some loss of quality and the positive aspects of having physical artifacts. Mp3 files do not hold the richest sound recordings, but they can be easily downloaded and are "good enough" for most ears on the go. The convenience of bringing an entire music collection with you appears to outweigh the value of tangible album artwork and packaging. Likewise, mobile phones are generally not as "comfortable" to talk on as full-sized phones and can have issues with audibility and reception, but most people would probably agree that the convenience of mobility has won out in the phone wars. Just a few years ago, the expectation in American society was for people to have an "official" landline number in addition to a cell phone number. The numbers of people living without landlines seems to be rising fairly rapidly. Mobile phone cameras might also be considered in this category. They are widely used because of their convenience, even though the quality and features are usually pale in comparison to a dedicated, full-feature camera. But there is another category—those mobile device functions that exceed in both quality and convenience. In the category, I include such functions as GPS/mapping, checking weather reports, sending and receiving text messages, clocks/ calendars, calculators, and a wide range of gaming and social network applications. In these cases, mobile devices often perform the functions at equal quality as the alternatives with the added benefit of mobility. On your list, where have mobile devices already achieved perfection, where do they still have some improvements to make, where is a compromise simply necessary, and where have they not even begun to make progress?

As a communicator whose occupational focus is educational, I often find the social media landscape both exhilarating and downright annoying. Truth be told, the never-ending stream of articles, presentations, and books that focus on social media more often than not fall into the "annoying" category. Too many of these resources lack real-world examples that include an instructional or educational component and yet they often purport to convey methods or approaches that work outside of their specific domain. For many, the sweet spot of social media is marketing. I don’t necessarily disagree. Marketing is extremely important to any organization, but social media need not always be constrained or driven by a marketing objective. How often have you run across this basic social media message: "Product X or Group Y is über cool and you need to act in some way if you want to join the campaign or affiliate"? Or, "I wasn’t generating a lot of revenue using traditional marketing, but with social media I turned my ‘Whuffie’ into serious waffles." There’s nothing inherently wrong with either approach and social media can indeed be a powerful marketing tool that helps individuals feel connected with a brand, organization or other individuals. What’s more, brand management and connection with educational consumers is particularly big business and the likes of the Gates’ Foundation, Cisco and many other big players have been parked on this block for some time; looking to grow market share, influence policy, and improve the educational experience in a more equitable fashion. But utilizing social media for educational outreach or research activities  in state-funded organizations? Over the last few years, I’ve seen numerous examples of social media working well within learning contexts here at our university (and others), but have not come across a cohesive vision that informs the practice. Is Cooperative Extension too rooted in face-to-face outreach to augment their communication efforts with social media? In fact, Extension groups are perfectly primed to leverage this form of communication based on their core goals and focus on meeting community-based needs. A recent eXtension talk by Lee Rainey of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project unpacks this notion in brilliant detail. While the practices driving social media usage are still emerging in tandem with the evolution of the tools themselves, Rainie’s talk helped me envision a time when social media will indeed become a part of the university’s research and outreach effort and a crucial part of how it does educational business. Paired with Harold Jarche’s discussion on the historical psychology of communication (and its predictable shifts), I can only say that I was inspired. I’ve been following Harold Jarche’s blog for a few years now and have found his dialog around managing information (TMI—too much information) and network participation crucial to understanding the theory behind social media practice. Those working in large organizations where technology adoption occurs more slowly would benefit from these two presentations. A university is in many ways an independent and relatively manageable entity, but what about an entire country that seems to push back on the use of social media, or a government? GCN or Government Computer News provided numerous recent examples of how the U.S. Federal Government is using social media to build more transparency and efficiency into its communication practices while a Harvard Business Review article tackles the issue of social media adoption in France. Both resources document real-world examples of how social media can be used in a "blended" environment where a sizable portion of end users are still entrenched in traditional communication modes.

After being on a phone call last week with 11,554 other people, I’ll never think of telephones as POTS -Plain Old Telephones-again. Our exposure to an innovative way to use telephones arose through an e-learning project called "Mastery of Aging Well" produced in collaboration with AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons). In our discussions on how to move this information out to the world—specifically the AARP world—we were informed about a process AARP called TeleTown Hall. Simply put, the technique turns the phone system into a radio talk show, reaching out to hundreds of thousands of people (or more!) with targeted information. For us, that targeted information was the variety of ways people can "master aging", and how they can learn more about the topic online and through other available educational materials—and take action in their own lives and in the lives of their aging family members. On the day of the program, we assembled our team. Our two hosts, Dr. Sharon Johnson from OSU (the author of Mastery of Aging Well) and Allen Douma, M.D. were joined by an AARP moderator, and three off-site screeners. Using a provider (TeleForum by Broadnet) we were able to simultaneously dial up 99,500 Oregon and Utah AARP members using information from an AARP database. After a brief countdown, the 99,500 phone calls were launched. People who answered were welcomed with a brief pre-recorded invitation to stay on the phone to listen in and participate in the live discussion. The screener’s job (of which I was one) was to connect to listeners who are calling in with questions for our hosts. Caller information displayed real-time in a web browser page, with their call status indicated. I simply clicked on a waiting caller’s name, welcomed them, and entered brief summary of their question. I could also tag them for follow-up if they just wanted additional information. The hosts/moderator read our screener comments, and chose which callers to connect "live" to the show-I mean phone call. Of the 99,500 calls placed, 11,544 people joined the call, and another 50,000+ received the pre-recorded message. During the one-hour call, 51 people were screened, and the hosts were able to take 12 questions live. And it doesn’t end with the phone calls. Three thousand people will receive a follow up letter from AARP including a copy of our Mastery of Aging Well brochure. This technology isn’t cheap: we invested $5,000 of grant money to make it happen for a footprint covering just two states. But for us it was worth it. It gave us a powerful way to have a conversation with our target audience, provide an interactive educational experience, elicit feedback, and market our e-learning materials. Obviously, it could be used for lots more. As TeleForum put it, "All you need to know is what you want to say and the people you want to say it to."

The Pew Research Center just released some statistics around mobile device location service usage. If you’re unfamiliar with "location service," the basic idea is "I’m at this specific location, so show me information or allow me to do something on my smart phone relevant to this place." According to the study, the percentage of online adults (18-29 years old) using "geosocial" or location-based services is still relatively low. About 7% of this group use location service sporadically, with about 4% using apps like Foursquare or Gowalla. The study seems to suggest daily usage of location service apps at about 1%. Interestingly, location service usage among Hispanics (10%) is higher than online whites (3%). 6% of online men use location-based services compared to 3% of online women. The upshot of the study? These findings suggest place-based apps or services are still very much in their infancy. Case in point, look more closely at Tim Kring’s (creator of the Heroes TV show) recent Conspiracy for Good Project. It’s essentially a large place-based multimedia experience that leverages mobile phones location service and builds an emerging, interactive narrative around physical locations in London. Say again? In his own words, We told a lot of story online and through mobile, publishing, and merchandising. Everywhere you could connect to an audience with the narrative, we were telling stories. This is taking that same idea and rolling it out, literally, into the streets. The exciting part is that the narrative lives all around you — on your mobile phone, on the internet, and starting on July 17, literally on the streets of London for three weeks. In a slightly less ambitious nod to place-based service apps, many universities are exploiting students’ penchant for this type of "geosocial" activity (young, social, mobile). A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article shares a compelling example from Boston University. Boston University’s Dean of Students Office designed a trek around a freshman-orientation fair in August that sent students to campus hangouts, libraries, and various academic-department booths. Students earned points by sending along pictures of themselves taking a dip in a college fountain, talking with counselors at the Career Development Office booth, and making tie-dyed T-shirts out on BU Beach, among other things. All pictures and completed tasks were posted on the event Web site, and the student with the highest number of points took home an iPad. Foursquare and Gowalla have already won some followers and other "geosocial" or place-based apps are popping up. SCVNGR is notable in their attempt to blend place-based "check in" with challenges, user contribution and marketing (how about Oregami in a burrito shop with a virtual coupon tied to challenges?). The NY Times summarizes the approach as follows, "…location-based gaming platforms that allow visitors to explore the institutions in a gamelike fashion. The company was founded with the idea that mobile games could blur a line between digital interactivity and real-world interaction." Although in its infancy, the potential for educational and marketing organizations is promising. Pedagogically speaking, educational approaches like place-based learning provide helpful framework for imagining how this technology can support key objectives like promoting civic responsibility, awareness of environment, and maximally contextualized asynchronous learning. As the technology improves, I can imagine dollars being shuffled rapidly into this domain as more providers determine how to integrate place-based features into their marketing, app, game, or in some cases, large-scale interactive multimedia narrative. For those of us in the educational market, the opportunities are limitless.

Gardening is one of our most popular topics within Cooperative Extension. In the spirit of form following function, we set out to capture some short vignettes from an expert gardener and convey the most important elements of these discussions in video, podcast, and caption-enhanced photo slide shows in a simple and easy to access format. We videotaped the interviews, worked on trimming down content and created an attractive and easy-to-use webpage that organizes the resources into appropriate categories. Before I discuss some of the lessons learned and design tips, feel free to look over the site. http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/sustainability/ Admittedly, it’s on the lower side of the complexity scale, but as mentioned, it’s mainly a collection of short stories that are formatted for online video. A few brief tips: 1. As always, think about your audience. This goes without saying and is built into any ID model. In our case, we imagined our online gardening enthusiasts swimming in an ocean of PDF files and knew they would welcome visual content that highlighted the experience of an expert in her own backyard. 2. Catchy headers, intros and titles are important. Eye tracking research on newsletter usability points out the dire need to capture reader attention in the first two words of titles and headers. A recent Jacob Nielson Alertbox provides other tips. 3. Modularize video content to ensure clips are short and compelling. Most of our video clips are under one minute and speak to a single topic. Although branded with our university logo, the style is conversational and to the point. 4. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good when you’re shooting video. Case in point, Kahn Academy…. Bill Gate’s favorite online teacher cobbled together a few hundred dollars worth of video equipment and single-handedly crafted almost 2,000 online video mini courses that are viewed upwards of 70,000 times a day. His 20 million page view count suggests he might be reaching as many "non-credit" students as several large universities. 5. Tools? We used video editing software (Final Cut Pro), Slideshow Pro (for the photos and captions), and a basic video camera with a wireless microphone. Analytics show these online resources are popular and our low bounce rate (8%) suggests users are being pulled deeper into the site after landing on the home page. Our next step in this project is to build a virtual tour of our expert’s garden and allow users to drill down on key characteristics of the garden (water usage, light, native or non-native) based on a seasonal view.

Today’s announcement of Google’s ebookstore of over 3 million titles that can be accessed on a wide range of platforms and devices appears to counter recent trends of device-specific content delivery systems. Will this, in turn, lead to greater openness, accessibility, and compatibility? Or just more traffic in Google streams that can be captured for advertising dollars? Whatever the case, hooray for the continuing interest in reading.

Video continues it’s meteoric rise in the world of online learning, with no end in sight. However, we all know there can be a wide variation in production quality. I offer the following guidelines to help anticipate issues that can make or break a video. But I do so fully realizing that dancing cat YouTubes can command millions of viewers: we should only be so lucky with instructional videos going that viral. So, knowing that rules are made to be broken, here we go: Is video an appropriate medium for delivery of this content? Are the learning objectives built into the video? Is this video educational? Will the learner learn something of value? Is this video unique? Is there another product or resource already available? Does the camera work demonstrate good composition? Are camera moves (tilts, pans, zooms) employed appropriately, effectively, and smoothly? Are scenes stable and free from distracting camera movement? Does the video employ the effective use of close-ups, medium, and wide shots? Do subjects/scenes demonstrate proper exposure? Are interior subjects/scenes well lit? Is the audio clear and free from distortion? Is the audio mixed with proper levels for narration, interviews, music, and wild sound? Is the script well written, provide an effective narrative, and exhibit elements of good storytelling? Are interviews used effectively? Is the overall program design appropriate for the intended audience? Is the program appropriate in length? Does the video demonstrate good editing, with smooth flow of content, ideas, and storyline? Are video transitions used appropriately and effectively? If used, is font size, color, and the amount of text appropriate, and "video safe" (text doesn’t bleed off the edges of the screen)? If used, are graphics video safe and used effectively? Does the video encoding demonstrate sufficient quality for distribution? Are all video images, stills, and music copyright approved? If appropriate, have model releases been obtained? Is there any content in this deliverable that should not be accessible to a mass audience due to intellectual ownership issues or safety issues? (For example, showing a worker on a construction site who is not wearing a hardhat.) Is the content accessible to vulnerable populations if this is an audience need? If the video is federally funded, is it compliant with any specific accessibility requirements (i.e. video captioning)? Are credits included for all relevant contributors? Are appropriate and approved logos for partner agencies employed? You can find related information on a previous EP post Ten Tips to Produce More Professional Online Video Interviews. The post 27 Ways To Improve Your Online Video appeared first on Electronic Papyrus.

Do you have the impulse to check your email or social network updates when you get up, throughout the day, between tasks, as an interruption in the middle of a task, in the evening, in the middle of the night, anytime? There might be a message you are interested in or something you "need" to respond to … Not everyone suffers from the same intensity of message-checking addiction, but it is not hard to see it in our culture—look at the people staring and poking at their devices as they walk down the sidewalk or sit in a meeting. As I left work for this holiday break, I thought to myself, I should turn off the automatic email notifications on my smart phone. This is a time when I don’t need to know there is a new message. I need a break. So as I walked down the sidewalk away from the office, I pulled out my phone and began to change the settings. This will help me be in the present, be aware of my surroundings, I thought. Then all of a sudden I experienced a crack to my head and I fell to the ground. I looked up and saw that I had walked straight into a piece of construction machinery. This experience followed a number of conversations I had over the past few weeks that seemed to indicate a growing awareness among my colleagues that one can be "too connected," that it is worthwhile to try to figure out the appropriate balance between being connected and being disconnected, that there is power and integrity in being able to personally manage the fine line between too much online life and too little. By serendipity, on my holiday travels I read a book I’d been meaning to read, Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers, a former Washington Post reporter. Powers is not a luddite or reactionary to technology. Instead, he offers a rich, long-term perspective on how humans have benefited both by connecting using technology and by disconnecting in a variety of ways throughout history. The book is a helpful guide in the search for a deep, meaningful life. Powers intelligently questions the current zeitgeist of "the more you connect, the better." He asks, why are we all so busy and yet spend so much time responding to electronic messages and tasks that don’t enrich our lives or add up to anything very important. He explores the seductive nature of "the screen" and offers ways to balance connected time with screen-free time. He provides examples from Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Thoreau, and Marshall McLuhan in a context that is very relevant and helpful to our contemporary situation. And with that I’ll get back to disconnecting so I can immerse in my own experience of the here and now. Or at least not walk into a piece of construction machinery. Happy holidays. The post The art of disconnecting appeared first on Electronic Papyrus.

I enjoyed Mark’s last post "The Art of Disconnecting" about moderating technology usage. The timing couldn’t have been better. I recently added a 3rd arrow to my quiver and have been enjoying watching my baby girl discover her fingers, cheeks, and anything else in reaching distance. During my initial time with her, I can only say that I’ve never been more unproductive as we spent hour after hour being in the moment and getting to know each other. And so, Mark’s last post about the need to disconnect resonated with me deeply. I enjoyed watching Mark in my mind’s eye being broadsided  by some kind of elevated machinery as he was simultaneously struck by a thought: "That it is worthwhile to try to figure out the appropriate balance between being connected and being disconnected, that there is power and integrity in being able to personally manage the fine line between too much online life and too little."  And so the machinery in my mind spun a bit as I thought about my colleague spending time with family, disconnecting, and being struck by some kind of swinging metal as he attempted to remove himself from the grid that is our new world. Over the holiday period, I read several autobiographies. Tony Dungy is a man of great integrity who maintained balance and focus on family in the pursuit of excellence—while winning a super bowl as the coach of the Indianapolis Colts. I ventured over to Abraham Lincoln and dabbled in some Mother Theresa. Each one reminded me that life is a gift to be lived in the moment and that our values need to define the rhythm that is our identity and ultimately bring balance to how we use technology in both the workplace and at home.  Perhaps a little deep for a technology blog, but technology at its core is about life improvement and it’s important every now and then to step back, duck,  and see the trees and the forest. While Mark found focus in William Power’s book, I kept thinking about wisdom literature I read often and the term "discretion." Merriam-Webster offers the following definition: The quality of having or showing discernment or good judgment. In short, it describes one’s ability to exercise common sense without external pressure or influence. And so, perhaps the antidote to the hyper-connected zeitgeist of our time is "discretion"—knowing how and when to use technology without having someone define this for you. Although it is perhaps a term that has fallen out of our vernacular, the concept is more important now than ever as we upgrade our latest smartphones, leverage the latest productivity software, and plug in to the newest must-have authoring tools. From my small corner of the world, I can only say that there are numerous activities that will always remain analog and organic—skiing on fresh powder, watching morning light bounce off nearby hills, and of course, holding a baby in one’s arms. The post Technology and Discretion appeared first on Electronic Papyrus.