Free Flash Quiz Tools?

I received a question on my post - Flash Quiz Tools - asking about any tools that were free that allowed you to create a Flash Quiz. The only free Flash Quiz Tool that I know anything about is

Class Marker - a free flash quiz tool. Create multiple choice, true false, free text, short answer, fill in the blank and punctuation quizzes.

So I added this back into my post, but it got me wondering if there aren't a lot of other solutions out there that I don't know about. Certainly you could do this as poll questions. So are there other free flash quiz tools that I'm missing?

If you are looking at this then you might want to also look at Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash and whether you really want to use Flash. Then take a look at some solutions that don't produce Flash Low-Cost Test and Quiz Tool Comparison.

Mindmapper 2008 USB

SimTech has announced on their website that they will soon release Mindmapper 2008 USB. With Mindmapper 2008 USB you will be able to have access to Mindmapper 2008 by simply plugging the USB flash drive into any USB port on a Windows computer. MindMapper 2008 USB will give you full access to the application and does not need to be installed to run the application. Mindmapper 2008 USB ships on a 4 Gigabyte drive which allows you to save your mind maps on the drive and open and edit them as if it were installed on your hard drive. Here is the information about MindMapper 2008 USB:

Product Introduction

Run MindMapper on any PC: MindMapper 2008 USB Edition is portable MindMapper that lets you run MindMapper on any PC with a USB interface. No installation No registeration or activation It also doubles as a 4GB USB flash drive so you can store all your MindMapper files and other files for your convenience Miniature slim swing-type USB drive Gold plated appearance to give you the best and valuable looking USB device among all your peers Small enough to easily attach to your keychain or mobile phone with the included strap

What's in the Box

USB Flash Drive with MindMapper 2008 Professional Edition built in MindMapper 2008 USB Edition has MindMapper 2008 Professional built in. Think of it as portable version of MindMapper, as you can plug it into any PC and start MindMapper

Mind2Chart Updated

A couple of weeks ago I had reviewed the initial release of Mind2Chart and found it to be a very easy to use MindManager add-in for project planning. I did make some recommendations to the developer for improvements and as a result of my feedback we now see that many of them have been incorporated into the latest version of Mind2Chart 1.3 which was just released.

Mind2Chart has now been upgraded to version 1.3. Mind2Chart 1.3 is an add-in to MindManager 7 and has been tested to ensure compatibility with the latest MindManager 7 build. Mind2Chart includes the following new features:

- Coloring tasks and color synchronization between MindManager topics
and Gantt bars;
- Master Schedule for the whole project and individual resource
schedules, to specify working days, holidays, individual days off and
vacations;
- Project cost calculation based on the resource costs. New report for
project cost calculation;
- Automatic Task Alignment Tool - allows to reorganize the project
schedule depending on the resources assigned, so resources will not be
overloaded and project will finish at earliest possible date.

Mind2Chart was thoroughly tested for compatibility with Mindjet
Connect®. Such compatibility should enhance collaboration within
project teams when planning and tracking task performance.

Off to the National Educational Computing Conference

My bags are packed and I off to San Antonio, TX for the National Educational Computing Conference. I will have 5 full days of educational technology and meetings with both hardware and software developers. At this conference the hardware and software developers will announce new products and services which always makes this one of the more exciting conferences of its kind. For the conference, I am packing my MacBook, Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, Olympus Digital Camera, Blackberry Curve, and FlipVideo camera. If I have learned anything, attending these conferences, is make sure you bring lots of business cards. I have lots of meetings and look forward to reporting to you from the convention floor-up to the minute news. I have set up my Jott account so that I can use my cell phone to quickly post to my blog. So if you see some minor errors please know that it is the speech recognition that is faulty. It should be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to reporting the news to you- so stay tuned.

Firewall Problems and Solutions

I would love to hear back from people on this as I received a question around firewall problems and solutions that I've not heard as much in the past couple of years. This blog reader provides eLearning content to a variety of customers from their hosted solution. Their solution uses a variety of technologies including: .wma files, JavaScript, Flash, HTML and downloadable PPT.

Their issue is that they are running into customers who are tightening their firewall settings and it causes some of their content to not work.

My sense is that the days when IT was doing things like stripping JavaScript, disallowing Flash, etc. are gone. So my first question is ...

Are you finding issues with firewalls these days? If so, what are you seeing?

Anyone having issues with Windows Media and firewalls? How about other media playback?

I couldn't tell from the message, but it could be the case that they are using some kind of custom player. My sense is that using a custom Player is still a really bad idea in most cases. Creating a Flash shell or a JavaScript based shell is fine. Anything else, especially ActiveX or Java is likely going to be a big problem. Even if you try to do everything over port 80, it's still an issue to get something down and run. But that's my bias. So my second question is ...

Are people still using custom players in anything other than Flash? If so, how do they avoid problems with firewalls and other security systems designed to strip out potentially malicious code? Do Flash players cause any problems with firewalls?

Finally, the reader asked about requesting clients to change their firewall settings. My experience is "good luck." There have been a couple of occasions when we could get changes made to the firewall. But unless you have a lot of influence, you should not be creating solutions that generally require changes. Thus, stick with standard ports, protocols, file formats, etc. Does anyone disagree?

What about getting changes made to firewall settings?

Workshop Scenario - Help Please

I've posted Work Task - Workshop Exercise and would very much appreciate any thoughts, input, help you can give.

I am testing out Jott...

I am testing out Jott so for the National Educational Computing Conference that I will be attending next weeK. Iit's going to be great to be able to use my cellphone to post on my AssistiveTek blog from the convention floor. listen

Powered by Jott

New Mindjet Connect Customer Vignette Up

For those of you that are considering using Mindjet Connect, take a look at my vignette to give you some insight as to how I have been using it for the last couple of months. I have found Mindjet Connect indispensable for planning the Fall Visual Mapping Conference. I have been able to share my MindManager 7 visual maps, as well as PDF and Word documents in the workspace. When I have needed to I have been able to in real time to co-edit my MindManager 7 maps with my co-presenters which has been really fantastic. So if you have the chance view the vignette to find out how I have been using Mindjet Connect.

Instruction eLearning 2.0 and Quality

On my post Quick Wins, I received some questions around use of Web 2.0 in the workplace (really they relate to eLearning 2.0). My quick example of one strategy that I've seen repeated successfully in several organizations:

• implement a small Wiki that has performance support materials that goes along with your eLearning on that new software application
• at first have it only editable by the authors
• then open it up to edit the FAQ and Common Issue pages by your help desk
• and then open up editing to end-users
• and to more pages.

The comments are interesting to see and discuss:

Can anyone tell me where QUALITY comes into play with these collaborative enterprise 2.0 technologies? Or does anyone even care about that anymore?

Later they say:

Invariably, quality will mean very different things to different elearning providers. Also, different needs will necessitate different solutions.

My quality concerns: Is it instructionally sound? What about the user experience? Above all, what are the learning outcomes? At what point do lowered standards become the standard?

This is partly the same instruction vs. support question we've had all along? If we provide information in the form of performance support, reference material, etc., then how do you know if the instruction was successful? The answer has always been:

Is the person able to perform?

Force marching someone through something that is high quality "instruction" - something deemed to be instructionally sound - doesn't make it any better and could be far worse since they probably won't actually go through it, will forget, etc. This will be highly variable on a case-by-case basis and really on a learner/performer basis. This hasn't changed. But our desire to move stuff to performance support has definitely increased and is more and more often the appropriate approach.

What has changed in my example is that the learner / performer or people who support the performance (e.g., the help desk) are able to change content in the support materials.

I'm not sure, but it seems that the commenter is making an assumption that this lowers quality. It theoretically could. Someone could add total garbage. But what's their incentive to do that. This is certainly something being discussed with revenge of the experts being pitted against the wisdom of crowds. I personally look at it in each case and consider what quality issues we are really talking about. Is it contributions by end-users that may be wrong? Do you have people monitoring? Maybe that gives us a great opportunity to intercept information that otherwise is being transmitted today in channels that aren't monitored. To me, it's often better to have it visible and discussed. In fact, I would claim that

Worries over quality is not something that should hold you back.

What really got me to post about this is the last question - "lowered standards" ... What? How does this equate to lower standards? The person who left the comment is expressing something I hear a lot at presentations and in client organizations. It's not at all the reality that goes along with most eLearning 2.0 implementations.

If you are going to worry about something, worry about lack of participation. Worry about lack of skills. The quality issue is a lot of hot air.

The Mindmapping Softwareblog

Anyone who has been following the visual mind mapping arena for any time certainly has heard of Chuck Frey. Chuck has been a vigilant leader in the field who keeps all of us abreast of the trends and software developments in the field of visual mapping. I for one am grateful for the work that Chuck has done and honored that he will be one of the guest speakers at the Intelligent Visual Mapping Conference on October 2-3, 2008 in the Greater New York City Area. Chuck recently started a new mind mapping blog which I wanted to make you aware of. Once you goto Chuck's new blog you will treated to one of the most informative blogs on visual mapping that you can imagine. So click here to take you to Chuck's new blog.

Quick Wins

Just saw a post by Mark Oehlert - Danger of Quick Wins. I had to post because, I think that Mark missed the mark (sorry couldn't resist). Here's the gist of his thinking:

As I become more and more convinced that implementing next-gen/Web 2.0 is soooo much less about technology than about culture (Duh Mark, I know)...

I think the idea of 'quick wins' can be not only distracting but wasteful. I think that often 'quick wins' are used to cover up the lack of an over-arching strategy against which actions can be measured and be found either to support an long-range plan or not to support it or to support it in some measure. That strategy is the long pole in the tent - it is the metric that we can measure our actions against.

So 'quick wins' are fine as long as they take place within the context of a long-range plan and are executed in such a manner as to continue progress toward that vision.

I agree with Mark that there are fairly sizable organizational culture aspects to enterprise adoption of enterprise 2.0 / web 2.0 / eLearning 2.0. And I think it's easy to underestimate that impact. I think Mark missed the bigger barriers of Changing Knowledge Worker Attitudes and the work literacy gap.

But what forced me to write this post is that I couldn't disagree more about whether to do Quick Wins. His suggestion to hold up on implementing quick wins until we can figure out all the big picture strategy, OD, etc. answers is bad advice.

My suggested strategy is almost completely opposite. I think you should go ahead and:

• implement a small Wiki that has performance support materials that goes along with your eLearning on that new software application
• at first have it only editable by the authors
• then open it up to edit the FAQ and Common Issue pages by your help desk
• and then open up editing to end-users
• and to more pages.

How does this fit into the grand strategy? You don't know? Who cares? It's the right thing to do! I'd argue that it's a good quick-win.

And, when you look at adoption patterns - a lot of what makes adoption of Web 2.0 tools likely is that they are easy to adopt and have immediate value for the individual and work group. They are designed for quick wins.

Mark - there's a reason that Andrew McAfee talks about these things being emergent (Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration) - quick-wins are going to be how this is adopted.

Mindjet Connect and More

I have had the opportunity to beta test Mindjet Connect before its initial release last week and have really enjoyed the ability to collaborate in real time on my visual maps. Once you use Mindjet Connect, there is no going back. Mindjet Connect is a wonderful and easy to use collaborative technology that lets you not only store your maps but other files types as well. I have been using Mindjet Connect to plan the Intelligent Visual Mapping Conference in the Fall and it is great having one single access point that all of my presenters can go to for all of the conference information. I am now storing Word and PDF files in my workspace along with JPEG files which makes it easy for me to access wherever I am. To see Mindjet Connect in action you can click on this link.

Along with Mindjet Connect, Mindjet announced the availability of MindManager Web which lets you create visual maps using an application that is served up through your browser. As long as you have a Mindjet Connect account you can launch the MindManager Web client from your computer and create and access your visual maps from your workspace. While you will need to have a Windows computer with a Mindjet Connect Account you can successfully use MindManager Web on a Macintosh to edit and create new maps. Having access to my visual maps from any computer is a great feature and one that I am going to really enjoy. Mindmanager Web was very easy to use and is functionally the same as the desktop application. MindManager Web has a great look to it and is very responsive when using it. Once you start using it you will soon forget that you are using a program through the browser. The interface is very well done and it looks as if the client was written using Adobe Air and Flash. When creating topics and subtopics MindManager Web behaves just like the desktop version and so you can easily use the Enter and Control Enter keys to add topics and subtopics to your visual maps. All of the standard markers, symbols, flags, and smileys are available to you for use. You can also add boundaries and relationships as you would on the desktop version of MindManager. Adding your own images to your topics can be easily accomplished within the application. One of the really nice features is the ability to open your MindManager visual maps and import them into your Connect workspace. Similarly, you can also add attachments and hyperlinks on your visual maps that you create with MindManager Web. With access to all of the features you would expect from a visual mapping application having them available to you 24/7 is really terrific. Check out Mindjet Connect and see what all of the excitement is about.

PersonalBrain 4.5 beta is now available

FYI:


PersonalBrain 4.5 beta is now available you can download it at
http://www.thebrain.com/download.

It is a free upgrade for all PersonalBrain 4 users.

New features include:

. Increased performance on all platforms
. Complete undo and redo support
. Paste outlines for easy importing of content
. New SiteBrain features
. Timed events and reminders
. Merge Brains command
. Copy and paste improvements

PowerPoint to Teach Composition

Rachel just posted a question via a comment on the post Background Reading - Use of PowerPoint:

I need help with a Powerpoint possible use. I teach freshman composition at a university to non-native speakers of English. They often come to me for extra help in their other classes. However, they ALWAYS need help creating PowerPoint presentations for their other classes of subjects such as economics, nutrition, statistics, travel & Tourism...etc. I spend time teaching and explaining "transitions", custom animations"...etc. I thought, as I am helping them so much, is there any information as to using Powerpoint as an actual tool to teach composition writing? It would be great to impart knowledge just in the structure of a composition....any thoughts or resources out there? Thanks

I always say, I love questions. However, I'm a bit at a loss on how to answer this question.

It seems wrong to be teaching about transitions and custom animations to this audience, right?

I don't know much about using PowerPoint as a tool to teach composition.

Any help for Rachel?

CS Odessa Introduces ConceptDraw Office

CS Odessa Introduces ConceptDraw Office - The Integrated Solution for Effective Project Management Visualization and Communication

Odessa, Ukraine, June 17, 2008 - CS Odessa announces today the general availability of its new ConceptDraw Office business productivity software suite. ConceptDraw Office reflects CS Odessa's collective expertise in developing market leading business applications, data visualization technologies and project management tools.

Using CS Odessa's new InGyre Technology in its ConceptDraw Office business productivity applications (ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO), users are provided with a seamlessly integrated workflow solution. The functionality of one stand-alone application is significantly extended, by utilizing the capabilities of the other applications within the suite, to create powerful work environments.

Building representative visual documentation that reflects work progress is a critical project task that ConceptDraw Office was developed to support. InGyre Technology assists in the creation of visual dashboards and reports that represent key indicators of work progress, from either project files or a set of selected tasks. It also quickly transforms task outlines into professional looking Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) charts that are editable by using ConceptDraw PRO.

From a communication standpoint, impressive visual project reporting is critical for the project success of any participant. ConceptDraw Office introduces a wide selection of tools to easily generate professional visual project reports.

Gregory Zhukov, Chief Executive Officer of CS Odessa explains, "We have seen from how our customers use currently available software products on the market, that there is a clear need for a visually-based application suite that has the capability to break through many of the business productivity barriers which have an adverse effect on project success. Years ago, Microsoft Office revolutionized the way we work with text documents and spreadsheets. In much the same way, ConceptDraw Office revolutionizes the way we work with project management data and business information."

Gregory Zhukov, further states, "With the time and other resource constraints that face knowledge workers today, it is important that the tools they use closely fit the tasks at hand. With CS Odessa's forward thinking design of CD Office, knowledge workers can now focus on accomplishments without struggling with the tools they use."

A common customer usage scenario often begins with the brainstorming of project ideas, using whiteboard views and organizing results into highly informative mind maps. During the next phase, information is developed into detailed project plans with Gantt charts and visual performance dashboards. Managers can then balance and efficiently allocate resource loads using the Resource Usage view, or assign and send task lists to team participants in the form of mind maps. ConceptDraw Office provides start to finish process and project cycle management.

For more information about ConceptDraw Office, please visit:
http://www.conceptdraw.com/pg?id=cdo_1.0_press-main

ConceptDraw Office is available for $499 USD at:
http://www.conceptdraw.com/pg?id=cdo_1.0_press-buy

ABOUT CONCEPTDRAW PRODUCTIVITY LINE
The ConceptDraw product line for Macintosh and Windows is comprised of:

• ConceptDraw PRO
  Diagramming and drawing software
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP
  Brainstorming tool that utilizes mind mapping techniques to help organize ideas and tasks
• ConceptDraw PROJECT
  Professional project management software
• ConceptDraw WebWave
  Software for creating professional diagrams and drawings on the stage of website or application prototyping and design, page mocking-up and site-mapping
• ConceptDraw NetDiagrammer
  Network and system design

ABOUT CS ODESSA
Founded in 1993, Computer Systems Odessa (www.conceptdraw.com) supplies cross-platform productivity tools and graphics technologies to professional and corporate users. With headquarters in Odessa, Ukraine and an office in California, USA; CS Odessa sells products internationally through resellers in over 25 countries. The ConceptDraw Productivity Line of products has won numerous awards and is used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world

Mindjet Connections Newsletter

If you have a chance go over to Mindjet where you see a total redesign of their website. With the release of Mindjet Connect and the recent acquisition of JCVGantt there is a lot happening at Mindjet these days. Each month I have the opportunity to share a Tip 'n'Trick via the Mindjet Connections Newsletter. This month I created a screencast giving you an overview of Mindjet Connect which is a great collaboration tool. For the past month and a half I have been using Mindjet Connect with my team of presenters as we prepare for the October 2-3, 2008 Visual Mapping Conference to be held in the Greater New York City Area. Mindjet Connect has been indispensable as we plan the conference. All of our maps, Word documents and PDF's are stored in the Connect Workspace for easy access. There are times when my co-presenters will work and edit the maps in real time- which is really a tremendous feature. With all of the maps and files for the conference n Mindjet Connect all of the presenters can keep on top of the schedule and gain access to the files if they need them. Having presenters all over North America and in Europe makes it easy for them to access them according to their schedule. So take a look at the screencast and then if you have the chance give Mindjet Connect a try!

Workshop Exercise Design - Help Needed

I've just posted Identify Knowledge Work Tasks - Workshop Exercise which describes a workshop exercise that I'm considering using in several different workshops. I feel like it makes a lot of the discussion more concrete.

I'm really hoping that folks will help me out by:

a. telling me what they would say if they were in the workshop and
b. giving me thoughts on the exercise itself.

The last time I posted something like this it was a HUGE help and I significantly redesigned the exercise which probably saved me a lot of grief. See comments in Conference Session Breakout - which convinced me not to do it as a breakout activity. Actually, I probably never will do session breakouts unless there's a REALLY compelling reason... but I digress.

Please help: Identify Knowledge Work Tasks - Workshop Exercise

What are the Odds?

At lunch today, I had a funny experience that I just had to share. The person I met for lunch (a CEO at a client company) today is his birthday. And, it's my birthday. And it's today.

So, if I'm right, then it's a 1 in 365.25 chance that we share a birthday. And maybe a 20 in 365.25 chance that it would be on our birthdays that we get together. So, that's roughly a:

1 in 6,700 chance

and even the chance of that happening in a lifetime is pretty remote.

It just struck me as a pretty cool occurrence.

The only disappointing part is that when we told the waitress that it was both our birthdays, she seemed completely unimpressed. (But she did give us each free dessert.)

Revolution in Workplace Learning

Just wanted to announce that I'll be doing a full-day workshop in Cincinnati (actually in nearby Kentucky) for the Greater Cincinnati ASTD on July 15. I think this is going to be an interesting and fun workshop. I'm hoping that a few folks who read this blog will go.

You can go to their site: http://gcastd.org to find out more about specific place, time, cost, etc.

Likely I (and others in Work Literacy) will be doing similar workshops over the next few months. If you are interested, but can't attend this workshop, then you might want to go to Work Literacy and go to Services to state your interest.

Hope to see some of you there. If you are going, please drop a comment.

The workshop description is:

A Revolution in Workplace Learning

Tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, social bookmarking, and RSS readers are revolutionizing formal and informal workplace learning.

GCASTD is bringing nationally-known expert Dr. Tony Karrer to Greater Cincinnati to present a fun, engaging, fast-paced workshop that will allow you to use these "eLearning 2.0" methods and tools for yourself and your organization.

You will:

• Learn specific methods you can use to accelerate your own knowledge work and learning
• Define strategies for eLearning 2.0 for your organization
• Make a plan for getting an eLearning 2.0 toolset for yourself and your organization

Who Should Attend

• Leaders responsible for organizational learning and development
• Individuals seeking to improve their own skill and knowledge

About the Facilitator

Dr. Tony Karrer is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower, a software, eLearning and web development firm based in Los Angeles. A expert on using technology to improve human performance, he is a sought-after presenter on eLearning 2.0 and it’s implications on workplace learning. He is author of the award-winning eLearning Technology blog.

Dr. Karrer earned both his M.S. and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of South California. He attended USC as a Tau Beta Fellow, awarded to the top 30 engineers in the United States, and was valedictorian for his class.

Clients include: Credit Suisse, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Symbol Technologies and many others.

Second Life Learning Videos

If you want to get a sense of what Second Life is like and particularly what it is like as part of learning, here are some videos that help describe this.

| View | Upload your own

What videos did I miss?

Mark Miller from EndUserSharepoint Uses MindManager 7

I have had the opportunity through my blog to get to talk and meet with many MindManager Users who are using the program in innovative ways. I had the opportunity to talk with Mark Miller from EndUserSharepoint.com, who is is an internationally recognized technology trainer. He has taught throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia at companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, SGI and Charles Schwab for over a decade. Mark shared with me that one of his most satisfying assignments was using SharePoint to help coordinate AIDS vaccine data for five research labs around the United States. Mark uses MindManager 7 for everything from creating Information Architecture schemas to brainstorming site plans in front of live audiences. His current project is the creation of a subscription based training site for SharePoint Information Workers that will go live in September 2008. Mark was kind enough to share his last EndUserSharepoint.com screencast, which if you watch the first couple of minutes he shows you how he uses MindManager 7 to help explain a key concept called Content Types for those users who are setting up Sharepoint systems.

IQ Visual Mapping Conference Website Live

It is hard to believe that IQ Visual Mapping Conference is just 4 months away and in our efforts to keep you abreast of all that is happening we have put together a blog dedicated to the conference. This is where you can go to find out the latest information about the presentations and the what is happening. We will keep you updated all along the way and please feel free to visit the blog and add your comments to the posts and get a conversation going. If you were not aware we announced last week that the conference will be a 2 day event, October 2-3, 2008 to be held on the campus of the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ. The campus is in the Greater New York area and is just 30 minutes from the heart of New York City-so come to the conference and then spend the weekend visiting the city that never sleeps.

View Larger Map

I have received numerous emails asking me about what is going to be covered during the conference and to give you a flavor, Stephanie Diamond was kind enough to interview Wallace Tait, Arjen te Hoeve, Adam Clayman, Chuck Frey and myself. We have since put the interviews up on our conference blog so that you can listen to them and get a good feeling of what will be covered. Please come back often since this will be updated. As you listen to the interviews you will begin to hear some themes coming through about the conference which include: learning new strategies for using visual mapping, learning about the tools, doing some real social networking, becoming part of the larger visual mapping community and making yourself more valuable in the work that you do.

Since we moved to a 2 day event we have gotten a tremendous response from vendors and software developers, who not only want to exhibit but who now will be given the opportunity to present so that they can share with you the unique feature set of their software. So stay tuned to find out who will be exhibiting at the conference.

Knowledge Worker Take Ownership

Must read post by Michele Martin - Changing Knowledge Worker Attitudes. I had chills as I read it.

I believe that we have to start with making people conscious of the fact that they own the most precious resource in just about any organization today–the power of their ideas, social connections and thought processes.

That's it - knowledge workers must take ownership. And it's the responsibility of learning professionals to lead that charge. Join this discussion on Work Literacy.

Top 10 Reasons to Attend the IQ Visual Mapping Conference

Check out Chuck Freys's Mind Mapping Software Blog for the Top 10 Reasons to attend the IQ Visual Mapping Conference on October 2-3, 2008 at the College of St Elizabeth, Morristown, New Jersey. For those of you who been following the conference announcement here is some breaking news! Due to the overwhelming response from exhibitors and conference participants the event has expanded to 2 full days. With the expanded venue we will be able to have our exhibitors share with you their latest software and developments. You will be able first hand to see the latest offerings from the software developers themselves. So sty tuned for list of software developers who will be attending the event. In the mean time here are the top two reasons to attend.

Here are the top 2 reasons why this is a don’t-miss conference:

1. It’s an opportunity to increase your value to your employer by becoming a more visually-oriented thinker, decision maker and problem solver.
2. Learn how to take your company's information management strategies to the next level of effectiveness.

To see the rest of the reasons go to Chuck Frey's Blog

To Register for the event click here

Skimming Strategy

Fantastic article by Nicholas Carr in Atlantic Monthly - Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains.

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I know what he's talking about. In the past, I've discussed this as Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim. He cites a recent study by University College London that looked at behavior of visitors to two research sites. Carr states:

They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.

The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

While Carr expresses concern about the impact that this has, I'm not quite so sure. Yes, we need opportunities to reflect, but for me that's blogging. I'm reflecting on his article as I write. But, indeed, I skimmed through passages.

Virtual Language Immersion

Great post by Karl Kapp -Immerse Yourself in Another Language. As someone who's always felt that immersion is the best way (possibly the only way) to really learn languages. While I like the new tutoring systems such as EduFire, the idea of putting someone in a virtual environment to learn the language is fantastic.

I've mentioned before that I also think Second Life as a Learning Tool can be fantastic if you set up an environment like Plymoth Plantation - a recreation of Plymouth where actors playing the part of Native Americans and Colonists told stories and answered questions about life, religion, history, etc. It was a fantastic learning experience where you learned things in such a great way. And there were quite a few surprises, that I didn't remember ever hearing in all my different history classes. (We have a rather idealistic view of the colonists.)

I came home from the trip thinking that the California Missions should really do something similar. I've had to take my kids to a Mission several times as part of their school work and it's frankly boring to walk around reading as compared to the experience at the Plantation. Maybe one of the tribes that has casinos could sponsor putting this together?

This is good timing given the LCB Big Question is: Second Life Training.

Visual Mind 10 is Released!

FYI

------------------

Visual Mind 10 is released!

Mind Mapping Software is increasingly acknowledged as a performance enhancing tool among companies and individual users all over the world. Quickly being able to switch from the overview perspective of relevant issues to complex details in a specific task, leads to improved decision-making and more structured execution. User studies and industry surveys show that Mind Mapping Software can increase productivity up to 30%.

As a leading supplier of Mind Mapping Software, Mind Technologies is proud to present Visual Mind 10, the newest version of Visual Mind. Visual Mind 10 introduces a number new features and improvements that will bring significant improvement to both new and existing Visual Mind users.

Check out the new features below, download the free trial version - and further increase your
performance!

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Social Media and Experimental Innovation

Interesting post by Clark Quinn - Innovating by Conversation - where he refers to the idea of the Experimental Innovator - an innovator who iterates through lots of ideas before arriving at something that works. Clark tells us ...

Surowiecki’s Wisdom of the Crowds, Tapscott’s Wikinomics, and Libert & Spector’s We Are Smarter Than Me, are telling us to tap into the wisdom of crowds, and with lots of examples of how creating conversations with folks can spark new insights.

The thought this sparks is that experimental innovation can be accelerated through broader conversations. This is interesting. Much of Gladwell's discussion of experimental innovation discussed innovation occurring over very long periods of time (10 years). But one of the promises of social media is that we can arrive at innovation more quickly and test it more quickly.

In many ways, this is exactly how we are approaching Work Literacy. It's a big, hard problem. Get lot's of people together to foster discussion, innovation, experimentation.

WriteOnline from Crick Software- First Impressions

Several weeks ago I shared with you the impending release of a new assistive technology application called WriteOnline from Crick Software. The release of WriteOnline is a departure from the release of any other software product, that I know, in that the application is delivered through the browser. This is a monumental paradigm shift for the industry and one that I have been talking about for years. WriteOnline raises the bar for other software developers as we move to software as a service model. But more importantly having software tools delivered through the web enables students to have access to their files and the supports that they need wherever and whenever they want to work on it. No longer will students have to give up their software supports when they leave school and go home to work on projects and papers.

Since that post I have the opportunity to use a beta of WriteOnline which will soon be available in the UK. Once I was given a link to the program, WriteOnline installed the the Java application and within seconds I was into the WriteOnline writing environment. For those of you are familiar with Wordbar from Crick Software you will certainly see the similarity. I for one was up and running within seconds and using all of the supports provided in WriteOnline. The screen is divided into three windows: the word processing area, the word prediction pane , and the Wordbar pane at the bottom of the screen. WriteOnline provides powerful text to speech support right within the application and by setting up the user preferences you can set the word prediction and wordbar pane to read the words by right clicking on a word. The text to speech engine produced clear annunciation of what was being read and the user could change the unit of how WriteOnline would read the text. With this release the text to speech engine used British speech engine but an English engine will be used when it is released here in the United States. I did have a chance to show some of my graduate students WriteOnline and many were really excited by all of the features. Most of my students whom are themselves are special education teachers shared that it was a great tool for differentiating the instruction.

Quite frankly when one is using WriteOnline it is hard to discern that the application is working online. For students with writing disabilities WriteOnline provides and incredible level of supports. WriteOnline comes with a host of Wordbars that are ready to be used with a click of the mouse. Additional free Wordbars can be downloaded from Crick's LearningGrids site. I was able to develop my own custom wordbars by simply shift clicking in the cell and typing the word. This worked very similar to Wordbar or Clicker 5. When you right click WriteOnline will read the content of the cell and is an excellent support for students who may also have reading disabilities. Students who need spelling support will find the word prediction tool really handy. I should note that the user has the option of hiding or showing the word prediction and wordbar pane as they see fit. The word prediction dictionary can be adjusted in size (number of words) depending on the age and skills of the student. The word prediction library can be set from anywhere from 250 to 60000 words and can also be set up to predict from the wordbar list as well. The word prediction tool was surprising good and was able to determine the proper ending of words depending on what looks like some grammatical rules. The word prediction tool had more difficulty when I spelled word phonetically. I will have to inquire about this feature. Using both the wordbars and the word prediction tools can provide students with the scaffolding they need to help them complete their writing. More importantly one must remember that since WriteOnline is an online application, students can access their files and continue to use these supports at home or wherever they are as long as they connected to the Internet. Now this is truly a paradigm shift!

Overall I was very impressed with the feature set of WriteOnline and will continue to explore the nooks and crannies and share with you new information as I find out about it. I should note that there are a number of writing analysis tools built into WriteOnline which would be helpful for a teacher as they look at a students written work over time. WriteOnline does support the insertion of comments which would lead me to believe that the student's teacher could access the written work and add comments where appropriate. While I certainly have more to learn about WriteOnline I for one was extremely pleased with the feature set and its capabilities. More importantly this marks a real transition in how assistive technology applications are delivered and I for one am overjoyed by the fact that students will have the writing supports they need wherever and whenever they need it. No longer will they be tied to one computer with their specific tools- this is a very liberating feeling and one that goes a long way for students having real access to what they need.

I should note that I would like to thank John Crick for giving me access to WriteOnline and if anyone is going to NECC 2008, please stop by the Crick Software booth and see for yourself the incredible tool set that can be found in WriteOnline. When you see John Crick, just tell him that Brian sent you:-)

Learning Organizations, eLearning 2.0 and Edupunk

Janet Clarey wrote an interesting blog post in response to the relatively recent edupunk meme which is basically an ideology that DIY learning and repurposing content is the way to go (and somewhat the ONLY way to go). Janet juxtaposes the recent inclusion of eLearning 2.0 type tools in Learning Management Systems against the philosophy that corporate and commercial is evil of the edupunkers. The questions she raises are:

Is the edupunk ideology saying that the use of social media in commercial learning management systems is an assault on the very philosophy of learning 2.0?

Ideologies shouldn’t be rigid should they? Rather they should be adapted and used in pragmatic ways don’t you think? If you’re a trainer embracing learning 2.0, who gives a rats ass where it lives.

These are fair questions that are also central to the issues of the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption. Corporate IT is interested in rolling out systems that they can control for security, auditing, back-up and a host of other control reasons. This is counter to the very being of a person like Stephen Downes. They would argue that the individual chooses what makes sense in their personal work and learning environment.

As a trainer, you are going to get stuck in the middle of this. If you have a population of learners who have already adopted tools (such as blogging and social bookmarking) for themselves that are different than the corporate tool (the LMS) do you ask them to move? It will depend on the content, but it certainly won't be good for the learner. If your population has not adopted a tool yet, do you have a responsibility to the individual to show them tools that can live beyond their engagement at the company? Do you show them the internal blogging tool only?

The answers are going to depend on the particular situation, but in a few cases I think the answers are fairly well known.

For Wiki-like capabilities, it likely is fine for an LMS to provide these and for learning organizations to use them. Most knowledge workers are used to thinking about that type of content being created for internal use only. It makes sense in many of these cases to keep it inside the firewall. So no problem if their Wiki is tied to the LMS. Just don't make me login to get to it. Allow it to be easily searched. Etc.

But I would claim that if you are talking about blogging as an ongoing learning and networking tool, then you are doing a disservice to learners if you show them only internal tools bundled with the LMS or any tool that is locked inside the walls of the corporation.

These are going to be real challenges for learning organizations and trainers moving forward.

Hopefully, we'll begin to see ways to allow a better handling of inside and outside the firewall solutions. For example, having social bookmarking that allows links to be kept private to a group. Interestingly when Yahoo create MyWeb as a competitor to del.icio.us before acquiring del.icious - they had features that did this. I'm expecting them at some point to put this into del.icio.us so that you can control visibility of bookmarks.

Final thought - I would claim that a bad reaction to this debate is to do nothing because we aren't sure. We need to be building work literacy. This will benefit the corporation and the individual.

Topic Diversity

Through the post on Conference Balance an in thinking about the keynotes at ASTD that I attended (ASTD Keynote - Malcolm Gladwell, Dysfunctional Teams), I realized that one of the reasons that I like going to conferences is it forces me (sometimes slowly and painfully) to get exposed to a diversity of topics. Through my PWLE methods (reading blogs, etc.) I would not have run across the concepts in Dysfunctional Teams. This was a good topic to go through and think about - and to have captured in my blog.

But, if I'm suggesting that conferences should head towards participation and F2F because more people are going to effectively get information through their PWLEs, then am I going to miss good topics like that talk. The closest equivalent are things like TED videos (which are always short and to the point). But more recently those videos have become more and more theoretical. I ran across a video on the topic of making a good presentation that was great. But, I still have this nagging worry that I would miss out if you didn't have keynotes on random, related topics.

Am I just being an Infovore and shouldn't worry about it?

Should I be seeking new information sources that will bring in random but related topics?

Where do you get this kind of information? How do you know to get it?

tag: workliteracy

Conference Balance

Just read a great post by Clive Shepherd - Cutting the Pie - where he discusses what the appropriate balance is at conferences. As you know creating Better Conferences is something that very much interests me. Check out that post, the poll results and the discussion for lots of ideas on how to make conferences better. But Clive's major point is that at today's conferences the mix is:



His definitions are:

• ideas - presentations from gurus, experts and thought leaders, primarily abstract in nature.
• examples - case studies from users, sharing successes and lessons learned.
• participation - opportunities for attendees to interact with each other to explore the ideas, share their own experiences and make contacts that can take follow-up after the event.

He'd like to see a balance:



This is interesting timing for me having just returned from the ASTD Conference. That conference was certainly the old model - mostly ideas and examples. Very little participation. But in fairness to ASTD - it seems like it's hard to get participation when 70% of attendees are relatively new to the industry and are first time attendees.

I personally tried (a little) to create my own participation ahead of the event through getting together at conferences. But I wasn't very successful.

I've always highly encourage participation, but my general sense is that people aren't really that interested in doing the Conference Preparation that might be required to Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee or using Social Conference Tools

So while I agree, my basic question:

When can you get effective participation at conferences?

It seems like the eLearningGuild is doing a better job at this recently. There were morning discussion groups last time that I thought were great. They are starting to do more with online tools. I think that conferences really need to adopt a mentality of having unconferences within a conference structure to allow for participation of all kinds intermixed with ideas and examples.

I'd be curious to hear thoughts on this as I always struggle with whether going to a conference is worth the investment of time.

ASTD Handouts

Lance Dublin mentioned a couple of handouts today from sessions I was not able to attend. It took me a little while to find this link to the ASTD 2008 Session Handouts. My session (yesterday) can be found: M313 - E-Learning 2.0 for Personal and Group Learning (PDF).

Dysfunctional Teams

At the ASTD keynote by Patrick Lencioni - Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Quick search and I found some good notes on different web sites so I don't have to type so much. Here's a good one.

He used an interesting thing in order to get questions - gave free copies of his book to people with questions. He got a lot of questions right away - not sure it works all that well with an audience of 5,000.

The Five Dysfunctions of Teams are:

Absence of Trust: Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. However, in most teams members will not be "vulnerable" with each other (air dirty laundry, admit mistakes, weaknesses and concerns without fear of reprisal). Without trust the team will not be able to achieve results.

One member of a team can break down trust. You can't go into a process unwilling to get rid of any team members.

Even if it's the leader - who you must be honest with about their issues.

You should be more vulnerable - but must be genuine. Vulnerability is always a little painful. Can you be too vulnerable? No. But showing yourself as incompetent is not good either.

Fear of Conflict: Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate about ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

Productive, idealogical conflict is good. This looks different for different teams. Conflict in Japan is quite different from the US. He talked about NY vs. Silicon Valley. Not important the style that's in use, but you want to know they are engaging when they disagree.

You have to be able to disagree, even passionately.

Why don't you do it more? Fear of getting feelings hurt. His point is that if you don't have conflict around issues it will become conflict around people.

Leader must model and even mine for conflict.

Lack of Commitment: Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions.

Without conflict there's no commitment. He doesn't necessarily want consensus. Most times you have an important decision to make - you have to hear everyone out and then decide which one to go with. If they don't feel they've been heard, they will simply not commit.

Disagree and commit.

Avoidance of Accountability: Without commitment and buy-in to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

Biggest problem on teams. Peer-to-peer accountability is the most powerful. If they know that peers don't buy in, then there won't be action.

Leader must be willing to confront tough problems. CEO might say - I don't have the time and energy for that. Afraid to hold people accountable for behaviors. People don't like to do these confrontational events.

Inattention to Results: Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where team members put their individual needs or even the needs of their division above the collective goals of the team.

What else can you focus on? Feelings. Relationships.

Healthy teams:

• Members trust one another.
• They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.
• They commit to decisions and plans of action.
• They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.
• They focus on the achievement of collective results.

Frank Nguyen - EPSS - at ASTD

Frank Nguyen is presenting at ASTD on EPSS. You can find his presentation on his site. His major points were:

• Search is not an effective method for performers to find information.
• Integrating information closer to the work flow and work interface can improve performance.
• Novices cannot effectively use the same support systems as experts.
• Providing learners with more on-the-job performance support does not eliminate the need for training and there are cases where training is preferred
• When in learning mode - people want minimal information. When in performance mode - they want more detail. Thus, you can't use the same content for both - EPSS needs more than training.
• You must focus on more than the technology in order to drive adoption of EPSS.
  

Choices for what to do as performance support vs. training:

• Routine (perform the task often) -> Training
• Not routine -> EPSS
• Critical -> Training

Only situation safe to do only support (not training), not critical, not routine.

One of the points that Frank made that I had to jump on at the session and mention Work Literacy was that even though most people know how to use Google search, they wouldn't find it to be an effective tool. I don't disagree that often search is not a great vehicle to support particular performance. However, I take issue with the claim that most people are good at using search. In fact, I would claim that most people muddle through search.

Frank is doing great research in this area. Really enjoyed his relaxed presentation style and his method of engaging the audience around key questions.

ASTD Keynote - Malcolm Gladwell

Next up at ASTD - Malcolm Gladwell - new book in November - Outliers - how people get to be successful. Talks about two kinds of creative styles:

• Experimental innovator - never has a big bold idea, works slowly, trial-and-error, empirical, approach master
• Conceptual innovator - big idea, can execute it themselves

He draws this distinction in artists, writers and the point is that it applies to any kind of field.

We have a tendency to value the conceptual innovator more than the experimental innovator. He spends about 10 minutes to show this through discussion of Fleetwood Mac vs. the Eagles and how the music industry focuses on conceptual innovators today.

Compares scouting combines in sports to how you select talent. Break down into specific skills and measure against those skills. He claims that scouting combine scores have almost no correlation to actual abilities. In the NBA, Kevin Durant - 75 out of 81 people in combines, but he was rookie of the year. Very little correlation. Similar issue of intelligence tests in the NFL. I have to check his facts - Bradshaw, Marino, McNabb all scored among the lowest on intelligence?

Interesting to juxtapose this versus the discussion of talent management by Tony Bingham. Talent management likes to look at things exactly this way.

Gladwell's claim is that you really want to find an experimental innovator in sports or other talent - who is going to grow into a star. Some of his main points:

• Talent is not a narrow, fixed thing.
• Picking talent requires judgment - hero of stories are those that can see future talent
  
• Along the way, talent will make a lot of mistakes
• Flexibility is required to be successful growing talent
• Measures (if they can even be done) must be much broader than simple skills measurement
• Must be patient
• Must be prepared to help
  

Commentary - the problem here is that in the fast paced world with a fluid flow of talent that we have today, how do you balance the need for immediate performance versus the need to be patient, develop over time, etc. To me a key aspect that is missing here is the transition of thinking about the corporation as being the key talent manager - that has moved to the individual. The corporation still has responsibility, but the individual has greater responsibility.

When you think about the parallel of this with the sports world - it's pretty close. Listen to any sports talk radio and they will talk about how you can try to draft for players who will have immediate impact or those who may develop into a bigger, more valuable player. There's a definite trade-off to be made in that choice. It's a tough choice to make. And the right answer is situational. Sometimes getting the lineman who will make immediate impact is a better choice than drafting a quarterback who may or may not develop into a star in three years.

I wish we could have had some discussion with Gladwell vs Bingham. Could have been pretty interesting.

ASTD Keynote - Talent Managment

I'm at the ASTD Conference in San Diego at the general session. It looks like there are about 5,000 people in the room. A complete guess at the number, but pretty good size.

Tony Bingham, ASTD CEO, is talking about and showing videos around talent management. It's interesting to see the message be around talent management when often that's fairly separate from the learning function. My experience is that talent management is more focused on performance review, succession planning, recruitment, retention, and other HR processes - less on specific learning / development. I've got to say that having someone showing a bunch of videos (of people from the BEST winners) isn't all that engaging or meaningful without more context.

Tony asked the audience - how many know the key strategies of your organization and then key metrics of your business. Very few (10 percent) raised their hands.

Tony's Keys at the end of his presentation:

• Create a Learning Brand
• Learning - most important role is in talent management
• Take Action on the Skills Gap
• Become a business partners

Great quote in one of the videos - self-development is the greatest challenge. It's often easier to change the world than it is to change yourself. Okay - maybe I was too hard on the videos. :)

Work Literacy Launch

I'm very happy to announce that Michele Martin and I have just launched Work Literacy - a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work.

This venture comes partly from my experiences doing presentations, workshops, blogging around eLearning 2.0. When discussing new(ish) tools like blogs and social bookmarking, and discussing things like advanced search techniques, there's a gap in knowledge work skills. In fact, we all have blind spots. Why is that? It's just coming at us too fast to continue to acquire in an ad hoc fashion. We need something to help us make sense of all that is happening that changes how we do our knowledge work.

Our goal is create a vibrant network of individuals, companies and organizations interested in participating in a variety of ways: learners, testers, experts, teachers, coaches, and I'm sure many others. The network is intentionally defined in a way that will allow it to emerge over time, but there are some very interesting people involved already.

Some ways to Participate:

• Subscribe
  • RSS Feed for the Work Literacy Blog
  • RSS Feed for an aggregation of related content.
  • You can subscribe by email using the entries in the sidebar to either of these feeds.

• Answer a poll on work skills opportunities.

• Point us to resources using the Del.icio.us tag: WorkLiteracy
  

• Comment

• Blog your thoughts. When you blog, include the term workliteracy or better yet a link to www.workliteracy.com and we’ll do our best to aggregate these posts for access by the community.

I truly believe this is something important, and I hope it sounds interesting enough that you want to come participate with us.