Camtasia for Macintosh to Be Released - August 25th

I know it has been a long time coming and I am glad to announce that Techsmith will be releasing Camtasia for the Macintosh on August 25th for a special promotional price of $99 dollars until the end of the year. After that Camtasia for the Mac will be priced at $149. I know I have been waiting for this awhile now and I am sure this will become an important part of your instructional toolkit once it is released. I will be talking more about Camtasia for the Mac in future posts.

Ginger Software Updated

I have been following the development of Ginger Software for the past couple of months and wanted to let you know that a new version is available at their web site. Ginger Software is a very innovative spelling correction tool that works with Microsoft Word and well as with Outlook. Students can do their writing in Microsoft Word and with a click of the F2 key bring up the Ginger Software application.

The Ginger Software interface has changed significantly since the last version and I trust that once you try it you will find it even easier to use. Once you invoke the F2 key the Ginger Software interface drops down from the top of your Word document and provides you with the suggestions for your misspelled words. If you click on the suggested word which is underlined, you will have some alternative words to select from. I think that you will agree that the new interface is much more intuitive and easier to use. You will note on their website that built-in text to speech support is coming to Ginger Software. So if you have not had a chance to experience using Ginger Software give it a try and let me know what you think. Click on the word demo to see Ginger Software in action. The algorithms that are used are fantastic for students with dyslexia. I would be interested in your feedback and how your students have found using Ginger Software.

Case Studies of Informal or Social Learning

I'm looking to find lots of examples of where informal or social learning has been used successfully in the workplace and where it was led by the L&D organization. This can either be already written up, or it can be the name of a person and organization where it was done.

Can you provide me pointers?

If you would be more comfortable, feel free to send me information via an email: akarrer@techempower.com.

Marginalized

In the T+D article Learning Gets Social, Tony Bingham paraphrases something I said:

In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business.

I thought it would be good for me to put some context around what I meant by this.  Especially given that there's been some push-back on the term "marginalized."

In the Business of Learning, I pointed out that there were some pretty significant questions facing the training industry.  Budgets have been hammered this year, and there's a question as to what spending levels will look like going forward.  During the Free Online Conference – Future of Learning we heard different perspectives. 

• Skill Building Still in Demand.  There was definitely the belief that there are continued need for skills development.  If anything, there is increased need.
• Catalogs / Courses Commoditization.  At the same time, the business of selling a catalog of courses is seen as being tough going forward.  Unless you do something to differentiate yourself in a real way, you will be more and more of a commodity.
• Many Ways to Differentiate.  We heard several people talking about focus on performance.  We heard about use of assessments.  There was discussion about a lot of the things that need to happen outside the training event.

While there are great content vendors out there, I really didn't hear anyone who was claiming that being a content vendor was a great business right now.  Instead, they talked about other kinds of things that would differentiate them in the marketplace.

I believe the same thing is true for internal learning and development organizations.  If you are seen as being the place you go for training / content production, there will still be need for your work, but it will be under greater pressure, just like external training suppliers.

There are some other big picture trends going on that have impact on this:

• Faster pace
• Greater focus and value on high end concept work 
• Job fragmentation – fewer people in any single job role
• Shorter job tenure

These pressures suggest that there are greatly increased learning needs within organizations.  However, less of these learning needs will be successfully met by traditional methods.  If you look at what makes a good situation for formal learning:

• Large Audience
• Similar Level / Needs
• Known, Stable Content
• Few Out of Bounds Cases

Of course, these are almost the opposite of the trends I mentioned.  So, while formal learning solutions will make a portion of how learning will occur, the increased demand for learning will be met through other forms.

This leaves us with the questions:

• What the role of learning and development relative to all of this?
• If L&D leadership chooses to focus primarily on traditional methods and less so on informal learning opportunities, will they be marginalized in the business.

WizCom ReadingenTS

I had a chance at NECC 2009 to meet up with Chris from WizCom Technologies to see some of their new reading solutions. For those of you who may not be familiar with Wizcom, they develop handheld reading tools with built-in optical character recognition (OCR) software that can scan text from a book and read it using text to speech (TTS). Once the text is scanned into the device, the WizCom Readingpen using text to speech (TTS) will highlight each word and read the text on the screen. The WizCom ReadingPens also includes extensive dictionary supports which allows students to look up words they are unfamiliar with and hear them being read with the text to speech. Over the years I have used the ReadingPen Basic Edition K-12 which includes the American Heritage® Children’s Dictionary and Thesaurus with good success with elementary and middle school students.

Like all technology the key is to match the features of the tool to the student. I can remember quite vividly that when I demonstrated the Readingpen to my graduate students (all of whom are certified teachers) , that one of my students got quite excited with what she saw. After class my student approached me and asked if she could try out the Readingpen with one of her students, which I said of course. My graduate student went back into her classroom and implemented the Readingpen with her student with great success. I can recall that at the end of the semester my student brought a card into me from her student who was using the Readingpen thanking me for introducing it to her and how it helped her throughout the year with reading text. What a great feeling to know that the Readingpen made a such a difference in the student's life. These are the stories that keep me motivated to teach others about new tools and gadgets that can assist students with reading and writing disabilities.

While at NECC 2009, I was able to see first hand the recently released ReadingpenTS, which includes a touch screen technology along with the option to choose between two different dictionaries, as well as the ability to connect the ReadingPen via a USB cable to a Windows based PC. The ReadingpenTS now includes a Children's and College level dictionary to choose from- giving the student more ways to cutomize their experience. The ReadingpenTS is a little larger than previous models which may make it a better tool for a middle to high school students. Having access to a touch screen allows student to directly interact with the text making it easier to select the word they want to have read or look up in the dictionary. The ReadingpenTS also gives students the ability to use a stylus and a virtual keyboard to manually enter words to be looked up which is a nice feature. The virtual keyboard will try to suggest works once you begin to input letters to help you along the way. The stylus is tucked away and secured within the slot provided on the side of the ReadingpenTS. The student will need to have good fine motor skills to use the stylus and virtual keyboard since the letters are small due to the limited real estate of the touch screen. The ReadingpenTS is designed to let you navigate the features using a 5 Way Toggle button located towards the front of the pen. I found the navigation system to be intuitive and work well for moving about the options. The ReadingpenTS can syllabicate words, provide you with definitions, synonyms as well as provide the student with English to Spanish translation. I found it very easy to move about the various options with the 5 Way Toggle and feel that students will find it easy to do as well.

If you have not taken a look at the Readingpens in awhile I urge you to do so. While some of the earlier models did have difficulty with recognizing the text, you will find that the ReadingpenTS with its faster microprocessor and advanced OCR software does an extremely good job of recognizing the text. I would say that if the quality of the text you are scanning is good and you get your technique down that you should achieve somewhere in the 96%-98% accuracy when scanning the material. Students can listen to the text being read discreetly using the headset that is supplied that plugs into the device. The ReadingpenTS is an ideal accommodation tool for students with reading disabilities during testing situations. The ReadingpenTS would allow student the ability to take the test independently without the need to have a reader. Likewise, if you need to, teachers can turn off the ability for the student to access the built-in dictionary or thesaurus when using the ReadingpenTS in a testing situation.

One of the new features of the ReadingpenTS is the ability to connect it via a USB cable to a PC. Right now this feature is only available for students using a Windows PS. Prior to connecting the ReadingpenTS to your PC, you install the PenExplorer application and drivers from the CD that is provided. Once you have installed the software you can view the contents of the History.txt file on the PC to review the words that the students has looked up in the dictionary. More importantly, The PenExplorer application lets teachers upload text files (.txt) to the Readingpen TS with up to 9000 characters that can then be opened and read on the ReadingPen TS. Using the Notepad application I copied and pasted some text from the book Call of the Wild and saved it to my desktop. I then dragged the Call of the Wild text file to the Notes folder within the PenExplorer. I then plugged in my ReadingpenTS and selected Connect to PC on the Main Menu on the ReadingpenTS which automatically, in the background, uploaded the Call of the Wild text file to to my Radingpen. Once I disconnected the Readingpen TS from the computer I was able to open the file and have the Radingpen TS read it aloud. Just think of all of the ways that you could use that to accommodate your students with reading disabilities in the classroom. Once they have access to the text in the pen they can also look up words and provide them with a context for developing their personal vocabulary. I was very impressed with the features of the ReadingpenTS and urge you to take a look at it for your middle and high school students with reading difficulties. Of course there always has to be a good match between the tasks, tools and the learning style of the student-but it is important to have lots of tools at your disposal for those students that you work with. For more information about the ReadingpenTS go to the WizCom Website.

Getting Started

During a recent presentation and workshop to eLearning leaders from across a large organization, it dawned on me that we were making Getting Started with eLearning 2.0 a lot harder than it really needed to be.

This organization was not unlike many other large organizations.  It was clear that there was significant opportunity in this organization for getting started with a broader mix of learning solutions.  Their situation sounded incredibly similar to what I have heard in many different organizations.  Some of the specifics that made me think they could make progress:

• Significant IT support for SharePoint
• Innovators in Knowledge Management and IT who would be great allies
• Support of senior L&D leaders
• Some early adopters of social learning solutions within particular regional learning and development departments

Because I was talking to people with widely varying levels of experience, interest and comfort around web 2.0 tools, it was clear that many of the people would leave the room and not do anything different.  I am hopeful that a few will take on a self-directed learning task around some of the things I talked about in Tool Set to develop their own knowledge and proficiency, but certainly they would not be spearheading any broader learning mix initiatives anytime soon. 

Barrier at the Individual Level

Why is that?  Well, it was expressed pretty well by one of the participants and I think it captures the challenge pretty well that individual L&D practitioners face (paraphrased):

Tony, while I'd like to use some of these approaches, this represents a whole host of new challenges for me in terms of getting agreement within the organization to use this approach (internal clients, L&D leadership, IT, etc.).  I'm already way too busy trying to get my stuff done.  Even if I think this makes a lot of sense, I don't need the headaches.

That's a really great point.  The organization was making it hard and not really supporting individual change agents who wanted to make this stuff happen. 

Role of Senior L&D Leaders

When I say "the organization" was making this hard on individuals - really this rests back on the senior L&D leadership.  They are lucky enough to have some change agents: early adopters who are willing to work to help move this forward.  Their job is to help identify those change agents, identify opportunities, and give support needed to make sure those early adopters can be successful in their project.

I've been finding my advice to L&D leaders almost always turns into the same basic message:

• Choose a few places where it makes sense
• Use existing tools as much as possible
• Give it the support it needs
• Allow for experimentation (and possible "failure")

Is this really that hard?  It takes work, but I don't believe it's hard.

This is much the same Learning 2.0 Strategy that I discussed a year ago.

Avoiding Two Early Traps

While I'm claiming this isn't hard, there are a few common traps that seems to bog down organizations. 

Trap 1 - Leading with Strategy

Even though the title of the post Learning 2.0 Strategy makes it seem like there will be a big picture social learning strategy, the reality is that the strategy is a bottom up strategy.

You do need to look across the organization to see the kinds of business, performance and learning needs where learning 2.0 will apply.  But, trying to jump too far along Dion Hinchcliffe's adoption curve is a problem.  

Plus, jumping too far leads you right into the next challenge.

Trap 2 - Language

While I use the terms "eLearning 2.0", "social learning", etc. and it's fine to use that amongst ourselves, don't use it in mixed company.  Consider the same message with:

We are going to use eLearning 2.0.

- or -

We are going to set up ways for people to exchange ideas and experiences.

I wouldn't really say the second thing, without a lot more context.  The point is that the terms blog, wiki, social network, etc. will likely raise barriers that are not needed.

Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that I believe we often make these things much harder than they need to be.

Yes, there are all sorts of barriers that you have to work through.  And there's work to be done to get through those barriers.  But, I believe the bottom line is that most organizations should be well into the experimentation / ad hoc use of social apps phase.

I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Presenting Your Proposal as a Mind Map

As I am gearing up for the fall consulting season, I am often asked to provide various schools and business organizations with proposals to give them a sense of how I can help them reach their goals. During the course of the year, I am providing a great deal of professional development and training professional staff on many different educational software titles and computer technologies. For the past year or so I have decided to practice what I preach and have been presenting my proposals visually in a mind map. As a result of this decision, I have found that it takes me half the amount of time to put together the proposal in a mind map but more importantly, the presentation to my clients adds a degree of clarity and conciseness which they all favorably comment on. Many of my clients are unaware of this modality and often comment what a great way to present the information without the need to plow through pages and pages of text.

One simple mind map convey volumes and is easily digested getting to the crux of the matter. Of course if you must, you can always export your map to Microsoft Word and present them with a traditional proposal. I recently created a proposal in MindManager 8 and then exported it as a Mindjet Player which I emailed to my client. For me having the Export as a Mindjet Player feature is the real killer feature in MindManager 8. Being able to open the Mindjet Player file with the free Adobe Acrobat 9 Reader makes it easy to share my mind maps. After emailing my client the mind map it wasn't before too long that I received an email back commenting how wonderful the proposal presentation was. For me it was a win-win situation all around! My proposals take me less time to prepare and my clients find the presentation easy to read and digest. So if you have the opportunity to prepare a proposal think about the prospect of delivering it as a mind map- you will be glad you did!

In my efforts to bring you articles that interest you I would appreciate it if you could complete this short survey.