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!

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Second Calendar Curator Joins to Help with List of Free Webinars

I've received very positive feedback and lots of good ideas on the concept of having a combined calendar of Free Webinars. The really nice thing about the way Jon Udell has set up his elmcity project (the system we are using) is that it acts a lot like social curation on RSS sources as provided by Browse My Stuff, but brings together designated calendars instead of blogs or other RSS sources.

In English, that means that we can have many different people each own their separate calendar and we can bring it together.

The initial list of calendar entries, we added ourselves. But I'm pleased to announce that we've just signed up our second calendar curator - Coaching Ourselves. Their events are now appearing in the listings:

Free eLearning Webinars

For now you won't be able to necessarily distinguish the source, but we will work on exposing that in the future. One of the recommendations we've already received.

It is exactly because we can distribute the load of keeping this list current that makes me think this will work really well in the long run.

If you are doing webinars that would be of interest to workplace learning professionals, please contact me: akarrer@techempower.com.

MindMap Navigator 1.3 is Released

FYI

I want to inform you that MindMap Navigator 1.3 is released. With new functionality it becomes more powerful and easier to use. Below is the list of features being added in the new version:

- Mapview context menu item "Sync with Navigator" allows to position the currently selected MindManager topic in Navigator tree;
- Enhanced "show branch alone" option: now you can set the level of details for the filter - 1,2 or expand all levels;
- MindMap Navigator now works with Mindjet Connect maps;
- State of options on the toolbar is saved when MindManager closes ;
- Ability to Cut/Copy/Paste and Delete multiple topics in the Navigator tree.
Also, several errors were fixed.

You can download your trial copy with a following link: http://www.mind2chart.com/Downloads/Trial/MMNavigator13_en.zip

This upgrade is free for existing users.

Outsource Training to Customers

The Business of Learning (see Free Online Conference – Future of Learning with Recordings Here) event went really well. One of the really interesting ideas came from Allessandria Polizzi who is Group Manager for Accountant Training & Relations at Intuit. Her role is to make sure that accountants are trained on the Quickbook products.

You can see Allessandria at 21:30 of the following video:

If you have problem seeing the video you can view them here as well.

Intuit used to produce the content themselves, but they have transitioned to hiring their Accountants (their customers) to produce the training content for them. This includes a varied mix of solutions - webinars, seminars, self-paced eLearning. One of the examples of how they did this was to give the Accountants camcorders and software (along with training) so that they could produce small training pieces. One example that she mentions is a video piece on mobile access showing how they can access client information from the beach via a mobile device.

There are 100 accountants who produce training for them as compared to 12 in her organization. These accountants are experts in using their software. They add legitimacy to the content. Many of these accountants already provided training to their end customers, so providing training to other accountants was an easy extension.

It's an interesting idea and something that can be applied in many other domains. While this is similar to having SMEs produce the content - I think that Intuit takes it a bit further with how they are engaging and paying them. They also audition/test their customers. They spread the work pretty wide.

Embedding your WebBrain in Your Blog

I recently posted about how you can post your PersonalBrain 5 to the web with WebBrain with a click of the mouse. Well pretty close to it. One of the really exciting features of the WebBrain is being able to have access to your links and attachments as if you were working with the PersonalBrain 5 on your desktop. Think of all the possibilities! This is a very powerful feature and one that I will certainly use when I am planning my workshops. Think about giving your attendees a simple URL to your WebBrian that they can access that would allow them to jump to web sites and have access to your attached handouts. That is really an outstanding feature.

WebBrain is evolving as we speak and I just learned that you can now embed your WebBrain in a blog or website by simply clicking on the Share button and copying the embedding code from the Webbrain site. If you click on the Customize option you can change the dimensions to suit your need. I should mention that you can also upload your PersonalBrain 5 files and keep them private so that only you can access them over the web. Likewise you can determine which Thoughts to keep private so that they don't appear when you upload them to WebBrain by marking them as Private thoughts in the PersonalBrain 5. If you have any questions or ideas on how you would use WebBrain - please leave me some comments.