Harold Jarche

Claroline 1.5.2

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I recently received an update on the Claroline open source learning system, which is available in 28 languages.
It is now at version 1.5.2, the administration has been improved since 1.3, and the developers consider it an easy system for those with little Internet experience.

LearnNB December Event

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The next LearnNB event is scheduled for December 8, 2004 at the WU Conference Center in Fredericton. The event is being held in conjunction with CSTD and the NB Animation Industry. Entitled Fun@Work, the day will feature Marc Prensky, whose presentation is Developing Learning that Digital Natives Will Love.

Registration information is available online and Marc’s presentation will be webcast for free via Elluminate.

Practice & Feedback

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Albert Ip makes a point that practice does not make perfect.

My daughter’s swimming coach puts it very well: "Practice makes your stroke permanent. If you practise bad technique, you just become a more efficient bad swimmer with the bad stroke. It is even more difficult to unlearn the bad strokes."

At an HPT workshop given by ISPI, one of the facilitators told a story about his daughter, who was a gymnastics instructor. This is the story as I remember it. Her main method of teaching was to provide only positive encouragement after each attempt, without criticism. Just before the next attempt, she would give some corrective advice, like "keep your elbows tucked in this time". This method seemed to work quite well.

She took leave from this role, and was replaced by another instructor who believed in immediate feedback. Most other aspects of the program remained the same. After a year of receiving immediate feedback, the gymnasts’ performance was much worse, and some left the program.

The program went into decline.

Many of us in the training and education profession have been told about the merits of immediate feedback, but this one example has stuck with me over the past two years, and I even try to use it with my children. Don’t give criticism, or ways to improve, until the person has the chance to try it again. If you received negative feedback, without being able to show that you could do it better, you would only feel bad about your performance. This makes sense to me anyway.

I still believe that the only way to develop a skill is through practice and feedback, however when and how the feedback is given is extremely important.

PowerPoint to Flash, in a “breeze”

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Here I have been using OpenOffice for the last two years and I didn’t know that you could export a PowerPoint file (or a native OOo Presentation file) from OpenOffice to Macromedia Flash format. The last time I had to send pre-conference slides, I exported them as an Adobe PDF, which worked well. Now I can save slides in Flash format, and they can be read by any web browser. My test file was a 2.5 MB PowerPoint file, which was the same size in OpenOffice Presenter. When I converted it to Flash (.swf), the file was compressed to 360 KB.

I learned this via a post by Scott Leslie, who was looking for cheaper versions of Macromedia’s Breeze. Thanks Scott, and thanks Luigi.

A Viable Business Model for Open Source Learning Technologies?

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A while back, on my previous blog, I said that: I believe the next great business model for an elearning entrepreneur is to provide high quality installation and support services for a select group of open source learning systems. Your customers will soon realize that you are not trying to sell them the next upgrade to get more cash, because the software is free. You will be selling your knowledge, experience, and customer service. Many IT departments would be more apt to use open source if they knew that it was strongly supported. Also, there is a lot less conflict of interest when you remove the vendor from the ongoing support.

I just came across a new business venture that has been 16 months in development, Spike Source. This company is positioned to be the Underwriter Laboratories (UL) of Open Source.

SpikeSource offers validated and certified open source stacks (both pure and commercial hybrids) with add-on functional features designed for faster implementation and applications manageability. We offer vendor neutrality and improved developer productivity using open source software. SpikeSource delivers certified product releases, periodic updates, technical support, and managed upgrades.

If you want more details on the business model, download the one hour interview on the Gillmor Gang  with CEO Kim Polese. It’s worth your time. I knew that this model would soon be taken by someone, but what I found interesting in the interview is that there is room for many more of these companies. I would also wager that there is room for companies using this business model in the learning market. So if you’re looking for a new business model, check this one out.

“ten technologies that are going to change the way we learn”

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From Luigi Canali De Rossi comes Robin Good’s list of ten technologies that are going to change the way we learn. There is a nine-minute audio/video explanation on the site, as well as many explanatory links.

  1. Search technologies

  2. Data visualization tools
  3. Blogs – Direct publishing and content aggregation tools
  4. Audio and video – increased use of audio and video as communication channels for small publishers
  5. RSS – content syndication, aggregation, re-use
  6. P2P – private and public file sharing networks
  7. Unlimited storage – on the desktop and online
  8. Unlimited bandwidth – Wifi – WiMax
  9. Real Time Collaboration Tools
  10. Collective and Collaborative Filtering – human spontaneous cooperative technology like del.icio.us and FURL.net

I’m not sure if these technologies will actually change the way we learn, but they are ten tools for every instructional technologist, educator or training developer. For sure, they are changing the way we teach, and facilitating learning for some.

If you’re in the business of learning, then you should understand the pros and cons of each and every one of these. It might be a good idea to play with some of these if they’re new to you.

“Blogging is rapidly emerging as a threat to Internet users”

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According to Janus Risk Management, reading this blog may be a risky activity, especially if you work for a corporation. You see, you might actually get some ideas that have not been pre-approved by the powers that be. According to the summary of their latest research document ($1,065.00 for a site license), Janus feels that:

  1. Blogging is rapidly emerging as a threat to Internet users.
  2. While blogs have a legitimate use, online journals pose serious threats to enterprise confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
  3. This presentation is designed for distribution to employees to raise their awareness of the importance of using extreme caution if and when it becomes necessary to visit blogs as part of the employee’s job performance.

But don’t be alarmed. Janus provides corporations with three Blog Acceptable Use Policy options to reduce their risks:

  1. ZERO TOLERANCE
  2. LIMITED USE
  3. PERMISSIONED USE

So for all of you who were concerned that working in the knowledge economy might actually require that you think for yourself; never fear. The corporate elite are ensuring that you won’t have to.

If you continue to read this blog, remember that you have been warned ;-)

Via Wirearchy.

Hey brother, can you spare some feedback?

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Calling on all of you educational technologists and teachers out there. Please give James Farmer some constructive feedback on his new website/service:

We’re a new service set up partly through a frustration with current mainstream online teaching and learning technologies (& the pedagogies they inflict!) and partly through a desire to explore the possibilities that wikis, weblogs, open source CMSs and other emerging technologies offer us.Totally free for individual or groups of teachers, drop by the incsub association or checkout the site for more. – James

James is giving a lot of his time and effort in order to facilitate better online learning. If you have some time, please support his project. He’s asking for input.

Are we entering a post-competitive era?

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LearnNB has taken on the theme of collaborating to compete, showing that organisations in this small region are open to collaboration for business ventures. Dan James, CEO of SilverOrange in Charlottetown takes this one step further, and states that his company has no competitors:

Stating that we have no competitors is not a proud “we are better than everyone else” declaration. It is also not stating that we are the only ones who work in this area of expertise. It is simply saying that we see those who also work in web development as our peers not as our competitors.

Dan and his colleagues are an excellent, local example of collaboration at work. Making collaboration work takes real conviction, but I think that it is the most sustainable business strategy there is.

Beyond the LMS

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Continuing my theme of process before technology, here is a post from Godfrey Parkin on elearning and the ubiquitous LMS:

Our move from classroom learning to e-learning was less like a move from pony-express to e-mail, than it was from pony-express to bicycle courier.
 
Learning software vendors still doggedly pursue their vision of reusable learning objects that integrate via a central standards-conformant LMS. Meanwhile, trainers who really want to encourage experience-sharing and dynamic learner-created content are scrambling to understand blogging, RSS, and peer-to-peer networks.



Many LMS vendors don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t ?¢‚Ǩ?ìget?¢‚Ǩ¬ù learning. Can it really be that they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t ?¢‚Ǩ?ìget?¢‚Ǩ¬ù the internet either? Are they so afraid of being non-intermediated that they will fight real progress every step of the way or are they about to help us evolve?