In at the Deep End

As my role as a new eLearning Manager crystallises there are a few key things I have to do. The first was to get a good understanding of what the scope of my role really is. As I?m now comfortable with that situation and there are plenty of definitions of eLearning out there and they are constantly shifting so I?m not going to define the term here other than to say that I will most likely to define it myself by what I do and what I write here.

The next task is to pick a set of software tools. As I?m in a situation where we have an LMS platform, suppliers that we co-own eLearning materials with and courses in progress using those materials the immediate pressure is on upgrading our provision and extending our capabilities. As we?ve got great asynchronous tools and products but are using only a basic online chat facility my first major task is to choose a synchronous eLearning platform that allows us to facilitate eLearning live to the internet.

To that end I've compiled a wishlist of features/benefits and prioritised them.

Feature	Description	Priority
No Downloads	Must be ready to go with no user downloads	Essential
Live polling	Participant voting	Essential
Whiteboarding	Trainer drawing, typing & highlighting areas of the screen	Essential
One-way audio	Trainer talking directly to class	Essential
Session recording	Ability to playback the session and take content from it	Essential
Presentation	PowerPoint style slides & uploading	Essential
Direct Messaging	Typed text messaging (as current)	Essential
Pre-scripting	The ability to automate certain portions of the session ahead of time and simply trigger them in the session	Highly desirable
Grant control	Hand over control of the session to another participant/trainer	Highly desirable
Live video	Video streaming to participants	Highly desirable
File transfer	Send participants files	Highly desirable
Breakout rooms	Split participants into workgroups for activities	Desirable
Two way audio	Participants can reply to the trainer via audio	Desirable
Application sharing	Show participants what?s on your screen	Feature only

All the usual suspects are under consideration for purchase as well as a few from leftfield. Check back for the shortlist in about a fortnight's time.

Grassy Knol

Google has launched its 'other' wiki tool, called Knol. This will an interesting experiment to see whether the introduction of advertising cash and author accountability injects some formality into the wiki process and what impact this is going to have on the quality of the information.



TechCrunch is predicting a lot of attempts to monetize and a kind of land-grab approach, presumably people will rehash wikipedia's content to do this. It seems an odd idea but this is definitley a potential tool for peer review of ideas that sits outside of the published journal method...

Use the damn phone!

Using the phone is the new black. After getting hacked off with everyone emailing everything (self included) and reading about how email is a time-waster I decided to stop using it so much. Using the phone more than I normally would has probabl;y saved me 2 hours today. That's the same 2 hours I would have otherwise lost to getting called in to meetings I didn't know about....

Also using email seems to generate more email, a syptom of the kipple begets kipple rule....

Grand Central

Ah, if only this worked in Australia. On the long list of Things The World Really Needs But Doesn't Know It Yet a unified and easily configured communications system is very close to the top.

Gimmethetoy!!

Invisible competition

Another from the geek shall inherit the earth file:

The greatest gains in this new world are likely to go to people who are methodical planners or who love the game for its own sake. Some people plot their competitive strategies far in advance. These �planners?�be they crazy or just highly �productive?�don?t need anyone breathing down their necks, and indeed they often work best alone or in small groups. ... Planners? behavior may manifest itself in competitive forms, but their underlying psychology is often not very rivalrous at all. They are ordering their own realities, usually for their individual psychological reasons, rather than acting out of a desire to trounce the �competition.

The ?invisible? quality to competition in massive distributed groups is leveling the playing field, or is it simply providing a medium for expression, an outlet or conduit that doesn?t necessarily favour the brash and classically competitive who thrive in s smaller context?

The New Invisible Competitors - by Tyler Cowen

Jihadinets

This article posits a startling idea - militant groups using virtual worlds to conspire. Is Neuromancer really so close to becoming a fact?! [Via the excellent wanabehuman]

Prioritising and over-optimising

I'm suffering a bit from overload at the moment so I thought I'd share two prioritisation tips that I'm making use of:

1. The first was taught to me by a former teacher and is used everywhere in some form or another: label and sort your tasks from A-C in terms of priority (A highest) and then by estimated time to complete them from shortest to longest. Do a few of the short ones, then a few of the long ones, rinse and repeat, that way you feel like you are making progress and don't get demotivated.
2. Don't over-optimise your workflow: you can spend all day making a to do list and making sure that it is 'at a glance understandable', that your emails arrive and are labelled, that your desk is neat and that your status reports are up-to-date. If you make this a task in itself it will be the only task you do!