“Dealing with business challenges all starts with connecting the right people.”
- Oscar Berg: “Boosting productivity with workforce collaboration“

This is like new computers going to executives. The people that need it the least, but are higher up in the org chart, are the ones who receive new technology and the attention of consultants and vendors brought in to improve the organization. Instead, it should be the top performers at every level below the executives.

Get the right people in the room.

We recorded our tenth episode before the end of 2011. The previous show had been about usability. This one was on accessibility, wish special guest Diane Elkins of Artisan E-Learning.

Ten episodes in six months – not too shabby. We’ll be picking it back up at the end of January after Judy returns from ASTD TechKnowledge.

Enjoy!

It was a fun show. We talked about DevLearn. I drank the lovely Saint Arnold Santo.

I’m really looking forward to recording this week with special guest, Julie Dirksen, Instructional Designer, usability guru and author of Design for How People Learn. I wonder what she’ll be drinking?

Congratulations Typekit

Please Don’t Call Them Avatars… Unless They Are Avatars – Word.

Can I Use – Great resource. Thanks Judy!

Learning 2011 Conference Backchannel – David Kelly does a great job with these collections

Omnifocus and Siri

Human Centered Design Toolkit – For years, businesses have used human-centered design to develop innovative solutions. Why not apply the same approach to overcome challenges in the nonprofit world? (via Jason)

Designing the Invisible

How To Think And Communicate Visually

Team Treehouse – What do you want to learn today?

Now Entering the Decade of Learning – Great link from Chad

Kurt Hanks – Paradigm mapping. Awesomness (via The Beard)

If we’re going to make our neighborhoods and communities better, if we’re going to improve the places we dwell… we need to be the heroes we’re seeking. You only become a hero by doing something brave, which requires you to have fear.

My advice to everyone: steer into the fear… and grow.

- Aaron Silvers: “Steer Into the Fear“

When are you going to learn that HTML5 is not the technology you want to use for authoring content! It may be how you want to deliver it, but those two things aren’t necessarily attached to one another.

- Reuben Tozman – “DevLearn“

This is always a great conference. The Guild does a great job getting excellent keynotes in. I also get to attend Kevin Thorn’s precon session today, How to Put the Story in Storyboarding for eLearning. I’m really looking forward to learning from him.

Between Kevin (@learnnuggets) and Aaron Silvers (@aaronesilvers), I should drastically improve my ability to communicate visually by the end of the week. This is most excellent.

Things I’m looking forward to:

• Learning from brilliant people
• Presenting my session (Remember The User) and helping push up the industry
• Ignite
• DemoFest is always a great time. We’ll be doing onsite #lrnchat, too!

I brought my iPad, iPhone, and a Snowflake microphone for recording snippets, and, maybe, a full show with Judy. Judy and I plan to interview vendors and some other learning celebrities for our elearning podcast, The ToolBar. If you have a request for questions we should ask vendors, let us know.

This is my fourth or fifth DevLearn. I always learn something new and grow my personal learning network (PLN). If you’re going to be here, look me up! Ping me via the conference app, Twitter or my contact form. I look forward to meeting more folks I’ve only interacted with online.

I’ll be posting a lot of photos and session reviews. I also recommend the following resources whether you’re attending or not.

• Official Backchannel (curated by David Kelly)
• Judy Unrein
• Cammy Bean
• Tracy Parish
• Conference Hashcast

“It means we can stop being the construction worker and we can be the designer — the way it was meant to be. Stop worrying about the delivery, focus more on structure.”

- Reuben Tozman: “What’s coming down the pipe”

Top 10 Misused English Words – Please stop using these the wrong way. (via Judy)

Your idea sucks, now go and do it anyway (via MBN)

Unitasking — absolutely gorgeous site, as well

Glider Pro coming to iOS – SWEET! (and, yes, I’ve spent too much time playing the original this week)

It’s going well, and we’re having a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as we are!

My weekend plans are to add a beer list, a beer recommendation form and a show topic request form to the Emergent Radio site. (And, yes, in that order.)

So. Go forth and be enlightened by Episode #6.

Memorable Speakers Blend Stories, A Connection to the Audience, and Takeaways

The Dude – I love Devour

Thanks for Teaching Us – So cool (via Michelle)

Driskill WordPress Child Theme – Beautiful and Responsive

The 10-Minute Instructional Design Degree

“Also – instructional design and visual design are different things. Visual design is just as important (and it isn’t about making things “pretty”), and it needs to be done before the development phase begins.” – Jane Bozarth

Overcoming Objections to eLearning

“Adopting eLearning is a cultural change as well as a technological one, and all of the changes required to make it accepted and expected can take time.” – Judy Unrein

When I Think of the Future of Online Learning – great insight from Ellen Wagner

Project Tin Can Moving Right Along – great news

30 Places to Find Creative Commons Content – goes well with this video on Copyright

eLearning Storyboards – some wonderful resources

Judy Unrein and I have a podcast. It’s called the ToolBar. We drink and talk about learning and software and other random stuff — episode 4 is about the eLearning Guild’s Rapid Authoring Top Tools report.

You should go listen to it right now. Or subscribe to it in iTunes and listen to it whenever!

Creating Losing Designs – great ideas on using low stakes losing to motivate learners.

“The Smart Worker Needs Job Aids Rather than Courses” – this is a great series. Read ‘em all.

Learning is Social. Training is Irrelevent? – Yes.

The Death of the Traditional Enterprise

Review: DesignJot – the first iPad app for learning development? Great review.

Spanning Sync’s 1 Year Anniversary – congratulations, guys! Great product.

Book Review: ‘Game Frame’ by Aaron Dignan

…the goal shouldn’t be to overlay rewards and achievements, the goal should be to get people more involved in experiences in meaningful ways.

Koreen Olbrish – “Reflections on LEEF 2011″ – eLearn Mag

Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s not about the game. It’s about the experience and the outcome. Games are just one type of immersive experience. This doesn’t just apply to learning, either.

…you end up killing the intrinsic motivation to do things you didn’t need to be rewarded to do before.

Aaron Silvers – “On Education, Badges and Scouting”

Both Koreen and Aaron make similar points. Don’t do something (like trying to gamify everything) just because you can. Do something because it will give your users great experiences that lead to meaningful outcomes.

It’s simple, really:

1. What do you want your users/learners to DO?
2. How can you make a great experience that gets them to a point where they CAN?

In episode three, we discuss elearning development on a Mac, ZebraZapps and Articulate Storyline.

Last week I went to San jose for mLearnCon, the mobile learning conference put on by the eLearning Guild. I was invited to participate on several panels in both the MOSH Pit and Future Zone.

I really like the open format of the stages/zones. They are a perfect environment for collaborative sessions with audience participation, which are my favorite types. I prefer the forum style where presenters can learn from audience members and we can let the inmates run the asylum to some extent. I much prefer to facilitate discussions between many smart people than to just talk at an audience.

As usual, the hallway and dinner conversations were far more valuable than any of the sessions were. The ability sit down with the leaders and innovators of this industry is just plain awesome, not to mention the wonderful food we consumed.

One of the highlights for me was playing in and winning the Game of Phones tournament. What a blast! I’m absolutely sold on the value of games for business and learning. Some really wonderful ideas were presented by some incredibly smart people. I would actually pay to watch one of these tournaments — very entertaining.

The keynotes were okay, but definitely not on the same level as some of the keynotes at other Guild events. They might have been audience-appropriate, but I thought they lacked the impact of a Marcia Conner or Nancy Duarte.

I didn’t attend many sessions because I was either a panelist in or attending most of the zone sessions. I did enjoy the Tablet Wars presentation from Robert Gadd. He had great statistics and a nice breakdown of which tablets support which technologies.

I didn’t take a laptop to this conference, relying on just my iPad and my iPhone. They didn’t let me down. It’s so nice to have tools like these that are lightweight and have ridiculous battery life, yet are so powerful.

Quick notes:

• David Kelly once again provided wonderful backchannel support and curation. He’ll continue to update the post for a while. It’s a valuable resource. That dude rocks. Check it out.
• Tracy added a great list of tweets from the conference.
• Talking games with Alicia, Kris, Drew and Aaron was a lot of fun. I downloaded Ticket to Ride on the iPad and I’m completely addicted. (I’m motherduce, if you want to play.) We also talked board games, and I’m trying to get a list together of great ones you may not have heard of but should be playing.
• Special thanks to Jeff Tillett for jumping in with me on the HTML 5 vs. Flash panel. His insight was great to have and he helped drive audience participation, which was awesome.
• Thanks to Aaron Silvers and Neil Lasher for inviting me to talk on their panels. I had a lot of fun, and was honored and humbled to sit next to the likes of Allison Rossett, Clark Quinn, Judy Brown, Reuben Tozman, Brandon Carson, BJ Schone, and other brilliant folks.
• Thanks to the guild for putting on another great conference. My wife attended the giant SHRM conference this week, and it just sounded awful compared to my Guild conference experiences. Way to go Brent, David, Heidi, Juli and Co.!
• Karaoke night is fun, but dangerous.
• Last, but not least, smart people who like good food and good music and like to play and create games are freaking awesome.

Here are a few more pics from the week.

One of the coolest experiences I had at mLearnCon last week was playing A Game of Phones, a wonderful creation from Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) and Alicia Sanchez (@gamesczar). Every attendee received a deck of cards when he or she registered, and a brief tutorial of how to play.

The basic premise is training and performance challenges presented to two or more players, who can then play technology, hardware and expert cards to offer up a potential solution. Both players state their case, and then they can either debate or they can have a third party judge their proposals.

At the end of the day on Wednesday, they held a tournament, judged by none other than The Beard and Jason Haag. Surprisingly, there were only eight of us who entered, but the ideas generated in this tournament were simply amazing. The energy level was high and the debates and follow-up discussions with the judges and participants were enlightening. Aaron or Kris should be posting some video and pictures of the event soon.

The three top scorers were myself, Stephanie Daul and Aisha Taylor. The final battle was between Stephanie and myself, and I ended up winning. It was so much fun, and such a useful game. I can’t wait to take it back to some folks I work with to generate some ideas for solving our mobile learning problems, or just to start talking about mobile solutions.

You can order the game as is, or you can request some tweaks to make it more specific to your organization. I highly recommend at least grabbing a deck or two and playing a few games with your team and then sharing some of the best solutions with management, and then playing the game with them! It’s a great way to show the benefits of a game in a real world environment that produces innovative, but practical solutions.

Most importantly, it was a lot of fun to play!

Additional Information:

• The Making of A Game of Phones
• Brent Schlenker’s Preview

*Update 07-08-2011*
The website for this game is agameofphones.com.

And odds are pretty good that 10 years from now when you are looking to strike out on your own, your passion and your portfolio will take you as far if not farther than a degree that came at a great expense and in all likelihood with only a slice of relevance.
- Will Richardson – “A Different Path“

Earlier in the article he mentions that neither he, nor any of his friends, have a job in the field they studied in school. Funny thing is, I’m one of the people who IS doing what they went to school for (to some extent), AND I’m passionate about it. So, do I consider myself one of the very lucky ones, or am I just a simple exception?

Either way, don’t force college on your kids. Guide them, but let them choose a path that they are passionate about.

(Via Jane)

According to the Information Design Network, “Wherever relatively complex information needs to be made easier to understand, or tailored to the needs of a specific ‘specialist’ or cultural community, the ‘user-oriented’ methods of information design can be employed.” I’d say that eLearning, job aids, participant manuals and other instructional materials can benefit from the best practices of text-based information design.

- eLearning Coach – “Designing Text-based Information.”

These are best practices for the web and any other form of text, not just in learning. Great resource links at the bottom, too.

(via Kay)

Perhaps gamify if you have to, but only after you’ve first tried to engagify. Please.

- Clark Quinn – “Engagification”

Yes.

(via Kevin)

Naps improve your working memory. This type of memory is involved in working on complex tasks where you have to pay attention to one thing while holding a bunch of other things in your memory. Napping also improves your memory retention; during sleep, recent memories are transferred to the neocortex, where long-term memories are solidified and stored.

Art of Manliness – Unleash the Power of the Nap

More reason to work a nap into your daily routine. It will help you learn!

The discussion focused on Creative Commons (CC), fair use and copyrighted material in learning (and anything else).

Quick Notes

• When is your work copyrighted? As soon as it is created.
• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
• Creative Commons works in conjunction with copyright. Basically, the licenses allow you to specify how and when people can use your content.
• Copyright.gov is a good, user-friendly site.
• Teachingcopyright.org is instructionally sound and geared towards kids, so you can get the info quickly.

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons has six types of licenses: three core licenses, each of which has an additional Non-Commercial Use version. All require attribution in some form.

Important note: if you change your license, anyone who used your content before you changed it can legally use it per the license that existed when they used it.

Three core licenses:

1. Attribution (BY): You can modify and use freely, as long as you give attribution to the original.
2. Attribution-NoDerivs (BY-ND): You cannot modify, but you can use freely in original format, as long as you give attribution.
3. Attribution-ShareALike (BY-SA): You can modify as long as you give attribution and license under identical terms.

The other three are each of the above licenses + non-commercial: basically, you are not allowed to use it if you will make money off it.

When Can Non-commercial Be Used?

This is a common question as it relates to internal training. Technically it’s use cannot PRIMARILY be intended for profit. This is a large gray area.

The safe answer, and the one Michelle and I both recommend, is to ALWAYS ask permission. Most content owners are okay with it as long as you offer attribution.

Finding Content

In the second half of her presentation, Michelle covered several resources for searching for commercial-use Creative Commons content:

• CreativeCommons.org has a great search engine. You can search for commercial-use with modification. You can use all of the returned content, as long as you give attribution. This makes it easy for you to keep it legal! The CC engine scours Google, Flickr, blip.tv, and other sites for available media: images, graphics, videos, and music, all in one place.
• When using Flickr, the CC licenses are clearly marked. If you use Flickr’s site directly, use the Advanced search and check the boxes for the type of content you need.

How Do You Give Attribution?

In a presentation, you can give attribution directly on the slide, or at the end (bibliography-style). The two requirements are a link to the source and a link to the CC license it uses. Do this for every piece of content you use.

If you use bibliography-style attribution at the end end, you must reference the page or slide on which the content appears.

Additional Information and Resources

• The Commons on Flickr
  These are images that have no known copyright. If you know anything about the photo, please submit info (tags, descriptions) so they can have more data about the images.
• The Life Magazine archives
  Wonderful photos. If your use is non-profit, you may use these images freely with attribution. If there is any chance of profit, you cannot use these images. Acceptable: your kid’s book project. Unacceptable: compliance training or blog posts.
• Morguefile.com
  For writers, the morgue file is the drawer of stories you never used. This is like that, but for images. Use anything, any way you want; no attribution required whatsoever. However, I’d at least reference the source as good practice.
• Stockvault.net
  You must give attribution, but you are allowed to use commercially.

Video

• Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and other sites all have CC licensed content that you can use.
• YouTube has no real licensing. Be smart, don’t use stuff that is obviously copyrighted. The only reason it’s still on there is just that YouTube hasn’t gotten to it yet to take it down. You don’t want to end up with the black screen message: “this video has been removed for violation of copyright” in your training course or on your site.
• While there are ways to download from YouTube, Vimeo, etc., it is illegal. Period.

More of Michelle’s resources can be found here.

Via Devour