Jeff

 

P.S. - I'm grateful to a number of folks who have been so kind as to review a draft of Learning 2.0 for Associations and provide a "blurb" to be included at the beginning of the report. We'll be incorporating those into the final version. If you read the preview version and are inspired to provide a comment to be included in the final version, please contact me.

 

As usual, here are a few items I have come across recently that I thought might be of interest to readers:

Self-paced Learners Meet Social Software: An Exploration of Learners' Attitudes, Expectations and Experience
This is a timely post relative to the release of the second edition of Learning 2.0 for Associations referenced above. In it, George Siemens points to new research on how learners engaged in self-paced study do or do not take advantage of social media. Turns out the findings are rather mixed. Siemens asks the right question: Is this owing to the usefulness of the tools or because of the or the previous experience level of the learners? You can guess how I would answer.

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Everything you ever needed to get started with Twitter
A mere pup, wet behind the ears at the time of the original Learning 2.0 for Associations, Twitter has emerged as perhaps THE tool for connecting online and offline learning. So, it seems only appropriate to point to some good Twitter resources. As it happens, Maddie recently did a nice little round-up over at Social Fish. The only thing I would want to add is:

Jane Hart's Twitter Workshop: 20 Tasks to Get Started with Twitter over on that great Learning 2.0 platform, Slideshare.

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Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010: Final list, presentation and more
Speaking of Jane Hart - her annual list of top learning tools has just been finalized and published. This is a must read for learning professionals.

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Open Source eLearning Tools
A lot of tools lists seem to be floating around right now. In this one, Tony Karrer lays out a whopping 71 you might want to consider.

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19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences
Like Jane Hart, Tony gets a double click this month. This list of tips is a great starting point for anyone planning an online conference and a good refresher for veterans.

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RSA animates Sir Kenneth Robinson
And now for something completely different. This video, via Jay Cross, combines clever animation with the always-captivating thinking of Ken Robinson. Robinson's talk is focused on K-12 education, but of course, today's elementary students are tomorrow's professional development customers. It's worth listening to and reflecting upon what Sir Ken has to say.

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An Association E-learning Conversation: The Print Version
Finally, I mentioned in the last digest that we would be putting together a print version of the conversation that Ellen Behrens and I recently had about e-learning in the association sector. That's now available, and if I do say so myself, it turned out quite nicely. The download is completely free - as in no money or e-mail address required. 

 

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Latitude Learning, one of the most recent participants in our LMS interviews, wrote in to say that it has received the Ektron 2010 All Stars award for its outstanding and innovative use of technology for Best Extranet Website. The award was announced Monday, October 11th and winners will be celebrated at the annual Ektron Synergy conference on Nov. 7 - 10 in Orlando, Florida. Winners of the 20 awards were judged based on the functionality implemented to solve critical business issues and the tangible results from the implementation.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/10/prweb4643864.htm

 

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Peach New Media has released a new "simple learning management," or SLM, feature set that enables customers to manage many aspects of the Freestone learning management system on their own.

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GeoLearning announced that GeoMaestro LMS has been named a finalist for "Best SaaS LMS" in the 2010 Best of Elearning! Reader's Choice Awards hosted by Elearning! magazine.

http://www.geolearning.com/about/pressdetail.aspx?NEWSID=459

Web Courseworks and CommPartners, two companies that recently formed a partnership, will be working in tandem at the Alliance for CME (International Association of Continuing Medical Education Professionals), The Alliance will be utilizing the course development services of Web Courseworks and CommPartners as well as the Course Stage LMS developed by Web Courseworks. Web Courseworks also reports that MGMA (Medical Group Management Association) has selected CourseStage as its LMS.
http://www.webcourseworks.com
http://www.commpartners.com

I'll say it (yet) again: Sector News is a very easy - and free - way to spread the word and maybe give your colleagues and peers some new ideas. That goes for both associations and vendors. If you have something for next time, send it to me by the 10th of the month at jcobb@tagoras.com. Why wouldn't you?!

 

 

 

 

March 13-15, 2011

 

Learning is undergoing drastic changes. Access to technology has allowed us to engage in a range of new media activities including blogging, co-creation, gaming, instant messaging, podcasting, social networking, social sharing and video creation. These new forms of media allow us to communicate and collaborate in new ways.

Next Generation Learning at Great Ideas 2011 will look at what the research says in terms of how people learn differently with the use of these new forms of media and how to successfully apply and implement the research in your association. No other time in history has there been this type of convergence for associations providing learning and education. It will also be a learning lab that models unique, innovative education formats including hands-on interactive activities to live-streaming to facilitated Peer2Peer Roundtables. 

 

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