Acrobat Connect enables on-demand, real-time web conferencing and document sharing. Everyone has acrobat, uses Breeze technology. Sort of trojan horse and instant standard for video, doc sharing, and more. Looks like it’s priced right too. 

Product page is here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect/compare/

Robin Goode’s review is here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/12/07/online_collaboration_and_soho_web.htm

Yugma is a free web conferencing service that enables people to instantly connect over the internet and to collaborate using any application or software, using both Windows and Mac. Businesses can connect on-demand and real-time with clients, prospects or employees whether they are across the city, nation or even the globe.

http://www.yugma.com

I’ve been involved in online, remote testing products and services for 15 years. People ALWAYS ask, "How do I know they are really the ones taking the test?"  THis article explores the security issue and suggests that the built-in video capability in new cell phones offers a potential answer.

Smart-Phone Assisted Remote Proctoring

New decision making scenarios from http://www.experiencepoint.com/ -- short, simple, and EFFECTIVE.

Hockey Team Negotiation Sim: http://www.experiencepoint.com/simulations/gm/

Negotiation at the North Pole: http://www.experiencepoint.com/holiday/2004/

Several years ago, Elliott Masie and I were on a leadership panel in Rome, Italy. I struggled my way through my prepared remarks and slides, speaking slowly while the translator in the back whispered into a microphone and a room full of 100 Italians listened through their headsets. I received professional, polite applause.

The next thing I know, Elliott is telling everyone in the room to find a partner and figure out who has a bigger foot! The person with the biggest foot must now make a fist, and their partner must open the fist. In minutes, 100 Italians are grappling, laughing and talking.

Elliott’s workshop activity, "Open Their Fist", and 89 other activities are described in detail in this new book. The activities are organized by topics: change management, coaching, communication, service, leadership, icebreakers, etc. And it’s fun to see what the favorite activitity is of some of our most famous gurus: Bob Pike, Darryl Sink, Marjorie Blanchard, Jim Kouzes, Jack Zenger, Edward de Bono, Thiagi, and Mel Silberman.

If you facilitate workshops, or just want to see how Elliott debriefed his activity in Rome, check out this worthy book. Link to Amazon.

The author, Kaliym Islam, is a fresh voice among the usual author/guru crowd and brings the credibility of someone who makes a living DOING rather then TELLING. He is the director of learning at the Depository Trust & Clearning Corporation.

Kaliym makes the compelling argument that if trainers want to support business and get the respect from business executives, they need to stop using training metrics (ie, Kirkpatrick Levels) and move to business metrics -- namely, Six Sigma.

This book offers a great history and summary of Six Sigma, and how and why it should be used in the management and measurement of training programs. Most of the book walks through the DMADDI model (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement) and how it applies in the world of training.

Highly recommended. Link to Amazon.

Using wiki technology and an open community format, over a 1,000 textbooks are being assembled online (with some PDF and print versions as well).

- Titles include Accounting, Chess, European History, Physiology, Managing Groups and Teams, Ecology and more.

- http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior provides full color booklets for kids 8 to 11. Includes Solar System, The Elements, Big Cats, Dinsosaurs, and more

If you want to join a community of educators and trainers, check out www.elgg.net. Also interesting to check out if you’re curious about open source projects or web2.0 phenomena.

Dr. Nathan Eagle, a professor at MIT, wants to understand the future of mobile phone use. So he went to Africa to see the latest trends... yes, Africa. Did you know:

• Africa is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world
• Only 200,000 Kenyan households have electricity, but there are 5.6 million mobile phone subscribers
• Adding 10 phones per 100 people drives GDP growth by 0.6 percent

Learn more about the Entrepreneurial Programming and Research on Mobiles.

Moodle is hot and getting hotter. Interested in this open source LMS?  New book out:

http://www.packtpub.com/moodle/book

Returning from a long road trip I began purging hundreds of spam messages from my in box when I stumbled on an unexpected e-mail from one of my ID heroes, John Keller, PhD. Dr. Keller is the father of the ARCS model for maximizing learner motivation. I’ve written and lectured on it throughout my career -- now there is a website dedicated to this topic at: http://www.arcsmodel.com/home.htm.

Brent is an e-learning guru over at Intel and a prophet for Learning2.0 (eg, Wikis) stuff. I met him at the eLearning DevCon conference... officially when during my keynote I asked if anyone was blogging in real time and he was the only one who was. He’s been blogging for a year already but his blog is "new" to me. Great style, energy, wide swash of innovation but most with links back to e-learning. In fact, I think this is now my FAVORITE blog.

Start by reading his August archives -- thought his topics were especially strong

Visit his home page and make sure to get the RSS feed (note the cool features like you can even get PDF versions or mobile device versions of his posts)

Way to go Brent, let’s keep in touch!

This NY Times article is making the blogger rounds. A Minnesota publisher called Freeloader Press is offering free electronic textbooks to students and colleges, the only catch is that there are advertisements inside the text. About 100 colleges have signed on to try them out. 

While every article and blogger I’ve read has been aghast and argues against this practice, I’m not so sure I agree. After all:

• College students are already inundated with ads, including on-campus ads
• College students are probably savvy enough to ignore, screen or objectively view the ads in the text
• Other pseduo-objective info sources like newspapers and magazines accept ads -- we somehow trust editorial to be separate from advertising, and readers ignore or view ads as they wish
• Channel One has been beaming ad-supported content into schools for 16 years and I don’t think our kids are any worse off

And practically speaking, as someone who worked his way through college, if I got my textbooks for free it would have saved me about a 100 hours a year of work. Time that I could have used studying!

What does have me worried is the slippery slope. Could this commercial support of education extend someday to having our first graders forced to view 30 minutes of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola ads each morning to start the day? E-mail me your thoughts at kkruse@e-learningGuru.com.

I’m a big supporter of the idea that in this info-world-is-flat-economy our schools need to provide one laptop per child. Some new links/articles:

• Computer on Everydesk: Memo to Sec of Education
• Maine to Extend Laptop Program: Buys from Apple
• WIKI MIT Initiative: One Laptop per Child
• One-to-One: Lessons Learned

Massive report from Australian government. Executive summary is manageable. Interesting content, including this powerful and whacky opening quote written in 1938:

You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your monies to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it, then—to learn.

This obscure but interesting article from Oregon State includes an interactive table for coming up with appropriate, valid learning objectives. Although simple topic and concept, it was interesting to consider that if the objective is for the learner to "remember" something, the objective might be to "list" items if you’re dealing with factual knowledge, but could be "describe" if it is conceptual knowledge.

I love the guys at Kineo. They put out so much fun, interesting, provacative stuff that browsing their website feels like drinking from a fire hose. And you got to love their style: "Don’t wake up dumber than you went to bed. Get Kineo’s e-mail briefing". Love it.

They beat me to the punch and published some results of search trends from Google. Some highlights:

• "Saba" searches are down; "moodle" is up
• The term "e-learning" is down year over year
• "Podcasting" actually peaked in 2005 and has flattened out

My own fun with GoogleTrends shows:

• "Authorware" peaking in 2004 and then tanking and "Toolbook" low and slowly decending
• For synchronous solutions all are basically flat but Centra is highest, followed by WebEx, and then LiveMeeting and GoToMeeting are hugging the bottom

Play with GoogleTrends yourself...how’s your company trending? How’s the competition?

Link.

This is AMAZING research. Students could view 30 seconds of teachers’ nonverbal behavior on video and accurately predict teaching ability (when compared to complete end of year student evals).

Hard data on power of first impressions. Any corporate trainers reading this? Most certainly this applies to you too. Full article.

MarcoPolo - Metasite for partner lesson plans including National Geographic and more.

UnitedStreaming - Discovery Education provides 40,000 items including many video clips.

BrainPOP - 500 animated lesson plans for K-8.

4teachers.org - Free from Univ. of Knasas Center for Research on Learning.

I’m pushing Evidence-Based Training in our industry and consider Will Thalheimer as one of the few people who really get it. His new white paper is must reading for IDs everywhere.

The "Spacing Effect" is one of the most reliable findings in the history of learning research. But it is also one of the most underutilized. Dr. Thalheimer has released his newest white paper to remedy this problem. Buy the white paper from his catalog ($40). 

The E-Myth is a classic book for entrepreneurs, and it’s notion of "working on the business, not in the business" has been a critical success factor in all my businesses over the years. So I was pleased to get this note recently from Hasan Luongo:

A few months ago you wrote a short piece on Video Blogs, and posed the question: why isn’t there a management or business guru doing a daily or weekly video blogs?  This got us thinking and we decided to do just that. The company I represent is E-Myth Worldwide...

 View Michael Gerber’s video here.

"Richard works in e-learning in one of the biggest banks in the world. He’d rather not say which one as that might really be saying too much." Interview highlights include:

• Web 2.0? Spare me!
• Use free stuff if you want ROI
• Life hacks

Slides from presentations at Information Architecture Summit.

Tufte made famous the map showing Napoleon’s retreat from Russia. Now you can get a whole series of info-packed posters from various historical events.

Mandates?! Sounds like there is some Michigan virtual high school vendor that has been sending big campaign checks to politicians. I’m all for innovation and online learning, but MANDATING high school students to take online learning - even if its crap?  Full article.

Great article by Nigel Paine that gives specific solutions to the retiring baby boomer crisis. Among the ideas:

1. Consider taking your most able and valuable pre-retirees off 50 percent of their day-to-day duties and get them to mentor 10 younger high-potential members of the workforce.
   
2. Why ask them to leave forever on some arbitrary date? Offer two days a week at the same pro-rata salary to continue the mentoring and begin coaching and perhaps balancing out uneven annual demands on the workforce. Develop a culture that welcomes back those who have left you and want to create a second career with you. Why not? You know them and they will have picked up more skills along the way.
   
3. Train these people in coaching, facilitating and mentoring skills—do not assume everyone can do these things automatically.
   
4. Do not delete retirees from your intranet. This is the place where they make links and stay in touch. Let staff keep the laptop and the access for as long as they have a relationship with you. In some sense, that network point is the point of connection.
   
5. Try to map out their social networks. How do they find out information? Who knows what? Map this and make the maps available to all.

Time Mag article describes Temple doc’s use of iPod audio clips to train medical students how to hear cardiovascular problems using a stethoscope.

- you must listen 500 times to reliably discriminate between different heart problems

- After 2 hours of iPod "training", docs ability to correctly diagnose cardiac problem went from 30% to 80%

11 minute audio/podcast at http://www.learning2006.com/university.

"The good news is that I can teach you everything I know about usability while standing on one foot. Ready? Here we go:

Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected."

Joel on Software http://www.joelonsoftware.com/design/1stDraft/03.html

http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1475&issue=mar_06

Well IBM doesn’t call it Learning 2.0, but they get it. Article on CNN.

The world’s largest computer services company is dedicating 15,000 existing consultants to the drive to help steal a march on rivals such as Microsoft Corp., Accenture Ltd. and Electronic Data Systems Corp... Computer services company BearingPoint Inc. and Web search leader Google Inc. Tuesday said they would form a corporate consulting practice to apply Google’s search techniques inside businesses.

Compelling article by former teacher, Jim Craign, written for his local paper.

All of us can remember falling asleep during a history lecture, doodling during algebra or hiding in French class to avoid being called on. School was, at times, boring.

Today, multiply this experience by a thousand. The fact is, more and more bright, otherwise motivated, talented kids are becoming disengaged by the old-fashioned school process. Their digital-native minds don’t work the old way. They are bored out of their minds.

Good and funny post by Jay Cross on the faddish term "Learning 2.0" that flying around.  My favorite paragraph...

Geez, before you know it Gartner would be selling magic quadrants for Learning 3.0 providers. Accenture would outsource only to Learning 4.0-qualified suppliers. IBM would counter with on-demand Learning 5.0 (Now, with services!). Elliott would host special events on Learning 6.0. Josh would sell reports on Learning 7.0 (You can blend 5.0, 6.0, & 7.0!). And I would still be ranting that this emperor has no clothes.

Technorati Update

In summary:

• Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created

"Apple shares common goals with education — to advance teaching, learning, and research through innovation, and engage and empower students. Students expect a campus environment that accommodates their digital lifestyle, adapts to their individual learning needs, and encourages collaboration and teamwork. Introducing a way to simplify and meet all these needs — iTunes U."

http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/itunes_u/

eLearnMag surveys the field for 06 predictions.  Whose got it right? Stephen Downes with his "year of video" prediction. I covered this a lot in ’05 and will continue... broadband ubiquitous, video to home, phone, iPod -- all via Tivo, too!  Summary of predictions:

"...Learning Activity Management Systems (LAMS) will build momentum...more electronic gadgets and gizmos capable of delivering learning anywhere...m-learning...an ADA lawsuit is launched...more practical approaches to RLOs...AJAX and SOAS...blended learning in the classroom...networked learning environments...explosion of media-rich and creative instructional approaches...training will grow 15%...the power of us: mass collaboration...DIY and information as instruction...responsibility for learning moves to the individual."

My new friend Jillian Eichelberger just turned me onto this great resource of stock images. In their own words, "Yes, it’s true! Only $1/image for high res images. No Tricks!"

www.dreamstime.com

Clark Aldrich posted this bright and early on January 1 (Didn’t watch the ball drop the night before, Clark?).

Top 11 Trends for Organizational Learning

The trend in free content -- free books -- continues. From the Guild.

834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction