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Today was a good day.
We started off attending the opening session at the ASTD TechKnowledge conference. The open speaker was Joe Miller, Vice-President, Platform and Technology Development Linden Research, Inc — i.e. creators of Second Life.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression, I think the potential future uses on 3-d worlds is interesting and could be very useful. I think that right now for many of the organizations I have talked to the idea of using something like Second Life isn’t an option – for a lot of different reasons. I’ve stated before I am a bit of naysayer – even though I keep many of the Tech trends – but I am trying to critically think of how it can be used. I guess the Second Life bug just hasn’t bit yet. And I’m still struggling to see it’s niche.
I guess its like a lot of things – as instructional designer I try not to get beholden to any one tool. I think like like many other positions the instructional designer needs many tools, so that the right one in the right situation at the right time can be used effectively.
Oh – and I think the presentation would have been more convincing if the avatars in the images used during the presentation weren’t large busted, scantily clad females. I mean, really, are those the only ones they could find. I suppose for some folks that’s the fun right – but when you’re talking to a group of professionals that already have to do a lot of work to justify tools a lot older and more standard than Second Life – couldn’t you help us out a little by at least not making it look like its spring break in Florida on the beach? [sigh.]
On a different note, Ryan Eash (Instructional Designer from TechSmith Corporation) and I presented another session on Camtasia Studio. It went really well. It was funny, I mentioned Second Life and got lots of laughs. I think some of the feelings I have we’re mutual.
The session was really good. We tightened up some of our presentation and felt pretty fluid. Still some more we can do, but teaching Camtasia Studio in 1 hour and 15 minutes is pretty tough.
After the session we received some really nice compliments. In fact, one gentleman mentioned that he has been to the conference for 3 or 4 years and this was the best session he has ever attended. WOW!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! That is quite the compliment, and I feel its safe to say that Ryan deserves most of the credit.
I do have to mention thanks to ASTD for having us — it’s been a lot of fun….
One last note: I showed a few people the Camtasia Studio video I have on my iPod Touch – and everyone is blown away how good it looks. The screen is crystal clear, the text is very readable, it just looks amazing – and I didn’t even add any zoom-n-pan key frames. Man, I love what I do!
So today has been a very full day. We started off with David Pogue’s presentation. Poor guy woke-up to a dead hard-drive. He said he had to throw together the presentation – and minus some small technical issues, it was a great presentation.
David Pogue focused on a few technologies that are going to be big or bigger. There was Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) or the idea of using a phone through a wireless connection – it already exists, but he sees a lot of potential. He talked about some other technologies – one in particular that is here and now is what Google is doing with information on the phone.
If you’re not familiar with Google SMS – I’ve made a quick Jing video to shows of how it works and how you can use it (Check out the Jing Project from TechSmith). http://screencast.com/t/NTesNX2a10o — Oh yeah, and it’s free (both Google SMS and Jing)
I also like Google 411. You dial 1-800-goog-411 (1-800-4664-411). You say you’re location, what you’re looking for and they will connect you. You can also get a business address as well. If you want you can get a text message of the information as well – super handy if you don’t want to write down the number.
Check out the Google video:
Ryan and I taught a Camtasia Studio session that went pretty well. We’ve talked about tightening up the presentation a little, and making sure we dig into the content faster – even if that means we pause at regular intervals to present information we normally give up front.
We also participated in one-on-one sessions. It’s a good opportunity, although pretty limited since we are only doing 2 sessions, with each session having two people participate.
It’s interesting to hear what different folks in the industry are doing. Of course there is a lot of buzz about simulations and needing to do simulations. I heard this at the e-Learning guilds DevLearn conference last November as well.
It’s funny in Grad school 4 years ago I was looking at this. So I was on the bleeding edge, looking at this opportunity coming down the pike… and I actually walked away from it. Partly because I was worried it wasn’t going to be something that I could build a career on, and honestly partly because I had family and friends that ribbed me about the games side of it (What? You’re playing games in grad school?)
So I probably missed one of those opportunities of a life time- but then again – is the simulation trend here to stay, or is it another tool that will go in the tool boxes and only pulled out when the hammer and duct tape won’t cut it?
I’m at the 2008 ASTD TechKnowledge conference this week. I am presenting on Tuesday and Wednesday with Ryan Eash, my co-worker about Camtasia Studio.
The show starts in earnest tomorrow, and we’re looking forward to a full day. Along with presenting in a creation station, Ryan and I will be having some one-on-one conversation with participants at the conference (these sessions are open for sign-up, so I’m hoping we get to talk to some folks.
I am still pouring through the conference guide to see if I can find some sessions that I should attend. I am excited to hear David Pogue’s session. You can hear from David Pogue through the Ted talks: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/7
We’ve been joking around about inviting him to dinner… David if you’re reading this, the invitations open- we’d love to sit and talk with you….
Looking through the session list, there are a lot of options — although I see several sessions that we’re at ASTD International last year. Also, a lot of sessions look very consistent with other conferences I’ve seen. It seems lately there is an obligatory session on Second Life, the sessions on integrating to an LMS, and so forth. Not that this is bad, though I’m hoping I can find a few sessions with ideas that really stoke the fire and get my ideas going.
Honestly, I think that the best thing about conferences is the stoking of knowledge and ideas. Granted I haven’t been attending sessions to learn software, so outside that realm– I hope I can walk away with great ideas. Also, hopefully I can meet some great folks who are open and wanting to dialog about the industry and how to make it really awesome….
I was invited to speak at the local ASTD chapter here in Lansing Michigan. They asked me to introduce SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, and mention Jing. (Please remember I in no way represent TechSmith or their products on this blog, but am a happy employee – who gets the great opportunity to work with these awesome products everyday. These comments and insights are mine and mine alone, whether you think a little or a lot of them.)
While I did talk about those 3 in some detail (as much detail as one can get in about an hour and 15 minutes), I was really pleased with the first part of my presentation on visual communication, an am excited to expand it and refine it more. If I get the chance I will have to see if I can take it to a session or two (hmmm…. DevLearn, ASTD, ??????, any good instructional design conferences besides these that I should be aware of?)
I think one of the big things that has been and will continue to shift in e-learning is the amount and the necessity to becom ever more visual. One of the things that I see is the wide spread distribution of tools like the iPod touch or iPhone – and other similar technologies. These are inherently visual, and even if the specific device doesn’t take off and become the cool e-learning tool of the future – or make mobile learning kick some series butt, its coming and it will be very visual.
In the past one of the big obstacles in e-learning was bandwidth, storage, etc… but now I’m sitting in my kitchen, pulling a signal through a wireless aircard, and able to move quickly along on the internet. Now granted I’m not able to play network intense games, and it takes a little time to stream movies – but it’s faster than dial-up, and most of the time faster than my parent’s satellite internet connection. And it will get faster the next few years, especially as technologies like WiMax and others become more prevalent.
Rather than worrying about content being downloadable to computers – we need to focus more and more on information – the content, the presentation, the messaging, the scaffolding, chunking and many other factors – being able to handle the information that is presented. In other words will the learners have enough personal bandwidth (mentally and emotionally) to handle what is being presented? There are a lot of considerations that need to go into the decision making process – but actual file size will be less of an issue.
So this morning was the key note session with Jim Collins which I thought was pretty great. Before Jim spoke though we had to sit through Tony Bingham, President of ASTD. Personally I would have liked the extra time to hear more from Jim. I felt like I was sitting though an advertisement for ASTD. But shoot. I’m already a member. I know not everyone is, but cut me a break.
Jim Collins talked about the research he has been working. I want to highlight some of the points that I took away.
Jim told a story about of one of his experiences with a mentor. In summary is mentor said: “Don’t be interesting, be interested.” Wow. What powerful advice and such a great way to live. Definitely need to be more interested – although I don’t know if I’m all that interesting.
A couple of key learning points (and sorry for lack of details – check out www.jimcollins.com- he’s got a lot of free content):
1. Training and Development professionals need to turn their respective areas into pockets of greatness.
2. Learning professionals need to help their organizations develop and select Level 5 Leaders.
Marker of decline: Problematic succession of power. 1 wrong leader can bring an organization down.
3. As members of the T&D world need to help members of the organization see that one of the primary factors in growth is getting the right people. Part of this is the fact that interaction and retention are more important for growth then technology.
| Marker of decline: When the organization begins to loose key people be terrified. 4. Make great people decisions. 5. People don’t have jobs – they have responsibilities. Then develop and help other develop the ability to answer what they are responsible for. 6. Their is danger in abandoning the fly wheel. Don’t abandon the fly wheel. – basically we need to keep pushing. Even if things start going really well, we need to keep pushing. There were other good things; if I get a chance I will post more about this. Jim’s book was recently recommended to me, before I realized that Jim was a keynote speaker. If his book is a good as his talk, I’ll have to pick up a copy.Good to Great |
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I am going in for more ASTD Internationa l presentations today. Hopefully there will be some things I can take back to apply in designing training for TechSmith .
Specifically I would like to have some conversation with folks who are trying to do e-learning (or move towards more of an e-learning 2.0). I think there is a great room for screencasting, which I hope to do some soon on this blog. It definitely is not the end-all-be-all solution, but I think there is a lot of merit in begin able to show someone at their pace the info that they need.
I think in situations where someone is trying to reach a mass audience and there is not necessarily going to be a lot of two way conversation – then screencasting is a powerful tool – especially when conveying information/knowledge/learning or what ever else you call, about something on your screen.
I could see an educational YouTube – home-grown topics in training and education. Although, there would have to be a half-way reasonable way to weed out junk… It could create a whole new realm of educational discovery. Throw in social networking, ways to comment on the video (thinking something like digg )
-matt
I arrive in Atlanta today and went to ASTD International. This is my first ASTD conference – I’m excited that I have an opportunity to learn more about the field.
I’ve attended two sessions today – both looking at e-learning. The first was by Marc Rosenberg. It wasn’t exactly w.at I was looking for. Marc did a great job though. Working with TechSmith Corporation (makers of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio) I am looking more for ideas on how to take our online tutorials to the next level (See some of our stuff in our Learning Center).
The second session was more of what type of session I am hoping to attend here at ASTD. It was about e-learning 2.0 by Tony Karrer.
Tony presented on web 2.0 technologies that can be used for e-learning 2.0. Some of the technologies that he talked about were wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, RSS Reader – with a brief mention to several others (social networks, add-in/mash-ups, podcasts, videos, etc…)
A couple of take aways for me: 1 – Tony talked about the value of blogging. He mentioned that a few folks from a previous ASTD conference that took that challenge to blog found that they learned a significant amount in a year that they took that challenge. So I’m going to try it. I need to find time to consistently approach subjects and topics.
2 – Social bookmarking – I’ve dabbled. I need to be better at marking things that I find and set up an RSS feed for topics I’m trying to learn about. (Going to see if I like Bloglines better than Google Reader)
3 – Many folks at the session were unaware or not currently using these technologies. It seems to me that there is a great opportunity to better understand how they can work in a learning context, and drive some adoption. I’m wondering if at TechSmith, we couldn’t help to drive this type of usage in the way we help people to learn.
