Friday, March 13, 2009

The future unmasked

What a catchy title... This is a general session, Todd Maffin is the speaker. Funny so far, let's see if it is informative too. Here are some bits and pieces from this talk.

He is talking about the "shinny object syndrome". If it looks good, must work. Not really, not without specifically understanding the pros and cons, measuring efficiency, and knowing your stakeholders. Right.

Everyone is talking about podcasting, blogging, wickis, virtual worlds, etc for eLearning. When are they useful though? When can they be efficient? Sometimes less is more. These tools save money. True. Wikis - do we need those highly skilled ID's training strategists, etc, or should we just let the average user write their own curriculum. Answer: we need the learning professionals more than ever! The way corporations can save money is by hiring the right people to develop efficient e-learning and training in general. It's nice to hear that.

Roz, thank you for telling us this a long time ago. Mutitasking is mythology. The brain cannot do it. :-)

Baroque music is the only type of music that has been proven to improve efficiency.

The learning environment matters tremendously: if you learn in a "work" environment instead of a "learn" environment the percentage of retention goes down.
Nobody can "teach". The job of teachers, IDs, training strategy is to provide the environment for learning to take place. Learning environment should not be distracting.

This is fun. Take this test, please and let me know what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Mobile learning: only 3% of the overall learning uses mobile learning. Most of the targets are sales people and executives. Most used types of mobile learning: audio podcast and text messaging. Top opportunities: content conversion, media services (e.g. video), custom development. Healthcare will be the biggest user of mobile learning in the next few years - up to 20%. Corporations will be next: "the young shall lead them" and "just-in-time mentality".
SUN - distributed mobile learning via iTunes
Capital One Bank - gave away iPods for mobile training
lynda.com - online video training

Blended Learning: exploration. The brain needs variety and reinforcement. Most of the blended learning on the market: classroom training, on-the-job training, and web based. It works.

Virtual Worlds: Opinion is they mostly do not work for learning. Using virtual world for meetings, showing videos and web based course? Why? Why not just show the video, have the meeting and take the web-based course?

Very entertaining and interesting session. Opinions?

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