Mobilemind

Tom Kuhlmann of Articulate (and the consistently fantastic The Rapid Elearning Blog ) just posted: Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid? I love the phrase, the idea, and am certain the mere phrase resonates with everyone in the industry.

I might have taken the article in another direction, but, as always, Mr Kuhlmann makes it great, digestible and practical. He provides rapid elearning tips and approaches that transcend any specific tool (and apply to more than just rapid elearning). Bravo Tom.

Labels: learning, technology, tips

Dan Pink, author of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need visited Seattle in late July and was kind enough to host a happy hour version of a “Bunko Breakfast” at the Arctic Club Hotel. There were 15-20 people in attendance including 3-4 from the Snohomish County Workforce Development Council, as well as designers, web designers, electrical engineers, school administrators, construction safety managers and a range of other individuals.

Recently, Dan called out that I was posting video, so I figured I better get to it. I pinged Aaron Silvers about how he converted his Spring time “Bunko Breakfast” Chicago session videos. Armed with his tips, I then went off and learned a bit about Vimeo as a nice hosting alternative, with some constraints (500MB/week upload limit).

The full video came off my flip Ultra video camera as a single 1 hour, 1.44GB file. (By the way, the camera is cheap, fast, easy and wonderfully effective for things like this— much better than the $400 Cannon ZR850 video camera I deliberately left at home. One might compare the flip to manga, as the clips will illuminate.)

I'm learning as I go, but it seems that 5 minute chunks might be the best way to post this. Here is the first segment, where Dan provides some of the backstory on the genesis of the book.

Dan Pink: Johnny Bunko Breakfast in Seattle Clip 1 from Tom King on Vimeo.

Over the next few days, I'll upload more segments of about 5 minutes. Once I have 2-3 more uploaded, I'll post again with a link to the Vimeo site where I will have the videos with titles and bullet point highlights for each clip.

UPDATE:I uploaded another video, perhaps with the quality setting too high. Apologies if the high bitrate makes the video hiccup for you. I'll fall-back to the tighter encoding for future clips.

Both of the current clips and the remaining clips will be posted to the Vimeo Channel “SeattleBunko” found at:  http://www.vimeo.com/seattlebunko

Labels: blogs, events, learning

I saw that 9to5 Mac picked up a story on iPods as mobile training devices for soldiers to learn new spoken languages. I immediately recognized this from some demos I'd seen from Carol Wideman of Vcom3D. Fantastic to see that this is in the field, well-received and effective. We'd met several years ago and a NATO training council meeting and this was mostly a concept then.

The story is written up on the Fort Hood 1st Cavalry web site, including some pictures of the ipod with battery and the wearable holder/case. (Note- The webmaster must like the yellow/black Purkinje effect.)

I'm glad to see Vcom3D get well-deserved recognition. Now its time for some forward-thinking corporate trainers to look at off-the-shelf and thinking-outside-the-box solutions like this too. I'm sure there's plenty of time- and cost-effective training applications for virtual characters that model real language and cultural gestures-- and plays back in common digital video and interactive Adobe Flash formats.

Labels: Adobe, Apple, learning, technology, virtual worlds