Mobilemind

Thoughts on Learning in 3D- Virtual book Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:33:00 +0000

I'm fortunate that this blog is an early stop on the “#Lrn3D” virtual book tour for Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration by Karl M. Kapp and Tony O'Driscoll. There is much to come on the tour, from colleagues and friends widely held in high esteem through the learning and training profession. My perspective on virtual worlds may cast me as an outlier, and therefore warrant some explanation. If you can bear with my explanation and thoughts about it, there just may be a book discount in it for you.

Though I am competitive, I'm not a gamer. I'm considered a technologist by myself and others, but I'm not a fan of virtual worlds and Second Life. I've tried them a few times and they have served little purpose for me. I suspect it may be awhile before they do. [Although Stephen Colbert recently said that “…more and more of life is becoming 3D.”]

The previous paragraph is an odd transition into a post about Learning in 3D. However, I believe my post, like the book it is about, will benefit both others like myself, and those at the other end of the spectrum. Personally, I am challenged to understand and find the benefits of these environments. It often seems that training needs can be better served by more widely understood and widely adopted technologies combined with sound instructional design and basic business acumen. Virtual Worlds and 3D for learning are areas that deserve thought and resources whether you find yourself enamored, intrigued or skeptical.

As an avowed skeptic, I found information in the book to expand my understanding of these areas and tools to apply to learning in 3D (as well as simulations and training in general). Two things in particular helped me become more understanding of virtual worlds for learning. First, an alternate view– not thinking of the technology, but the plot or story. As contributor Randy Hinrichs puts it in Chapter 4:

Virtual worlds are about theater, character development, relationships with other characters, plot, conflict, denouement, catharsis, and conclusion. We need to design for the full immersive experience in which the users must adapt to the environment, survive in the environment, and fail if they haven’t learned well enough.

Second, I benefited from frameworks and scaffolding as schemas for concepts and as job aids for design and development. The authors deliver on these with useful tools like a model of design principles for 3D Learning Experiences (also in Chapter 4). There are other useful checklists presented as rhetorical “Key Questions” throughout.

Finally, I found it refreshing to review the case studies both for the successes and the lessons learned about design and implementation. It’s not just pie-in-the-sky, but gets down to brass tacks about what worked, what didn’t and how it can be done better in the future. These are real case studies from major organizations, and there are nine of them. Each has some innovation and some challenges. I really appreciate that they also share the lessons learned about implementation, orientation, design and evaluation.

That just skims a few parts of the book. I’ll leave it to my colleagues to provide broader and deeper analysis— I just touched on a few areas, mostly from Chapters 4 and 6. If you’d like to learn more about the book, stay tuned to the virtual book tour, visit the book web site, book wiki or for awhile buy it from the publisher with a 20% discount using code L3D1.

iPhone Travel Apps: Me v. National Geographic

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:23:00 +0000

One screen of my iPhone is dedicated to essential travel apps and I'd like to share that list with you. For comparison I'm also including a link to and the short list of Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure.

My key travel apps for iPhone (prices as of July 3, 2009):

TravelTracker with TripIt $7.99
If you take more than 6 trips a year get this app and sign up for TripIt service on the web. TravelTracker shines over the free TripIt app because it keeps past trips and has many more features. Silverware is a good company and this is a good app. Loved the previous TravelTracker incarnations on the Newton & the Palm, and I got it on iPhone as soon as it came out as a new-from-ground-up, smarter app. I'd hold off on getting the “Pro” version for now though... there are some iPhone 3.0 issues to sort out. In a few weeks I will be upgrading to TravelTracker Pro though, so I can get live flight status plus download and upload to TripIt. Update: A new version of TravelTracker posted to the App Store today—July 3, 2009.
TripIt for iPhone Free
Huh? You just said TravelTracker. I use both. The TripIt app is less cluttered and faster— for the current trip, but I can not easily forward an itinerary or do many other things that TravelTracker does so well. I use TripIt for quick access to info on the current trip, like hitting the rental car info with my big fat thumb as I dash away from baggage claim.
The Weather Channel Free
As National Geographic puts it:
[The Weather Channel app] gets the nod for customization and the ability to check out conditions in multiple locations at a glance.
AroundMe Free
I admit it, Starbucks pwns me. AroundMe helps me quickly find that essential latte, or a local equivalent and other conveniences (ATM/bank, restaurant, pharmacy, retailer). I've tried coffee-specific apps and a few brand-name bank/retailer/restaurant finders. This particular app works well and seems current most places I go, and does away with having a slew of category/vendor-specifc apps.
Currency Free
Fantastic currency converter that auto-updates exchange rates. Shows a purchase amount in multiple currencies of your choice at the same time. Easily switch from entering in one currency to entering in another. Very helpful on my trip to Singapore when trying to figure out what $5 USD was in SGD or what $900 SGD is in USD (answer: 1 nice watch).
Taxi Magic Free
Great app for getting a taxi when you aren't in an urban center or near a taxi stand. It electronically hails a taxi and sends your current location to your choice of cab companies. You can even create an account & use it to pay for the ride, without using cash or credit in the cab. Cities supported include: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, LA, Minneapolis, Nashville, NYC, the OC, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Dan Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington DC.
Urban Spoon Free
The best way to break the logjam of “I dunno, where do you want to go.” Also nice to find something interesting & local instead of the shopping mall-perimeter chain restaurant defaults.

Then there are the airline superstars of iPhone web app-friendliness. The standout here is JetBlue, who has a very useful and colorful web app. Honorable mention to Southwest Airlines, who made great use of the very cool iUI iPhone templates found on Google Code.

To make the most of any of the web apps below, just visit the URL on your iPhone and then bookmark with the “Add to Home Screen” option.

Great iPhone web apps from airlines to add to your iPhone homescreen (actual iPhone/Touch home screen icons shown):

JetBlue mobile http://mobile.jetblue.com/
American Airlines mobile http://mobile.aa.com/
Delta mobile http://mobile.delta.com/
Southwest mobile http://mobile.southwest.com/

I heard back from @Alaska Airlines on twitter that Alaska is working on it. Go Alaska! No word from United Airlines on when http://ua.flightlookup.com will become more iPhone-aware. Sadly, the very-cool, but Flash-dependent site of Virgin America doesn't make the iPhone cut either (as of July 3, 2009). Btw, lots of airlines are on twitter, as I found out working on @AICC followers.

A Few Extra Travel-related Apps
Rounding-out my travel page I have Aeroguide Lite (Free) to recognize things like that rare Ilyushin Il-62 I once saw over SFO (an Il-62 looks like MD-80/DC-9 with 4 engines or a Vickers VC10).

Other miscellanneous items on the page include: Gas Cubby ($9.99) for recording and charting the MPG, etc. of my own car; FedEx Mobile (Free) for help with shipping; and Google Earth (Free) for miscellaneous mapping and geographical visualization.

The National Geographic Adventure List
To get more detailed information on their picks, please see Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure. I've add my opinions to their list below where I had feelings one way or the other. For reference, here is their list:

Next Flight $2.99
Urban Spoon Free
HearPlanet reg $5.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
Air Sharing $4.99(Nix I say, get FTP On the Go)
Tweetie $2.99 (Nice, but nix say I. Get free TweetDeck or Twittelator Pro for $4.99, or both as I did)
IAmHere $0.99
World Customs $0.99
Wi-Fi Finder Free
The Weather Channel Free
Google Earth Free
Packing $1.99 (on sale for $0.99 on July 3, 2009. This one *I* might try)
Room Free
FlightTrack Pro $9.99 (Nix, I say, get TravelTracker w/TripIt)
Lonely Planet Phrasebook $9.99
Skype Free (I totally agree here–a very popular app, 4M downloads & estimated to be on 10%+ of iPhones)
WriteRoom $4.99
(Amazon) Kindle for iPhone Free (I totally agree here too)
Cheap Gas Free
Babelingo $3.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
Where Free

LETSI Tech Meetings Live Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:32:00 +0000

This is a temporary location for the Live Blog of LETSI Tech Meetings being held during June 2009 at IEEE Headquarters in New Jersey. Ultimately this post will be come a link to this blog hosted on the LETSI site.

LETSI Tech Meeting June '09

Thanks.

iPhone Travel- Save on Calls, SMS and Data

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Mon, 25 May 2009 23:26:00 +0000

Avoiding excessive charges is one key trick for International Travel with an iPhone. International travel can include a quick cruise to Mexico or the Caribbean, or a full-on international flight. Either way, some tips I've learned will save you money. I spent a week in Singapore and saved $60 over what the roaming rates would have totaled for data, SMS and calls.

Summary

Get the free AT&T myWireless Mobile app. It is an easier way to manage the service add-ons.
Get the free Skype app for iPhone. You can make cheap calls over WiFi, or even skip/miss a call to your iPhone number and then call right back using Skype.
Skim the AT&T iPhone Tips for International Data Roamers from their web site.
Be smart with call & SMS rates. 2-3 days before travel, activate the $5.99/month “AT&T World Traveler” for cheaper call & SMS rates.
Be smart about 3G data. 2-3 days before travel, activate a “Data Global Add-On” for International Data roaming (20/50/100 MB for $24.99/$59.99/$119.99/$199.99)
Turn off or dial-back SMS reminders from things like Twitter, etc. Do it a day or two early, there may be that one last service that sends a message and you can turn it off before you leave.
Tip: I leave twitter Direct Messages on, so that colleagues traveling can reach me without using up their own SMS messages.
Scout for WiFi options before you leave. Try Hotspot Locations or Ji-Wire Global Wi-Fi Finder. Remember to ask locals and check for more once you arrive.
Delete or move what you can out of your IMAP email account Inbox. Having a smaller Inbox or putting messages in rarely used subfolders will reduce data updates.
On your iPhone, use Settings>General>Network>Data Roaming to turn OFF Data Roaming before you board (airplane or ship; you can get hit with roaming data charges just walking between connecting flights with your phone on, or when a cruise ship sails out-of-range). Turn it on when you really want to connect for data.
Turn off PUSH data services using Settings>Fetch New Data to select Push OFF. On the same screen, change Fetch to Manually (or if you really want updates, Hourly)
Updated: Turn off less critical Notifications— they use data too.This includes Growl/Prowl if you use it.
Reset the iPhone Usage Tracker to Zero using Settings>General>Usage>Reset. Check your data usage daily (consider an alarm or appointment for this).
Tip: If you get close to the limit of your Data Plan, you can call well before you exceed it to upgrade to a plan with more capacity. (While traveling, call International Wireless Care at +1-916-843-4685).
Wait 7-10 days after returning to deactivate your “Data Global Add-On” and “AT&T World Traveler” services add-ons. Though they are pro-rated for portions of a month, international billing can take a week and you don't want to be charged the higher rate.

More Details

Service Add-ons:
Use AT&T myWireless Mobile app to activate/deactivate additional services rather than calling AT&T. I recommend doing this at least 72 hours before you leave the USA.
Tip: When you activate the add-ons, immediately set an appointment or “To Do” to de-activate 10 days after you return. You'll save a few dollars that month since it is pro-rated, and won't accidentally carry-over the service into future months.

If you need to call or just prefer it, note that you'll need to make 2 calls. First call the regular service number (611 on mobile or 800-331-0500 from another phone). Second, call International Wireless Care at 800-335-4685 or if already abroad, +1-916-843-4685 to add your “Data Global Add-On” for International Data. Do this AT LEAST 72 hours before you leave; it can take 24 hours or more to activate.
Tip: Add “AT&T International” as a Contact with the 916 number above. You can quickly call for support or to update service.

“AT&T World Traveler” is just $5.99 a month and is pro-rated. It can save you $0.30 to $1.00 per minute on calls you receive (rates here). The cost of each SMS message can drop a similar amount. The gotcha is be sure to leave it active for ~10 days after your return. If there are delays in international billing you'll get hit with the higher rate if you already de-activated this add-on.

Regarding the “International Roaming- Data”- Pick a plan that suits your needs. I watch my data budget tightly and did fine with 20MB ($24.99) for a 6 day trip. I turn off “Data roaming” often and use WiFi where I can. I was ready to call and upgrade if needed though.
Tip: Before you travel, reset the iPhone Usage and watch it for a 2 days to see what your data budget might need to be.

Skype:
Buy in US dollars before you go (or stay in euros if your account is already in euros). Don't switch currencies on your Skype account; you'll get hit with a currency conversion charge. I started on Skype years ago when Euros were the only option. I'll only switch to US Dollars when my account is at zero.

WiFi:
72 hours before leaving the USA, Scout for WiFi. Check with the hotel or conference venue to see if WiFi is available. That can greatly reduce 3G data needs. It will also help you decide how large of a data plan to buy.
Tip: Check if the hotel has a frequent guest plan, many hotels offer free or reduced WiFi for frequent guests. Sign-up before you leave the US.

Data Misers:
Set a recurring alarm for “data off” (bedtime) and one for “data on” (wake). Toggle the Data Roaming setting accordingly. You can still get calls or use alarms, but won't be disturbed (or charged) for night-time email updates. Get them in a batch at a WiFi spot or when you turn on 3G data again.

Preload maps by searching for directions while at a WiFi spot. You can still get updates via 3G while out and about, but the larger map will already be downloaded.

SMS:
48 hours before leaving the USA, turn off or dial-back on SMS updates. Why 2 days before leaving? So you can catch that one extra service you forgot. Likely sources of SMS reminders to turn off are: Google Calendar, Jott, Remember the Milk, TripIt Premium, twitter.
Tip: Once you've established your new locale, do more than set the iPhone time zone. Also set your twitter time zone preferences to reflect your “do not disturb” hours for the new time zone.

Don't be surprised if you receive 1-2 SMS messages from AT&T as you travel. AT&T will alert you when you're in a roaming zone and you are not charged for those messages.

Switch iPhone from MobileMe to iTunes Sync Without Losing Bookmarks

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Once used on the iPhone, turning off MobileMe sync for bookmarks will result in deletion of all the bookmarks on the iPhone. Furthermore, there is no way to force the iPhone bookmarks to over-write things on the Mac if the sync ever goes awry.

If, like me, you ever end-up with the "good" bookmarks on the iPhone and "bad" on the Mac, there is just no way to sync the good over and replace the bad. However, one can do some tricks with the iPhone back-up preferences file (plist) and Mac Safari export/import bookmarks to achieve a transfer from iPhone to Mac. Once complete, two-way sync will be restored via iTunes. Unlike the MobileMe sync, you can turn off the iTunes bookmark sync to Safari without losing bookmarks on you iPhone.

I'm not responsible for lost data. Back-up everything before you start this process. Do NOT sync the iPhone until the process is complete. Others may have some shortcuts or improvements to this process [eg, convert Mobile Safari plist to Mac Safari plist instead, or use XSLT or shell script improvements, etc.]. I welcome those suggestions and will re-post them. Leave a comment or send email to me at mobilemind (at) pobox.com.

Here's how I managed to save my iPhone bookmarks, recover them to Mac, and switch off MobileMe bookmark sync without losing data. Now I just use iTunes for Bookmark sync.

1. Download iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor by clicking on the big honking icon on that page. (I sent him $10 USD because it worked so well for me. Send him a few Euro if it works for you too.)

2. Launch the Extractor, open a backup and extract “iPhone OS Files”.

If your current back-up is questionable or to deliberately use an older version of iPhone bookmarks do the following. First make a copy of the current back-up, and put it in another location. Then use Time Machine or your back-up utility to find and restore a "good" previous version of the backup, from:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Remember that “~” is shorthand for the user home folder (Home icon in Finder, or Shift-Command-H).

3. Save the “iPhone OS Files” extract to a new folder, and find the Bookmarks preferences file. It should be in:
newfolder/iPhone OS Files/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

4. Convert the binary preferences file to XML. Open a terminal window and go to the folder with Bookmarks.plist. Then issue this command:

plutil -convert xml1 Bookmarks.plist

Leave the terminal window open, you'll need it in a minute.

5. Open Mac Safari and do File > Export Bookmarks… to save a backup. We'll use this if anything goes wrong, and it's a handy reference example of the bookmark file format. I saved mine as “Safari Bookmarks.html” and put an extra copy in the same folder as “Bookmarks.plist”.

6. Get or make some shell magic with grep to reformat the XML plist preferences file into a rough approximation of a Mac Safari bookmarks import/export file. I found a great bit of code from Dave Taylor here.

I took Dave's example and removed some stuff like the sorting (more on that in a minute). Then I added the necessary opening and closing tags for a Bookmark file, with some comments. Here is my shell file for you to download: plist2bookmarks.sh

7. Save the shell script and make it executable. Save the shell file to the same folder as the converted Bookmarks.plist file. Then go to the terminal window and make it executable by you (the owner) and your group.

chmod 774 plist2bookmarks.sh

8. Execute the script and direct the output to a new file. I called my output file "MobileSafariBookmarks.html" (no spaces to make the shell command easier).

./plist2bookmarks.sh >MobileSafariBookmarks.html

9. Clean-up the “MobileSafariBookmarks.html” in your favorite editor to make it match the folder hierarchy of your iPhone Bookmarks. I used Dreamweaver CS4 and TextMate to open my reference file ("Safari Bookmarks.html") and the new file ("MobileSafariBookmarks.html"), bouncing back & forth to make sure I got the tags right.

Have your iPhone handy to check the folder structure. That helped me as I did edits. The comments put in by “plist2bookmarks.sh” should help you understand how and where to create folders (or nest them).

Keep in mind that the iPhone has a few built-in bookmark folders and bookmarks, like the “History” folder and the bookmarks for “Yahoo!”, “Google”, “AT&T MyAccount”, and “iPhone User Guide”.

10. Prepare to import Mobile Safari Bookmarks into Mac Safari. Make sure you have a back-up of your Mac Safari bookmarks. Then open Safari, use Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks, and delete ONLY your bookmarks. Do NOT delete Address Book or other items. In m case, I selected Bookmarks Bar and deleted all the items there. Then I selected Bookmarks Menu and deleted all those items.

11. Import the Mobile Safari Bookmarks into Mac Safari. Use File > Import Bookmarks… to import “MobileSafariBookmarks.html” as cleaned-up in step 9.

12. Verify Mac Safari against Mobile Safari before you disable MobileMe sync of bookmarks. Remember, that will delete the iPhone bookmarks. Carefully check the list and URL addresses of the bookmarks now in Mac Safari against the list and structure in Mobile Safari on iPhone. Quit Safari on the Mac when you are done. Quit Mobile Safari on the iPhone too.

13. Take a deep breath and delete the bookmarks on Mobile Safari by disabling MobileMe sync of Bookmarks. On iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Then, under Accounts select your MobileMe account. Change Bookmarks to OFF. iPhone will warn you about deleting bookmarks. That is OK, because we now have them in Safari and will soon sync with iTunes from Mac Safari back to iPhone.

14. Disable iTunes automatic syncing for devices to allow us to make changes. Do not connect the iPhone yet. Start iTunes. Open Preferences and select Devices. Check the box that says "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods". Close Preferences.

15. Connect the iPhone and change iTunes to Sync Safari bookmarks. After the iPhone connects, it may sync anyway. That is OK. Select the iPhone in the left panel. Then select the tab labeled Info in the large main panel of iTunes. Scroll down to the shaded bar for Web Browser and check the box next to Sync Safari bookmarks.

16. Apply the change to sync. Click the Sync button in the lower right corner of iTunes and wait.

17. When the sync is done, all the bookmarks moved manually from the backup to Mac Safari, will be restored to the iPhone. From now on, the iPhone and Mac Safari will sync via iTunes. Changes on one will be reflected on the other after each sync. As an extra bonus, the MobileMe "push" should be a little shorter and a little less battery draining, since bookmarks are no longer synced over-the-air.

If you want, you can even turn off iTunes bookmark sync and add/restore your original Mac Safari bookmarks, either to keep things separate or to merge them back to iPhone later.

IMS QTI Still Relevant Despite 2.1 Being Revoked

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:10:00 +0000

IMS withdrew the QTI 2.1 spec, despite some existing implementation and information going back to 2006 that is was imminently ready for use. The official IMS wording seems to be toned down a bit, but there is also a clip from early wording on Rowin Young's blog. Other early opinions ended up on list servers like this. I've fired up a Google alert on this issue and will be tracking it. Meantime, one of my co-workers at Questionmark and a key contributor to QTI 1.x, John Kleeman, has penned, Why QTI Really Matters.

Check it out and watch for updates here. I expect a few more QTI experts and pundits from other specification bodies to have some observations soon. However, an unnamed organization with a litigious nature may be unwittingly suppressing discussion.

SCORM Vulnerabilities + IMS Spec withdrawal = Excitement

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:33:00 +0000

Exciting times for elearning standards. Lots of discussion about two unrelated events. First, SCORM “cheats” are published and the community rallies to address the issues. Secondly, and coincidentally, the IMS recently withdrew the QTI spec from further work by IMS membership. I'll follow-up on the IMS QTI issue in a subsequent post (likely linking to more detailed information from others).

What is SCORM Cheatlet?
I coined “cheatlet” as a portmanteau of cheat and bookmarklet (itself a portmanteau of bookmark and applet). A bookmarklet is a browser bookmark that uses the javascript: protocol prefix instead of the typical http: prefix used for web pages. This allows one to create a bookmark that runs JavaScript code in the browser.

I dove into bookmarklets when developing my iPastelet utility for iPhone in the summer of 2008. It immediately occurred to me that this technique could be an interesting way to hack/cheat the SCORM JavaScript API. Thus was born my implementation of the cheatlet. It worked easily and nearly immediately. By clicking a bookmark, I could send a score to an LMS. I tuned it to send a time, a status, and in a sinister turn, close and then nullify the API object handle to prevent any legitimate data from overwriting the hacked score.

Cheatlet Concept goes Public
In late August 2008, with a working demo of this code in hand, I sent it to major players in the SCORM world, including a major ADL contract agency, major LMS vendors, SCORM code suppliers of various types, and tool vendors. Many vendors responded that it was simply an instantiation of a hack to a known issue. One indicated they were well aware of this and raised the issue early on to discourage the AICC from deprecating HACP for the JavaScript API, that vendor was Questionmark (Disclosure, I started work for Questionmark in January 2009).

I seemed to be more concerned than others. In late August, I submitted a paper on the issue to the LETSI SCORM 2.0 Workshop, without disclosing precisely how to implement or code the exploit. The paper, Security Before Features was discussed online and at the Pensacola meeting in October 2008, but little seemed to happen as a result. Work continued on SCORM 2004 4th Edition without any API changes.

Cheatlet Example/Running Code Goes Public
Flash forward to a few weeks ago. Working completely independently, Phillip Hutchison had a similar moment of inspiration and crafts his own SCORM “cheatlet” bookmark. The big difference was this included a working cheat as a link right in the blog post (chealet linked since removed, but code is still available by request to Phillip). Soon this issue received broader attention. Reaction and opinions flew about the internet. Plateau proactively sent a letter to its US government LMS customers about this issue to help calms their fears. Ironically, I think this also drew further attention and discussion.

Defense Approaches, Work-arounds, Opinions
Soon after the example code hit the internet, opinions flew between experts on twitter, email and blogs. I posted a overview of the issues on the Questionmark blog, along with a follow-up post on general defensive strategies, including some specific solutions to support those approaches.

The ADL posted workarounds for some aspects of the vulnerability. Both are more clearly aimed and HTML/JavaScript coders, but that may be exactly who read this blog.

SCORM Content Vulnerability Workarounds by Jonathan Poltrack
Securing Your Assessments, Excerpt from Carnegie Mellon Best Practices Guide for the Design and Development of SCORM Assessments (means to make “View source” more challenging)

Some feel quite strongly that SCORM has never been suited for more than the lowest-stakes elearning events. I feel that stakes must always be viewed as a continuum. Furthermore, I believe it is far easier to consider the high stakes end of the spectrum first and back-down as necessary. In any environment, is incredibly difficult to start with little or no security and patch your way up to a secure system.

Others may see it differently. I'm sure there will be plenty of opinions. I'd say my views on this issue tend to align with Phillip Hutchison (whom I've never met, but respect) more than Mike Rustici (whom I've known & respected for many years). I'll come back and update this post as they emerge. Other opinions include:

SCORM security (two kinds of SCORM people), Phillip Hutchison, Pipwerks
SCORM Security - Some Perspective, Mike Rustici, Rustici Software

They Saw It Coming, BUT... Newspapers Now, LMS Next

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:36:00 +0000

I just read Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. Substitute “LMS/Central Training Department” for instances of “Newspaper/publishers” and it is a real wake-up call.

Read it. Think about it. Who are the real-world, radical change-observing “pragmatists” and who are the in denial status-quo with incremental-change “revolutionaries” in your organization?

Are the people who say that the now and the future is in informal learning, collaboration, mobile and social networking the revolutionaries,or the pragmatists? Are the experts those wizened experienced people who say learning & training have been and always will be structured, pre-defined and centralized, (and they often add or else it is wasteful and inefficient).

Look outside your windows (or preferably Mac) there is a whole world (-wide web 2.0 ) happening. What the heck, check it out on your phone or Xbox or …

See past the matrix illusion of the Central Committee's integrated-firewalled-siloed starts-and-stops-at-your-enterprise LCMS-LMS-authoring-tool including Centralized Succession Planning, now with connect-to-your-actual-cubemate-Social-Networking™.

Got it? Good. Now go read two Jay Cross posts, New Roles for Former Trainers and then Agile Instructional Design. For bonus points tonight or tomorrow, twitter (+2), text (+1) or email (+.05) a few colleagues and collaborate on how you can apply scrum techniques on your next training or elearning effort.

Feedback? Like this kind of post? Let me know, I've got a few more cans of elearning willy pete in the armory.

Geek Cribs Follow-up: “The Setup”

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:18:00 +0000

Via Daring Fireball, I learned of “The Setup”; a series of posts/interviews with techno glitterati describing their work setups. A much cooler (and computer-centric) approach than my early December post, What if… MTV Cribs for iPhones.

So far The Setup covers Alex Payne (of twitter), YACHT (I can't describe YACHT), Gabe Newell (of Valve videogames), Steven Frank (of Panic Inc and Transmit fame) and John Gruber (the famous fantastic Daring Fireball and Markdown maker).

Elearning Events Updated for 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:03:00 +0000

The Elearning Events Calendar is updated with key elearning conferences and trade shows from January 2009 - June 2009. I didn't do a good job of updating it from August-December 2008, but I'll try to be better. If you are aware of a conference I missed, send an invite or email to events(at)mobilemind.net and I'll add it soon after I hear from you.

I've added events from AICC, ADL, Articulate, eLearning Guild, I/ITSEC, IMS Global, the Masie Center, Questionmark, SumTotal, Training Magazine, and more. I'll add links for the Plateau and Saba conferences when details become available (they are usually in Fall).

I also moved the calendar to a separate page to make it easier to read and navigate. The link to the new page is in the header navigation of my site as Events, as well as the first link in the opening paragraph of this post.

Happy New Year 2009.

What if... MTV Cribs for iPhones and Macs

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:22:00 +0000

It'd be cool if there was a “geek work cribs” that showcased the preferred tools of geek celebs (and minor celebs). If there is, I don't know about it. Nonetheless, we all find posts and pages to that effect here and there. Recently, fellow geek (and elearning celeb) Aaron Silvers kindly posted a page-by-page list of what's on (and no longer on) his iPhone. There are some cool ways to do things like this that I'll share too.

First, get an account (or two) at iusethis.com, but do NOT populate it- yet.

Mac OS X - http://osx.iusethis.com
iPhone - http://iphone.iusethis.com

Next, get AppFresh, a Mac OS X application that helps you keep apps, widgets, preference panes and plugins up-to-date. Conveniently, it also connects to you iusethis account for Mac OS X. Run AppFresh, and it will create a list of your Mac apps and check for new version. Add your iusethisaccoutn via the AppFresh preferences.

Once the list is populated by AppFresh, you can easily click to add items to iusethis.com from AppFresh. Now you have a readily updated list that you can share as a page or RSS feed (see link at bottom of your apps or event page on the iusethis site).

The iPhone section of the site isn't quite as auto-magically updated. I'd love to see AppFresh or something like that scour your iTunes directory to populate such a list though (hint). Fortunately, the folks at iusethis do make it easy to find iPhone apps on their site or add your favorites while their forms pull in data from the iTunes App Store.

Now for the mobilemind iusethis lists:

Mac OS X apps: http://osx.iusethis.com/user/mobilemind
Recent changes: http://osx.iusethis.com/feed/mobilemind
iPhone apps: http://iphone.iusethis.com/user/mobilemind
Recent changes: http://iphone.iusethis.com/feed/mobilemind

Once you are signed up and sharing like this, iusethis will also identify like-minded neighbors by way of your application set. Note that the respective OS X and iPhone sites also have overall lists for New, Interesting and Top apps.

Hey Aaron are we iusethis neighbors? (PS- I too dropped Appigo To Do for the freeRemember the Milk app.) Poor Appigo, first To Do dropped for the free RTM app, and now AccuFuel has been replaced with the $4.99 Gas Cubby. All good apps, just a matter of preferences and $4-$5.

Will Adobe XFL revolutionize Rapid Elearning Workflows?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:15:00 +0000

For some time Adobe insiders and followers have been talking about XFL, a package file format for Flash (here, here, here and more in search). XFL combines XML and some binary assets in a zip archive. Currently Adobe CS4 applications use XFL as an interchange format.

How does this impact rapid elearning? Office automation tools are also using package file formats, such as the somewhat controversial Microsoft Office Open XML format. This is the metaformat that subsumes the underlying markup languages for word processing, presentation and spreadsheet content.

Taken together I suspect we will see the rise of many custom workflow and “homebrew rapid elearning” applications. It will be easier than ever before to use common zip and XSL tools to take “SME content” in .docx and .pptx files and transform them into XFL. From XFL to published SWF is an easy step for CS4, and will allow for expert tuning/enhancement in Flash itself. That sort of tuning isn't possible in current tools.

Corporate developers and elearning shops will likely create their own tools and workflows like Mohive and CourseAvenue Studio, but optimized for their market, clientele, content, style, work cycle and requirements.

Still others developers will bypass tools like Adobe Presenter, Articulate Presenter, and iSpring Pro, Rapid Intake ProForm, instead creating their own tools. These tools will likely work with specialized, optimized and more structured Word or PowerPoint files/templates, but also provide more optimized workflows and optimized content.

I think the opportunities for more flexible rapid elearning development will increase. The race is on for Articulate and Adobe to improve their offerings with richer tools and more instructional design savvy built-in. Wonderful as it is, Articulate Engage could be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Likewise, CourseAvenue Studio and Mohive will need to expand the value of their workflow, repository and shared template capabilities.

Elearning professionals can contribute design skills to these new custom processes. Those with Flash skills will appreciate content flowing more easily from Word and PowerPoint to Flash, allowing upstream production efficiencies while still resulting in “raw” Flash files that can be enhanced and enriched with animations, effects and AS3 code.

It will be interesting to observe as the likely home brew solutions, open source tools, tool kits and SDKs emerge– all making it easier for content to flow from office automation tools to Flash source code file formats. I suspect other package file formats will also emerge and contribute to interesting solutions.

Social Networks: Support, Abuse and Filters

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Today I received a spammy-spoofy email that looked like it was from LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a service I trust and respect; it moved conscientiously and cautiously in the face(book) of pressure from multiple social networking sites.

As times get tight, it will be interesting to see what happens with social networks. The pessimist in me suspects that schemes and scams will increase, as well as sincere, legitimate requests for connections and job assistance from true friends.

I hope people will be supportive of their closest contacts and colleagues. Tim Sanders' Love Is the Killer App is a quick read and perhaps too touch-feely for some, but the premise is good— be open, trusting and giving with your social network.

As a social network, we can help stop abuse from scammers and schemers. Here is,

What I Did and you can do, too

Check the message title and source in email headers. (Yep, spoofed as L:inkedIn)
Check my own LinkedIn network and groups. (Did someone I know harvest names? Nope.)
Check the LinkedIn groups that I manage (AICC and LETSI). (Not a member; if so I would have bounced them out of the group. I will be monitoring these groups.)
Check Terms of Service. (No, this does not seem consistent with TOS.)
Report the abuse if any. (In this case, I turned on full headers and forwarded the email to abuse (AT) linkedin.com.)

The LinkedIn User Agreement is notable for a few key sections that I appreciated:

2. Your Rights — What You May Do
3. Our Rights and Obligations — What We Must And May Do
and
11. LinkedIn User DOs & DON’Ts

I'll be tracking this one, since this scammer is quasi-promoting LinkedIn, via their claim to be an expert on using LinkedIn for job-hunting and encourages its use. That seems to be a conflict of interest for LinkedIn. We'll see.

UPDATE November 21, 2008: LinkedIn got back to me on November 19, indicating they were investigating the spam. As of November 21, 2008 the alleged scammer/spammer is still on LinkedIn promoting their personal network of 2M “friends & colleagues” along with their skills in recruiting and life balance. Draw your own conclusions.

Meantime, there are plenty of ways to find experts on job-hunting with LinkedIn. We also all need to be aware of way Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody ) labels as a “failure of filters”– in social networks, emails, twitter and even blogs. I encourage others to filter actively and with fairness.

Social Network Terms of Service and Abuse Reporting

Facebook: Terms of Use — Report Abuse (contact form)
LinkedIn: LinkedIn User Agreement — abuse (AT) linkedin.com
Plaxo: Terms of Service — abuse (AT) plaxo.com
twitter: Terms of Service — Report Spam (contact form) or abuse (AT) twitter.com (unconfirmed)

Why didn't I think of this

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:06:00 +0000

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.

Seattle Bunko Breakfast: Video Clip 1

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:10:00 +0000

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

iPod-based Language Learning w/Virtual Characters

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:08:00 +0000

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.

LETSI got Cuil Faster than SCORM

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:13:00 +0000

Playing around with the Cuil search engine earlier this morning…

versus

Fortunately my typical vanity search did find me. Even more interesting is that Cuil quickly “learned” about SCORM in just an hour or so. Click either image to see more current results.

Paste Text into Web Forms on iPhone or iPod Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:58:00 +0000

Here is a new utility web page to easily create javascript: bookmarks (bookmarklets) that paste a custom text string into a web page form in Mobile Safari on iPhone or iPod Touch– http://mobilemind.net/iphone.

On iPhone and Touch, that page will automatically re-direct to http://mobilemind.net/___, which includes all the instructions and code needed to make a bookmarklet that pastes text (an “iPastelet”).

On the iPhone/Touch, Save an iPastelet provides a form to enter your text string and a button to update the page URL. Then you need to save the bookmark, then immediately edit it to remove the http:// prefix and mobilemind URL. The directions on the page explain it all.

On desktop machines, the page does not re-direct, but instead takes you to the “classic” iPastelet Maker that I posted last December. The desktop browser version of iPasteletMaker creates a bookmarklet for you to save in your desktop browser (Mac or Win) and then sync to your device via iTunes.

This approach might be a little more handy if you already sync broswer bookmarks and want to create a bookmark Scrapbook folder with lots of these.

Thanks to Erica Sadun for the original bookmarklet code and inspiration. Special Thanks to Craig Hockenberry (IconFactory / Twitterific, Twitterific for iPhone), Joe Maller (Transmogrify), Joe Hewitt and the iUI team (http://code.google.com/p/iui/), and Ankur Kothari (Make the most of the iPhone SDK) for inspiration and examples.

Ping Pong with Brooks: Clarifying that Challenges != Death

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:54:00 +0000

PING- In response to my post, Call for Whitepapers on SCORM- Do SOMETHING please Brooks Andrus wrote a blog post titled, The Elearning Industry Is Dead. [That is a provocative statement that might leave one feeling a bit conflicted if one possessed 10 years experience with multimedia, Flash and elearning, and worked for TechSmith, makers of Camtasia Studio, a software product to: Train. Present. Persuade.] Kidding aside, I'm glad one of the 250+ subscribers of this feed thought enough to follow-up

I'm always ready to throw a few stones at learning and training, yet also ready to come to the aid of an industry that has comfortably paid the bills for me. [I'm a bit conflicted myself, but it is an industry that has provided cost-effective, mission critical training to sales associates, fighter pilots, jet mechanics, commercial aviation mechanics, construction managers, accountants, law enforcement personnel, healthcare professionals, and even software developers.]

PONG- So I wrote a comment to Brooks' post, feebly defending the industry that is my patron. [Dang, I want to drive a Boxster again.] Seriously though, if the point is to raise awareness to improve things-- I am all for it. Allow me a brief aside on criticism.

People have found fault with elearning, computer-based training and its precursors since the days of TICCIT and PLATO. It might just be endemic to any form of compulsory knowledge transfer; few text books or training films ever become a NY Times Bestseller or a box office smash.

All along the way the criticism has generally raised the capabilities, quality and effectiveness while lowering the costs. Expectations rise too. Things change. Cutting edge and high quality always has a price, but those expectations are a moving target. The green screen training that had text-based role plays, probably took as many development hours as a similar Flash-based piece with a digital avatar today. BUT it only played on the corporate or campus mainframe, and you were quite lucky if it did more than show text and beep.

So, Hail to the critics, they have challenged the industry and industry has responded. Likewise, Condemnation to shameful designers, they besmirch our trade with discouraging and unimaginative content. While I've been bored during presentations anchored with snazzy multimedia PowerPoint, I've been wrapt with fascination by compelling speakers with simple Kodachrome slides.

Thus my point, great content transcends technology. Great technology enables. Clever designers focus on the content first, and make good use what the technology enables. Was Shakespeare held back by the lack of Microsoft Office for Windows Vista or empowered by a simple quill? [Personally I think he would have used a Mac though.]

As I heard Dr. Michael Allen say earlier this year, "It is a poor craftsman who blames his tool." And I might add, it is a poor industry that never improves its tools.

PING- Brooks posts again, Why Elearning Is Dead. And I respond here, to the problems he cites. With a veritable volley to each point. Hang on.

PONG- First point from Brooks.

Reusable content, the raison d’être of SCORM / AICCC [sic]...

PING- Actually, the AICC exists to...

Promote the economic and effective implementation of computer-based training (CBT) media.
Develop guidelines to enable interoperability.
Provide an open forum for the discussion of CBT (and other) training technologies

Quoted from the AICC FAQ page. As I recall, driving factors TWENTY YEARS AGO when the AICC formed, were economics and interoperability issues. Issues were things like the fact that there wasn't a widely adopted digital audio file format (WAV didn't exist). The CMI (Computer Managed Instruction, aka Learning Management System) specification work started a few years later, and focused on interoperability. At that time the desired level of re-use was the LMS itself. Believe me, it was NOT better when each set of training materials came with its own proprietary LMS silo capable only of running the corresponding proprietary content developed in that vendor's proprietary authoring tool.

As for SCORM, a few of us remember when the "R" stood for Repository. I don't know the back-story of why it was changed or by who. I like to speculate that it was partially a marketing maneuver to secure political support and funding.

PONG- Later in that point, he continues.

...reuse just falls flat on its face. I’ve found it to be near impossible to achieve reuse across departments within a single organization

PING- I'll generally agree. I recall having conversations with Phillip Dodds about my desire for a disposable content object model. Meaning content object wrappers so cheap and easy, they became to consistent quality learning what the disposable cup is to the Starbucks latte.

PONG- Next point.

Testing (SCORM + LMS) has been a failure. Despite all the fancy API features you still can’t reliably certify results. Physical environments and instructors are still required for anything needing mission critical result certification. We might as well be using simple survey tools rather than bloated standards.

PING- At first, I thought he meant the LMS certification test. I'd consider this point a "FOL" as I've seen in called some bug bases-- a Fact Of Life, not a criticism of SCORM or AICC. Unattended remote testing for high stakes certifications (lives or livelihoods at risk) generally doesn't make sense. If you must do medium or high stakes testing to do electronically there is just one way to go in my opinion, Questionmark. A great product, a company filled with people of great integrity, and they can more than manage low stakes testing, assessments and surveys too.

PONG- Next point on costs [or salesmanship].

The cost of developing lean forward elearning experiences is at least an order of magnitude greater than its pitched at. In fact elearning is pitched as a cost saver when in reality its usually a net loss. Most elearning is PPT based because the cost of creating a compelling experience from an SME’s physical course is so high (at least that’s been my experience).

PING- Almost too easy to rebute. We've all seen things oversold, maybe even been reluctant participants in some way. As a developer/consultant, I had to backpedal on sales promises made at more than one previous employer.

I'd feel sad and try to avoid projects where my work is (un)recognized as a net loss. As for PPT versus costs-- not every piece of elearning replaces a SME's course. And in many cases a great blended design might shorten the overall length of a classroom course, and allow the instructor to convey better/richer material. In such cases the elearning serves the role of individualized instructor allowing each student to slow down only when they need to do so. This as opposed to an instructor slowing down a whole class of 25 for the one student challenged at the current moment. This works great for classes where students may speak different languages. Likewise, a shorter footprint for classes can be real savings when you have high volumes of students to train or training must span the globe. Sending students or instructors across oceans isn't cheap, and you'll need classrooms and hotel rooms too.

PONG- Next point on failures [or bad situations].

Every LMS / LCMS vendor I’ve worked with gets a FAIL. They’re bloated, difficult to administer and use, and often require organizations to wrap their infrastructure around them (which just doesn’t happen too much). Again these tools are pitched as cost savers, but typically require full-time administrators and the large vendors have notoriously bad service track records.

PING- Sigh. More sadness. I know it happens. I guess I've been fortunate, working with some wonderful customers and vendors. I've been tremendously impressed with Accenture, American Airlines, Boeing, Herman Miller and others. They all faced challenges with partners and vendors, and both sides dealt with it well.

PONG- On to more failures, such as discoverability.

Distributed content / repositories reign supreme whether on the Web or across organizations. Again the LMS / LCMS get a FAIL and SCORM SCOs have had little tangible value.

PING- Remember when the "R" stood for repository. Now I sigh for myself. I thought CORDRA was supposed to move things forward on this. It has not. Time for some good thoughts to be shared and popularized to solve this. [See original call for LETSI white papers]

As far as SCO's having little tangible value, I think a few million Korean parents might disagree regarding the SCORM-based elearning their children receive. I believe Chrysler also has some hard numbers on savings they achieved with SCO's, you can find it via this Google search.

PONG- Home stretch now, second last point is on community and standards.

A real infrastructure and community never really developed, at least not on the scale we should reasonably expect. Actually you could say the Web raced ahead and that search (GOOGLE), Wikipedia, Creative Commons, etc. form the backbone of real elearning. Adding community features doesn’t mean your going to build a great community and standardization here might hurt more than it helps.

PING- I'm personally amazed that the little presentations I saw in 1996 and 1997 led to something the size, diversity and adoption level of SCORM. I don't know what scale Brooks was expecting. It's bigger than I ever expected when I helped form a tiny company to build an early standards-based CMI/LMS in 1993. Back then we had to explain what learning management was, it was all just content. The typical training management decision was build-versus-buy. The tools skills an CBT/elearning designer, developer or consultant had with one system had very little applicability to another

PING- Last point, on a failure to change the classroom paradigm (I'll add, that is something that I never thought AICC or SCORM set out to do).

The elearning industry failed to fundamentally improve the old classroom led paradigm. Big institutions still employ SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) as course developers and instructors. The elearning movement as we know it has largely failed to create tools that can effectively allow SMEs to create elearning courseware. This meant the introduction of a new class employees–IDs (Instructional Designers) and Courseware Developers. In most cases we’re talking about new hires under different managers and even departments. There’s a huge level of distrust between these groups based on paranoia, ego and organizational allegiance. All of this results in increased operational overhead (financial and development).

PING- In my experiences, when big institutions change it is either almost imperceptible slowly or relatively quickly due to major disruption or catastrophe. The good news is that for big institutions, elearning has not been a major disruption or catastrophe. Lots of big organizations get lots of content out quick, almost too quick. I'd now argue for more filters, and shorter content, and less content, as much as better content (which I think such filters would also bring).

Even better, for small and medium institutions, elearning been a huge improvement. It allows them to time-shift training with self-paced e-learning, span geography with virtual classrooms, and keep training far more current than classroom approaches and scheduling would ever allow. It makes it worthwhile to send out 5, 10 or 30 minutes of training. Far below the threshold of the duration we might expect for a class (hours or days) to take.

We shake hands after a game well played. Finally, the denouement.

All this said, there are some really fantastic people in the elearning world–maybe they’re going to kick some ass and surprise me with SCORM 2.0. :-P

I hope so Brooks. I hope you're surprised, and I hope you're one of those fantastic people.

Call for Whitepapers on SCORM- Do SOMETHING please

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:31:00 +0000

LETSI is soliciting white papers on SCORM to help identify the issues and ideas that are key priorities for the learning and training community. The submission deadline is August 15, 2008 and more information can be found on the LETSI web site SCORM 2.0 page or in the PDF file LETSI White Paper Solicitation on SCORM.

I think this is important, as we could be at the cusp of a make-or-break situation for evolution (or revolution) of learning and training infrastructure. Much of the current e-learning and LMS infrastructure is grounded in the learning and training approaches of the 1990s ('80s? '70s??). By comparison, today's technical and learning environment is much more “read-write”, collaborative, social and nomadic-- all while being more personal and individualized.

Excuse me while I meander, ramble and eventually get to the point of why it is important.

Recently, I realized I have been unwittingly (and somewhat weakly) channelling the thoughts of Dr. David Wiley regarding the isolated "read-only" static nature of LMS-centric training, by mentioning this in conversation and scattered bullet-points in presentations over the last year. I discovered this thanks to Brian Lamb, who I have never met, but who I remotely and greatly appreciate via his blog abject learning.

Brian in a passing credit mentioned that David provided a lot of meat for many of his own presentations last year, and then lead me straight to Dr. Wiley's 2007 presentation Openness, Localization and the Future of Learning Objects. If you can't take the time to watch/listen to the whole presentation, I'd strongly encourage you to advance the slides and time marker to the following points:

30:37 Engineer invasion and the next slide, Technical standards soup (Tom adds, Mea Culpa-- and I'm not even an engineer)
15:27 Education vs Everday (a more cogent expression of some ideas I discussed at AICC in Hamburg last month)
13:27 Innovative in 1995 and next slide, Education v Everyday (revisited)

If that doesn't inspire you to respond to the call for papers, perhaps it might get the attention of Dr. Wiley or Brian Lamb.

E-learning isn't completely broken, but current specifications and infrastructure don't match how we live, learn and work.

Interoperability specifications can't completely fix that, but maybe, maybe, the specification efforts can be oriented to enable and facilitate more effective and more congruent approaches. Too often they seem resistant and brittle towards innovation.

I'm certain that LETSI looks forward to learning from and sharing your white paper ideas.

Develop iPhone Web Apps w/out an iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:59:00 +0000

I saw my friend Aaron twitter a question about this topic, so I thought I'd pull together a quick post with some resources for those with a Mac (and 1-2 for Mac or Win Firefox) and general tips. Briefly the tips are:

Test using Safari with User Agent set to Mobile Safari
Preview with iPhoney application for more context & rotation testing (add latest agent string)
Use Firefox extensions User Agent Switcher, Web Developer and Firebug, and Firesizer
Use iUI code with CSS/HTML/Javascript for iPhone-style interface
Visit the Apple Web Apps Development Center and Apple iPhone Dev Center
Check out the Google Groups iPhoneWebDev
Register for iPhone DevCamp 2

Safari- Go to Preferences and check the box for Show Develop menu in menu bar.

Then you can use the menu Develop > User Agent > Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone. That will allow Safari to present itself to website (and your code) as the iPhone web browser. Hovering over a menu option will also display the full User Agent string.

iPhoney- iPhoney from MarketCircle is basically a shell around WebKit that acts like the iPhone browser, Mobile Safari. It does support rotation, but isn't exactly like iPhone (address bar can't scroll (but can be hidden), it does add vertical/horizontal scroll bars in some cases were iPhone wouldn't). That said, it is a nice way to get a quick "iPhone Preview" of any site from your laptop or desktop computer.

Tip: I found that I get more "iPhone-like" results with many sites by having iPhoney use a custom user-agent. The User Agent string below matches exactly what a web server sees for my iPhone user agent with the current firmware, whereas the iPhoney returns a slightly different version (Mobile/1A538a). Just use the appropriate menu item to enter the text below as "Custom User Agent".

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3

Switch User Agent- Firefox users (even those already using Firefox 3.0) can use the User Agent Switcher extension to also mimic the iPhone web browser user agent, with the same User Agent string as above.

Firefox extensions for Javascript development- While you're at it, you may also want to get a couple of other Firefox extension that are generally useful for web development– the Web Developer extension is from the same author as User Agent Switcher, and the latest Firebug extension beta release seems to work well with Firefox 3 (and help a lot with debugging). Firesizer ~~isn't~~ is compatible with Firefox 3 ~~(yet)~~ now, and it allows you to quickly switch Firefox to different screen sizes... helping you preview an iPhone sized window of (or even test other web sites & apps at common sizes like 1024x768).

iUI- iUI is set of CSS, HTML and Javascript that hails from Joe Hewitt of Facebook, who also originated Firebug. iUI is available from the Google code site, and includes code to provide a more iPhone-like look and feel to your web applications while providing the ability to handle page orientation changes (rotation between landscape & portrait views).

Apple Developer pages and Google Groups- There are a bunch of resources on the Apple site and there is an active iPhone Web Development Google Group too. Visit the Apple Web Apps Development Center and Apple iPhone Dev Center. Then check out the Google Groups iPhoneWebDev.

iPhoneDevCamp- Finally, there will be a second iPhoneDevCamp at the Adobe offices in San Francisco. It is scheduled for August 1-3 2008, and you should watch the official iPhoneDevCamp 2 website for more information.

Story, Comics, Manga and Elearning

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:22:00 +0000

People pay money for stories. People tell stories. People learn from stories. What is the story in recent elearning you've taken or developed?

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink cites a great quote from Ursula K. Le Guin:

The story—from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace—is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no great societies that did not tell stories.

Stories are powerful things. I love hearing, learning from and re-telling (sharing) stories. Last October, I met Dan Bliton of Booz Allen Hamilton at Learning 2007. We'd just seen Dan Pink's presentation and Mr. Pink (there are 2 Dan's in this story, but "Mr. Pink" sounds so Pulp Fiction) mentioned his upcoming book on manga. Manga had been on my radar for about a year and this seemed like an interesting area, and an area of shared interest with Dan Bliton.

One thing led to another, and now Dan Bliton is going to share a presentation he's done on on Stories, Comics, and Manga - Oh My! Making Learning Stick For Your Audience! Dan's presentation shares insights and lessons learned in several markets and from Booze Allen Hamilton's award-winning learning organization. A take-away job aid and web site references summarize the approaches discussed and list additional resources

The live e-seminar will be this coming Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT (yes, daylight savings time, the USA switches this weekend) and you can register for the e-seminar for free here:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=472090

As always, I'm looking forward to the presentation. Dan (Bliton) has a lot on stories and will even have a web comic embed in the live presentation. We might even riff a bit on manga and comics as catalysts for elearning storyboarding and user-contributed content.

I'm quite interested in the read-write nature of manga in Japanese culture. In fact, I'm already going to pre-order Dan Pink's manga book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need which is due out on April 1, 2008 (no Foolin).

A shame I won't have this in time to chime in with and ask for comments on Johnny Bunko from the other Dan. That said, the session will still be really good, and is always better with the discussion with the live audience.

The interaction, the audience and the re-telling (or the desire to re-tell) is part of what makes an event a story, and what makes the word transcend the page. With fond memories of reading The Left Hand of Darkness in my high school sci-fi literature class, I'll close with another Le Guin quote.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

Elearning Events Calendar Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:29:00 +0000

I updated the public Elearning Events Google Calendar with major industry events from April through October 2008.

Updates and additions include CLO Spring Symposium, Learning Systems 2008, WATS, Training Leadership Summit, and Learning Impact Summit, as well as events in the early Fall.

Update: CNET Reports Gizmodo Banned

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:23:00 +0000

Unsurprisingly the CEA (CES organizers) have banned Gizmodo and are looking at further sanctions.

CEA's take on CES Gizmodo prank: Banned!

This results from the earlier presentation-fouling pranks, Gizmodo CES horseplay reported all over the web.

Lesson learned for presenters & trainers, prepare for the juvenile-- turn off IR ports/devices/remotes you don't need or tape them over, or make sure they provide some basic security. Require pairing for BlueTooth devices, turn off the "Discoverable" setting, and so forth. Mac users should pair their infrared remote or even disable it if not used. Wired connections are preferred.

I'm almost surprised there haven't been widely-publicized incidents with wireless mics at conferences, yet. I guess we'll all need secured ultra-wide band wireless microphones soon.

Rapid Syndication Surfing: FeedDemon & NetNewsWire

noreply@blogger.com (Tom King) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Reading blogs has become a primary source of news for me. I sorely missed FeedDemon when I switched to Mac. Then I found about about NetNewsWire, but dawdled on buying it. Surprise, BOTH are now free. My favorite apps list just got bigger and free-er. I'll expand on the details of each below.

Feed readers make your blog reading more productive. Yes, I know about Bloglines and Google Reader (and other web-based readers), but these desktop readers are my preference for a few reasons. Those who live in the browser or bounce between machines may prefer web-hosted solutions. However, putting me in front of a browser, leaves me itching to hit a few favorite bookmarks, check AdSense, frequent flyer miles and other BBADD ideas (Browser-based Attention Deficit Disorder). Plus, lately I've been getting paranoid about having ALL my data at Google, so I spread the data to make the harvesting a little harder, even if that expands the password/identity hassles/risks.

The "fog of surfing" quickly crushes my plans for focused RSS raids in Firefox (apologies to Carl von Clausewitz). In contrast, I find that FeedDemon gives a comforting and quick "customized newspaper" my favorite feeds. NetNewsWire has a little different interface paradigm, but I can still sail through feed faster than plain surfing, Firefox Sage extension surfing or using Bloglines and succumbing to BBADD temptations.

UPDATE 1/11/07: Nick Bradbury himself discusses, Why Use a Desktop RSS Reader? (Note he does NOT make it a all-or-nothing argument like some).

Windows RSS Reader: FeedDemon now $0
FeedDemon comes from the genius of Nick Bradbury, who also developed the original HomeSite HTML editor. I bought FeedDemon years ago when he sold it directly. I've always loved the newspaper view and the innovative blog-search-results-feed. The search lets you create a "feed" that is the dynamic results of searching across blogs-- VERY handy when you want to stay on top of emerging news on a few related topics of interest.

Mac RSS Reader: NetNewsWire now $0
This one is a little newer to me, but I'm liking it a lot after 2 days of heavy use. NetNewsWire has the features you'd expect and a nice capability to open posts in either your preferred browser or the built-in browser. Opening things in the built-in browser reduces the clutter, while still letting you easily read the full-featured verison of the posts. Besides an nice Outlook-eque 3 panel view, the NetNewsWire browser pane also includes sharp, useful thumbnail views of each open "tab" of blog posts content.

Both readers really shine if you use the feature to clean-out infrequently read feeds (literally NetNewsWire "dinosaurs"). For further blog-reading productivity boosts, you can become a FeedDemon speed demon by applying the Inbox Zero techniques from the 43 Folders organizational site to RSS reading. I've tried it and it works great!

Speaking of BBADD behavior, have you seen the Gizmodo CES horseplay? I'm not sure I'd be proud of that.