What a segue. the Malaria No More bed nets made it to Mali Africa almost 2 weeks ago. Soon after they arrived, Elliott Masie posted a few interesting videos about the impact the nets will have and even some information on how local health advocates engage in learning and training. Here’s an interesting video on the train-the-trainer and communications for the “Health Relays:” Field Lessons. There are other interesting observations and videos on the Learning Gives Back blog , that address everything from differences in mobile phone culture, to holidays, and even a bit on the Amazon Kindle.

One more bit on the One Laptop Per Child. Read what children and teachers are saying about OLPC and the XO at Learning Around the World. If you miss the December 31, 2007 deadline for Give One, Get One and are still interested, there are other Ways to Donate.

It was kind of cool to get the jump on folks like ZDNet and have real Amazon Kindle review done by last Monday. Their “initial impressions” reviews just showed up in my inbox today. However, last Monday, Elliott Masie shared his take on the Kindle in a video posted for the Masie Learning Consortium and also posted a PDF of my review. Recently the same material was also shared with the broader learning community via the Learning TRENDS Newsletter he publishes. Here’s a quote from the December 5, 2007 entry:

Kindle Reader from Amazon – Perspectives: We have been testing the new Kindle Reader device recently released by Amazon. This is the latest in a series of e-book readers that we have seen and reviewed at The MASIE Center. While the new device has some flaws and usability challenges (including the absence of a touch screen), it is an important “baby step” towards the dream of more accessible digital content. Just as Apple’s iPod and the iTunes site popularized the concept of buying and downloading a song for a dollar, Kindle is aimed at doing the same for books. Our Learning CONSORTIUM will be doing a series of experiments with the Kindle and other e-Readers to see how they could best be integrated into corporate learning. You can take a peek at our work by going to http://www.masieweb.com/kindle.

Elliott has a nice 6 minute video overview on the page at the link above, which also has a link to a PDF that he has referred to as, “[Tom King has done] a more technical, in-depth “first look” at content models for the Kindle as well as human factor issues.” Cool and not even entirely self-promotion for me. :-)

Speaking of promotion, if you plan to purchase a Kindle, please consider using the link below so that I will receive an Amazon Associates referral fee. Thanks.

Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device

While we’re all in a thankful and charitable mood, how about helping to stop malaria for $10?

In many developing areas a simple mosquito net can help save children’s lives by protecting them from nocturnal mosquito bites (ok, technically mosquitoes are crepusclar instead of nocturnal, but who knew that). Insecticide-resistant mosquitoes are emerging and a cheap $10 net can be quite effective at protecting vulnerable young children when they are most likely to be bitten. Malaria No More is a non-profit that helps procure and distribute such nets. I was lucky enough to be able to donate at Learning 2007 and have gone back and donated again since then.

Malaria No More – Education and Donation Information

If you’re not familiar with twitter yet, I have some links to share to help you understand twitter or even activate twitter for your phone. You can also find people/events to follow without signing-up.

It is far less avant-garde now, but still quite useful to use a wiki. I’ll also try to update the Learning 2007 wiki for session that I am facilitating (or even those I attend) That’s all the best of intent though. We’ll see what really happens as I head into the blizzard of ideas and activities that seems to define a Masie Learning event.

Here are the wiki pages for the sessions that I am directly involved with:

• e-Learning 101: Fundamentals and Futures (with Tomás Ramírez) [Sunday - 9:00am to 3:45pm]
• iPhone and Learning (w/ Ez Yap & Jared Frisby, both from Apple, and Masie Fellow Judy Brown) [Tuesday - 1:30pm to 2:30pm]
• SCORM: 10 Years After and 10 Years Ahead (hmm, lets see who I can get to guest star. Any volunteers?) [Wednesday - 8:30am to 9:45am]

I think Larry Israelite has made me a (dis)honorary member of the Liars Club (Learning Edition), so I may be a drop-in at his More Lies About Learning session too. (btw, check out his Lies About Learning book now in paperback).

Whew. It’s late here (1:20am Satuday) and I have lots to do tomorrow.

Please consider contributing to any of the wiki pages, or sending a tweet. I’m interested to learn what ideas you might have for the L07 twitter and how we could use it. You might even comment here on the blog.

I heard some trends on the call that people are both observing and hopeful for these trends continuing. One trend (or goal), is moving training departments from a cost center to a revenue & performance contributor; integrating what was “training” into performance, knowledge, collaboration & compliance integration. This may take a variety of forms.

An additional trend was the increasing role of leaders in leadership development. More organizations are seeing their own leadership as critical in being active participants, presenters and resources in leadership development training.

Another one of the many trends discussed was the move to shorter & tighter e-learning modules and transitioning of learning modules into performance support tools. I couldn’t agree more and I think this is reflected in all the Rapid Elearning and SME-authoring trends and tools we’ve seen in the last 4 years. That said, there will always be a need for fundamental skill development, and it is my opinion that performance support and SME-authoring are not the most effective approaches for fundamental skills development.

Elliott also made some predictions that he stands behind and are quite clear. The predictions focus on disruptive (to me, enabling) technologies that will undoubtedly impact organizations in the next 2-4 years. They are Multi-touch and haptic interfaces (like the iPhone uses), ubiquitous mobile device with parity in broadband connection speed relative to current desktops, and mobile devices with “big” high-resolution display capability (it may be in the form of wearable, virtual or projected screens or ???).

There was tons more talked about and it wouldn’t be fair for me to publish it all here. So if you are a Learning Consortium member and missed the call, be sure to visit the members site and check out the recording later (hint: login and scan the page or use search to find ‘podcast’). Who knows, your organization might already be a member as many big corporation are, or your organization can consider joining.

Great Debate: 610 Instructional Design is Dead!

I open my email and there’s a note from Tony Karrer. He’s asking me to re-engage with the ASTD Learning Circuits Blog and join in the fray on this month’s Big Question:

Are ISD/ADDIE/HPT relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time-to-performance, and informal learning?

Hmm, are we spotting a trend here? Mid-life crisis for Instructional Design? (Can’t be me, I sold my convertible last August. sniff)

Or this like that triple-positive biorhythm day in college where you could turn the same paper in for 2 or 3 classes? Hmm, speaking of college maybe I should go back to school and study Competencies or Knowledge Management. Seems like these are the new buzzwords for enterprise learning systems. Nah, this ISD "fad" thing paid for the last convertible, so I’ll stick with it for a bit. Who knows, maybe I should check Adobe job listings.