eLearning eVolution

I read an article in the Boston Globe today that said that many students no longer have much recollection of the events of 9/11, as they experienced them at such a young age. Lessons for today are turning more into historical facts vs. a discussion of remembrances. My memories are still so alive. After all, 8 years ago in an adult’s life seems like just yesterday. And it was 8 years ago on 9/11 that I experienced “continuity of learning” without even realizing it.

Early morning 9/11, I was at work planning for a Customer Advisory Council meeting. I worked for a company that developed virtual learning products, and I needed to learn about what educators needed in future versions. My meeting was to be held online, using web conferencing technology, the next day.

At 9:10 on 9/11, I abandoned my preparation efforts to watch the replays of the twin towers being hit by 2 planes, crowded into a cubical with co-workers all standing in silence. As the day went on, I worried about my family living in the NY area, my co-workers and neighbors who headed to Logan Airport that morning for a flight, and colleagues at a conference in NYC. Like everyone, I experienced distraction, confusion, anxiety, and grief. This was not a business-as-usual day. Would tomorrow be?

The next day, 9/12, was my big Council meeting. I attended my online event from home. As invitees began to enter the virtual room from all over the U.S., I greeted them and said “I’m really not sure what to expect today.” I was referring to meeting attendance, but my comment triggered discussion about concerns of the nation that day. It turned out that in the end my online session was quite successful despite the crisis situation.

In retrospect, the worries I had about my meeting were incredibly minor compared those who were faced with life and family changes as a result of 9/11. They were:

- Would everyone attend? — Why not. Flights were all grounded but internet service was fine. My online meeting was on and reachable at the click of a link.

- Would this session even happen today? — Why not. People displaced by shutdowns or who chose to work from home for safety merely attended from a different PC-equipped location. They had participated in online sessions so many times before. Only their chairs were different now.

- Would we be in the mindset? Sure. Live interaction and discussion allowed for a brief but needed decompress. After that, we were ready to focus on something engaging and positive.

As they say in times of death, life goes on. In times of crisis, learning and productivity can go on, too.

- Donna Christopher, Elluminate Director of Marketing

Gary here. Giving Beth a break today.

For those of you that don’t know, Seth Godin, marketing guru, has a blog. And he also answers all his e-mail. In fact, in one of them, he turned down the opportunity to use Elluminate gratis for some of his web interaction with his clients.

I got the feeling from his reply to me and from reading his posts and his books (and this is my feeling, not a quote or paraphrase from Seth) that Seth doesn’t like the “webinar format” because of some of the plaque surrounding the typical “bad” webinar:

• bad powerpoint
• no interactivity
• bad powerpoint
• and bad powerpoint

So when I saw this post by him, I was intrigued.

Has Seth begun to come around? Does he not realize that chat, sychronized with audio, is the beginning of true collaboration on the web? That web collaboration NEEDN’T BE ABOUT POWERPOINT?

It is kind of hard to get across that my product is really useful since I am vendor scum and people assume I will lie, but I and my peers live ALL DAY on Elluminate Live! and an as yet unannounced new product from Elluminate (ahem…) and I really HATE the phone. If I am on the phone with somebody doing work or teaching or even just shooting the breeze – I want to draw! I want to take notes! I want to see their notes! I want to make snide comments from the peanut gallery (when appropriate)! I want to show my desktop or a web page or an application I am working on!

Not to mention, that with my cool Yamaha PJP-25UR echo cancelling mic and speaker, I get better audio quality across VoIP on my PC than I do on my standard phone. (I feel like Liz Lemon on 30 Rock pitching Snapple.)

So Seth, the door is still open. Redefine the word webinar to yourself. In fact, throw it out! Use Elluminate (or, G-d forbid, another tool) on your Mac or your PC and truly collaborate in real time beyond your phone and text chat. Think the phone and text chat are great for creative thinkers and teachers? Wait til you take the next step.

Cheers,

Gary Dietz

The Elluminate Center of Excellence program recognizes achievement in live eLearning and web collaboration, highlights best practices, and showcases those organization on the “learning-edge” of adopting synchronous pedagogies for teaching, learning, and related business processes.

This year’s 2009 Elluminate Centers of Excellence include:

- Broward County Public Schools for utilizing Web 2.0 and distance learning technologies to manage organizational change while implementing a structured approach to training to reach a large volume of individuals needing just-in-time training.

- Center for Distance Learning and Innovation for providing equitable access to educational opportunities to almost 1000 students in 113 schools throughout Newfoundland and Labrador in a way that makes distance transparent.

- eLearning Broward for significantly increasing attendance of live and recorded online workshops to include thousands of adult students, enabling them to improve academic skills, increase proficiency and confidence with technology, and increase number of diplomas earned.

- McMaster University for achieving an accelerated adoption rate of live eLearning and web collaboration technology system wide for distance education, research, and administration, while increasing efficiency and reducing costs for a number of high-profile projects on a global level.

- University Alliance for delivering professional development programs that lower training costs and reduce loss of productivity, while meeting or exceeding traditional face-to-face programs and maintaining level of excellence required by a Fortune 500 company.

- University of Hertfordshire for upporting mission of Blended Learning Unit to motivate and enable academic staff to transform their teaching and learning, engage with colleagues across the higher education sector, and participate in professional development activities.

Click here to read all about their individual achievements and view their recorded submission sessions. Prepare to be inspired!

Have you achieved real-world results using Elluminate technologies? Apply now for 2010.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

In these trying economic times, it’s important for brick and mortar schools to look for opportunities to extend their reach and offer additional services in a cost-effective way. For Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas, the answer was their new Online Campus. The cool part is that they used their new Elluminate virtual classroom as a promotion medium to reach more students and parents, giving them an opportunity to try the new technology for themselves. Pretty clever! Learn more by reading this new case study.

Keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Times are tough all over. I was just reading an article, “BCC Faces Major State Funding Cuts” in the Bellevue Community College student paper about the school facing $838,000 in budget cuts for the 2008/2009 fiscal year, including decreasing faculty travel expenses by 50%.

So that means, like a lot of other schools, BCC has to get serious about reducing spending, innovative about meeting the needs of students, and creative about sustaining mission-critical initiatives like professional development. PD, in particular, has been on my mind lately as its often one of the first things cut from a strained budget.

Luckily, BCC will use Elluminate to replace some travel with web conferences. Here are some Elluminate resources that can help you make the case for online learning, meeting, and professional development.
- Top Ten Benefits of Using Elluminate Live!
- Top Ten Ways of Promoting Adoption of Elluminate Live!
- Top Ten Ways of Using Elluminate Live!

Keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

I’m sure this is a questions those of us in the eLearning world often ask ourselves. Well, according to Sting’s Teachning Tips blog (no, not that Sting), there are a number of basic characteristics a successful online facilitator should have:

- Life experience
- Openness, concern, flexibililty, and sincerity
- Comfort with written communication
- Accepts value of online learning
- Ability to introduce critical thinking into the learning process
- Appropriate credentials to teach subject matter
- Trained in online learning experience

Interesting. Learn more here.

At Elluminate, we’ve got some ideas as well. Here’s our “Top Ten Habits of Highly Effective Moderators.” My favorite is: smile and your participants will smile with you. Enjoy!

And keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communcation

Here is some mythbusting about eLearning provided by Clive Shepard, a consultant in the UK. His blog is called Clive on Learning. These are Clive’s three synchronouf eLearning myths:

- Myth #1: One hour is enough for anyone. Evidently there’s quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

- Myth #2: Classroom will always be best. Sometimes you can get better results in the virtual classrooom.

- Myth #3: Just one more death by Powerpoint. Looks like people are pretty creative when it comes to live eLearning.

Any additional myths about live eLearning you’d live to debunk?

Keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

I recently ran across a ‘virtual paper’ (which is a great idea by the way) on blip.tv about “Collaborating by Design,” where author and presenter Hazel Owen of Unitec New Zealand discusses a process model and framework you can use to get started with ICTELT (Information, Communmication Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching).

One of the basic things to understand about using technology for online collaboration is that you must move from a teacher-centered to a learning-centered approach. In other words, it’s more important what the student does than what the teacher does, says Owen. And while it’s tempting to just let the technology dictate the online activities, pedagogy should actually be the driving force. In my mind, the technology should be as invisible as possible to facilitate a focus on teaching and learning.

Owen believes it’s all about meeting the needs of today’s students, who are sophisticated users of technology and who expect online or blended sessions where formal or informal collaboration can happen. In fact, interactive online activities are very important to collaborative learning. Something we understand at Elluminate.

Interestingly enough, Owen tests her model at Dubai Men’s College, a great story in itself. Enjoy.

Keep on Elluminating.

Beth – Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Wondering what the future holds for eLearning? Well here’s the scoop, according to our Fearless Leader Maurice Heiblum.

Here are some highlights:
- Major factors that have influenced eLearning are the Internet, globalization, and social networks.

- The education paradigm has evolved from institution centered to learner centered.

- Today’s students want to be empowered to learn the way they want to learn with a personalized experience.

- Learning has to be flexible, offering a physical classroom, asynchronous eLearning, and collaborative online learning, portable learning, and more.

- The eLearning technology adoption cycle is speeding up.

- To build a success flexible learning framework, you need three foundational elements: infrastructure that leverages computers and Internet, learning and social technologies for all students, and professional development to facilitate online teaching.

Take the time to listen to the entire session recording. You won’t be disappointed!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

As a writer, I love alliteration, so I was attracted to the title above for its own sake as well as for the topic. The title comes from Niall Sclater of The Open University, an Elluminate customer in the UK. Read his entire posting. Plus, you can read how The Open University is deploying synchronous collaboration enterprise wide here.

The tips he passes on deal with planning, creating, practicing, delivering, recording, and getting feedback. Here are a couple of additional resources I’d like to add for getting the most out of your synchronous session.

- Elluminate Plan! enables you to create session content and script activities before the live session. Then during the session, you simply execute the plan to automate routine tasks. This enables you to concentrate on the interaction, which is the point of most live sessions. You can get a free 30-day trial of Plan! here.

- Elluminate Publish! enables you to create podcasts or standalone recordings of any Elluminate Live! session. So this gives you more ways to engage participants even after the fact. You can get a free 30-day trial here.

So the idea is to engage, empower, enlighten, and Elluminate. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication