Barry Sampson – Page 3 – Onlignment Archive

Home Telepresence Coming This Week (Rumour)

There are plenty of rumours running around that at a scheduled press event on Wednesday morning Cisco will be unveiling consumer telepresence. According to Kara Swisher at All Things Digital the hardware will cost between $200 and $500 in the US, although the lower price may be subsidised by the network carrier.
There’s no doubt that the full telepresence experience is impressive, but will the same experience be possible when piped through your home TV or PC?
We’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see if the rumours are true, but if they are is this something that you would be interested in using at home?

Top Ten Tools 2010

^{Image by yoppy}
Since 2007, Jane Hart has been inviting learning professionals around the world to contribute to her crowdsourced list of the top 100 tools for learning.
This is my contribution for 2010 (in no particular order).

Twitter has become my favourite way to connect with people online, and one of the first places I go to when searching for information. The unexpected and serendipitous connections you make can be at least as useful as the deliberate ones.
Skype has little competition when it comes to voip for consumers and small businesses. It’s the tool I’m most likely to use for voice communication, and for the last two years I’ve done away with a business landline and replaced it with a Skype number.
WordPress is the open source software that this blog runs on, as does my personal blog. Anyone that knows me will know I’m a big fan of Drupal (and nothing can beat it for complex projects) but with version 3.0 WordPress has became the ideal tool for simpler projects.
Evernote is my ‘external brain’, the place that I use to record anything I may want to refer to in future. It’s brilliant because it’s accessible on all of my devices. It’s largely replaced delicious for me as I had too many instances of saving bookmarks to sites that later disappeared.
Instapaper is a fabulous service that allows you to save content for later reading, and presents it in a consistent and wonderfully readable format. I save content from wherever I’m browsing, but will usually read it using the Instapaper iPad app.
Google Reader/Reeder is still the best feed reader I’ve found. The only thing that’s made it better for me in the past year is using Reeder on the iPhone and iPad to access my account. I can’t imagine reading the quantity of content that I do in any other way.
Google Chrome has pretty much become my browser of choice. I gave up on Firefox a long time tme ago (too slow and buggy) and although it’s improved a lot recently Safari hasn’t quite kept up with Chrome in terms of speed and stability.
Dropbox is one of those services that you just can’t believe anyone wouldn’t be using. It’s simply the best way to keep my Macs in sync and make all of my content available on my phone, iPad and from any browser. Just brilliant!
The iPad has already been mentioned in this list in terms of some of the apps I use, but it deserves its own place in the list. I think we’ve only just scratched the surface of what this kind of device will enable.
Webex Meet is a service that is in beta and currently free for meetings of up to 4 people. If I need something more complex than Skype, such as document sharing, this is my tool of choice. Whether they are able to maintain it as a free service remains to be seen.

You can add your contribution here.

Working with the iPad

It’s now two months since the iPad was launched in the UK, and so it’s timely that people are starting to comment on how they and others are using it. Inspired by these and other posts I thought I would jot down my own thoughts on how the iPad fits into my toolset.
The first time I took the iPad out, my laptop came along too as I couldn’t quite convince myself that the iPad would do everything I needed. Since then unless I know that I will specifically need it (such as for development work) the laptop has stayed at home; the iPad has quickly become my main portable device for business. I regularly travel up to London, and previously my bag would contain my laptop, its power supply, a paper notebook and usually whatever book I happen to be reading. Now all I take is the iPad. It really does have a battery that lasts all day, and combine that with no wait to boot up, and it really is just such a convenient device for accessing… well, everything.
I work at home, so the line between work and non-work activity has a tendency to blur, but the iPad somehow makes that less intrusive. I think perhaps because it’s so quick and easy to access things, activity like checking for an important email you’re waiting for is less likely to open the door to doing other things. In fact, one of the things I like most about it is the way it forces you to be focussed, because although background multitasking is on its way you can only ever be in one app at a time so there’s far less opportunity for distraction.
Some people have commented that at 16, 32 or 64GB it doesn’t have the capacity for serious work, but that hasn’t been a problem for me. All of my content lives in the cloud in one of three places – DropBox, Evernote or Google Docs, so if I want access to something I just open it via WiFi or 3G. The days of carrying your actual data around with you are pretty much gone, even if we don’t quite have ubiquitous access to the net yet. For the curious, my 32GB iPad currently has 26GB free, although I suppose I should mention that I don’t keep any music on it as that all lives on my iPod Classic.
Irrespective of location it has become my favourite tool for online communication, whether that’s via email, Twitter or other social networking tools. That has had the knock on benefit of keeping those things off my desktop when I’m working. I’ve also found that I manage my RSS consumption much more efficiently on the iPad, although that may be more down to the app I use (Reeder) rather than the iPad itself.
I guess you can’t talk about the iPad without mentioning its lack of support for Flash, but for me that’s really been a non-issue as it’s yet to stop me doing anything.
Despite having reasonably large hands I’ve found the on screen keyboard to be surprisingly good, but then I can’t touch type anyway so I don’t have a great typing speed to start with. If I know that I’m going to be doing a lot of typing I will take my Apple wireless keyboard with me too.
At Onlignment we’re all about working virtually, and the iPad is proving its worth as my portable virtual office. Apps from Skype, Webex and Adobe Connect mean I can be connected with the rest of the team wherever I am. I’ve no regrets about buying the first generation iPad, but I’m excited by the opportunities that future versions will bring.
Image Source: Apple UK

Getting the job done with live online training

At the eLN Showcase event on 9th July, the Onlignment team each presented a Pechu Kucha (20 slides, each 20 seconds in duration). Today we present Phil’s session, titled Getting the job done with live online training.
Most training is carried out live in the classroom or on-the-job, but face-to-face instruction is not always the most practical or cost-effective option. Web conferencing allows you to continue to offer live training but without the need for all participants to be present in the same location. The ‘virtual classroom’ is ideal for running short training sessions, follow-ups, seminars and meetings. In this Pecha Kucha session, you’ll learn how leading organisations are making use of web conferencing to provide more training more efficiently and how they have equipped their classroom instructors to make a successful transition to online delivery.

Enjoyable Elearning – Is it an oxymoron?

At the eLN Showcase event on 9th July, the Onlignment team each presented a Pechu Kucha (20 slides, each 20 seconds in duration). This week we’ll make them all available here, and we start with Clive’s session titles Enjoyable Elearning – Is it an oxymoron?.
We all know that elearning is growing in popularity, primarily because it’s efficient. It helps employers by cutting travel costs and allowing more training to happen more quickly. It helps employees because it allows them to obtain learning when and where it suits them. But none of this means that learners ‘like’ elearning; for many it’s just another mundane chore. So is it possible for elearning to be enjoyable, or is this an oxymoron?

Photos from the eLN Showcase

Here are a few photos from last week’s eLN Showcase event in London.

Join us at the eLN Showcase

The Onlignment Team will be at the eLearning Network Member’s Showcase next week, which will be taking place in London’s West End on Friday 9th July. This year’s event is jam packed with inspiring and informative sessions and provides a fantastic opportunity to network with your peers in the eLearning Community.

Five great reasons to join us at the eLN Showcase

1. Win an iPad – Anyone who registers and attends the event will be entered into a draw to win an Apple iPad, the most talked about gadget of the year!
2. Attend for free – As sponsors we have a limited number of free places to give out, so if you’d like to attend as our guest, please email Viv at the Onlignment office.
3. Pick up a free book – We’ll be giving away printed copies of the latest edition of our book ‘Live Online Learning – A facilitator’s guide’
4. Meet the team – The Onlignment team will be around all day, so why not come and say hello?
5. The Pecha Kucha half hour – Clive, Barry and Phil will be presenting three Pecha Kucha sessions. If you’ve never seen this before, it involves a presentation of 20 slides, with each one set to advance after 20 seconds. It’s guaranteed to be entertaining!

Clive Shepherd – Enjoyable elearning – is it an oxymoron?
We all know that elearning is growing in popularity, primarily because it’s efficient. It helps employers by cutting travel costs and allowing more training to happen more quickly. It helps employees because it allows them to obtain learning when and where it suits them. But none of this means that learners ‘like’ elearning; for many it’s just another mundane chore. So is it possible for elearning to be enjoyable, or is this an oxymoron? In his Pecha Kucha session, Clive Shepherd looks at the barriers to enjoyable elearning and suggests some solutions.
Barry Sampson – Overcoming objections to social media
Just a couple of years ago it was hard to find any serious use of social media within the workplace, and yet now it’s commonplace to see blogs, wikis and other collaborative tools being used. Adding social learning to the blend can enhance the learning experience, increase engagement and at the same time reduce the time and cost involved in more traditional approaches. So why do some organisations find it so hard to get started? In his Pecha Kucha session, Barry will address some of the common objections that L&D might face when adding social learning to the blend.
Phil Green – Getting the job done with live online training
Most training is carried out live in the classroom or on-the-job, but face-to-face instruction is not always the most practical or cost-effective option. Web conferencing allows you to continue to offer live training but without the need for all participants to be present in the same location. The ‘virtual classroom’ is ideal for running short training sessions, follow-ups, seminars and meetings. In this Pecha Kucha session, you’ll learn how leading organisations are making use of web conferencing to provide more training more efficiently and how they have equipped their classroom instructors to make a successful transition to online delivery.

Interoperability Matters

Despite the increasing use of web conferencing, instant messaging, and social media tools in the workplace, email shows no sign of disappearing. There are plenty of arguments for and against email, but it has one very big plus that most other systems don’t have; no matter which email system you’re using, you know it’s interoperable with everyone else’s email system.

Imagine if GMail users could only email other GMail users, or if you could only email other people inside your organisation. Of course, it would take away most of the benefits of using email. It works because everyone adopted the same set of standards, and although there may sometimes be inconsistencies with style and formatting, you know you can usually rely on the message being delivered.

The same can’t be said for web conferencing and telepresence platforms, and it’s easy to understand why the platform vendors like to keep things closed; they usually work on a per seat licence basis that wouldn’t stand up to a more open model. It’s hard to imagine email (or the telephone, mobile phones or text messaging) becoming as commonplace as they have, if the user was tied to a particular vendor, software, hardware or network.

I’d like to see this same open approach to standards applied to web conferencing, because I’m sure that it would increase overall adoption. It seems to me that the budget decision to invest in this kind of platform must be easier to justify if you can demonstrate more opportunities to use it.

Things may be heading in the right direction. When Cisco aquired Tandberg, they announced that they would be adopting their own Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) and that they would open source it, a commitment that they recently delivered on. It allows interoperability between Cisco and Tandberg telepresence systems, as well as any third party system that supports it. At the moment that’s limited to Cisco’s own Webex Meeting Centre, and Microsoft Office Communicator, but let’s hope that other vendors adopt the same standard, rather than introducing their own.