The Department of State’s Tech@State team will be hosting the 5^th edition of Tech@State events at the Jack Morton Auditorium in the Media and Public Affairs building of George Washington University on Friday May 27 and Saturday May 28. Over 200 attendees will “explore the mechanics of games, business and sustainability, design, education, international aspects, games for social change and much more.”

MetroStar Systems will be supporting the Tech@State team with our MyStanly twitter moderation/display application, and our CEO Ali Manouchehri is slated to speak on two separate panels on Day 1. He will first address the topic of “Games, Business and Sustainability” and then present with a panel about “Military and Government games”.  The event features an impressive collection of government, academic, non-profit, and industry experts/tech innovators who will be sharing their experiences and exploring many aspects of serious games. The agenda and complete schedule is now available at the Tech@State blog.

Here are some additional URL links that may be helpful if you are interested in attending or want more information:

• Tech@State website:  http://tech.state.gov/
• Tech@State: Serious Games event registration:  http://techatstate-srsgames.eventbrite.com/
• Event Agenda & Schedule:  http://tech.state.gov/profiles/blogs/serious-games-content-and
• Bios of speakers & panelists:  http://tech.state.gov/profiles/blogs/serious-games-speaker-bios

For those of you who cannot attend the event, you are in luck! This event will be live streamed on Tech@State’s UStream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-state.  You can also follow the conversation on twitter by searching the hashtag #TechAtState and following our live tweets @metrostarsystem.

*** Updated 5/31/2011 ***

The event was a great success with excellent panels, great presentations, and great ideas shared. Here is a video of the “Military and Government Games” panel that Ali moderated at the end of Day 1:

Video streaming by Ustream

I attended a couple of sessions at the Congress Camp ‘unconference’ a few weeks ago at George Washington University.

I had never attended an unconference before so part of my reason was to get a feel for what they’re all about.  My weekend itinerary was jam-packed so I was only able to attend 2 sessions and lunch but even so it was definitely worth my time to come out.

Engaging Citizens in Subcommittees

The first session I participated in was focused on the question of how to get citizens engaged in Congressional Subcommittees when legislation is getting drafted.  The major issue was that drafts of legislation are usually written under tight deadlines and as a result Congressional staffers often have difficulty performing the requisite research for the bills.  The result is that staffers often rely on lobbyists and small groups of experts to provide input for drafting policy.  Citizens rarely gain any influence into the process.

But now with advent of Web 2.0 tools Congressmen have the opportunity to solicit and incorporate citizen input into the subcommittee legislation creation process.

• How does one determine the location and identity of participants?
• How to verify the expertise or quality of user submitted opinions, data, content?
• How to incorporate citizen input in a timely manner?
• How to moderate comments and user forums?

The consensus from the participants was that the technology exists to answer all of the major questions.  The major challenge then is to craft technical solutions to mitigate the human challenges to citizen participation.

My take on things was that crowdsourced input could be filtered by a rating/moderation system.  Some of the participants brought up concerns about the quality of citizen content but the answer to that is that no system is going to be 100% clean and tidy, and at the very least there’s a chance of finding outstanding citizen ideas and solutions if they are engaged (as opposed to now where there is little to no chance of this).

A good idea that came from the session was that one need not to use an approach the relies totally on random citizen input nor totally on expert opinions.  A hybrid approach of sorts could possibly get the best of both worlds.

Advocacy Software

The advocacy software session was focused on issues that the current crop of advocacy software creates for the Congressional offices that deal with the output of said software.

One of the overarching issues that came up was that of authenticity.  How does one go about ensuring that communication from constituents is real?  How do you make sure the 10,000 emails your office received on an issue actually corresponds to 10,000 people who feel the same way? When advocacy software is generating this mountain of email it’s hard to tell.

There was one Congressional staffer in this session who shared some of the problems his office encountered.  One is that advocacy groups often send emails on issues on the behalf of constituents who opt into their mailing list.  But when the Congressman’s office tries to contact some of these citizens who sent these emails sometimes the citizen either didn’t agree with the position written in the email or had no idea an email was sent on their behalf.

One attendee posed a provocative question about whether or not email as a marketing tool or advocacy tool is still relevant or effective.  The email campaigns generated by some of the advocacy software solutions are so rife with useless email that many times Congressional offices simply ignore them.  With each passing day email-based marketing becomes less and less effective.

To me, this is a piece of a very large problem on the internet, which is, ‘How do we filter content so that we can find the valuable stuff and ignore the worthless stuff?’ Some combination of filtering, authentication, and new forms of communication will probably be the answer. In other words, it doesn’t seem like there is a silver bullet as of yet.

The session closed up with a discussion of some political advocacy software that is available commercially. There was also discussion of an open source solution called CiviCRM that can plug into the Drupal content management system. Ultimately I didn’t get much out of that discussion since I had never used that sort of software.

Conclusion(s)

A lot of the issues that were discussed boiled down to the question of how best to incorporate Web 2.0 principles into the Congressional law-making process. A major part of the challenge is to convince Congressmen and their staff of the value of interacting with their constituents using technology.

A significant opportunity exists for companies who develop solutions that solicit and organize constituent input to help Congressmen craft better legislation. Any solutions developed to that end will have applications to other parts of government as well, or even the private sector.

Lessons Learned

*I opted not to haul my laptop out for this event.  Big mistake, always bring your laptop so you can try out websites that come up or blog or tweet about the events.

*Some folks spiced up their ‘Hello My Name Is’ tags with some pieces of flair as well as their twitter accounts.  Must do the same next time.

*Live blogging next time might be useful.

*If one intends to lead a session at an unconference, it pays to do a few things right:

• Have an interesting and informative title for your session
• Have a rough plan on your topics of discussion
• Graphics or metrics would be useful, but ditch the boring powerpoint slides
• Personal anecdotes and authenticity go a long way when getting your point across

You can visit http://congresscamp.org/ for complete event info, photos, case studies, tools and other useful resources.

Our event emcees are Shonali Burke, Principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, and DC Hughes, Photojournalist/Multimedia Producer for Lemur News Images and Lemur News Audio.

Shonali Burke & DC Hughes

Beth Kanter

Our first speaker is Beth Kanter, Scholar in Residence, The Packard Foundation. Beth’s first foray into social media included her own blog, and the Cambodia4Kids.Org blog.

Throughout her time in the field, Beth noted four themes in Social media:

• Working in a networked way
• Art of Network Weaving
• Transparency
• Creating a social culture in the organization (behind the firewall)

My favorite of those is network weaving! What is Network-weaving? It is working through a network in a way that makes every node within that network stronger by way of each other node. A sort of Rhizomatic growth, that is, growth where every bud within the organism receives nourishment from the other buds.

Key takeaways from her talk:

• We need to work within our network so it can spread and grow.
• We need to learn and play within transparency.
• We need to work with our clients and our organizations as change agents within the firewall.
• Management should become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Shel Israel

Next, it’s our keynote speaker: Shel Israel (@shelIsrael). Shel worked for years as a journalist at the Daily Reporter. When he ran into tougher times, he worked into Social Media and blogging. It was his way of doing what he loved, and to do it independently. When he decided to write a book, he was offered just $2,000 for 6 months. It wasn’t until he teamed up with Robert Scoble that he was able to finish Naked Conversations.

He reluctantly joined, then a new social network, Twitter. He was taken by its rapidness and effectiveness in connecting with people. It was finally the James Buck incident (of getting himself out of Egyptian jail using Twitter) that drew Shel to write his next book, Twitterville.

He’s pleased to see the growth of Twitter. Politicians are finally realizing that it is a two-way street. School systems are using it to alert students of closings and events.

“What Social Media allows any institution to do is listen and respond in ways that they could not previously do. And this hits the nerve that we all have. We don’t hate large institutions because they’re large institutions. We hate them because they’d rather spend 50 years [broadcasting and] reducing us to eyeballs…Twitter allows us to see that there are real people in government, in Microsoft…and they start listening and try to do better.”

“Social Media is just a bunch of tools. You could use a tool to build a house or to kill your spouse. It’s really up to you; but the guy who invented the hammer doesn’t have a say.”

“The newspaper industry was not clueless. They saw ‘this’ coming before we did.”

Shel on the future:

• We are entering the normalization phase of Social Media
• We are looking at a slower but steadier growth
• They said about the telephone that businesses would be crazy to let such a device in. But the truth is, “Whoever starts the stuff doesn’t have a lot of say on how the stuff is used.”

Natalia Luckyanova

Next up: Natalia Luckyanova (@nattylux), co-founder of Imangi Studios. Imangi Studios is a two-person operation that builds Mobile games (mainly for the iPhone). They use social media extensively to promote their brand, listen to their gamers, and interact with them.

Beyond just their own marketing, they get plenty of attention from other businesses who wish to create mobile apps for their brands. Being such a saturated market, it is imperative for mobile app developers (especially those associated with the iPhone and AppStore) to generate adequate buzz and excitement pre-launch, and early on. Mobile apps have very short shelf-lives.

Another change in the mobile app world is in the realm of mobile gaming: the realization (finally!) on behalf of game developers and their organizations that they should be marketing  more to women and girls. There are more women in the gaming audience as well as on the development side. One thing Natalia’s team has done is include a very large pool of women in their focus groups.

A great question posed was regarding mobile apps geared toward nonprofits. Beth Kanter pointed out a great resource on this subject: http://gamesforchange.org

Andy Carvin

A very welcome late edition to the speaker list is Andy Carvin (@acarvin), social media strategist at NPR.

Andy worked across the street of the FBI building in Oklahoma City when it was infamous bombing incident took place. He recalled asking the question: “What can the internet do?” And at the time, the answer was simply “Nothing.” There simply wasn’t enough traction, nor sufficient architecture in place. Several years later, in September of 2001, Andy was working in DC. The proximity, the incident, the desire to do something all culminated in Andy building a Yahoo group. This only grew from there. After Hurricane Katrina, Andy built Katrina Aftermath, which describes itself as “A public gallery of thoughts, images and sounds in response to Hurricane Katrina.”

As tools grew, Andy stepped up his efforts to grow and keep active with providing different communities the support they needed, whatever it may have been. His next endeavor came during the election: http://blog.twittervotereport.com/

When the terrorist attacks in Mumbai took place, Andy learned a valuable lesson. Twitter, as a tool for getting news out, was effective only for the first few minutes/hours. From then, the information reached saturation, and most of what was coming out was unreliable or downright wrong. His methods for combating the false information was to track down the only person he knew in Mumbai, and to see whom she was listening to and whom she was re-tweeting.

A similar issue happened in the aftermath of the recent election in Iran. Many people throughout the world changed their Twitter locations to Tehran, Iran, in a very “I’m Spartacus!” moment (his words) to protect the people in Iran posting news no Twitter from being tracked down. But that also threw off the geo-mapping information and accuracy.

“We’ve now reached what you may call in some ways a hashtag crisis.”

So, the key question here becomes: How do you triage trust?

Though he stopped short of answering this question in full, he offered this valuable tidbit. A new project called TrustMap, where people could go and list the names of those that they trust.

–Now, in the Q&A, a great conversation that has come about is the question of ethics in Citizen journalism. Is it ethical for us to broadcast events that are intimate to other people? Legally, what happens in public space can be considered public, but what ethical ramifications are we dealing with when we post information that becomes the means by which relatives may hear about a disaster? Do we want to be the ones breaking that news? Do we want to be the people photographing parents of a deceased child?

–Yet another discussion: How effective are we when we seek to help? Where do we draw the line between meaningful change and slacktivism? Does it make a real impact when we turn our avatar green and change our location setting? Beth Kanter mentioned a guest post she has on her blog the issue of slacktivism.

* * *

Here at BlogPotomac, we just got back from lunch. A quick note: Debbie Weil came on to offer BlogPotomac cofounder, Geoff Livingston some well-deserved recognition. As she pointed out, Geoff has shown an undying dedication to promoting women in the social media and tech space. In all the BlogPotomacs, much care and attention was payed to making sure women were well represented among the speakers lists. Geoff, kudos!!

* * *

Jane Quigley

We are now listening to Jane Quigley, (@jquig99), Vice President of Client Relations at Crayon. As Jane puts it, she’s “the only capitalist here.” She is talking to us about making money on the web.

And the main trend that has been taking over in this regard is the localization of the web. Sites like Group On and CitySource are making a big splash by focusing in on a localized, specific geographic niche.

She also discussed the future of localization, particularly as it relates to Google Wave. Her point was that right now, it’s so easy to get lost in the many “waves,” but what’s effective in this system is when smaller groups break out into collaborative spaces.

Another point of growth for businesses on the web is the creation of APIs. This is another twist on the principle of localization, not so much in a geographical sense in this case, but a topical sense.

Sean Gorman

Our next speaker is Sean Gorman, CEO of FortiusOne. His discussion is on location-based technologies and mapping on the web. Sean is a trained geographer and cartographer. Around 2005, with the simultaneous growth of Web 2.0 and web mapping (and applications such as Google Earth), Sean joined the action and became heavily involved with these emerging technologies.

FortiusOne has been aggregating geographic databases from all around the world. This includes information from where Tweeters are talking about a certain product, to best windsurfing spots, to visual displays of economic growth areas.

A very effective implementation of mapping that Sean was involved with recently was the recent Afghan election, where data coming in about votes were geo-tagged. So as they realized inconsistencies, such as votes being made in one area but the overall numbers that those votes would reflect decreasing, they could spot voter fraud in real time.

–From the Q&A:

Among of the issues location-based services are facing are security and privacy issues. One way some services are standing out and gaining favor is allowing users to customize the granularity of the information they wish to be shown (i.e. location down to city-level, neighborhood-level, or exact location).

Peter Slutsky

And, finally, our final speaker of the final BlogPotomac (I’ll stop redunding now) is Peter Slutsky, Director of Strategic Partnerships of Ning and Co-Founder and CEO of Double Speak Media.

Ning not only provides a platform for niche social communities, but also a way to monetize the platform, whether from ad revenue, or from custom gifts.

He makes a strong case for niche communities: “There’s a less than 50% overlap between people you know and your interests and passions.”

Note: Ning Apps (API) has been launched. They will be holding the Ning Appathon on November 5th, in Palo Alto, CA.

* * *

Well, the event is now officially over. I’m going to mingle and say my goodbyes, but do check back here later for my recap of the event!

Yes, folks, this Friday, October 23rd marks the end of BlogPotomac. For those of you who may not have heard about the unconference, it is a staple of the DC Social Media scene. Organized by Geoff Livingston (@GeoffLiving) of CRT/tanaka and Livingston Communications, it is a gathering of social media rock stars to discuss and share their ideas on best practices and future outlook.

I had the benefit of being at the last BlogPotomac, and I still notice myself shaking my head in amazement every time I reflect on the experience. As my first real foray into liveblogging (see the post here), it was quite well received, convincing me of two things: (1) that I would definitely be attending the final one, and (2) I’ll have the laptop and air-card fired up and ready to liveblog again.

So, if you’re reading this close to when I’m publishing it, hurry, as there are still a handful of tickets left. If not, fear not! Just be sure to redirect your web browsers right here to SuperNova on the morning of Friday, October 23rd, the year two thousand and nine, (show starts at 8:45 AM) and keep on refreshing, as I will be giving you the up-to-the-(handful of)-minute(s) skinny on what’s being said, and who’s saying it.

In the meantime, check out http://www.blogpotomac.com/, follow @blogpotomac on Twitter, and set your Twitter searches to #blogpotomac. And meet me right back here on Friday.

If you recall, in June of this year, I represented MetroStar Systems at Salt Lake City, and liveblogged eLearningDevCon 2009 (you can find those posts here, here, and here). eLearningDevCon was hosted by Rapid Intake, makers of the eLearning development tools ProForm and Unison. Several sessions offered in that conference were labeled “BYOL,” standing for “Bring Your Own Laptop.” These were hands-on sessions where the instructor would guide attendees through a project, whether it was to produce something, or to learn a tool, or both. These sessions were a huge success, and the folks at Rapid Intake Conferences announced the first instance of their new conference, BYOL eLearning.

It is a one-of-a-kind eLearning conference that is 100% hands-on. One can’t help but appreciate a conference that strives to be so tangible and effective, nor can one help but crack a smile upon hearing the conference tagline (and noticing what it’s implying):

BYOL. Actually learn something.

Of course, all joking aside, the very fact that I’m here stands as testament to how much I learned at eLearningDevCon. I’m sure this conference will be no different. As all the sessions are hands-on, I won’t be liveblogging this event, but I will be recapping my experience at this conference in the near future.

So tune in later to catch my post on the conference. But in the meantime, keep up with what’s happening here on Twitter by following the hashtag: #byol.

SAVE THE DATE: Social Media for Social Good

When:

Thursday, July 23, 2009

9:30 AM – 3:30 PM

What:

“Social Media for Social Good”

Where:

Google Offices, Second Floor,

1101 New York Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20005

Why:

• Hear from experts in the corporate and nonprofit sectors during in-depth workshops on the social media topics that interest you most.
• Learn about specific tools, strategies, and applications that can increase your organization’s impact in the community.
• Network with nonprofit professionals and social media service providers in the Washington metropolitan area.
• Todd Pitt, Social Media Manager / Change Manager of MetroStar Systems, will be presenting a  “Blogging for Nonprofits” workshop from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
• Mr. Pitt will also be featured in the panel discussion entitled “Moving Transaction to Transformation: How nonprofits can build trust and deepen stakeholder engagement through social media” from 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

Who:

This event is for people who work for non-profit organizations or for those who are committed to helping build the capacity of NPO’s.  If you know an NPO or someone who may benefit from this event, please pass along this information.  If you are interested in attending or would like more information, please contact Todd Pitt.

EVENT HOSTED BY:

Capital Area Food Bank’s Agency Achievement Academy

Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of DC

National Human Services Assembly

Google

EVENT SPONSORED BY:

MetroStar Systems helps government, nonprofit and commercial organizations effectively combine new media technologies with social media strategies and emergent web tools to communicate, connect, collaborate and distribute content across the digital divide.

For more on the conference, check my previous posts (Day 1 and Day 2) . Also, check out:

Conference URL: http://www.elearndevcon.com/

Twitter handle: @elearningdevcon

Twitter hashtag: #devcon09

Conference Sponsor: http://www.rapidintake.com/

And, on to the day’s first session:

The Missing Link: Rehumanizing eLearning

with Sarah Williams

E-Learning is mistakenly defined (by reference.com) as “a type of education where the medium of instruction is computer technology. In some instances, no in-person interaction takes place…”

Why? The best learning happens when there’s some form of human interaction–real or simulated.

Well, to solve the dilemna this definition poses, Sarah is taking us through concepts, beginning with “easy” ones and getting increasingly more “involved.”

Easy:

• User interface design – make it simple, and conversational. Avoid conflicting stimuli.
• Narrating the text that is visible on screen is generally a bad idea. People prefer to either read, or be read to, but both is confusing.
• Metaphors – Use things from the learner’s pre-existing knowledge, to evoke–or more specifically activate–certain thoughts and emotions.
  • Use the principle of Einfühlung:

Einfühlung: “understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one person are readily comprehended by another.” (from Answers.com)

• Use the principle of “Mirroring” – Cells in the brain mirror what the brain sees.
  • If we see something happen, the same neurons fire off in the brain that would if we were actually doing it. (Also called co-cognition.) Make the learner imagine themselves doing what you are demonstrating.
• Know your audience. Be mindful of “In-groups” and “Out-groups.” For eLearning aimed at a certain demographic (gender, ethnic, occupational, etc.) use imagery from that same demographic (In-groups), not different demographics (Out-groups).

Medium:

• Avatars v. agents:
  • Avatar is a human representation (actual photo, or digital/graphic depiction)
    • E.g.:

(“Mii characters” also count as avatars)

• • Agent is a non-human representation, such as:

Use avatars. They are best for creating the human connection.

Be careful with digital Avatars! Cartoony avatars are ok, people can still relate (in fact, three dots, representing two eyes and one mouth are almost always recognized as a human face). If a digitally generated avatar looks too realistic, it can be off-putting.

Involved:

• Video production – Show an actual actor or cartoon character talking to your learners. Caution: This solution is almost always expensive. (For a good recap of this, see “Cognitive Learning” from Day 1 and “Interactive Video from Day 2.)
• Video conferencing – This can also be an expensive solution, but it is a superbly effective way to connect with your learners–Live! Could be done in realtime, or used for support after the fact.

Final Takeaways:

• Take advantage of human psychology
• Use human imagery (cartoony is OK!)
• Have human interaction whenever possible

–

Next Session:

Getting the Most Out of Your Tools

with Jason Bickle

There is no magic bullet. No one tool does it all. E-learning professionals have to amass a repertoire of tools, and use some of them in conjunction to tackle each assignment.

Questions to ask before beginning any eLearning project:

• What is your skill set?
• What is your team’s skill set?

Select your tool(s) in accordance with your answers to these questions.

Basic tools:

(Note: These tools are categorized only based on their primary uses.)

• Web:
  • HTML Editors – Dreamweaver, UNV, etc.
  • A great online learning resource for HTML, XML, etc: W3Schools.com
  • Discussion forums & Wikis
  • PDF – Adobe Acrobat (audio and video are now possible to integrate)
  • Documents – PowerPoint and MS Word

How you use these tools can be varied. Jason, for example uses discussion forums to interact with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). All of these tools can have both internal and external uses.

• Audio/Video
  • Audio editing – Audacity, Soundbooth, Sound Forge, GarageBand
  • Video editing – Vegas Video, Adobe Premiere (+ digital video camera, make sure you use one that has an input for an external microphone)
• Graphics
  • Adobe Photoshop (the premier tool, great for larger, more involved projects)
  • Adobe Fireworks (great for quick and easy photo editing for web)

• PowerPoint Conversion
  • Articulate
  • Adobe Captivate (although PPT conversion is not its primary function)
  • Adobe Presenter
  • ProForm
• Screen Video/Capture
  • Adobe Captivate
  • Camtasia
  • Snag-It
  • CamStudio (free software)
  • ProForm
• SCORM Content Shells
  • Captivate
  • Articulate
  • ProForm/Unison
  • CourseBuilder – Dreamweaver
  • Lectora

Be diverse in your use of these tools, and use many simultaneously. E.g.:

Using Articulate as your PowerPoint conversion tool, you can then incorporate Flash, Quizzing/SCORM, Graphics/Audio, HTML

Same principles apply whatever tool(s) you’re using. In fact, replace “Articulate” with “Captivate,” and this graphic still holds true.

Good tip: Record demos from your SMEs, both video and audio. Capture as much of these brain-dumps as you can (Even profanity. An SME’s profanity will almost always translate into a point of caution that your learners need to be warned about–tactfully.)

Tips for choosing an LMS:

• Does it match your business?
• Will the vendor support you?
• Do you have access to all your data?
• Again: Will the LMS provider support you?

–

Next Session:

Quick Prototyping Techniques

with Nick Floro (@nickfloro)

It’s all about communication and problem solving.

Use prototypes to help customers understand what it is you are trying to do.

Questions to ask:

• What is the goal?
• What are the learning objectives?
• What is the time table?
• Does content exist?
• Who is the audience?
• What current technology (if any) is in place?
• What type of delivery method is required?

1. Begin with sketching. In his office at SealWorks, Nick uses a Fujitsu SnapScan, which scans his sketches into PDF, and recognizes & converts handwritten text into type.
2. Then move on to wireframing. Nick puts his wireframes into PDF format, with Adobe Acrobat Pro. By dragging worked out JPEGs into Acrobat, and in multi-page prototypes, using the note tool (), simulates linking from page to page.
3. Brainstorming:
   1. Quantity, not quality
   2. Have toys and candy on hand to get creativity flowing
   3. Everyone is an equal
   4. Limit sessions to 1 hour
   5. Get everyone to focus
   6. Break and flow
4. Selecting tools – key is to be compliant with client’s requirement.

Great tip: For design purposes, carry a camera (digital or on your cell phone) with you wherever you go. You never know when you’ll be inspired.

-

To check out Nick’s slides (including his slides from other sessions which I wasn’t able to attend–I’ve heard nonstop praise for his “Social Media Demystified” session) go to http://www.slideshare.net/nickfloro

–

Last session of the day and of the (*sniffle) conference:

Interactive Branching Simulations in Flash

with Nigel Dobereiner

The Value of Simulation

• Why simulation? – Adult learners want to solve problems; be challenged.
• What’s the value? – Makes for more enjoyable learning and better information retention.

Instructional Design

• Think of interaction as quizzes (posing questions as statements of need)
• Think of customer statements as questions based on learning objectives
• Create convincing distracters
• Work with SMEs who have experienced the simulation targets

Video Recording

• Overacting is actually prefered in simulations
• Keep talent movement to a minimum
• Convert videos to .FLV (deinterlaced, high bandwidth/small img size)

Putting it All Together in Flash

• Use external assets to simplify updates and reuse sections of code
• Code*:

stop();

var netConnect:NetConnection = new NetConnection();

netConnect.connect(null);

var netStream:NetStream = new NetStream(netConnect);

yourVideoInstance.attachVideo(netStream);

netStream.play(“yourFLV.flv”);

*Code given is in ActionScript 2.0 (not 3.0)

Selling it to Your Customer

• Remember the values from before
  • Increased retention
  • Greater usage
  • Better mastery of material

Learning + Simulation = Better Learning

–

My Closing Remarks

First and foremost, thanks for reading. I hope these few posts were able to do justice (as much as is possible) to the quality of the conference. I also hope you found it worthwhile and insightful. I was impressed with every single session I attended. It has been a remarkable experience. A BIG SHOUTOUT and thank you to Rapid Intake (http://www.rapidintake.com/) for the great work and effort they put into the conference. As you can tell, they picked an incredibly far reaching range of speakers, experts and presenters. They do also have another conference coming up in October, which will be an all-application, hands on conference titled: “BYOL” (Bring Your Own Laptop). Check that out at: http://elearning.byol.com/

Finally, a great many thanks to all the incredible people here at eLearningDevCon! It has been a pleasure meeting so many experienced and accomplished professionals. As great as all the sessions were, the opportunity to have met the people I’ve met here at the conference was the best part of the entire experience.

I hope to see you all again very soon.

As always, do share with us your thoughts, comments, reflections. A conversation this good should keep on going…

-Padawan

Thanks for joining us! Again, some info about the company:

Conference URL: http://www.elearndevcon.com/

Twitter handle: @elearningdevcon

Twitter hashtag: #devcon09

Conference Sponsor: http://www.rapidintake.com/

Today’s first session:

Panel: The Future of Mobile Learning

Moderated by Bob Sanregret

Bob served as CEO of HotLava Mobile, which has since merged with OutStart. He is now VP of Mobile at OutStart.

Panel Members: Jason Bickle of AMX, Nick Floro of SealWorks, and Art Paton of Motorola.

From Left: Jason Bickle, Nick Floro, Art Patton, Bob Sanregret

The key to mobile learning (mLearning): Just get something up. No need for flashy multimedia. Just do something.

• Key subsets of mLearning: Supplemental, Ad hoc.
• In some environments, students are not physically meeting with one another anymore for class assignments. They are meeting via mobile services.
• In 2003, for the first time in history, the number wireless subscribers passed the number of wired subscribers (then, 1 billion; up to 4.1 billion today).
• All learning (mobile included, of course) must be trackable. If you can’t track, you cannot justify the investment.
• Most successful mobile learning applications: Simple graphics, and Text.
• Format for apps: XHTML, and WAP. 95% of phones run Java (JAR) files, but not on iPhones out-of-the-box.
• There are over 375 mobile device configurations. Never launch without first launching a pilot program to discover issues.
• For any course that can be on both eLearning and mLearning platforms, simplify content delivery. It will greatly increase the reach.
• Revisiting content in mLearning: Storyboard standard content, and minimize it as much as possible. Then test it on different devices to find out what works, and what doesn’t.
  • The last few years taught us: Not all instructor-led training can be eLearning.
  • Now we learn: Not all instructor-led training or eLearning can be mLearning.
  • mLearning should enhance instructor led and e-Learning; not (necessarily) replace them.

On to the next session of the day:

Cognitive Learning

with Curtis Morley

Curtis handing graphics to his presenter

Learnability v. Usability – Nothing is usable, until it is learnable.

Curtis is presenting on concepts of learning that bring new interactive methods to teaching, powered by eCANDLE with support from facilitator Agilix. Emphasis is on using talking heads, but they talk out of the box. The talking head moves around the screen, interacts with the screen, captions, even physically places graphics onto the screen.

As the learning is delivered, the user is presented with options as to which path to take, which topic to learn and when. This engages the user and lets her appreciate the learning more–fueled by her ownership of the material and its delivery. The progression of the learning also makes use of machine-learning, as the system includes retention of what paths were taken, which topics already covered.

The impact? They took the content of a 3-hour conference presentation and wrapped it into this method. The material was shortened to fit into 10 minutes (including all different paths). The result of the 10-minute module was significantly better retention and comprehension than the 3-hour presentation.

Cognitive learning: Let your learners hear it, see it, do it.

As the learners were given the material, they were given assessments. In turn, these assessments interacted with the learning modules, to inform them which topics within the modules need to be repeated for the learners, and which do not.

Next session…

Emotional Foundation for Developing Higher Order Thinking in E-learning

with Peter Chan, Thad Scott, and Ryan Dean

Dr. Chan is the founder of the Instructional Design and Development program at Brigham Young University – Hawaii, “which trains students to apply instructional theories and advanced technology in designing effective and efficient instructions in various settings.” (from bio at eLearningDevCon)

From left: Thad Scott, Dr. Peter Chan, and Ryan Dean

Higher Order Thinking (H.O.T.) – Thinking that requires the higher cognitive abilities of the brain: Synthesis, Evaluation, Analysis. (see Blooms taxonomy here and here).

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we were using when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

To start from the basics and work from the ground up: An instructional framework of H.O.T.:

• Emotional State has a direct impact on learning.
  • Primary emotions are our reactive emotions (fear, anger, etc) that we share with animals.
  • Secondary emotions (found in humans, not animals) are what regulate and control our primary emotions.

With these two points in mind, how can we facilitate a positive emotional state for the learner?…

Factors affecting learner emotions in an online environment:

1. Learner’s own psychological status
   1. How does learner feel about course? Do they feel it is relevant to them? Use stories, cases, allegories to establish relevancy.
   2. Do they know how to be successful in the course? State the course structure clearly, and provide study skills. Promote the learner’s metacognition.
2. Interpersonal connection
   1. Increased connectivity leads to positive emotions.
   2. Can the learners connect and share with other learners for support?
   3. Do they know the instructor/content creator?
3. Learning environment
   1. Can learners choose their environment?
   2. Is the instructional environment easy to use and stimulating?
4. Customizability
   1. How much control do the users have over the control of the content?
   2. Can they skip information they already know? Does the system provide a pre-assessment?
   3. Does the system remember the learner (their name, their settings, etc.)?
5. Support
   1. Academic support: does the system solicit feedback from the learner?
   2. Is there technical support provided?

Collectively, a Positive Affective environment can lead to Higher Order Thinking.

Case study: Peacebuilding innitiative headed by the Arbinger Institute and students & faculty at BYU-Hawaii: “A Single Idea that Changes Everything”

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Interactive Video

with Curtis Morley

Second session of the day with Curtis. In his first session (“Cognitive Learning,” above) he demoed videos with highly innovative interactivity.

To begin this session, Curtis is showing us a demo you as well can view at Direct Pointe Solution Overview, all designed in Adobe Flash.

The most important part about all interactive video is not the production, but the pre-production, mainly, the script.

Extensive scripting/storyboarding done in MS Excel

Interactive video window on top of its script/storyboard.

Most of the videos shot are brought in using Adobe Premiere, but for editing purposes, all video was brought into Adobe After Effects. Using After Effects, green screens were very easily removed. And After Effects was a better option than Final Cut Pro and the like, thanks to After Effect’s simplicity in setting cue-points, which can then be easily called by the Action Script code in Flash.

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Well, that brought our day to a wrap. I hope the post has been useful for you. Join in, share with us your thoughts, and leave a comment. Until tomorrow,

-Padawan

But to get back to the conference…I will be attending several sessions today and will keep you all posted.

In the meantime, you can find out more about the conference here:
Conference URL: http://www.elearndevcon.com/

Twitter handle: @elearningdevcon

Conference Sponsor: http://www.rapidintake.com/

Check back in as I will be summarizing sessions on:

• Instructional Design
• Mobile Learning
• Educational Gaming

First session:

“I See What You Mean!” Visual Design in eLearning

with Lee Bandy (@LBand)

This session was a quick but very useful crash course on using graphics in eLearning modules. Lee took us through some visual design concepts, and showed us some practical examples from her own work.

About Lee (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Lee Bandy is an Instructional Systems Designer at Magellan Health Services in Columbia, Howard County, Maryland. In addition to designing and developing e-learning products, Lee brings a creative design perspective to her role on the Corporate Learning & Performance Leadership Team. With eight years of experience and an M.A. in Instructional Systems Development, Lee’s technical and creative areas of expertise include instructional technology, interactive web-based e-learning, visual screen designs, blended training program designs, and competency-based instruction.

Selecting Graphics to illustrate and communicate ideas:

• Use metaphors that are readily apparent.
• To evoke provocative messages, use grayscale images. In grayscale, focus on balance.
• If you can’t find the right image, make your own, take a photograph, or modify already existing clip-art, auto-shapes, or stock images.
• Follow the “rule of thirds” to compose a picture
  • Divide layout into thirds (vertical and horizontal)
  • Primary focal point should be off-center on one of the vertical lines.
• Balance a photos foreground and background by reducing compression of background
• Another method for bringing in your own graphics: Screenshots.
  • Don’t use “Print Screen”! It doesn’t have fast editing features.
  • Use screen capture software like FastStone or Snag-It.
  • Adding effects (drop shadows, etc.) can strengthen and enhance screenshots.
  • To sample screenshots without blurring, use “Nearest Neighbor” sampling.
• Tip from the audience: Spend some hours to create vector-based templates that you can use to drop in screenshots when necessary. Could be graphic templates for images, or movie-clip templates for Flash animations.
• Don’t hesitate to crop images if/when necessary.
  • This can be very useful when dealing with limited screen size.
  • And the mind tends to ignore the missing portions of familiar images and mentaly “fill in” the rest.
  • Cropping can be great to keep the original resolution but fit only the necessary part of an image to a limited size.
• Of course, when you can’t find the right image, make a new one.
  • Combine elements from different images, stock photo, etc. to generate an image with impact:
  • 
  • Here, she used a picture of a laptop, and a software screenshot, tilted and overlayed on using layers in Fireworks..

Next session…

Flash Character Animation tips and tricks

with Ryan  Simmons

About Ryan (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Ryan Simmons has been working in animation for 13 years at studios such as Warner Bros. and Dreamworks on numerous feature films. His Flash animation skills have won many awards for his short films and TV commercials. Ryan is the co-owner and art director of Cartoon Solutions.

(You can find all kinds of tools, tips and tutorials at http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/)

In any animation, begin with observing yourself and other people.

While creating character animations, Ryan’s method is to use a tablet to draw straight into Flash. But in Flash, motion tweens used on symbols tend to skew images too much. His method to alleviate this: Use the motion tween on the first image until he has gotten it to the limit, just before it starts to skew. Then, he draws a new image from where the last motion tween’s movement left off. How many original drawn images are required depends on the frame rate. Lower frame rates require less images; at 24 f/s or greater, more are required.

Using bones tool in Flash CS4 is still a difficult process, as there are still bugs that need to be fixed.

Instead, for our example, Ryan manipulated motion tweens along the timeline (as well as two separate hand images) to animate a rather sinister-looking masked man to simply raise his arm. Class example:

In animating, make all movements to take place on arcs. This makes the flow look more natural.

He first set the motion tween in the movement of an arc. Then, used some simple strokes to make the motion flow smoothly:

And for lip-syncing, he made sure to make seven different mouth shapes to represent the different mouth positions:

• Closed (M, B, P)
• Open (Ahh)
• Consonants (C, K)
• Consonants (T, D)
• Consonants (Th and L)
• Consonants (F and V)
• O, U, or W

Examples:

On each frame, create a new key-frame, click on the symbol, and select which frame to use. Or, use a tool like Anim-slider pro from animonger.

This is why for lip-sync animation, you want to use graphic symbols . It’s way way way easier.

Also, if you’re changing facial expressions (such as eyebrows) repeat all seven mouth frames.

Next session…

Mobile eLearning: A Reality

with Robert Sanregret

About Robert (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board Bob Sanregret, a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in California, has over 20 years experience in learning, distance learning and knowledge development. Bob blends his senior executive experience at three of the largest learning companies in the world-Sylvan, Global Knowledge and Learning Tree International-with his education and training to bring you Mobile Technologies. Bob has worked with over 50 companies and government organizations to define and design mobile technology content solutions.

The Basics of M-Learning:

• Portable - Users have to be able to take their learning anywhere and everywhere
• Remote - Should be able to have it regardless of WiFi/Broadband connections
• Handheld Devices - not laptops
• Quick Access - Can I be up and running instantly?
• Urgent/Required Information - Mobile learning is not the resizing of standard eLearning modules

There are 4.1 Billion mobile phones out there today. There upwards of 47 million BlackBerry subscriptions, and 11 million iPhone subscriptions worldwide.

“[Mobile phones] have replaced keys as most the most important thing that people take with them before leaving their homes.”

So how do we leverage mobile tech for our organizations? What kinds of things can be done on mobile devices?

• Learning
  • Courses  (possible, but not the best medium)
  • Assessments (can be instant, and very effective)
• Marketing
  • Surveys
• Performance Support
  • Job aids
  • Check lists

Robert’s organization teamed up with the Kauffman Foundation to encourage youth interest in math and science, to help American educational competitiveness. In sports arenas nationwide, they implemented the Sports Bytes Challenge (powered by HotLava Mobile):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ygus7OG6fA

Robert gave a great example of a mobile survey you can take (on your mobile phone, or on a laptop/desktop) at jamwap.com. This survey took him 2 minutes to prepare using the HotLava software.

2 Key takeaways:

• Don’t mistaken mLearning for shrunken eLearning. You’re better off just sticking to eLearning.
• Make your applications universal. Target as large a portion of the 4.1 billion as you can. Don’t lock yourself into a single platform.

Next session…Lunch! I’ll be back in the afternoon (again, mountain time) to fill you in on more sessions. For now, leave any questions, comments, feedback, responses to anything covered so far. I’m in sponge mode right now, and I’d love to hear from you as well!

And, back to the sessions:

RISC: A New Model for Measuring eLearning Success

with Jacob Bunker

About Jacob (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Jake Bunker is the performance improvement specialist for FamilySearch —a worldwide non-profit genealogical services organization. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) and has taught as an adjunct university professor in management and organizational behavior. Jake has many years of management experience including management in retail, training coordination, and volunteer coordination and training, and brings a business results approach to training and evaluation. He specializes in training, measurement, and performance improvement.

In a study done by Corporate University Xchange, 28% of companies accept solid anecdotal recap of eLearning assessment, along with conservative estimates as backup.

All that companies want from training boils down to two things: Efficiency, and Effectiveness.

Enter the RISC model:

Efficience	Effectiveness
Cost/Time	Reach
Impact	Satisfaction

Make evaluation metrics to fit these four categories.

Example:

As a Satisfaction metric, use the Net Promoters Score (NPS). NPS asks the key question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this course for colleagues?” Then, this needs to be tracked and calculated (click NPS link to see calculator).

Key takeaways:

• Establish a desired (measurable) result for your eLearning program with management.
• Using the RISC model, create and implement an eLearning evaluation program.

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