Friday, January 26, 2007

Reference - Weblog Case Study

From, Supernova 2006 - Weblog, for reference, a case study of incorporating Web 2.0 by Dresdner Kleinwort investment bank in Germany.



Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development: Paper-based Learning - DIY Job Aids

Finally, some practical thought.. In Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development: Paper-based Learning - DIY Job Aids Brent takes a realistic look that sometimes good old paper based job aids and gives us some good tools.

This is a sore spot for me as I try to sell including a 'paper based' take-away item in a training I'm designing. The overall training program is a highly interactive system training that includes videos, help systems, 'test-out' options, and practice environments. We've discovered a need for an easy 'take away' cheat sheet (something that can be attached to a monitor) so people can be reminded what menu to use for top tasks..

Many are so wanting virtual only training, that even the thought of a small reminder job aid to help during the transition is shot down.

Never underestimate the power of the tangible item in your learner's hands.



Thursday, January 25, 2007

Wikis at Work

This article, Wikis at Work from Dice.com, asks us, could wikis work for you (at your workplace)?
This is something I've been considering and looking for an opportunity to implement for a while.

Here are some snips from the article:

While chaos would seem to reign with wikis, workers — and especially technology workers, including developers, project managers, QA, and product managers — often prize wikis as a way to keep projects quickly and easily organized. Various organizations, including British Telecom, Disney, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Yahoo!, have adopted wikis for their IT project teams...

Why use a wiki? According to Vanessa DiMauro, a principal at Leader Networks and an expert in online communities and social networking, wikis excel at uniting geographically dispersed project teams, “connecting project management and senior technical staffs with clients and project managers,” and sharing non-static, internal company information, including “prospecting lists, user manuals, and employee directories.” ...

Wikis differ from other collaborative tools — including groupware, e-mail, online communities, instant messaging, intranets, and Microsoft’s Groove and SharePoint — because they allow information to be shared and retrieved in a free-form yet user-structured manner.


Read the entire article here:


I plan to begin a log here into our deciding on and building a wiki collaboration platform here at my work. I am also planning to work on ways to publish and retrieve the contents through mobile devices, truly fusing mLearning and Web 2.0.


Monday, January 22, 2007

Two Scripts to Detect Mobile Browsers

When writing mLearning content, sometimes it is good to have a single URL that all your participants can access. The following are two scripts that you can add into the head content of your page that will detect a mobile browser and automatically redirect your users to a 'mobile friendly' version of your site.

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Script #1

In this script, change the $location attribute to the page you want your users to see if they are using one of the mobile devices listed in the if(stristr.. string.
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Script #2


This is a simpler script to detect Windows CE browsers (although you can detect any browser with this script.) Simply change the window.location URL to your mobile friendly site.


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In both of these cases, I'm redirecting the site to the mobile version of this site- http://www.2mlearn.mobi/


I will be adding this script to http://www.mlearning-world.com/ in the next few days
to help all our visitors with mobile devices.



The Generation Y Stigma

CertMag.com The Generation Y Stigma

As the first generation to use the Internet in a more productive form, communicate through cellular phones, text messaging and instant messaging adamantly, and bring digital cameras everywhere—all from an early age—generation Y is the most technologically adept yet technology dependent groups to enter the workforce thus far. Although that is very true, generation Y has somehow earned a stigma during the past few years... Read the rest here: