Skype

All too often some of us — myself included — tend to forget that not all people use some of the tools available as we do. Case in example is Skype. I don’t even recall when I started using it, but it has been a while. I am as likely to say I will “Skype” you rather than I will call you as I do use it as my primary phone connection when I am at home or where I am connected, but have no cellular coverage, such as in Asia or Europe.

Having never used Skype, I can see where it could be intimidating. Probably even more so that the young child who has never seen a telephone cord.

Wanting to get some practice with Camtasia Studio, I just recorded a short intro to Skype. You can find it here. I do plan to redo it when I have the opportunity with a timed script, but for about 10 minutes production time, this will do.

Skype is a great tool for one-to-one or even one to five, but for larger groups (up to 100) as in the Unworkshops, we have been using Skypecasts. You still need a Skype account, but this is web based.

Skype is great for chatting or talking, but there are also other add-ons that you may want to consider once you are comfortable with Skype.

On a Mathemagenic blog in July the writer relays:

“A few weeks ago we had a very special incident. My mom thought that I was around home computer with Skype logged in as Robert and started a chat. In Russian.

Of course, it wasn’t me next to it, but Robert himself. He went to an online translator, figured out what my mom was saying, got his reply translated and posted back. First my mom thought I was making fun of her typing strange Russian, but then she had to believe that she was chatting with Robert. Both of them were very happy and very proud that they found a mode for direct communication despite of speaking different languages. Thinking of opportunities that this discovery could bring (=not having to translate back and forth between family members I thought that it would be great to find an automatic translator for Skype chat. I found one – ULRTMT – Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator, which is in difficult to install beta. Haven’t tried it yet, but already happy since these times things develop fast.”

WebDialogs Unyte™ is a quick, easy and secure way to share documents, applications or your desktop with friends and colleagues anytime, anywhere. And best of all, its FREE, always.

“Simply download the Unyte plug-in and you’re ready to start sharing. Review a presentation, troubleshoot a PC, debug code or give a sales demonstration from the comfort of your home or office.

For the first 30 days, your account will be enabled with our premium features, which include sharing for up to 4 people, recording**, annotation** and remote PC control**. After the first 30 days, you can choose to enjoy secure one to one sharing for free, forever, or you can choose to purchase our premium service for just $9.95/month or $99.95/year.”

I just got a complaint this week from someone that was trying to find me that my web site did not have my email address. This is mainly due to spam. I decided to add a Skype button and will see how that works. It is at the bottom of my home page and shows whether or not I am online and available.

There are a number more options. What have you tried?

My Last Two Weeks

Like many of you, my available time changes from project to project. During the last two weeks I have been extremely busy rolling out a new community about which I thought that many of you may be interested. It is a community we are building for the extended ADL community and is available at http://www.adlCommunity.net.

ADL and SCORM
The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative (ADLI) was created in the Department of Defense mainly to improve digital learning in the military. SCORM and CORDRA have been adopted by LMS vendors and authoring tools vendors and thus are also in use in corporations, academia, non-profit organizations and others, both in the US and across the globe. In fact, the largest implementer of SCORM 2004 today is the Korean K-12 system with over one million users and over 185,000 daily.

The latest version of SCORM was released just last week. A DoD Instruction (1322.26) was released in June requiring the military to use SCORM for new content and to register it in the ADL-R registry.

The ADLI is now concentrating on implementation, best practices and the advanced portion including games, mobile, intelligent tutors and more. The community is a place for all to learn from each other and will grow in the direction the community takes it. Please visit and give us your feedback.

Informal Learning
Yes, informal learning is also a part. In fact last week at Implementation Fest in Orlando, we heard about the training from two war-fighters recently back from Iraq. One of them was a Naval aviator officer who was assigned to lead the group in charge of Saddam Hussein. He was told that he was to make certain that he was at the court and that he was kept alive.

He shared with us that he had 32 days from hearing of his new assignment until he left and spent that time trying to learn everything he could to help him. He had questions like what all he should take and how he should prepare. He found a Marine who had recently returned and said that this “informal network taught me more than anything in a day and a half.” He suggest that everyone should have their “Marine informal network.”

The adlCommunity
In order to implement all the functions and features we identified (forums, wikis, blogs, RSS, events, resources, etc.) we wanted a single sign on for access to all. As with many projects, there was no specific funding for new tools, so we decided to implement Moodle. For those of you unfamiliar with Moodle, it is an open source course management system. Today there are nearly 15,000 registered Moodle sites in 161 countries. (We have already had visitors from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Mexico, UK and Canada.)

One of the challenges was to change course/teacher/student to community/facilitator/participant, but I think we have accomplished that and would be happy to discuss the implementation in less than two weeks.

Blogs Discussion

On the last “bus trip” we had some good discussions on both blogs and blog software, plus aggregators and tagging. The recordings are available for the informL unworkshop participants.

Some participants still seem to be having problems with both Skype and Skypecast. Harold and I stand ready to assist as needed on an individual basis.

John Gee inquired what the most successful, popular blog site is. Is it WordPress?
Mark Oehlert asked whether he was referring to the site or the software and contributed that boingboing is one of the most popular sites and is interesting because it is a multi-author blog but it has a strong “voice”; Blogger is huge; and TypePad is also pretty big.

Eddie Nestingen shared that he uses blogs for reflections. “A chance to put meaning to what you have learned or to spell out what you are thinking. For me things seem to change when I write them or speak them out. Reading others blogs is important. It helps to share what is going on.”

Harold suggested that the group may be interested in reading The Cluetrain Manifesto available at www.cluetrain.com or in print. Jay commented “The market is the arbiter. True or not, if what you’re saying strikes a chord, it will be read.” Mark added let the market vote on it like Digg. (community-ranking of information).

The conversation turned to validity of posts. Jay’s view is that “Validating blogs is no different than validating any information. This has been a big deal since the web democratized the world of mass communication.”
Joe Pulichino stated “Islamic fascists are making great use of networks to promote their cause. Just because you are connecting people doesn’t mean that you are fostering democracy. Do you think that the new blog from the President of Iran which exploits networking capability is intended to subvert authority?”
To this Mark stated: “I think that the argument can be made that while fascists are making use of blogs/wikis so are dissident Chinese, so are Americans who feel disenfranchised by the major political parties, so are global consumers to refute corporate misinformation, I think on balance, the world is being served better by blogs/wikis/networks than it is for ill.”
Joe agreed with Mark, but continued “let’s not make that claim that blogs, because they promote networking, are of and in themselves tools for democracy. This gets us back to the subject of truth and validation.”
Jay added “I think blogs are a tool of freedom. Of course, freedom is not an unadulterated good.”

Harold contributed that a how blogs work picture is available here. 

Urs Frei requested that titles are important — similar to subject lines in emails. They get the attention of your audience.

Aggregators and social tags were the subjects of the bicycle rides for the off week.

50 Million Blogs and Counting

With all the blogging discussions, check out the State of the Blogosphere, August 2006, posted today.

• Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs.
• The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.
• From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
• About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
• About 8% of new blogs get past Technorati’s filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
• This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
• The most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time

TEDTalks

I don’t know if I am the last person to discover TEDTalks, but just in case you have not heard of it, please take the time to check it out.

Each year, TED hosts some of the world’s most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience. So now – with our sponsor BMW and production partner WNYC/New York Public Radio we’re sharing some of the most remarkable TED talks with the world at large. Each week, we’ll release a new talk, in audio and video, to download or watch online. For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. They have a cumulative effect.

Jeff Han and Hans Rosling videos are must views! I haven’t had a chance to view all of them yet, but do plan to do so as soon as I can make the time.

U3 Off and Running

The unworkshop bus ride #1 on Learning with Blogs, Wikis, and Web 2.0 Tools started with most participants in attendance on August 1. We had attendees from the US (mainly Minnesota), Switzerland, Japan, the Canary Islands, and Canada. As with other groups, we experienced a few startup issues while everyone got their tools in place in running. Questions concerned using the chat feature and changing a guest name for those who logged in as guests on Vyew, plus muting the audio and asking for the microphone on Skypecast. (The issue with the size limit of 20 on Vyew has been solved.)

Vyew was used for the slides for this bus ride led by Jay. If you missed it, you can access both the presentations (1 or 2) and recordings (1 or 2). Harold acted as the “air traffic controller” bringing participants in and out of our Skypecast which we used for audio. Both tools were chosen as easily available at little or no cost for all.

To prepare for our sessions and collaboration, Jay posted a short video on using the wiki. The informL wiki is our headquarters for the unworkshop. All communication is available through there. However, we also do use our U3 Google Group email for messages to all. If you prefer to have alerts come through email, you can set both the Informl wiki to send you a message when there are changes or Google Group to send you email.

Participants were asked to set up a blog and to send the URL to Jay Cross so that it can be added to the U3 aggregator. Thus far only a few have done so. All were also asked to click on their name on the participants page and edit their personal information. Thus far all but five have done so. Thank you.

Harold, Jay, and I are standing by to assist one-on-one or in groups. We look forward to going on the bicycle trips next week and getting to know you better.

Usually in these blogs I recap the discussions in the chat sessions for those unable to attend. This time most of the questions were about using the tools. One comment made by Mark Oehlert needed to be captured:

Grades are part of a game – that is they are artificial rules that do not bear on anything outside the academic circle.

Most of the participants are involved in corporate training, however there are some of us involved in public education, struggling with what should stay and what should go. Hmmm

Podcasts, wikis and blogs BBC briefing

There is an interesting online and mobile briefing on the use of podcasts, wikis and blogs for knowledge sharing at the BBC, featuring Nigel Paine, the Head of BBC Training and Development. (Available in Real Media or Windows Media).

The 24 minute interview is very interesting (once you get past the initial askaninja.)

Discussing their learning framework, Paine states:

We have face-to-face at the core; we wrap around face-to-face e-learning and then we use informal learning as the reinforcement and the amplification and the breath, if you like, around all of the rest.

There are about 300 wikis in use in the BBC — both open and closed and 298 bloggers — alone or in group blogs. Experience is being shared and the BBC is encouraging a learning culture.

As to informal learning, Paine believes these tools reinforce formal learning, highlight gaps in learning and recognize contribution from staff at all levels. Anyone can contribute with easy to set up tools to reach a targeted open audience. He believes that the BBC is an organization which needs to remake itself within 5 years and these tools are helping in the process.

Final U2 Sessions

On June 29 (Thursday) and July 3 (Monday) we had presentations, discussions and feedback sessions. I could have sworn that I posted something on the 29th, but can’t find it.

On Thursday, we used a web page for links, chat, and a Skypeconference for audio. The topics included podcasting and video casting. We were also joined by Peter Kaminski, CTO, Socialtext to talk about enterprise wikis.

Peter referred us to some customer stories on their site and answered our questions. One good tip he shared for wikis is that you can see what’s happened recently on the “recent changes” list. On pbwiki, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Show changes to this wiki”.

During the podcast discussion Beth commented in the chat that podcasts really lend themselves to those kinds of quick and casual communications and that she likes to listen to NPR podcasts. She continued it’s a nice way to tune in to those pieces of most interest – a bit like TIVO for the radio.

Peter referred us to and article about a baseball team using video ipods to study their team’s performance, and to study opponents. Baseball using iPod for more than just music, movies: Rockies introduce method of taking video analysis to a new level.

Most had no experiences with podcasts nor videos. Jim shared his plans for welcome casts for his students and promised to let the group know when they were ready. There are several links to how to articles on our informL wiki.

We discussed our unworkshop progress thus far and sought suggestions for improvement. It seemed to be concensus that groups should be assigned along with group tasks rather than counting on all to make contact themselves.

On Monday, Jay gave us an update on his experiences over the weekend at Gnomedex. We were also joined by Rob Paterson who shared his experiences over the last 9 months with NPR. Trust was the big issue that had to be resolved. He referred us to the book, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

See Robert’s NPR parable, Part 1 of 4.

On the chat Richard wondered how could an Unworkshop be arranged so it’s less “one presenter has the mike and everybody is muted” (and the presenter(s) own the agenda) to something more collaborative? He continued One catch is: collaboration and consensus takes more time than many people seem willing to invest. It would imply a much longer unworkshop. The discussion then continued with the size of the group and the necessity to mute some to avoid the background noises. It would work better if all had a mute button and would mute themselves. Beth liked Richard’s ideas and added having the group take on more and more responsibility for the technology, such as who has to set up the Skypecasts. Richard felt that perhaps 1 session per week for the whole group and ways to keep the conversation going mid-week could work. Carolina expressed difficulties in bringing people together during the week for the non-scheduled sessions due to different time zones.

Jay concluded with the bottom line. All were directed to the Alumni Notes section of the informL wiki and encouraged to stay in touch. Plans are being made for alumni events and a class reunion. This journey is not over, even though the formal informal sessions have concluded.

June 26 U2 Session

On Monday we used a light weight solution with a web page containing links to Web 2.0 apps and other topics of discussion using Skypecast (with Harold back at the controls) and a separate chat session.
Buthaina was connected from Kuwait and Kerry from Australia. The technology seemed to work well, other than us all trying to keep together. We all watched an 8-minute futuristic video clip.

Following a discussion on Web 2.0. Jay shared some interesting mashups on gasoline prices, photo searches and maps. We then explored the survey results from 10 respondents and discussed future directions. All seemed to like Jay’s suggestion of a class reunion.

• Beth recommended sessions twice a week, but homework once a week.
• Ulrike suggested that a combination of big and small groups were preferable and suggested that they stretch over 6 weeks.
• Carolina thought two sessions were fine, but with no homework over the weekend.
• Beth noted that the use of the informal wiki was not a fair question as a lot of the resource links take us *off* the informl wiki…

Harold discussed Netiquette and requested that all contribute to the informL wiki Netiquette page.

In the chat:

• Beth shared an interesting article on information architecture in the web 2.0 world.
• Carolina asked how to register for gmail and Harold and Jay both said they could each send anyone an invitation.
• Harold and Beth mentioned that they like Survey Monkey. Harold also mentioned that he likes Zoomerang.
• Harold suggested http://edtechtalk.com (podcast for the educational technology community)
• Jeff joined us from the Webcast Academy

Jay will be joining us Thursday from Gnomedex 6.0

The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a complex Adaptive Intelligence Community

Jennifer had requested more specific examples as to how blogs and wikis were being used in corporate and government. I had mentioned a paper from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, but was unable to find the location until now. (The web site had changed to a secure site.)

Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community

There is a new generation of Internet tools that enable people to self-organize around shared knowledge. The first of these self-organizing tools is known as “wiki.” …
A second self-organizing, information-sharing tool has matured in the last few years. It is called “blogging.”