Little ol’ me on a big, big stage Down Under

I am thrilled and humbled to share the news that I have accepted an invitation to speak at the 2015 EduTECH congress in Brisbane, AU, in June.

To say that I am floored and in a little bit of shock would be like describing Arthur C. Clarke as a guy who “wrote a little”.

This event is different from most L&D gatherings in that the speakers all use a TED-style format for their talks, and this is definitely terra incognita for me. So, I’m going to engage in a little ‘working out loud’ as I share some of my preparations and thoughts as I get ready for this “talk of a lifetime”.  That said, I am especially looking forward to meeting Ryan Tracey at this event, and hopefully Helen Blunden as well.

This kind of reward is not a singular one. I thank my friends, colleagues, my PLN, and my wife, for their support, encouragement, and inspiration. I will be standing on the shoulders of giants as I take that stage.

6 Design Principles Of Connected Learning

The Learning And Design Principles Of Connected Learning

by Terry Heick

In 2015, no one should be hurting for compelling ed content. Sites like edutopia, The Tempered Radical, Langwitches, Justin Tarte, Cool Cat Teacher, Grant Wiggins’ blog, and dozens of others offer outstanding reading on a daily basis to help you improve the things that happen in your classroom. (And this list is frustratingly incomplete–they’re just the sites on my radar that I’ve been reading since I entered education.)

A bit more “fringe” are sites like TeachThought, Jackie Gerstein’s UserGeneratedEducation, the Connected Learning Alliance and DMLCentral.net, MindShift, and so many more–“fringe” due to their thinking that seems as interested in understanding what’s possible in a modern learning environment as they are what is. Pursuing excellence in the box while demanding to know what’s going on outside that box.

via 6 Design Principles Of Connected Learning.

My take: While this article is focused more in the K-12/HE arena, it’s still valuable to explore the principles of connectivity and what it means to the improvement of learning. – MLS

Talking Tools Evaluation and Lessons Learned on eLearnTV

I had a thoroughly enjoyable Skype video chat with Rick Zanotti and Dawn Mahoney on Jan 14 where we talked about selecting authoring tools, some lessons learned on short-notice deadlines, and a surprising geographical connection.

It’s nice to be able to add this to some of the #workoutloud and #showyourwork activities going on. Sharing what we do is important to the growth of our discipline.

Your feedback is, of course, always welcomed.

New name, same goodness! Welcome, tom.spiglanin.com!

Tom Spiglanin

For those playing along at home…my friend and L&D colleague, Tom Spiglanin, has just launched his new domain name to go with his blog.

So, please go and visit tom.spiglanin.com. While you’re there, check out the story of John Andrew Rankin. He’s pretty cool, too.

Conversations about L&D – a New Podcast(?)

Earlier this week I was fortunate to have a Skype conversation with PLN luminary, Brent Schlenker, about all things L&D. Joining me in the conversation was Montreal-based performance strategist, Ajay Pangarkar.

Brent is hoping to turn this into a genuine podcast series and I am hoping to be a collaborator.

Grab your headphones and have a listen!

http://elearndev.blogspot.ca/2014/11/new-podcast-bs-talks-about-elearning.html

Quick Update

Pardon me while I blow the dust off the blog.

My day job has been full and rich of late, leaving precious time to carefully craft suitable offerings here. However, here are a few highlights:

• I completed a major ID undertaking that occupied the entire month of June. This entailed the design of the Training Plan for a new course encompassing the common foundational training for all RCAF aircraft technicians. The next phase of the project is to lead the development of the entire 3 month course and all the learning assets.
• I am currently engaged in a new Stanford MOOC on Design Thinking. So far it’s fascinating and very inspiring. I even managed to entice my PLN colleague Bianca Woods to join in the fun.
• I am also training for my first ever half-marathon. I’m training 5 days out of 7. While that time is great for clearing my head, I haven’t found a way to blog while running. I am now accepting suggestions for this challenge.

Coming up next, my own take on Lifehacker’s “How I Work”.

Leaving ADDIE for SAM. With a Crossbow?

I got a chuckle out of the reaction from some of my valued PLN members when I shared a photo of a (nerf) Crossbow training aid from today’s “Leaving ADDIE for SAM” workshop. *

I was laughing at myself because, in hindsight, I probably should have added a little context to the image.

Thoughts on Doug Belshaw’s OpenBadges videos

This is another win for my PLN. I am reviewing Doug Belshaw’s well-presented videos about OpenBadges.

Doug, as many of you know, works for Mozilla, and is one of the leading minds there on the OpenBadges initiative. Rather than performing endless F2F briefs, he created a couple of videos that outline the basics.  I want to record a few thoughts and queries as I review them.

Storify – My Test Drive

While I grabbed a Storify account some time back, I hadn’t really done much more than explore it at a fairly basic level. However, I finally took the plunge and decided to take a new approach to summarizing one of my favourite PLN discussions, #chat2lrn.

In concept, the Storify concept is simple: search for whatever you want, and turn it into a “story” of related events, news items, media clips, whatever.   Add in your own commentary, reassemble at will, and you can create your very own amalgamated/aggregated digital artifact.

This was a good learning experience for me because I wanted to find a way to catch up on the tweets and draw some of my own conclusions, particularly because I wasn’t able to stay for the whole chat.

Rapid ID and Rapid Dev? Yes! But…

Thanks (yet again) to Twitter, I came across a post by Karen from Langevin Learning Services (@karencar_ID) who shared an offering from the folks at Bottom Line Performance in Indianapolis (@BLPIndy). The substance of this post was whether or not Rapid Design and Rapid Development were possible. BLP’s inspiration was another entry from the widely read Rapid e-Learning Blog.

My immediate reaction was, “Yes, but, there are some caveats.”