Techwire

I received an inquiry from a reader at a large company that is continuously working on large projects with lots of course content running around.   They have Articulate courses, classroom courses, SharePoint sites, etc.  They have an LMS but not an LCMS.  And they currently manage all of this using what I’ve seen at a lot of companies: network drives, naming conventions, some SharePoint.  Of course, it’s still a bit of a mess.  Sound familiar? A long time ago, the goal of an LCMS was to help to manage all of these kinds of assets.  Along the way, a lot of the LCMS products on the market have become more about a kind of authoring approached with content stored in a database that is transformed into courseware.  This is valuable for large scale authoring and translation of content.  They also handle asset management, but I really have not been seeing the kind of large scale adoption of LCMS products for that purpose. Here are some specifi...

I was just asked for some examples of eLearning.  I had collected up eLearning Examples a couple years ago, but thought it was worth going back to look for more.  The following are some very good lists of widely varying examples of eLearning. Elearning samples eLearning Examples Examples of E-Learning Where are Examples of eLearning? Lots Right Here! Two examples of elearning Elearning example: Branching scenario eLearning Examples 100+ Free Websites to Find out About Anything & Everything 100+ places to learn a language online 100+ free sites for learning about business The last three provide a glimpse into the great variation that exists to learn and get help on particular topics.  While a lot of people think of eLearning as being a course, notice how few of the resources in those last three are actual online courses.  Instead, most examples of eLearning actually fall outside of that realm.

Over the past few years, I spend part of December going back through my blog to recap a bit of what some of the key things I’ve learned over the course of the year.  I’ve been doing this the past few years, for example: Learned about Learning in 2009 .  And every year I use this as a Big Question – see: Learning 2010 .  A lot of it is thinking through where my thinking has changed over the course of the year.  So here are a few of the things that are a bit different for me. 1. Twitter is Much Better than I Thought for Learning I used to say during presentations that I wasn’t quite sure about twitter as a learning tool.  During 2010, I’ve been ramping up my use of twitter as a learning tool.  I’ve had to find ways to filter the flow and figure out when/how to reach out.  It was definitely helpful to spend time going through Twitter for Learning – 55 Great Articles . 2. Learning Coach Model Very Powerful In 2010, I had a great experience where Dr...

I just read George Siemens post Will online lectures destroy universities?   He makes the point that despite articles like Why free online lectures will destroy universities – unless they get their act together fast : Statements like “universities are obsolete” or “universities are dying” are comical. And untrue. Universities are continuing to grow in enrolment and general influence in society. Calling universities obsolete while we are early on in the so-called knowledge economy is like declaring factories obsolete in the 18th century just as the industrial revolution was taking hold. Utter nonsense. While George does talk about challenges in education, I think he misses part of the point of the article.  And this is something that I’ve been thinking (and writing – see Physics Lectures ) about for a long time.  Here’s the point: It’s incredibly easy to capture and distribute lectures. Rather than getting a lecture from whoever is teaching your course loc...

This post is part of the series on Text-to-Speech (TTS) for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me. The other posts are: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality , Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech , Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course , Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products , Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning , and Using Punctuation and Mark-Up Language to Increase Text-to-Speech Quality. Text-to-Speech Examples In this post, we will look more closely at costs of Text-to-Speech and issues around TTS Voice Licensing and Pricing.  The subject of TTS voice licensing and pricing is important because it helps e-learning practitioners understand which TTS tools they are legally allowed to use for their specific applications as well as letting them estimate the costs and pricing models of using these TTS tools. Voice Talent Rates and Implications on TTS Licensing and Pricing When the TTS...

May 18 2011 - Updated conferences with new list for June - December 2011 (and beyond). Clayton R. Wright has done his amazing list of conferences again this year and has asked me to post again. Past years eLearning Conferences 2010 , eLearning Conferences 2009. You can contact him at: crwr77@gmail.com . This list is focused mostly on the first half of the year: January to June 2011. And it covers a broad range of types of topics. Please note that events, dates, titles, and locations may change; thus, CHECK the specific conference website . Note also that some events will be cancelled at a later date. All Internet addresses were verified at the time of publication. No liability is assumed for any errors that may have been introduced inadvertently during the assembly of this conference list. If possible, please do not remove the contact information when you re-distribute the list as that is how I receive updates and corrections. If you publish the list on the web, please note its ...