IT Lesson

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"Introducing the concept of life-long learning is a massive undertaking for most organisations. It needs a major shift in culture, requiring commitment, careful implementation and ongoing support to be successful. George Eybers, chairman of Skills2learn, says there are 12 basic steps to ensuring the success of an e-learning implementation."

1. Secure upper and middle management commitment, support and active participation.
   Form a team of people that represents the whole company.
2. Install and test software components of the e-learning programme (LMS, EIS, and courseware library).
3. Employee information (in LMS/EIS) establishes the backbone of the e-learning process management system.
4. Establish internal e-learning experts in each department.
5. The CEO should outline the strategic objectives behind the training programme during the launch.
6. The implementation team must work with department managers to develop local level plans and timetables.
7. Specific e-learning personnel appraisal objectives are developed and formalised with each employee.
8. Incentive programmes are developed and publicised to all employees.
   Ongoing monitoring of EIS and LMS information.
9. Employee feedback.
10. Management - monitors system key variables (from LMS/EIS) and takes action where indicated to ensure there is ongoing progress.

"Any organisation that follows these 12 steps to a blended learning implementation will increase its return on investment, and realise an edge over its competitors through the improved skills of its staff."

• Link to Stephen Downes Homepage
• All His Papers
• All His Presentation Slides + KL Workshop Slides
• Blogs - OLDaily & Half an Hour

Web 1.0 = Read
Web 2.0 = Read -Write
Web 3.0 = Read -Write - Research
Web 4.0 = Read -Write - Research - Rambo!

At last I got to meet Stephen Downes in person and attend one of his workshops. Better yet, due to a secret arrangement (Not telling!) I got to become his personal bodyguard (I mean assistant) during this 2-day workshop in Kuala Lumpur (14th - 15th January). You can see me on the picture happily holding tightly to the handheld laser gun (I mean camera!).

In this e-Learning 2.0 workshop facilitated by Stephen (who actually entitled it Web 2.0 in Learning), participants explored a full range of web 2.0 tools, and discussed (including group activities) how these tools could facilitate more effective communication, collaboration and learning. The intention was to explore the underlying technologies and to develop a sense of what to expect in the future.

NEW DISCOVERIES?
The thing about attending workshops facilitated by people like Stephen is that you can be sure of discovering a lot of new learning stuff on the way. Here are new learning tools and sites that I discovered during this great workshop:

• Gliffy - A free web-based diagram editor.
• Zoho - Offers a suite of online web applications geared towards increasing your productivity and offering easy collaboration.
• LiveJournal - A free service for your journaling and blogging.
• Bebo - Allows users to share photos with music, and blogs, and draw on members White Boards.
• Pixer - Lets you manipulate, edit, enhance and apply filters to your digital pictures using only your web browser.
• Ustream.tv - You can broadcast your own live video show for free. You only need a computer device, camera and solid Internet connection. Not bad!
• Worldbridges - A community of communities that use homegrown webcasting and other new media technologies to help people connect, learn, & collaborate.
• EdTechTalk - A community of educators interested in discussing and learning about the uses of educational technology. They webcast several live shows each week.

In addition, we discussed many other web 2.0 learning tools such Ning (Social Networking), Second Life ( 3D virtual world) and Wikispaces, which I have already explored, but are worth mentioning here (Check out the slides to discover the rest!).

Not only did we discover new tools from Stephen, he also discovered a few new learning tools from us, including:

• WiZiQ - Free Hosted Virtual Classroom platform.
• CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software.
• eSnips - Get 5GB of free space to upload and share your files, photos, videos and music.

In other words, no matter how brilliant we are, we can always learn and discover stuff from others. Therefore, I would argue that Stephen Downes is brilliant, because he knows this and practices it all the time (Any logic here!).

However, of all the things I discovered, learned and explored during the workshop, I personally found the reading resources shared the most valuable to my learning mind. I suppose it is easier to find a new tool or site (at least for me!), than discover a great article or paper among millions. Anyway, here is a list of a few of those relevant and mind enriching writings, which Stephen recommended us to explore further (Check out the slides to discover the rest! 2nd time!):

• The Cluetrain Manifesto - Markets are about conversations (an e-Book by several authors). If you are lazy, at least read the 95 theses to get some idea.
• E-Learning 2.0 - (Stephen Downes)
• What is Web 2.0 - The web as platform. Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software (Tim OReilly).
• Educational Blogging - (Stephen Downes)
• How to Be Heard - (Stephen Downes)
• The Long Tail - Why the future of business is selling less of more (Clay Shirky/Chris Anderson).
• MySpace is My Identity Space - (Danah Boyd)
• Wisdom of Crowds - (James Surowiecki)

And the juicy list of excellent reading resources (especially about blogging and social networks) goes on and on (Check out the slides to discover the rest! 3rd time lucky!). As I had not read many of these recommended reading resources before, it was a thrill to discover them.

• Learning as Creation - We increasingly learn by creating/remixing knowledge, products and services during the learning process (not only consuming), with the assistance of increasingly more powerful and user-friendly learning tools.
• Social Learning - We learn by interacting with others locally and around the world, which is increasingly being enabled more efficiently and effectively with the assistance of technology (Global Collective Intelligence). Imagine participating in global learning communities and getting access to some of the greatest minds on this planet with just a few clicks. Here I am talking to Jay Cross, Jane Knight, Joseph Hart, Stephen Downes and Clayton Wright on Skype. The only cost is basically our time.
• Personal Learning Environment - People will increasingly be able to construct their own customized and convenient learning spaces, which integrates all their informal and formal learning tools. In other words, we might soon say goodbye to LMS, LCMS, portals, etc., sooner than we realize. They will probably exist, but we will hardly visit them, and mostly read their news feeds from our all-to-one learning dashboards. One User ID and Password! One Learning Space! Tons of Learning Tools! All are communicating with one another! We can get all our relevant updates from one learning space, and we can update all our learning tools with one update (Create once, publish many). WOW! That is cool!
• Immersive Learning - Augmented reality and 3D virtual worlds with fully immersive tools enabling every sense of our body to engage in the learning process. It also reflects that we will increasingly be able to construct cost-effective simulated learning environments that are close to the real thing. We are able to do and practice things in safe virtual learning environments that we could only dream about in the past (e.g. manage Google, build spaceships, teleport to Mars, discuss global warming with Al Gore, and engage in past civilizations). In short, we can stimulate all our senses to fully immerse ourselves in safe virtual learning environments that are similar, or close replications of the real ones. Practice without getting physically hurt (though, we might get a bit of mental stress!).
• The Living Arts (Things You Really Need to Learn) - We dont follow strictly the requirements and needs of PhD, Masters, Bachelor and Diploma programs, programs are instead tailored to our relevant learning needs, and we are empowered to construct our own learning opportunities and environments that enable and motivate us to find and fulfill our learning potential. Why learn something that we never use, or want to know?

In addition to learning a lot of stuff from Stephen, I learned a lot from more than 40 participants both from the corporate and the education (mostly Higher Education) sectors in Malaysia (picture below). Interestingly, we are also planning to start an official e-Learning community (whereby we physically meet on regular occasions) in Malaysia, and if you are interested to find out more about that, please join or visit our new Malaysian e-Learning Community in Facebook (you need a Facebook account to join).

Finally, I would like to thank FIK International for organizing a great workshop.

Oh, I forgot (this post is getting long!)! You might be wondering why Stephen and the Myau picture. Well, during the first day of the workshop we all suddenly heard the sound of cat (Myau), and Stephen probably thought he was going a bit nutty, or the jet lag was really getting to him (which it was, I suppose!). However, it was only a ringtone to one of the participants, and we all had a great laugh! So, the picture is in memory of this funny informal learning incident. Myau!!!

In conclusion, I am glad that I attended the workshop (and became Stephens workshop assistant), and got to know Stephen better. These are the kind of learning experiences that spark our motivation to learn and explore more. Yeah, now I am also a certified e-Learning 2.0 specialist (by attendance). If you are interested to learn more, please give me a buzz :)

• Slideshare version
• Thinking Back to The Future
  

MY TALK

I was invited by the Ministry of Health (Training Division) to give a two hour lecture during a 2-day Tutor Seminar at the Hotel City Bayview, Penang. There were 165 participants (17 males only!). This seminars theme was TRAINING EXCELLENCE, and it explored e-learning, student assessment, self-assessment, self-motivation, lateral thinking and emotional intelligence over two (2) days.

My 2-hour talk explored learning and how we can use web 2.0 learning tools and Open Educational Resources (OER) to transform the way we learn. Finally, it reflected some of the challenges that we will probably face as we embark on this 21st century learning adventure.

Here are the slides:

Using e-Learning To Facilitate 21st Century Learning

View more documents from zaid.

SELF-ASSESSMENT
The moment of truth had arrived after my lecturing nightmares in 2008. This was my first lecture of the year to more than a 100 participants. Was I ready? Or would I crash, and procrastinate into total self-destruction?

Interestingly, I was invited again by the Ministry of Health (Training Division), after putting so many tutors to sleep during my previous lecture. I suppose they might have found something valuable from it. Otherwise, why would they have invited me back again? Maybe my negative imagination during that sad period had misled me to believe that it was much worse than it really was. Sometimes setting too high expectations can kill our joy to enjoy the process of learning and mastering. Nothing can be mastered over night! Ask Tiger Woods, and he will tell you?

So, lets start with the presentation slides? 108 slides (54 slides per hour), including four inspiring short videos (adding up to around 25 minutes) over a two-hour period. There are several more excellent short videos in the slides, which I ignored during the talk due to time constraints, but still worthwhile sharing for participants to explore after the talk.

Since, I was going to talk about e-learning, I was of course reluctant to give them print-outs to prove a point. So, I uploaded the slides to Slideshare the night before my talk for them to access during and after the seminar. Interestingly, I believe this is the first time in my life that I have actually been really satisfied with my presentation slides. Although, I missed out on a few resources and tools I wanted to share, and a few messy slides, I felt good about them. That was at least a good start.

My positive feelings were probably picked up by the Slideshare team, which within 24 hours featured the presentation slides on Slideshares front page. Within 48 hours it had been viewed more than a 1000 times, and retweeted 20+ times. So, this indirect feedback from a global audience has surely helped me regain my confidence :)

But then again, it was not my slides that were a problem last time. Instead it was my actual delivery (lecture) that literally nearly procrastinated me into total self-destruction. So, how would it go this time around?

Strangely over the last few months in my recovery to rediscover myself, I have lowered my expectations, and started to enjoy life. Yes, I have even started swimming 2-3 times a week, built some muscle, and should be ready to challenge Michael Phelps in the next Olympics. London here I come!

After months of frustration, reflections and rejecting several offers to conduct talks and workshops in Malaysia and abroad, God (Allah to me! For Atheists, I have no idea!) sparked a small light that has literally changed my life (at least until now!). My little four year old son looked me in the eyes and said a few words of magic (Please, get better soon!), and from that day on, slowly and steadily an inner strength has increasingly touched every cell in my body.

So, how did the lecture go? No fear, no pressure, no high expectations, more muscle, more experience, more fun, and more Yes, I can! Al-Hamdulilla, I believe it went very well. Actually, I believe I nailed it (Simon are you reading!). At the moment I feel like an e-Learning Gladiator that can battle through all the destructive forces of negativity to inspire people to explore all the wonderful opportunities to learn beyond face-to-face learning (please explore the slides!).

Looking back, I should have video recorded it! But then again, I am not ready to become a Stephen Downes yet (recording and sharing to the world!). Give me a couple of years of messing up first, then perhaps! But at least you all can enjoy my presentation slides as I learn to master the art of lecturing.




MY WIFE, MY LOVE!
However, as I have been so obsessed during the last few months trying to rediscover myself and become an e-learning gladiator, I have neglected and not given the kind of love and time a marriage and family deserves. At the moment I am paying the price for it, and should stop writing right now, and instead win back the only woman that I have ever loved.

I LOVE YOU! PLEASE FORGIVE ME! I CANT IMAGINE LIVING WITHOUT YOU! PLEASE COME BACK!...


Update (15/7):
Al-Hamdulilla, My Love mission has been completed successfully. Now, I can focus on being an e-Learning Gladiator again :)

• SlideShare version
• SlideBoom version
• PDF version (46 MB)

For those of you who have no idea what Ramadan is, you can click here for starters.

"...It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from dawn until sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience, sacrifice and humility. Ramadan is a time to fast for the sake of God, and to offer even more prayer than usual. In Ramadan Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance into the future, ask for help in refrain from everyday evils and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds."

Non-Muslims often think that fasting is a burden to Muslims, but we mostly look forward to it, and really enjoy the daily little struggles. Besides the obvious reasons (health, spiritual growth, empathy, bonding, sharing, awakening, discipline, etc.), I love this month because my brain neurons (or synapses) become more active, stimulating new creative connections during it. Also, my energy level increases. However, this energy increase does not seem to apply to many of my Muslim colleagues (I suppose I am bit different in that sense!). One reason could be that the blood circulation to the brain increases during fasting, while the stomach and digestion organs are taking food-free yoga lessons during the day (Can a doctor please explain why?). In short, I love the month of Ramadan for many reasons.


e-LEARNING eBOOKS COLLECTION
I suppose to continue with the spirit of learning and sharing during this special month, I have compiled an Amazing collection of free e-Learning ebooks in a quite visual stimulating chunked manner (Instructional Designers please evaluate!). Well, whether it is Amazing or not, I leave it up to you to decide. I suppose I used that word to attract your attention, and if you are reading now, I suppose it is kind of working. This time around, I have dumped SlideShare for SlideBoom to stimulate your mind to explore a bunch of interesting free e-learning related ebooks, and sites to find more ebooks:




Click here to download the PDF version (46 MB).

Here are the quick links (my favorite! Easy to access and replicate by others!):

1. LEARNING 2.0
   
2. Educating the Net Generation
3. Learning Spaces
4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
6. The Insiders Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
10. e-LearningGurus 5-Minute Summaries
11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
14. Knowing Knowledge
15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
16. Using Moodle
17. FREE Guide to Online Education
18. Informal Learning
19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
22. KINEO Magic!
    
23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
24. Horizon Reports
25. Clives 33 Columns
26. Creating Learning Communities
27. Digital Education
28. Web-Teaching
29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
30. elearningeuropa Papers
31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
33. EDUCAUSE Books
34. Google Book Search
35. Project Gutenberg
36. Scribd
37. LearnOutLoud.com
38. LibriVox
39. Great Books Index
40. CIA World Factbook
41. FreeBookSpot
42. FreeTechBooks.com
43. OnlineComputerBooks
44. Free-eBooks
45. ManyBooks
46. Globusz
47. BookYards
48. The Online Books Page
49. Wikibooks
50. Free eBooks
51. Free Online BookStore
    

SLIDEBOOM ROCKS!
SlideShare is still my favorite free slide-sharing site, but SlideBoom is quickly becoming my next favorite one. What do I mean? I will be using both from now on. For the sake of giving SlideShare a wake up call, here are five things I like about SlideBoom, which SlideShare currently lack (hopefully they will upgrade soon!):

1. First, you can upload PowerPoint 2007 files (.pptx), meaning you dont need to convert to PDF or .ppt before uploading (if you are using Microsoft Office 2007).
2. Your original presentation keeps its features after conversion, including content style, animation effects, transitions, embedded audio and embedded video. This is a major weakness in the existing version of SlideShare, which really annoys me. To keep my presentations intact, I have to upload them as a PDF file.
   
3. The uploading process is faster and more pleasant (well at least from my notebook and network). I suppose they have fewer users and uploads to manage. It will be interesting to see SlideBoom tackle this, when the user/viewer tsunami comes.
4. The presentation seems to run smoother in the browser, and you can even create annotations (using pen, highlighter, eraser, etc.) to any SlideBoom presentation to point out its key ideas.
5. The heart of SlideBoom is based on iSpring (An add-in PowerPoint to Flash converter), which enables you to convert PowerPoint to Flash offline, speeding up the process, while retaining the presentations original effects better.

Having said that, SlideBooms presentation size is currently limited to 30 MB (easy to upgrade!), while SlideShare enables 100 MB per presentation. In terms of users and presentation views, SlideShare still rocks big time! For example, the most viewed presentation (as of today) on SlideBoom is only 3100+, while SlideShares most viewed presentation is a whopping 1.6 million+.

In a slideshell, I will not give up on SlideShare just yet, but you never know in the future. Anyway, why not use both! Perhaps I should consider a third free alternative. Got any suggestions?

Oops! You might be wondering, "what happened to the 101 OER presentation I was talking about in the previous post?" Coming soon hopefully. What happened to your non-blogging vacation? Al-Hamdulilla, Ramadan awakens again my need to share amazing learning resources quickly.

Oops, one more juicy item! I have updated the 140+ free learning tools list with one more juicy learning problem solver (in addition to SlideBoom). Hint: Unlimited storage :)