eLearning Technology: Desember 2009

Rabu, 23 Desember 2009

St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants

If you have aspirations to become a medical assistant course, you also understand that it is not easy to attain. It really need most of your time to study the medical subject, and you also have to prepare themselves in leading the school. One of the leading schools that prepare their students qualified medical assistant is St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants.

The MedAssistant.Org has the online learning. They will teach you to be the expert medical assistant. This online learning is supported by St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants. It has 6 up to 8 weeks program that has to be completed but you can set your own schedule as you’re convenient. Here, you don’t need to worry about the distance because you can do your study online with the expert guidance. St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants has the e-learning program, so the students can send all their tasks, assignments, and questions via email. The benefit of this program is that, the students can cut off their transportation cost and have the flexible time.

If you want to make it sure read the testimony from the students at MedicalAssistantschools.Blogspot.Com because they know how interesting the online learning is. St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants also has other assistant profession programs that you can choose such as Nursing Assistant program and Home Health care courses. They also offer the students with the job info opportunity as the medical assistant and they can start their career from St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants.

Minggu, 20 Desember 2009

Prepare to Feel Old : eLearning Technology

Workplace Learning Today pointed me to a post Ten Common Phrases That Could Soon Be History. I use similar kinds of examples in my presentations (and posts such as Work Skills Keeping Up?). I thought it might be fun for me to catalog some of the ones that I’ve used in my presentations and other places as well as have this ready for future presentations.

So here is a list of technologies that:

Boomers – used
Gen X – know what it is (probably)
Millenial – never used / likely don’t know what it is

If you are a Boomer or an older Gen X, this list is sure to make you feel a bit old.

Pay Phones – Collect Calls

Where’s the nearest pay phone?
Call me collect?

Typewriter / Ribbon / Correcting Ribbon

"You need to mute your sound"

Sabtu, 19 Desember 2009

Learned about Learning in 2009 : eLearning Technology

It’s always fun at the end of the year to go back and take a look at what you’ve been working on, what you’ve learned during the year. I’ve been doing this the past few years. And as part of this, I’ve been taking advantage of: 2009 Predictions How Did I Do?, 2009 Top Posts and Topics, Top 125 Workplace eLearning Posts of 2009 and just running through my blog posts for the year.

Knowledge Work Skills / Work Literacy

Having realized in 2007 that there's a very important Knowledge Worker Skill Gap, I felt the need in 2008 to find ways to help knowledge workers and organizations build skills like Leveraging Networks, Network Feedback, Finding Expertise, Using Social Media to Find Answers to Questions, Learning through Conversation and searching, scanning, etc. In June 2008, Work Literacy Launched.

2009 has continued that effort. I’m convinced that we are all struggling to have our Work Skills Keep Up. And many of my 2009 Top Posts and Topics are related to exactly this.

Also, a lot of my presentations have been about exactly these things.

When I look at my particular skills, methods and tools for 2009 and compare them to 2008, I would say that it’s mostly a question of degree of use and certainly my use of Twitter has grown. See also: Twitter Conference Ideas and Twitter and Webinars. I will say that adopting TweetDeck on both my desktop and my iPhone has made it a much better tool for me.

Online Sessions / Conferences / Discussions => Now Visible Networking

I’ve seen during 2009 a real growth in the ability to spark up interesting discussions as online sessions. During the year, I’ve had fantastic conversations through LearnTrends around SharePoint, Examples and Tour of Different Kinds of eLearning, Social Learning, and the Business of Learning. Each of these allowed me to fast forward my learning and share knowledge effectively.

However, during 2009, I had a bit of an aha moment. It came during a presentation when I said:

It's a much better use of my time to use LinkedIn to spark a conversation than it is to go to networking events.

I realized that a lot of the networking that I had done in person in the past could move online and actually be a much more effective use of time. And a lot of that networking could be public. So, why not look to make this more explicit and effective?

I started calling this Visible Networking. This is still relatively new as a name, but it’s something that I’ve been doing for a few years now. Naming it allows me to better understand it and move it forward.

If you think about it, Twitter, Blog Comments, etc. are all forms of visible networking. Instead of networking in private, make it a visible conversation online so that everyone can benefit. And it can turn into great things like: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank.

eLearning 2.0 Morphing Into Social Learning and Informal Learning

In the post, Hot Topics in eLearning for 2009, the top two hottest topics across all the eLearning Learning blogs were Twitter and various forms of social/informal learning, especially as it relates to the use of technology to support this. eLearning 2.0 was considered a hot term in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009. For me, it was still one of my top terms, but I’ve found myself discussing things in other ways as well. I think as we’ve moved past the idea that this stuff has impact, we’ve begun to discuss it in a different way.

I don’t actually think using the terms “social learning” or “informal learning” is the right way to go about selling this stuff either.

Instead, during 2009, I’ve decided to always be a “Jack” … if you don’t know what that means or what it means about selling social learning then you should look at: Selling Learning Communities – Not Everyone Will or Wants a Group Hug.

It’s something I’ve said in a lot of presentations – you pick a specific, smart target and it’s a “no duh” decision. Now I have a better way to say it. Thanks Jack!

Using Topic Hubs to Speed My Learning

In 2008, I launched eLearning Learning. It basically takes what people in the world of eLearning are already doing and turns it into a resource that helps surface the best stuff. It was great to help me better keep track of what was going on in a world that I know pretty well.

In 2009, I realized that this same approach is even more valuable for areas where I want to learn more as I described in Learning, Extended Brain and Topic Hubs. So, I have been heavily leveraging the system and working with partners who are gurus in a space to fast forward my learning on diverse topics such as: Community and Networks, Mobile Learning, Nonprofit Marketing, Nonprofit Technology, HR Technology, B2B Marketing, and Professional Speaking.

There’s something really interesting going on here that I’ve not quite figured out. It’s very powerful stuff and an important extension to my PWLE.

I’m a little surprised that I didn’t get more response to Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning but it may be that other people learn in a very different way.

Slow Dramatic Shifts in the Business of Learning

I really think we are going through some pretty dramatic shifts as described in the Business of Learning and covered more in posts such as Update on Future of Business of Learning, New Learning Solutions, Marginalized, and Free.

There’s always going to be a need for certain kinds of training and traditional learning. But the economic realities and environment suggests a pretty dramatic shift going on here.

It’s going to cause us to think about models in very different ways such as how Intuit has Outsourced Training to Customers.

Learning Event? Work Event?

There was a really great case study by HP during one of the Learn Trends sessions that described how they took marketing professionals from across the organization, taught them some basics about Web 2.0 tools, and then helped them engage in conversation around what it means to HP. This was hosted by the learning organization, but it looked more like a research, innovation project than a learning event. The outcomes really weren’t known at the start. The goal was to actually define some meaningful results for the business.

Grow My Virtual Meeting, Collaboration Skills

I was reminded during 2009, that I need to be in a continuous learning mode around building my skills for effective virtual meetings, collaboration, presentations, etc. Several of my posts during the year were around this such as Learning from Others in the Room, Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations, Presentation Backchannel Multitasking, Twitter Conference Ideas.

Final Aha Moments

Need for more eLearning Portal Integration.

There’s bias around Profile Photos and an Email Address Bias.

Jumat, 18 Desember 2009

Twitter Captivate Integration : eLearning Technology

I mentioned in my post 2009 Predictions How Did I Do? that we are seeing more and more about Add-ins & Mashups as a means to build richer learning experiences. I particularly cited a DevLearn demo of twitter being embedded inside Captivate as the basis of a social learning experience.

They’ve posted on the Adobe Captivate blog - Collaborative learning using Captivate and Twitter. You can run a demo (18 mins) to see it in action. The basic idea is that students will be able to have a social learning experience utilizing twitter as a messaging systems within a Captivate course.

Rabu, 16 Desember 2009

eLearning Technology and LearnTrends Nominated : eLearning Technology

The EduBlog Awards are happening again this year. I’m happy to say there were several nominations for this blog and for LearnTrends. There are a lot of great nominees in all of the categories.

If you’ve found value from this blog and/or LearnTrends, please click on the links below and vote for them in their categories. It’s a nice way to support the sources you use.

eLearning Technology was nominated in two categories:

LearnTrends was nominated for:

I also appreciated that several people nominated eLearning Learning for various categories. It didn’t get put on the short list in any of the categories, but I do want to thank people who nominated it.

Kamis, 10 Desember 2009

Home Loans with Cheap Mortgage Rates

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web Site www.monitorbankrates.com offers home loans with cheap mortgage rates which will also helpful for the financial problem. At least, actually we don’t need to spend too much for getting better life in that area. This site also provides the life insurance quotes that offer a better live standard for everyone whose want it.

Online Shoe (Schuhe) Shop

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Rabu, 09 Desember 2009

Half of Arizona Homeowners with Mortgages are Underwater. 23% Nationwide…

Not surprising, but sobering numbers…

The Wall Street Journal reports that the number of people underwater on their mortgages (those who owe more than the property is currently worth), has increased to 23% nationally.

Arizona is second only to Nevada with 47.9% of all home owners with a mortgage having negative equity in the third quarter of 2009. Another 4.5% are classified as “near negative” – within 5% of being in a negative equity position. (Nevada is at 65% / 3.7%)

Yep, drive through a neighborhood in Arizona and statistically speaking, every other house you drive by is worth less than what is owed on it. Drive through a development built in the last five years and the odds are outstanding that every homeowner is underwater.

Depressing, isn’t it?

Oklahoma, New York and Montana all have less than 7% of mortgage holders in a negative equity position. Florida, Michigan and California round out the top five in underwater borrowers.

I don’t really want to get off into why half of Arizona is underwater on their mortgage. There are lots of reasons – ridiculously lax lending practices in the near past, poor choices by lenders and borrowers, accepting crappy advice like, “Don’t worry, in a couple of years you can just refinance”, irrational exuberance, and investor frenzy all come immediately to mind. We could discuss all of these for a significant portion of the rest of eternity.

What’s it going to take to fix this?

I don’t know.

A homebuyer tax credit won’t do it.

There are lots of calls out there for loan modifications that include a principal reduction component. You think the banks are going to reduce principal balances on HALF the mortgages in Arizona? On a fourth of the mortgages across the country?

Time, and a lot of it, is the most likely answer. Quasi-regular readers know I’m not a fan of Big ~~Brother~~ Government mucking about in the market. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a scary thing. At this point, I don’t think the government could fix this even if they had a clue. Look at the numbers in this WSJ interactive chart — $12.8 trillion dollars of property value and $8.9 trillion in outstanding mortgage debt. That’s a 70% LTV (loan-to-value) ratio nationwide. Arizona’s LTV is 91%. Ninety-one percent.

These are mind-boggling numbers folks.

If the government must get involved, streamlining the short sale process might help. I can’t tell you how many buyers we’ve had that walk away from a short sale transaction because they grow weary of waiting, 5, 10, 20 weeks or more to get a reply from a lender. If the short sale process was even remotely reasonable we might actually be able to bleed off some of this inventory, impact the supply and demand curve and see home values begin to appreciate – hopefully at a reasonable pace, not the patently absurd frenzy of a few years ago.

Until that happens (IF that happens), more homes are likely headed into foreclosure, putting too many homes on the market, increasing supply which will result in downward pressure on prices.

It’s a vicious circle.

There is no question there are some great buying opportunities out there. Yesterday I showed homes in the $125K range that would have cost $200K a couple of years ago. That’s great for the buyers. Conversely it’s lousy for the sellers. But every buyer needs to understand that as low as prices are, that doesn’t mean we’ve hit bottom and there is never any guarantee that home values always increase. Obviously that is a fallacy. The WSJ report indicates 11% of borrowers who took out a mortgage this year already owe more than their home is worth. The days of buying a home and selling it in a few months (or few years) for profit are over.

At least in this neck of the woods.

What am I missing? What, if anything, can the government do to stabilize the housing market? Should they do anything or should they let market dynamics play out?

eLearning Technology