Publishing has changed … or not so much?

Last week, I spoke with students at Clemson University in their graphic communications program about HTML and CSS, content management systems, and how to combine mediums for publishing.  Yesterday, in one of my feeds this video was brought to my attention.  It’s incredibly clever. Apparently, the video was created by Penguin Group for a sales conference and it sort of exploded from there, as mentioned in at paidcontent.org.  At Penguin Group’s blog, though, they explain the inspiration, idea, treatment, and development process, following “The Lost Generation” video.

Disclaimer:  This video was produced by publishers PenguinGroup USA and DK in the UK.

I encourage you to watch the whole thing.  Don’t stop half-way through.  If you do you’ll be disappointed. This video is very thought-provoking and it’s in the vein of Michael Wesch’s viral The Machine is Us/Using Us.  I can see this video as a sort of mantra or battle cry for publishing as printers and publishers consider digital technologies and the individuals that rely on them.

So, take this video with awe and a grain of wisdom for recognizing it as a small piece of propaganda, too. Enjoy!  Hey, but let me know what you think about the video.  Leave your comments below.  I’d love to heard from you guys!

5 things Facebook can teach us about elearning

Facebook is an Internet phenomenon. It launched to a small group of Harvard students in 2004 and now has millions of users worldwide. Although elearning is popular, it has not had the kind of widespread acceptance with the general public that Facebook has seen. Let’s take a look at a 5 things Facebook can teach us about elearning.

1. Anyone can do it.

One reason people give for not wanting to participate in elearning is that they aren’t good with computers or technology. According to Inside Facebook, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is women over 55. I’ll never forget the surprise I had when I logged into Facebook and saw that I had a friend request from my mother. MY MOM IS ON FACEBOOK! I was shocked. If she has the ability to create an account, upload pictures, make status updates, and everything else she’s been doing on Facebook, why can’t she take an elearning course?

2. People don’t mind spending time online.

Another complaint I’ve heard about elearning is that people don’t like spending that much time on the computer. If you take a look at Nielsen’s Online Ratings, you’ll see that the average Facebook user spent almost 6 hours on the site in December. If someone can spend 6 hours a month updating their status, viewing photos, and participating in virtual pillow fights, they should be able to spend time participating in elearning.

3. Evolution is critical.

Facebook is constantly changing and improving. They add features that are needed and take away features that people don’t like or don’t use. They change the layout to help improve the user experience, even though everyone doesn’t always agree.  Elearning must take a similar approach for the content and the experience to remain relevant. Elearning must take advantage of the latest technology, make changes based on user feedback, and keep content up to date in order to improve the overall experience.

4. An active facilitator is not necessary.

Elearning proponents often talk about the need for an active facilitator to help create a thriving online community. Facebook blows this theory out of the water. Facebook has an extremely active and constantly growing community without having someone in charge of making sure everyone is participating. However, there is some facilitation programmed into the system. It might make a suggestion about adding a new friend or contacting someone you haven’t messaged in a while, but there is no live person checking to make sure you do these things.

5. It’s not for everyone.

I know I said earlier that anyone can do it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone wants to do it. Even with over 300 million Facebook users, there are still people who just don’t get it. I know several people who have signed up for an account, spent some time looking around, and then never returned. The same applies to elearning. It just doesn’t seem to fit with some people’s learning style.

So, if you are involved in the development of elearning, keep these things in mind. They might help it improve. If you can think of other things that Facebook can teach us about elearning (good or bad) please post them in the comments.

Guest Blogger: Joey Weaver teaches Computer Technology to high school students at Kansas Career & Technology Center in Memphis, TN. He is currently working on a Master’s degree in Instructional Design & Technology at the University of Memphis.

Image courtesy of sitmonkeysupreme at Flikr Creative Commons

Bookmarks for December 9th through December 10th

These are my Jumptags for December 9th through December 10th:

• How To Explain To Clients That They Are Wrong – Smashing Magazine – GIFs of spinning s on the Contact us page. Common usability mistakes for the sake of visual appeal. Splash pages. Fancy search box. No whitespace. Music on page load….
• How to Deal with Feature Creep | Webdesigner Depot – If any assumption is safe, it’s that six months after launching a website (or sooner?), its owners will have a list of things they want to change, from minor
• Project Timeline (Marine Theme) – Google Docs Templates – This is a template for Google Docs for project schedule tracking.
• Cover it Live – TBR08 – Michael Grant – Barry Dahl covered my keynote live and I didn't even know it.
• 6 Hilarious Social Media Motivational Posters – These posters are not the usual motivational posters you see hanging around offices. In fact, the little quotes we see on them aren’t exactly motivating and might even be insulting to social media users. Any offense is obviously intentional, but it’s…
• Sketchy Web Icons: 30 Hand Drawn Icon Pack | Tutorial9 – This Icon Pack includes 30 Hand-Drawn Web Design Icons. This is the perfect set for adding that handmade feel to your own creations online.
• Secrets to a Faster and Attractive Web Site Design Revealed | Web Design | instantShift – A web designer has many challenges to tackle. The creation of an attractive web site is as important as sending the message across effectively. After all, a web , Daily Resource for Web Designers and Developers.
• Evaluation Wiki – Mlawiki – This wiki is an ongoing project initiated by the MLA Committee on Information Technology (CIT) as a way for the academic community to develop, gather, and share materials about the evaluation of work in digital media for purposes of tenure and promot…
• How Getting An F On Your School Paper Makes You A Better Blogger – This guest post was written by Rob Sutton from Ramped Reviews. Image by kharied. This comes to be a surprise …
• HOW TO: Manage Successful Social Media Promotions – Retailers are getting more traffic and sales from social media sites. Here are some great tips for turning social media buzz into social shopping buy.
• Easy front-end framework – Easy front-end framework is all in one front-end solution. It includes CSS, HTML and JavaScript predefined code that you can easily use and reuse on your projects.
• 50 High-Quality Free Fonts for Professional Design – Designers love to have a lot of quality fonts available to them, and fortunately there are some very good free fonts out there. In this post we'll feature some of the best free fonts that can be used in your commercial designs. If you're looking for …
• 22 Latest Exceptional WordPress Hacks | Tutorials | instantShift – WordPress needs no introduction among designers and writers. It’s usually known as a synonym for blogging. Now days every other WordPress blogs look more or , Daily Resource for Web Designers and Developers.
• From Blank Screen To Web Design In 5 Easy Steps – Learn a simple, five-step web design process to make sure you include the basic elements every website needs while freeing your mind to be more creative.
• New Branding Revealed For Winter Olympics 2014 – The official logo for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics was revealed last week. This is the first winter games to be held in Russia and it is the first Olympic logo to include an internet URL.

400 friends? Confirm or ignore?

I recently had a facebook friend post a celebratory post about reaching 400 friends. Of course, comments of congratulations followed this. However, I could not help but wonder how many of the people he would recognize or speak to if he met them on the street?

A recent blog posted by Dion Hinchcliffe lists the twenty-two power laws of the emerging social economy. I found it interesting that number 3 was Dunbar’s Law that states we can only have 150 active connections. With more than 10 social networking options available, I think of people who have more than 150 connections on each network. For example, on my LinkedIn network, I only have four connections with two group memberships.

So, how many connections do I need? Personally, I have 148 friends in Facebook. In September, Wired published an article explaining where you could purchase Facebook and Twitter friends. Most of my connections are personal connections made through education and church settings. However, I did use my friends list recently to distribute a survey for a course. Because of their feedback, I was able to focus the instructional design of my unit.

The Facebook Song seems to summarize the feelings of the growing population of social networkers. With the number of social networking sites and connections increasing, are social interaction skills beginning to suffer? I love the thought of being able to connect with high school friends or college friends. However, when you begin to suffer withdrawl symptoms because of lack of Facebook time, there is a greater problem.

• Have you suffered facebook or social networking with drawl?
• How many social networking connections do you have?
• How do you use these connections personally and professionally?

Guest blogger:  Jamae Allred is a former preschool teacher of six years. She enjoyed working with children from three to five years old. After completing her Masters of Science in Education in Early Childhood, she taught undergraduate early childhood courses for one year. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in instructional design & technology at the University of Memphis. Her research interests include online education and e-Learning influences in the early childhood arena. She plans to teach in higher education after completing her degree.

Bookmarks for October 9th through October 13th

These are my Jumptags for October 9th through October 13th:

• PowerPoint Design in 2009: Six most recommended tips : Speaking about Presenting – But in this project, there was a striking consistency with the advice given. I’ve outlined below the six tips that were recommended most often. I’ve also noted the research that backs up a recommendation – where it exists.
• PowerPoint slide design – the basics : Speaking about Presenting – These design tips are for the Assertion-Evidence format – this is gaining ground as the brain-friendly yet easy to put together alternative to bullets.
• New evidence that bullet-points don’t work : Speaking about Presenting – At last, we have some scientifically rigorous evidence to show that slides full of bullet-points don’t work.
• STUDY: 75% of Small Businesses Are Not Engaging In Social Media | Penn Olson – According to a survey conducted for Citibank Small Business, 75% of small businesses revealed that they have not found social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn helpful in generating leads or business expansion.
• Learning Circuits Blog Big Question – PowerPoint – The Learning Circuits Blog considers the use of Powerpoint in learning.

Bookmarks for September 8th

These are my Jumptags for September 8th

• The Five Design Elements Every Website Needs – Discover the five design elements that every well-built website needs. Includes tips and tricks for content and navigation design.
• How To Jump Start The Website Design Process – Discover a simple four-step process that can help any web designer squeeze inspiration out of a competitor's website design.
• Project2Manage – Free Project Management – Project2Manage is an Online project management system that allows you to stay up-to-date, on task and connected with your team. We’ve taken the hard work of staying organized and simplified it for you.
• 15 Essential Web Tools for Students – It's time to head back to school and there are a number of web-based and social tools to help you get through the school year. Here are 15 essential ones.
• Microsoft Launches Tools For Teachers – Microsoft's Education Labs launched a new project this afternoon and it's better on trees and the environment. The group just announced a new Math Worksheet Generator where teachers …
• Kineo – Tip 27: Tear down the visual wallpaper – It is time to tear down the e-learning wallpaper and take heed of some top tips on using graphics for instructional use.
• 30 Amazing Alphabet Recreations | Tutorial9 – The Alphabet dates back to the Egyptian era and forms the basis of our language, through the years people have experimented and created a wealth of interesting and unique alphabets. This is a collection of some of the best examples.
• 3 Successful Small Businesses on Social Media – To help you see how social media can work no matter how big or small your business, I’ve found some great case studies of small businesses that get it and are seeing results!

Importing your blog (or someone else’s) into Facebook

Over at The Edublogger, Sue Waters offers up a quick tutorial (with screenshots) on how to import your blog posts into your Facebook account.  With a comment I made to Sue, she also discovered it was possible to use Yahoo Pipes and splice multiple RSS feeds together and import that into your Facebook account as well.  Finally, because Facebook is accepting an RSS feed, it seems possible to publish/re-publish just about any RSS feed, including your Delicious bookmarks, a CNN feed or the feed from your Google Calendar.