Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
BP4_Penzu.com
Hello followers! This week I chose to discover Penzu, a secure, online journaling site that allows you to keep your entries private using encryption or to share them with others via email or by publishing them like a blog.
I’m in love with the diary style design of this site that looks like actual paper bound in a leather journal. Although Penzu is free for anyone to use, I found that there are more options available in the Pro mode. For $19 a year, users get offerings such as customized fonts, backgrounds, arrangement of pictures and so forth. Users can go mobile, adding entries on the go and also get the option of reminders sent to them, prompting them to add to their journal. This site takes me back to my 10th grade English class where one of our assignments each week was to write in a composition book about a topic of our choosing. If this web tool were available back then, I would have an extensive journal of my life by now.
I thought this site might be useful in my environment because often service members are restricted in what they can talk about, many times don’t know how to deal with various situations, military in nature or not, and need an outlet to simply express their ideas, opinions and experiences without fear of backlash. This is a great alternative to social sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which makes everything viral instantly. Penzu allows anyone to rant and rave, share and personalize his or her feelings in a secure environment.
A final, and encouraging note, there is no storage limit with Penzu, and, therefore, no need to abbreviate language or clip one’s words due to character limits. Welcome back, English language!
Friday, June 10, 2011
BP_Certificate RSS Feeds
A scenic day at Al Asad Airbase, Iraq 2006
My selection of the following feeds was based on my past, present and, hopefully, future roles within a "corporate" training environment. I am not a teacher by trade, but have been exposed to a number of training environments within the military, the legal sector and law enforcement. I believe each of these feeds would be pertinent to me no matter what arena I should find myself.
1. Adult Education Quarterly
This feed provides articles and book reviews on the current trends in Adult Learning. I chose this feed because of its broad focus, covering issues across physical, gender, and age boundaries. Most of the students I encounter are above the age of consent and have a knowledge base beyond what is taught in the traditional classroom. I'm hoping to gain some insight on what makes teaching to an older audience so much more different or similar to teaching to a younger audience by following this feed.
2. American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)
In another life I worked for a law firm which was a member of ASTD and had the opportunity to sit in on some of their seminars on new technology tools within the legal field. As a Training Coordinator, this was a hot button item as my department would be responsible for rolling out whatever new software, update or system came out. This feed/organization is not exclusive to the legal community, its focus is on workplace training and performance so this is a great addition to my arsenal no matter what field I'm in.
3.eLearning Technology
I really enjoy this feed! It provides a one-stop shop for all things eLearning. Predictions about what features are slowly dying off and which ones are taking off are just a sample of what this feed provides. There are also articles regarding how to best serve your audience and what tools work best in specific areas. It takes an unbiased look at everything that's popular, not just one certain brand or company.
4.Online Training, Learning Management System, Blog. Litmos
Litmos is a Learning Management System (LMS) which provides eLearning. This feed talks about the great features of Litmos but also reviews other eLearning tools such as Articulate and Adobe Captivate. I chose this feed to get a foothold in the LMS arena, how to develop courses, to see what upgrades are available. LMS's will always be an enigma to me, it's the Rubic's cube that I must solve. Hopefully I'll be able to stay fresh with what's new in this field.
5. Virtual Environments
Last but not least, I chose a feed dealing with Virtual Environments as this type of platform is always lurking over the horizon but, in my opinion, hasn't gotten the attention or respect in the training world that it deserves. This feed looks at sites like Second Life and its role in education. Can students learn in a "game" world? Of course, and as a Soldier, I'm learning that this type of training will become commonplace in the military. Leaders are starting to pick up on the fact that current and future service members are the products of a gaming society which may change the total future of what we know as war.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
BP2_Eduslide.com
Greetings followers! Today's post will be a review of my newest Web2.0 tool, Eduslide.com.
WHY
I chose this particular tool because it has features that would allow me to create e-learning content and push it out to a specific person/group or make it available to all users. In a military environment, it is easier to assign courses to users, setting due dates and requirements while controlling how the content is delivered. This gives supervisors the ability to design specific learning objectives for their various users. 
HOW
In another life, I was exposed to a Learning Management System (LMS), acting as a content manager, tester and designer, so Eduslide.com felt very familiar. I designed a simple website using the default display, but html-savvy users have the capability of designing a site from scratch. I added a mock lesson just to see the site’s user friendliness.
The final product looks like this.
WHAT
The main feature I was drawn to is the Create > Courses process. I created a mock course called “Lesson” and played around with the different types of media I could use. I settled on a slide show using sample pictures from the Mac library and followed it up with a quiz. I was then able to assign the course to a user, myself, and assign a due date. While trying to work this particular magic, I stumbled upon user roles. This is the section where the Administrator can assign or limit permissions for a user, an essential function if multiple users need access to the site. I realized at this point that I’d worked backwards, creating content before assigning roles.
OPINION
Overall, this is a great tool to use for course content creation and delegation. It certainly helps that I’ve had LMS exposure, but without that background I may not have maneuvered this site very well. The key drawback of this, and any public site, is security of content. This can, however, be overcome with Single-Sign On (SSO), passwords, etc.
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