War, disease drive up conferencing. Anecdotal evidence shows that multinational companies are turning more frequently to phone and video conferencing in light of the war in Iraq and the flulike disease in Asia. [CNET News.com]

I think this is just one more pair of forces driving us toward more synchronous (and eventually toward more asynchronous) e-Learning. It is also moving us toward more professional conferences taking place on line rather than at remote locations. I would look to see solutions such as blogging and peer-to-peer (eg, Groove) substituting for the social interactions that take place at conferences.

This still isn't an ideal or direct one-to-one substitution, though. Issues that will have to be resolved: payment for events, structure for participants, intellectual property and drm, vendor participation, bandwidth requirements (lots of people are going to be attending on dialup connections from home).

11:03:27 AM    

Messaging key to Web services, CTOs say. Reliable messaging considered at least as important as security [InfoWorld: Top News]

Another huge area of need limiting online learning. If learning is offered online by vendors as a web service, in many cases there will be a need for messaging between the online learning application and an LMS or LCMS running on the employer's system. All of these applications and services need to be talking to each other, and SCORM ain't the answer (imho) due to firewall restrictions and other security concerns.

11:02:43 AM    

Holes found in RealPlayer, QuickTime. Just as streaming video and audio are hitting the mainstream, researchers sound the alarm about serious security holes in the two popular digital media players. [CNET News.com]

More issues to think about in selecting technology to support e-Learning.

10:44:45 AM    

eLearning is dead
Quote: "Two weeks ago at the eLearning 2003 Conference in Manchester, UK, I announced that eLearning was dead." [Internet Time blog]
Comment: Very short post...but makes the point well: elearning as it was envisioned over the last several years is dead...it's not viable, and it's not practical. My bet: over the next year/two, organizations will fall over themselves promoting the "business value" of elearning - terms like metrics, ROI, strategies, solutions, innovations will abound. Sad thing is - they'll all still be missing the mark. Elearning (or whatever people will start calling it soon) is needed because the undercurrent of what drives society has changed - it's a digital world...and original elearning initiatives sought to place a template over traditional education and call it "new". In reality, the industrial model is largely out of date...and anything built on it is outdated before it begins...   [eLearnspace Blog]

Comment on the Comment (and the Quote): I guess this is typical of the kind of confusion that results when disruptive technology collides with vested interests. We don't even know what to call what we do (any more than we knew what to call it when "it" was just "training"). I think Jay is unhappy about the hype that has been introduced by people trying to sell products that have turnd out to be only partly baked. Some objections to use of the term are really only branding disputes. The "handle" we use to describe the use of online technology to shape offline human performance may very well change, but it will still be important to measure and demonstrate the business value of that technology use.

Look at it this way: a name, such as "e-Learning", is really a kind of brand. A brand is a promise. What promise are we making? Isn't it time we kept the promise?

More on this later. It's important.

10:32:10 PM    

Grabbable Objects Grab Attention

A Dartmouth research group has found a new and unexpected way our attention can be grabbed - by grabbable objects. Their study, which appears in the March 17 advance online issue of Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates that objects we typically associate with grasping, such as screwdrivers, forks or pens, automatically attract our visual attention, especially if these items are on a person's right-hand side. [Science a GoGo]

9:53:40 PM    

Microsoft puts its spin on office chat. The proposed SIP standard is key to IM interoperability and to merging voice, data, video and messaging into a single system, says a Microsoft executive. [CNET News.com]

Wow. What does this do to conferencing, synchronous e-Learning, e-mentoring, and epss?

5:00:13 PM    

ATT to offer prepaid Web surfing cards. The telecom giant dips its toe into the Net micropayment by putting prepaid Web content cards, which let people buy access to Disney, Shockwave.com and other sites, into retail stores. [CNET News.com]

(Hmmmm - could work for public access to e-Learning, too ...)

4:57:02 PM    

AOL announced it's new BYOA (bring your own access) service called AOL Broadband on Monday, March 31. Here's their press release: http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/press_view.cfm?release_num=55253107 and an article in USA today about the announcement. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-03-31-aol-broadband_x.htm

1:00:07 PM    

Various news sources are pointing to a possible announcement by Microsoft this week to incorporate Rights Management Services into Windows servers, at least initially to control the information in Office files over a corporate Intranet.

Microsoft devs Windows Rights Management Services. Tool to plug corporate leaks [The Register]

Here's some other things Microsoft has to say about DRM:

http://www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2002/06-03digitalrights.asp

12:59:29 PM    

Adobe Gets Ready To Rumble With Microsoft

Acrobat 6 is more accessible to users, Adobe says, including those outside firewalls. [Information Week, March 31, 2003]

Most of the features to be added to Acrobat 6 will be of interest for Content Management purposes, but if you are creating e-Learning-related PDF documents with multiple editors, or doing heavyweight project management involving partners outside your firewall, you will want to look at the article. At some point (in a few months), you will probably find yourself weighing the benefits of Office 2003 and InfoPath. It isn't too early to start looking at the differences between the products and deciding which makes more sense for your e-Learning development team.

12:26:05 PM    

Outsourcing e-Learning Development? Heads up!

According to the research firm Gartner, half of this year's outsourcing projects in IT will fail to deliver on their bottom-line promises. The biggest reason cited is breakdown of communication between outsourcing providers and clients. The vast majority (over 70%) of companies do not have formal plans for managing relationships with their outsourcing providers. Although the report from Gartner applies specifically to IT, eLearning managers who are outsourcing development efforts should also commit to planning for renewing and modifying contracts. Schedule formal meetings with outsourcing providers in order to keep up with changes in technology and business needs. [Gartner report cited in Information Week, March 31, 2003]

12:11:53 PM    

Talking with Jim Moore yesterday, he said that more people see themselves as citizens of the world not of any specific country. It certainly is easier to do that now, and that's the argument for globalization, or the observation of globalization. Of course we're all citizens of the solar system, galaxy and universe. Carl Sagan and all that. (Douglas Adams.)

10:43:47 AM