I'm an Irish Web Awards 2009 Finalist!

I am delighted to announce that I have been shortlisted as a finalist for two categories in the 2009 Irish Web Awards sponsored by Realex Payments.

I’ve been nominated for the following categories:

Best Education and Third Level Website

• The E-Learning Curve Blog (you’re reading it now)

Best Podcaster

• E-Learning Curve’s Other Podcasts

The awards ceremony takes place in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin on just under two weeks from now on Friday October 10th 2009.

Good luck to all the finalists in all the categories, and wish me luck…

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Immersive learning environments – a great example

As you'll know if you frequently author content for a blog or for distribution via any medium, planning is the key to maintaining consistency and quality. It's a rare day indeed that I wake up at 6.00am, the proverbial light-bulb goes on and I say to myself "Eureka! Adaptive learning! That's what I need to tell the people about today!"

Well, today isn't one of those days, but this post is good, so I still urge you to read on...

There are many myths and misapprehensions non-Irish people have about Ireland; leprechauns, drinking alcohol to excess, rustic types saying "Sure and begorrah." I can't even spell shillayley shylleleagh shillelagh, and you can't get Lucky Charms here.

“Say you like me hat!” Tom Cruise in Far and Away

In fairness, we do play it up a bit to get the tourists in, but post-Celtic Tiger, we're all broke and we need your cash.

Some of the characterizations of Ireland are based in fact though, among them our rich literary heritage. Remarkably, for a country with a population of about 4.5 million people (about the same number of people as Greater Manchester in the UK, or the Boston Metro area in the US) we have produced four Nobel Prize winners for literature: William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney.

I have always been intrigued by the later works of W.B. Yeats, and particularly how this master of traditional poetic forms adapted to Modernism.

Yeats' 1920 poem "The Second Coming" has an fascinating couplet:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

and the first phrase in particular has always resonated with me - and not just with me: "Things fall apart" has appeared in creative works as diverse as Chinua Achebe's eponymous 1958 novel through to an episode of Ugly Betty.

As it's the first anniversary of the Lehman Brothers' collapse, I've been considering writing a post on the economic "anarchy ...loosed upon the world" and it's impact on the Learning & Development industry as a follow-up to my 2008 post Recession and the challenge to e-learning. This post is not that post, but while I was researching the subject, and considering some approaches to fusing the unlikely bedfellows of high finance and poetry in a blog article, I happened upon an excellent interactive Yeats exhibition hosted by the National Library of Ireland.

In it, you (the viewer) can explore the environment Second Life-like, interact with the exhibits, "pick up" original MSS, and get a sense of the times and places Yeats inhabited, including a set from the Abbey Theatre, and the poet's library.

If you're a Constructivist (like me) you'll appreciate how well this exhibition aligns with Bruner's Principles (see Table 1).

Table 1 Principles of constructivism

Principle		Definition
Readiness		Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn
Spiral organization	Structure.	The content must be structured so that it can be grasped by the learner.
	Sequence.	Material must be presented in the most effective sequences.
Generation		“Going beyond the information given” - Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps

I have created a short video to demonstrate some of the features and functionality of this exhibition, and I encourage you to "drop in" and take a look yourself; you never know - it might just be a template for the type of immersive learning environment you need to engage and support your learners.

_________

References:

Bruner, J. S. (1966) Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

National Library of Ireland. (2009) The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats. Internet: Available from: http://www.nli.ie/yeats/main.html (Broadband and Adobe Flash Player Required). Accessed 14 September 2009

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Exploring Podcasting for E-Learning (and new podcast episode released)

I'm exploring the medium of podcasting at the moment. I've previously discussed podcasting in general here, but in my view there can (and should) be more to the medium than the well-trodden 'single voice-over discusses topic' - what I call the 'fireside chat' - podcast format. To undertake this successfully demands a theoretical understanding and competency in a number of domains.

I will outline the technical aspects of creating, recording, producing, and distributing podcasts at a later time, but for now, I want to investigate some aspects of audio delivered via podcast as a learning channel.

The greatest advantage of the sound medium lies in its direct appeal to the imagination. There is a (probably apocryphal) story told that a child once said they liked radio better than TV 'because there are better pictures on the radio'. The sound 'pictures' are better because they are built in the mind and imagination of the user. If done correctly, ideas and meaning can be conjured up in sound as easily as a software simulation demonstrates the steps involved in formatting a spreadsheet...

...well, perhaps not quite so easily. Sound demands a greater contribution from the learner than visually presented material. To compel this involvement - and to deserve it - the material emerging from a loudspeaker must maintain a high level of interest throughout. If it drops for one moment, the imagination is turned off like a light and all real communication is lost. However, there are many ways to stimulate the imagination: to some extent, they depend on form, and to some extent they depend on studio and recording technique. Apart from this, what is done is a matter for individual judgment and intuition.

In the analysis of any podcast, we should probably take interest as our starting point, because the one factor that all successful podcasts have in common is their ability to engage and retain the audience's interest. Gauging interest depends on our previous life experiences: we know what we like; what we're not motivated to care about leaves us relatively indifferent - very few people are interested in subjects that cannot be explained in terms of concepts that are already understood.

In this context, a podcast presents a learning stimulus, guides knowledge acquisition or learning through example, and elicits understanding. As such a podcast is a practical example of Bruner’s concept of instructional scaffolding - the learner's current level of knowledge can be described as an edifice that represents their cognitive abilities. Mayes and de Freitas (2005) describe the scaffolding as “a means of exploiting the ZPD” (p.19). The cognitive scaffold surrounds what is already known and can be done. The new is built on top of the known as the learner develops, and over time the supports can be removed as the learner can independently actualize the knowledge, behavior or skill. Each new learned knowledge or asset becomes a level in the learner’s constructed schema and this becomes the foundation for extending the learner’s ongoing development.

When we listen to somebody talking, we soon forget such relatively superficial qualities as accent and voice timbre (unless we are forcibly reminded of them at any point); we do not listen closely to the actual words, but go straight to the meaning - we forget the words almost as soon as they are spoken, the meaning we may retain. This meaning, together with its associations in the audience's mind (through visual, memory association or other means) forms an image that may be concrete, abstract, or a mixture of the two. If it is possible to present a subject in such terms, a considerable amount has been achieved in enabling the audience to learn for the podcast.

With that in mind, here is the latest episode from my 'Other' Podcast Transatlantic: the Flying Boats of Foynes ('New and Notable' according to the iTunes Podcast Store). If you choose to listen to the podcast, you'll notice that the piece is not merely a narrator telling a story: along with narration, there's dramatization, eye-witness accounts, and incidental and background music. Other sound elements included in the series of podcasts include archive recordings, wild track, and (in Part 5) a very cool sound collage to set the scene for the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939.

The observant among you will notice that the piece isn't about e-learning. That's OK - the point of e-learning is to provide training professionals with a means of creating and distributing content that enables people to acquire information, knowledge, skills, and expertise on a diverse range of subjects: as e-learning practitioners, it's our job to facilitate this process.

In Part 3 of Transatlantic: The Flying Boats of Foynes:

On the 4th of July 1937, the Pan American flying boat Yankee Clipper inaugurated the west-east part of the transatlantic air route with Foynes as the fulcrum of the New York - Lisbon flight.

Chief Operator of Morse Code & Semaphore Frank Buckley describes the sight of Pan American Captain Harold Gray's Boeing B-314 Clipper arriving for the first time in Foynes, Ireland.

We get a sense of the glamour and the whiff of danger for passengers undertaking the still-difficult journey from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other.

We tell the story of the invention of Irish Coffee.

Click here to listen.

As one of the contributors in the podcast has quite a noticeable regional accent, I've included a transcript for the podcast - indeed, some people may find using their visual as well as their audio register is a more satisfying experience. Click here to view the transcript of this podcast (PDF, 30K).

Does this format work for podcasting in your view? Have I managed to elicit interest in the subject matter. As a listener, are you motivated to find out more, by retrieving Episodes 1 & 2 or by subscribing to the series? Let me know what you think.
___________

References:

Bates, A. W. (1984). Broadcasting in education: an evaluation. London: Croom Helm

Bates, A. W. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education. Oxford: Routledge Falmer

de Freitas, S. & Mayes, T. (2005). JISC e-Learning Models Desk Study Stage 2: Review of e learning theories, frameworks and models. [Online] London, JISC. Available from: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Stage%202%20Learning%20Models%20(Version%201).pdf [Accessed 15th January 2007]

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A Podcast Service for the E-Learning Curve Blog

I'm delighted to launch a content delivery channel I've been researching and developing for a while: a podcast for the E-Learning Curve Blog.

First a little about podcasting...

A podcast is one in a series of digital media files (usually in either audio MP3 or video M4V format) that is released periodically and made available for download by means of web syndication.

This syndication aspect of the content delivery is what differentiates podcasts from other ways of accessing files, such as simple download or streaming. Special client software applications called RSS aggregators (also known colloquially as podcatchers) such as Apple iTunes or Nullsoft Winamp can automatically identify and retrieve new podcast files in a given series when they are made available, by accessing a centrally-maintained 'feed' that lists all files currently associated with that particular series.

New files can be downloaded automatically by the podcatcher and stored locally on the user's computer or other media device for offline use, enabling the audience to download content that is released episodically without having to manually check that new material has been made available.

According to the Horizon Report (2006) podcasting is

At the leading edge of a wave that will last for the next several years and beyond, personal broadcasting takes advantage of small, easy-to-use devices that people already carry to capture and share personal experiences, information, and events. This trend, which has roots in text-based media (personal websites and blogs), is expanding to include audio and video, as the tools for capturing and sharing those media become smaller and better. From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting is an increasingly popular trend that is impacting... audiences.

(p.11)

It's easy to see why podcasts have value in e-learning. Will Richardson states in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms that the

underlying technology here is digital recording and the idea that it is now very easy to create and publish these recordings... As long as you have a way to make the recording, and as as long as your students have access to the Internet, you can make this work.

(p.113)

Now that I have started publishing podcasts, I'm obviously going to write a series of articles about developing and delivering content using this learning channel. What's more, I will discuss podcast authoring using production techniques, based upon my experiences as a radio documentary maker in a 'previous life' - I'll be talking about the craft of writing for audio, as well as the technical aspects of the process.

Now, [drum roll] I want to introduce you to the E-Learning Curve's Other Podcast. This podcast service is about subjects that interest me other than e-learning. Topics I'll be covering include aviation, history and music, among others. The first set of podcasts is called Transatlantic: the Flying Boats of Foynes:

July 2009 is the 70th anniversary of the first scheduled trans-Atlantic airplane passenger service. Told against a backdrop of the momentous events of World War Two, this eight-part podcast documentary series by Michael Hanley tells the story of a unique era in world aviation.

Airlines like Pan American Airways (PAA) and the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) with their flying boats like the Short series of planes, and the massive Boeing 314 'Clippers' were welcomed to the seaport of Foynes, in the embrace of the River Shannon estuary on the Western edge of Europe. Come with me now as we fly back in time to the Golden Age of Aviation, a era of adventure, conflict - and the invention of Irish Coffee.

Parts 1 and 2 of the series are now available. You can listen and subscribe to each episode here, or you can access the podcast via iTunes. The next installment, The Glamour of Travel will be released on Tuesday July 28th, 2009.

The more observant among you will have noticed that this podcast channel is called the Other Podcast, which implies that there is a regular E-Learning Curve Podcast, discussing subjects associated with learning and development.

Yes there is. And it’s on it’s way soon. More about this closer to its launch.
___________

References:

The New Media Consortium (2006). 2006 Horizon Report. [Internet] Available from: http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2006_Horizon_Report.pdf Accessed 15 July 2009

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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Moodle Flies High

When I was an undergraduate, I worked for a summer in the Phillips assembly plant in Eindhoven in The Netherlands. Life as a "gluer and screwer" or line assembly worker is quite repetitive, and repetitive, and repetitive, and repetitive, so my college friends and I tried to get to visit the cultural amenities of nearby Amsterdam as often as possible: yes, there are many galleries and museums to broaden a young man's mind in one of the jewels in Europe's crown - I recommend it.

After one particularly "cultural" weekend, my friends and I found ourselves in Centraal Station waiting for our train back to Eindhoven, and across the platform I saw an odd thing: a group of skiers! My initial thought was that I had hit the culture a little too hard, what would skiers be doing in the Low Countries (which after all, is famed for its plains, lack of topographical relief, and general flatness), and in the Summer, no less?

Holland: notably bereft of the conditions for skiing

Eventually the answer seeped into my culture-addled brain: of course! They were going to the Alps! As a young lad from a small island nation on the western margin of Europe (the island without the Eurotunnel) it had simply never occurred to me that you could hop on a train in one country, and a few hours later be on the piste in Switzerland, Austria or Italy.

Living in Ireland, the only way I can travel off the island is by sea and by air. As a result of this situation, most Irish people have quite the soft spot for Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. Until the emergence of Ryanair and other low-cost carriers, flying Aer Lingus was the only way to travel to foreign lands quickly and comfortably: it's how I travelled to go on the piste (as it were) in Holland after all.

So I'm pleased to see that Aer Lingus have decided to use Moodle (another organization I have a much admiration for) for their Online Pilot Training courses. The aviation industry has been involved with e-learning for over twenty years - indeed, the first generally-used e-learning specification AICC was an aviation industry initiative, developing guidelines for the development, delivery, and evaluation of computer-based, and Web-based Training (and related training technologies).

AICC specifications are usually designed to be general purpose (and not necessarily aviation specific) so that learning technology vendors can spread their costs across multiple markets and thus provide products at a lower cost. This strategy has resulted in AICC specifications having broad acceptance and relevance to non-aviation and aviation users alike. Even today, AICC PENS (Package Exchange Notification Services) is a broadly-used standard implemented in many e-learning authoring packages, such as Adobe Captivate.

Aer Ling chose Enovation, an Irish Moodle Partner, to undertake on the consultancy in the project. Using Moodle, Enovation provided the following services in line with Aer Lingus’s technical requirements:

• Hosting – Provided secure solution hosting for Aer Lingus courseware.
• Training – Provided hands-on training to all administration staff at Aer Lingus.
• Reporting – To comply with industry regulations, Aer Lingus has to produce a report to show that users view and complete all tasks within Moodle. As part of this, Enovation integrated the third-party reporting solution, Jaspersoft, with Moodle to allow administrators to report on user activity.
• Branding – Enovation customized Moodle to match the Aer Lingus branding.
• Support – Enovation implemented a Web-based issue reporting and tracking system for Aer Lingus.
• Courseware – Enovation worked with Aer Lingus to transform their original course content into the Moodle environment.

According to Conor Rock, Training Captain at Aer Lingus,

Moodle has been universally well received by the pilots and we have reduced our training costs, what can I say - the project has been a huge success.

Captain Rock continued that Moodle could be used in other domains within Aer Lingus:

Moodle has obvious potential in other areas. I see Aer Lingus expanding Moodle to the wider employee base for cabin crew and technical training.

Next time: back to ISD

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E-learning blog for Ireland – calling Irish learning professionals

I’m developing an e-learning blog specifically for learning professionals based in Ireland. I aim to use it as a platform to discuss Learning & Development Technology-related topics specific to practitioners based in the Emerald Isle.

The Great Recession notwithstanding, Ireland has a vibrant technology and knowledge-based industrial economy, and one of the domains we excel in, is in e-learning - most people in the industry have heard of SkillSoft and ThirdForce and HMH, for example.

Equally, academic institutions like Trinity College, Dublin, University College, Dublin, the National College of Ireland, and the University of Limerick run very innovative e-learning programs – particularly at post-graduate level. These organizations and institutions aside, there are over fifty 'other' e-learning development houses in the country. Not bad for a country with a population of under 5 million people. By any measure, I think we punch above our weight.

Despite this, there seems to be very few Learning & Development Technology professionals contributing to the blogosphere. Off the top of my head I can think of Brian Mulligan, Michelle Gallen, Patricia Donaghy, Eamon Costello, and some guy called Michael Hanley. I’d love to include the views of Ireland-based Learning & Development Technology professionals in the new blog I’m developing, and to create a space for us to discuss the challenges and opportunities that we all encounter in our activities with learners.

If you’re interested in contributing, just e-mail me here: elearningcurve[at]gmail[dot]com and I’ll get in touch with you to discuss my ideas.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh (Happy St. Patrick’s Day)!

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Elearning is weather-proof

The Irish calendar does not observe the typical astronomical seasons (beginning, in the Northern Hemisphere, on the equinoxes and solstices), or the meteorological seasons (beginning on March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1), but rather centers the seasons around the solstices and equinoxes (so that, for instance, midsummer falls on the summer solstice), beginning the seasons at the approximate halfway points between solstice and equinox, following the seasons of the Iron Age (or Celtic) inhabitants of the island.

According to how we measure the calendar in other words, yesterday was the first day of Spring.

Now read on…

As the country experiences the worst snow storm for nearly two decades, according to Irish national broadcaster RTÉ’s website:

The cold snap has resulted in widespread disruption to road and air traffic and the closure of dozens of schools. Sub-zero temperatures and snowfalls in parts of Ireland and most of Britain have led to flight cancellations and long delays for motorists.

So I’m still sitting at my desk at 7.00pm catching up on some paperwork, as the road out of my office is gridlocked and has been for some hours now…

Assuming this traffic clears, I still have to find my car (which is somewhere under all that snow)…

…and I still have to make it home.

It occurs to me, that e-learning is resistant to all of this weather, and traffic.

Normal service resumes tomorrow (as I hope will the weather!).

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The Winter Solstice at Newgrange - watch it live on the Web

5,000 years ago, an extraordinary people lived in Ireland. They were farmers, hunters and builders. Without the benefit of the wheel, and with tools made only of flint, they carved their culture into history. Along the banks of the River Boyne, they built houses to their dead, repositories to their spirit - monuments to immortality.

Brú na Boinne: Monument to Immortality

I don't spend all my time involved in learning and development.

No, no, no.

Among my more arcane, but nevertheless very satisfying interests is in the culture of the Neolithic (New Stone Age), and particularly the culture of the Beaker People of Western Europe. An event central to the lives of the people of this culture in Ireland (which resonates with us today) occurs this Sunday, 21st December on the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere.

At ten minutes to nine on the morning of the shortest day of the year, a pale and weak sun slowly rises above a ridge in the Boyne River valley. As its rays penetrate the dawn mist, a solitary building sits atop it hill... waiting. Waiting as it has every year for over fifty centuries to shine once again as a beacon to the Spirit Of Man - a place where people forever bound to the earth can, however briefly, capture the Fire of the Sun and touch the sky.

Newgrange is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the winter solstice sun. Above the entrance to the passage at Newgrange there is a opening called a roof-box. Its purpose is to allow sunlight to penetrate the chamber on the shortest days of the year, around December 21, the Winter Solstice.

At dawn, from December 19th to 23rd, a narrow beam of light penetrates the roof-box and reaches the floor of the chamber, gradually extending to the rear of the passage. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9am.

Newgrange's accuracy as a time-telling device is all the more remarkable when you think that it was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids in Giza, and more than 1,000 years before Stonehenge.

Thanks to the Irish Office of Public Works (OPW) and facilitated by the good people at Servecast (yo! Julian, Declan, & Sinead!) you will have the opportunity to view this event live online on the morning of 21st December.

Recession, the challenge to e-learning, and HMH in Ireland

I'll start this post by issuing a mixed metaphor alert: today, we're going to talk about an elephant in the room, which also happens to be an 800lb gorilla.

Intrigued? Now read on...

Back in February this year, I wrote the first of my occasional series on Recession and the challenge to e-learning; in that first piece, I concluded by suggesting that

in the era of $100 a barrel oil and the value of virtual classrooms; the ROI of e-learning as opposed to traditional methods; even the impact of traditional ways of teaching on the environment ("e-learning" becomes "eco-learning" anyone?).

Based on an announcement made last Thursday 10th September 2008, I can now assert that we are beginning to see that there is validity in this conclusion. Based on the level of investment one e-learning enterprise has committed to developing the industry in the medium- to long term, the market in now in a place to support the proposition that the ROI on e-learning makes sense, and generates profit.

E-learning giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) – formerly known as Riverdeep – is to create 450 jobs at a new R&D headquarters in Dublin. Riverdeep had its origins in Dublin in 1995 and under the leadership of Barry O’Callaghan became a global name in the e-learning K-12 market space. As an educational publisher, HMH has over 100,000 customers, generating approximately US$2.5bn in annual revenues, profits in the region of US$1bn, and 50 per cent market share of the US K-12 market, the world’s largest education market.

HMH is to establish its global e-learning R&D centre in the greater Dublin area, creating 450 "high-value" jobs over the next five years.

Fiona O’Carroll, senior vice-president, Digital Products R&D at HMH confirmed the Irish Government’s vision to create a knowledge economy by investing in people, research and innovation was a key factor in the company’s decision.

The new R&D centre will be a focal point for e-learning and educational innovation. Employees, partner companies and collaborating universities will be attracted by the quality of research, people, innovation and commercialisation activity in the centre.

The Centre will involve establishing a globally networked team in Ireland with team members and innovation partners based in the US and around the globe. The company said these jobs should be very attractive to seasoned technology professionals, engineering and technology graduates, highly creative thinkers and innovators in the e-learning space.

As I've said in the past, Ireland has a vibrant technology and knowledge-based industrial economy, and one of the domains we excel in, is in e-learning - I guess most people in the industry have heard of SmartForce and Electric Paper, for example. These large companies notwithstanding, there are over fifty 'other' e-learning development houses in the country. Not bad for a country with a population of under 5 million people.

In my view, this investment will prove to be a game-changer. As it is, you could say that HMH are the only game in (e-learning) town - if they manage the innovations and outputs afforded by this R&D centre correctly, HMH will grow to become the Google of e-learning. Indeed, the Google approach (especially the famed "20 per cent time") is a perfect model for any knowledge-based organization that wants to stimulate growth through innovative new products invented and developed by their own subject matter experts. Similarly, this R&D centre will provide the organization with the potential benefits of having an audience for life: if HMH products have the skill and facility to instil the joy of learning in the kids that they currently provide e-learning solutions for, they will have an audience for life, given that these Digital Natives (click on the link for Marc Prensky's seminal article) will grow up associating the brand with discovering knowledge and the fun of learning. In essence, we can say that the company has the potential to mould a whole generation of learners, which is an extraordinary business opportunity, but also a huge responsibility.

Do I now hear the distant trumpet of an approaching elephant?

I do...

Just an observation really. Rumours of this investment have on the jungle telegraph here in Ireland for some time now, and I was originally going to post on this topic last Thursday (the day of the announcement).

An African elephant (sans room)

I held back, because I wanted to see what reaction would come for the Irish L&D and e-learning blogosphere. I'm disappointed to say that no-one has posted a reaction to the largest investment in their industry, ever.

I'm sure people are still formulating their thoughts - I for one want to read how others in the e-learning industry here in Ireland are responding to this investment.

_____________

References:

HMH to Create 450 Jobs and Base Global R&D Headquarters in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland Press Release. [Internet] Available from: http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/eicms/interiorpage.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2FNews%2FPress%2BReleases%2F2008%2FPressSep102008.htm&NRNODEGUID={077DB63F-4925-4D96-BEB3-364BF11C8EB1}&NRCACHEHINT=Guest

[Accessed 10th September 2008]

Ireland wins €350m HMH deal after tough worldwide battle. Irish Independent. [Internet] Available from: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ireland-wins-8364350m-hmh-deal--after-tough-worldwide-battle-1473370.html

[Accessed 10th September 2008]

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Elearning Companies in Ireland: RFI

I use the fantastic StatCounter.com Website and Blog Analytics service to measure my Elearning Curve Blog's metrics; this is not just because they're an Irish company, but also because they provide very comprehensive and granular logs and metrics.

Among other things it enables me to review are such statistics as

• site usage
• page loads
• popularity of site by location (for an English-language site, I've an unusually large group of readers in Brazil, for example: Olá! Como vai?)
• location of subscribers (hello also to my most northerly reader in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada)

...and so forth.

According to my "Most popular keyword" reports, a very common query is "e-learning companies ireland." A recent Silicon Republic report states that there are over sixty such organizations based in Ireland, but from my researches no directory of these companies is available online.

Now, we all know about Skillsoft, WBT Systems, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Electric Paper, Intuition, and so forth, but who else is out there?

I (and seemingly quite a few other people in the blogosphere) would like to know.

So, if you send me your company details via the Comments link at the bottom of this post (name, URL, location, market space etc), I'll put them together in an easily accessible online directory, not for any other reason than nobody seems to have undertaken this activity before - that I'm aware of, anyway.

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Maynooth and the Knowledge Economy in Ireland

Just a short post to big up my home town of Maynooth in Ireland, and the range of research being undertaken at my alma mater the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Current research includes:

• facial expression software
• AIDS research
• Wi-Max networking
• drug delivery technologies
• Darfur peace talks
• retail geotechnology
  
  

NUI Maynooth

Past academic research in Maynooth included the first description of Quaternions by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Quaternions form the basis for 3D calculations in computer graphics.

Ruins of Maynooth Castle Keep

A near-contemporary of Hamilton, Nicholas Callan, invented the induction coil, the technology which drives the spark coil in petrol combustion engines, strobe lights and photographic flash guns, and was used by Marconi to send early radio transmissions.

Click here for more.

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Come along down to Learning Town

One of the early evangelists of E-Learning, Eliott Masie, has launched a Ning-based e-learning social network called Learning Town - A Village for Learning Professionals. It's free and vendor-neutral, so nobody is trying to push their products or services on you (too much: there's always the odd chancer).

At the time of posting, nearly 3000 people in the learning industry have signed up for the network - in 8 days. I think I'm justified in describing this as an internet phenomenon. We'll see in time whether it maintains this initial momentum or whether it will develop a classic "long tail" but if you're in the habit of contributing to the blogoshere or social networking sites, it is in my view a nicely centralised location to interact with you peers.

The site has a broad range of features including:

• Personal Page
• Blog Hosting
• Forums
• Discussions
• Digital Media Content Hosting
• Audio Player
  
  

[my profile page on Learning Town]

For me, one of the most stimulating areas of the site is the innocuously named "Groups" section. Groups provides members with a platform to share, debate, argue, and discuss a range of learning-related topics. I've detailed a list of the most active groups below - as you can see, it's a quite comprehensive range of the types of topics learning professionals encounter while carrying out their work.

Groups

• Instructional Design: For learning professionals that want to discuss Instructional Design strategies and perhaps how to take a new approach in this area.
• e-Learning Dialogues: For learning professionals that want to discuss e-Learning strategies, tips, and tools and perhaps how to take a new approach in this area.
• Podcasting for Learning
• Rapid Learning Design: A forum for learning professionals on creating learning content quickly and effectively.
• Women and Learning: A forum for women learning professionals.
• Mobile Learning Group: For members using/curious about using mobile devices for learning.
• Neuroscience & Leadership: For members curious about neuroscience and it’s connection to learning and leadership.
• Boomer Learning
• 3D Virtual Worlds: This group focuses on learning in a virtual environment.
• Performance Support Group Description: A forum for discussing strategies, tips, and tools that support "learning at the moment of need".
• Learning Leaders: CLO, VP for Learning, Learning Managers Network Here
• Evaluation and Metrics
• Computer & IT Training
• Learning Systems '08: A private GROUP for participants in Learning Systems '08.
• Selling Learning: This is for professionals who are selling or marking learning products or services
• Learning and Careers
• What's it Cost?: This group is geared towards people interested in Intellectual Property and Training. Feel free to discuss!
• Healthcare and Learning
• Higher Ed & Learning: This is a group designed for colleagues in the Higher Education field to collaborate on learning at the Higher Education level.
• Learning Standards: This group is designed for Learning Colleagues interested in learning and discussing more about AICC & SCORM

Come on down to Learning Town - you'll be glad you dropped by!

FOGRA: If there's any Irish Learning professionals out there that is interested in setting up a group on this site, or setting up a similar ideas exchange on a similar platform, let me know - I'm up for it.

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Finally, another e-learning blog from Ireland...

Despite the fact that Ireland is home to more commercial e-learning organisations per capita than anywhere else on the planet, there are very few blogs representing the views of the Irish e-learning community being maintained. More about that directly, but first...

Here's a quick look back at the the contribution of Irish-owned e-learning companies to the industry:

Back in the 1980's "Computer-Based Training" was the coming thing, and Irish-based CBT Group (CBT Systems in North America) were one of the originators of the industry. They specialised in self-study courses that users could take at their own PCs. CBT developed a library of more than 600 titles for client/server, Internet, intranet, and mainframe platform deployment.

By the mid-to-late 1990's, there was an explosion of Irish entrepreneurs exploiting gaps in the on-line learning market:

• Prometheus developed the "CompuTutor" range of products for the MOUS and MSCE audience.
• Transware PLC founded to meet the localisation needs of e-learning organisations.
  
• KnowledgeWell and Riverdeep begain making inroads into the K-12 sectors.
• Electric Paper began development of the first courseware for the ECDL qualification.
• EMG developed the skoool.ie initiative in association with The Irish Times and Intel (Ireland) Ltd.

By 1999, the CBT Group had transformed itself into SmartForce, "the e-learning company." Following convergence in the marketplace after the dot-com crash, a new raft of e-learning organisations emerged:

• EP, Creative Learning Media, A-V Edge and MindLeaders have all merged into the ever-expanding ThirdForce.
• In 2002, SmartForce merged with another virtual classroom leader, Ireland-based SkillSoft Corporation.
• Also in 2002, Barry O'Callaghan led an MBO of Riverdeep. Since going private, the organisation has acquired the assets of The Learning Company, Broderbund, Edmark, and most recently (2007) merged with Houghton Mifflin, to become the fastest-growing e-learning consultant in the US.

In 2008, for Ireland to hold on to it's hard-earned status as a global e-learning leader, it must maintain the momentum that's been built up over the past 20 years.

Certainly some signs are good: companies like Intuition, InnerWorkings and CompuPharma continue to innovate in the fields of finance, adaptive learning environments for programmers , and pharmaceutical training respectively. The National College of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland in particular are leading some very interesting initiatives in adult learning and post-graduate skills development. Specialities in adaptive learning and other third-generation e-learning solutions are being investigated in Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Limerick.

However, unlike our neighbours in the UK (who's government-backed education policy has the mantra "Education, education, education"), we in Ireland have a government who's lack of vision concerning this sector is downright embarrassing, if not ignorant.

A salutary lesson might illustrate my point at this stage of the post.

We are all agreed that e-learning is about channelling digitally-mediated content via networks like the internet. Yes? Therefore, without an effective high-speed network in place the development and delivery of high-quality learning products will be hindered.

In Ireland, our broadband is a mess. It's been said that we are a first-world country with third-world comms infrastructure. In fact it's worse than that; the Eamon Ryan, the minister whose responsibility it is to develop the comms infrastructure doesn't know the difference between high-speed internet availability and quality of service - as an example, here's an excerpt from a recent Sunday Times article:

John McElligott, the managing director of eBay in Ireland, has called on the minister to take a “quantum leap” by investing in NGNs, bringing Irish broadband speeds closer to the 100 megabits per second (Mbits/s) enjoyed in some countries. Irish download speeds for residential broadband users are a maximum of 12 Mbit/s. Most of the country operates on speeds of 1-2 Mbit/s. Ryan said McElligott was “right to be ambitious”, but questioned his thinking. “John runs eBay. When he starts running a construction company, he can advise me on digging holes to every home in the country,” Ryan said.

I would guess that if you're outside of Ireland, dear reader, your jaw is dropping at the supreme irony of a leading digital development hub and world-leading economy, and the steam-powered infrastructure we have to negotiate on a daily basis.

But that's not why we're here today. We're here today to welcome a new, Irish, e-learning blog to the blogosphere: welcome Brian Mulligan and the E-learning Ireland blog!

Click on the link under the E-learning Blogs panel to the right of this post to check out what his blog is about.

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