With the thousands of apps available on the iPad, how do you decide which one to purchase when there is always the chance that the one you selected turns out to be a turkey, rather then a gem.

Until now, you were stuck with guessing or visting iPad app review sites geared towards everyone, and not corporate universities and educational institutions.

Starting today, that has changed.

Every week, CorpU will present a round-up of the top iPad apps covering various areas.

From boosting productivity, to writing and taking notes, to presentations with ease to experiencing the real power of mobile learning.

Plus each week, our new feature, “iPad apps you may never have heard of”, will present an in-depth and detailed review.

Our debut begins with an app you may never have heard of, but in reality is an impressive solution that shows the possibilities.

The Civil War Today

Price: $7.99
Made by: History Channel and Bottle Rocket

The Civil War Today is an incredible app that shows the power of self-contained mobile learning (that is to say, without having you go to a web site).

The feature set offers incredible capabilities that frankly shows the real power of what is possible in a self-contained app.

Features

Lasts exactly four years, the length of the Civil War

End users can view only up to the current date and not move forward

You are able to view photos of the day, see data tied to the Civil War, read feature articles on informational topics tied to the players and way of life during that time

Read the diaries of 15 people, including President Lincoln, for that day

What is great about this feature, is that you see the image of the person, their role, their actual handwritten note – in their own handwriting via a scan, and finally the text of the note.

Images that can expand with the touch of a finger, occasional video embeds, battle maps and a daily quiz tied to achievement badges

Daily scanned image of a local newspaper, click and see the front page, zoom and read the articles of that day

But that is not all, especially when it comes to the social media.

Do you want to send out a Tweet? No, problem, but there is a twist, because as you know back then the Internet did not exist; so if you wanted to send a message you had to use a telegraph.

To type a tweet, you see morse code and an image of a telegraph, along with its touch pad

Each letter is represented in its morse code language, so “A” is “._”, “E” is “.” and so on

Tap the appropriate number of times for each letter and when finished click “send”. You have now just sent out a tweet

You can also send the daily diary postings from individuals including President Lincoln, to Twitter, Facebook or via e-mail.

Audience
Educational Institution – educators and students, individuals who love history

Possibilities

For an educational institution, eliminate the textbook or e-book format and move into something that is highly interactive and engaging.

Corporate universities can develop apps for any product or topic area, including leadership development and enhance it with additional social learning tools, even a collaboration component.

Bottom Line

The power of a self-contained app which does not require the learner to constantly synch or have access to the internet, is in of itself, powerful. Add real scanned articles and diary postings, toss in images and embedded objects and you have a real engaging learning solution.

May 9th, 2011 is going to be a date to remember.

It is on this day, at the Global Leadership Congress, 25 companies achieved an elite status for their corporate universities.

For each company their hard work, perseverance and objectives and success at their corporate universities were recognized.

Alignment
Furthering corporate goals through learning and development efforts

Exemplary Practice

Jiffy Lube

Westinghouse Electric

Best Practice

Accenture

Town Sports

Excellence

CSC

Quintiles

Alliances
Making the best use of external providers

Exemplary Practice

Infosys

Owens & Minor

Best Practice

Alstom

CSC

Excellence

Seagate

Branding
Developing and implementing communications and branding strategies

Exemplary Practice

McDonald’s Hamburger University

Int’l Capital & Mgmt. Co.

Best Practice

MillerCoors

Excellence

Raytheon Company

Launching
Successfully beginning a new corporate university initiative

Exemplary Practice

Discover

Landi Renzo S.p.A.

McCain Foods

Best Practice

Accenture

McCarthy Building

Radio Flyer

Excellence

Alstom

Int’l Capital & Mgmt. Co.

Leadership
Implementing high-impact program targeted to managers, high potentials and senior executive leadership

Exemplary Practice

Aon Hewitt

Teradata

Best Practice

Accenture

McCain Foods

Excellence

AT&T

Raytheon Company

Learning Technology
Creating an effective learning environment through the use of technology

Exemplary Practice

CA Technologies

Cisco

Best Practice

The Boeing Company

CSC

Turkcell

Excellence

Tata Consulting

Best Overall Corporate University

Accenture

Congratulations to all award winners and every entrant who entered this year’s Corporate University Xchange Awards for Excellence and Innovation.

Corporate University Xchange is the leading provider of corporate education research, benchmarking and advisory services for the enterprise learning market.

How do we define early adopters?

Are they companies and individuals who set out and say, “we are going to follow but add value”, or “we see what is possible and move forward”?

I say no.

Early adopters understand the power and benefits that come with the technology or solution. In the case of social learning, they realized the capabilities, foresaw the challenges, identified the features to bring about a new experience for their learners.

In turn, their learners responded. They gained insight, added value, engaged and inspired others, and brought a real sense of collaborative and community learning.

Social Learning is about adding social media types to e-learning.  It is taking that next step, to see what is possible, to try out new ideas for higher engagement boosting comprehension, retention and more importantly, synthesis.  Adult learners want to see real gains and a real world experience in their learning.

Social Learning enables that and more.

Can you add APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and Mashups to go beyond what is possible and explore new learning opportunities, regardless of the location?  Yes.  Can you enable your learners to create, edit and share in real time documents; offer new ideas and develop a sense of belonging through various new forms of social media?  Yes, to all the above.

That is the amazing strength of social learning, but it doesn’t stop there.

Virtual Worlds can be integrated with various social media offerings, and the next evolution of social learning incorporates augmented reality, mobile learning with tablets and the use of livecasting.

Will this make you an early adopter? Absolutely.  Will it offer an engagement and experience for your learners and equally as important, boost their productivity? Yes.

At this year’s Global Leadership Congress, Hitachi Data Systems, Mercer, Plastipak and General Mills will discuss the details on how they implemented and acheived success with social learning.

As an attendee, you too will experience social learning, first hand. Brainstorming, collaboration and engagement is included, all components of social learning.

A learning tool designed to help you identify the appropriate social learning types to meet your company’s business needs and eliminate the challenges is included.

So, who are the early adopters?

You are.

The Global Leadership Congress, Social Learning Roundtable will be May 11th, from 2-5 p.m.

If you haven’t yet registered for the Global Leadership Congress, seats are still available, although they are going fast. To learn more about the Global Leadership Congress, May 9-11th in Philadelphia, visit the event page.

 

E-Learning in 2000

• Create courses/sims with Authorware, Director or Dreamweaver by Macromedia – all of which required you to have moderate to advanced tech skills, or with HTML/Javascript or with some very difficult and complex authoring tools
• Create two course versions, since Netscape offered Java and Microsoft did not – they were in a fight with Sun (so you had to add a browser sniffer in the code)

• People were using either a 56K modem or less; and even though it was advertised at 56K, in reality it was 52.3Kbs. In Boston you were lucky if you hit 38K on a good day
• A great majority of businesses were not running T1
• 3rd party off the shelf content was always in English, to locate another language would cost a significant amount of dollars

Outputs

• Desktop or laptop computer; but the majority of people had a desktop
• Systems, e-learning products were hosted on your own server, very few were in the cloud
• Globalization did not exist in the e-learning market
• People had PDAs, but it was still growing, and really who would want to take a course on a Palm?
• We watched television on a television, simulations as games, was unfathomable
• Creating courses in 100% Flash, rare

Now – 2011

• 115+ rapid content authoring tool vendors, anyone can create a course, even with limited to zero technical skills
• Simulation content authoring tools in the market, regardless of your tech skill set – you can create them
• Courses in HTML5 rare, Flash? The norm
• 3rd party off the shelf multilingual content standard
• Majority of end users access via DSL or Cable
• Most businesses have T1 at the minimum
• Access e-learning via the desktop, laptop, mobile and even the television – streamed from your computer

• On the Go truly exists – taking the wherever, whenever you are – a whole new meaning
• Collaboration in real time, regardless of what time of the day or where in the world are you located – exists
• Video conferencing is as simple as a tiny web cam in your system, even with your tablet
• HD video is available for e-learning courses, materials, web conferencing and more
• More and more systems are cloud based only, with the rarity of having the product or solution on your own servers
• Virtual worlds
• Open source, APIs, Mashups

Where is it going?

• Higher interactivity with Kinect technology & touch free gesturing – thus you can become part of the course via your gaming device or a stream onto your television or tablet
• Augmented Reality via the tablet or laptop
• HTML5 content with APIs, Mashups integrated
• Social Gaming Learning
• Virtual worlds with streaming video, audio and real time video chat/presentations
• Stronger social learning features and capabilities
• Cloud based e-mail within a LMS, that can replace your current email system
• Cloud storage for each end user, within a LMS or learning platform
• The End of the LCMS

 

 

 

 

How do we define social learning?

Is it a collaborative approach? Enhanced feature sets to engage learners? Strategy tied to learning initiatives from a business standpoint?

Or is it a way to ensure that our employees and our customers see the value of  learning and its benefits?

Benefits of Social Learning

• Gives power and provides engagement to your learners, they seek this out
• Eliminates passive training, now you can find out what your employees are thinking, responding and inquiring about
• Opens up an experience that can show the real impact of learning
• Does away with instructor led training that is often non-engaging, lacks interactivity and hopes that everyone asks questions and is involved (rarely the case)
• Enables people regardless of location, division, department to be part of something rather than nothing
• Offers opportunities to link to job roles, skills, leadership development using tools not available before

Two types of Social Learning & Benefits

Social Q/A

• End users ask questions, Subject matter experts respond, end users add comments
• Unique Value Proposition- establish mentoring program, one learner to one SME (via department, division, region, etc.)

Gain?

• Eliminates on the job training – which has been shown ineffective in the long term
• Identifies topics that could be used for future training

Scribd & Slideshare

• Employees or Trainers can upload presentations and share them with other learners
• Training department or employees can create, upload, read, print or share documents, audio/video files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.

Unique Value Proposition

• Training Departments can provide quick reference materials, cards, video clips or presentations, audio, etc. to employees/customers and identify how many times they have been viewed, printed & shared – reduces cost to department for unnecessary future training or courses, reduces cost to department (eliminates printing/shipping), opens up global experience – which can be tied to native language (for example you have employees outside your home country)

Gain

• Localized learning
• Higher engagement
• Eliminates waste
• Identifies topics to train & topics to re-train (via blended learning or e-learning)

Bottom Line

Social Learning offers your learners, new opportunities, provides you as a training executive with future topics without the need of constant gap analysis, reduces costs in the short term and long term and identifies what your trainees need and want.

To gain a new perspective on social learning, please make sure to attend the exclusive event of the year, the Global Leadership Congress, May 9-11, 2011 in Philadelphia.  A roundtable on this topic and its strategy from a training and department angle will be presented. To learn more about the roundtable including the agenda, click Social Learning at GLC.