My First Second Life Experience

Not so good, I must say.

I spent about 25 minutes trying to make my avatar look sort of like me. It's sort of me-ish.

Then I wandered around Orientation Island, which gets boring fast. And then I teleported myself over to Brandon Hall's Education Island.

I starting talking with another newbie for about 2 seconds when we were accosted. The short story is within my first 5 minutes of exploring an island I was called a "bitch" and this guy was claiming to own "this world" and wanted me to pay him to get off the island. Coage Boucher. Avoid him.

I probably should have reported him, right? Well, I didn't. I just quit. Had to come back to my real computer and review a proposal anyway.

31 Days to A Better Blog

I mentioned to Michele Martin that I was interested in participating in the 31 Days to a Better Blog Exercise being led by problogger Daren Rowse. I was initially intrigued by Daren's ideas and by Michele's enthusiasm. I'm not blogging for the money or the fame, but I am in it for the community, networking and learning opportunities. So I guess it doesn't hurt to try and get better.

Well, when I stated my interest, Michele went nuts and added me as a participant on her blog list. She's an inspirational task master, really. Since I've now got some authority to report to, I'll do my best to keep up with the homework.

I'm already behind...

Day 1: Email a new reader. Haven't done that yet, but I was inspired to make sure I am actively commenting on commenter's comments. I'll take the leap. I really will. If you are a new reader, why not take the leap yourself and comment on my blog? I'll send you an email and will be taking blogging to that next level together!

Day 2: Sit with a new user while they walk through your blog. Hmm...I need to find a likely suspect who's willing to waste some time with me. I did send my blog link to my cousin Alex who works for a new media company. We were IMing each other and he disappeared for about 15 minutes. When he came back he said, "that's great stuff!" He's my cousin and he's supposed to say that, but I'll take it anyway. Does that count for my homework? (He occasionally posts at his company blog Inspire Action. Check 'em out. They're hip. They're funny. They're new media.)

Day 3: (Which is today -- actually, I think that's tomorrow. Daren is in Australia.) Search for and join forum's on your blog's topics. So I'm thinking I'll finally join Jay Cross's Internet Time Community. Is that what you would call a forum? (I admit to feeling like an old lady by even having to ask that question). Do you have any suggestions for e-learning/instructional design forums?

In preparation for all of this, I did spend some time mucking with Feedburner. I've been using MyBlogLog to track visits, etc. but it doesn't tell me how many actual subscribers I actually have. (Other MyBlogLog users -- am I missing something?) So I set myself up in Feedburner and now have a benchmark and more analytics to check out. I admit to getting overwhelmed at times with all the tools out there. What tools do you use to track readership/subscribers for your blog? Or do you even care?

Online Portfolios

Jennifer Madrell shows us a great example of an online portofolio, which she calls a "svelte and sparkly version of this blog - that is a requirement and capstone project at Indiana University."

She's included samples of wikis and courses she has created, links to podcasts, references and her resume.

Of course, I have nothing like this for myself. For years I had a stack of CDs -- examples of courses I had created over the years. I gave the CDs away on interviews, lost them in moves. The stack is long gone and completely obsolete.

Somewhere on an old laptop I've got examples of old project plans, design documents and storyboards.

These days I've got oodles of documents on my hard drive at work, this blog, but no concrete examples that I could share of courses I have been involved with (it's all proprietary info built for clients).

If I was trying to show my stuff off to someone, I guess I'd send them here to my blog, I'd send them to my company's website, I'd send them examples of project documentation. My LinkedIn account has my resume, as does Facebook. It's kind of scattered.

Should the blog become the landing point for your online portfolio? Your presence to the world? Should I be better about including links to all that other info so people can find out more about me?

I'm not looking for a job right now, so there's no urgent need. But it makes sense to be keeping track of your output as you create it. Otherwise, you can't find that stack of virtual CDs when you need it.

So I have some questions:

• Do you have an online portfolio?
• What tools did you use to create it? Would Netvibes work? A wiki tool? Your blog?
  
• How do you show samples of e-Learning projects or solutions you've been involved with? Screen captures?

Photo Credit: "Briefcase" by Gerson Robles from Stock.xchng

Yet More Buzz on Buzzword

I posted about Buzzword a month or so again and since then, I've had a lot of traffic to my site. I got listed on their "press" page. Oooh.

Wired has now done a great review of the app: Buzzword: Web-Based Office Docs Never Looked So Good.

"...the web apps status quo is set to change with the arrival of Buzzword, an office-caliber document editor with a visually rich user interface. Buzzword beats current Ajax-based offerings like Google Docs and Zoho Writer in both usability and aesthetic impact. And in a few months, when a desktop version is released, Buzzword will pose a serious challenge to Microsoft Word, the current king of document editing on the desktop.

The application has what you'd expect from a word processor -- copy and paste, find and replace, text formatting -- plus a few more features that have traditionally only been associated with desktop apps. It has intelligent margin, table and image formatting options as well as a sophisticated lists manager. Documents can be shared among users, and your classmates or co-workers can leave comments, which show up as little yellow pop-up notes in the right-hand margin."

I like that it's built in Flash. I like that Virtual Ubiquity is a Massachusetts company. I like that it's a purty application....

It's still in invitation-only beta. I'm on the press page, so I think I should get at invite, don't you?

Public beta will start in the fall. For free. Will the free part stay free?

8 Random Facts About Me

Michele Martin of The Bamboo Project has tagged me for the 8 Random Facts About me meme.

My very first meme participation -- does this mean I've arrived as a blogger?

First, the Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they've been tagged

And here's my random facts:

1) My dad was the captain of a nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy.

2) My family moved to Hawaii when I was nine. My parents still live there and although I've been away for more than 20 years, I still think of it as home.

3) I went to the same high school as presidential candidate Oback Barama (although I'm 7 years younger and have never laid eyes on him in person). My oldest brother was a class behind him and has observed that he was a "big man on campus."

4) I speak German. I used to speak it fluently; these days I'm pretty rusty. Yesterday I read an e-Learning blog auf Deutsch and I was surprised at how much I could actually understand.

5) I moved to Cambridge, MA after college and thought I'd stay east for a couple of years and then move back to a warmer coast. I've now been in Massachusetts for 17 years. I still haven't gotten used to the winters.

6) I was a competitive swimmer for 11 years (ages 9-20). I swam two years in college and then decided I was done with swimming and instead went to study in Germany for a year (Hamburg) where I proceeded to gain a lot of weight. I still love to swim and feel most at ease under the water, although I don't get the opportunity to swim much these days without a child hanging on my neck.

7) I made a vow when I was in college to never work at a job where I would have to wear panty hose. Except for the occasional sales call, I've managed to get away without wearing nylons. Luckily, women's fashions have also changed.

8) I play a lot of "Godzilla-Lincoln-Log-House-Wreck" these days. My 4-year old gets to be Godzilla while I narrate the scene of mass destruction.

And so I tag:

Janet Clarey
Christy Tucker
Clive Shepherd
Dan Roddy
Brent Schlenker
Tracy Hamilton (who's on holiday this week, but I bet will respond nonetheless!)
Wendy Wickham
Ray Sims

Apologies if you've been tagged previously or have done something similar, I'm just playing the game!

e-Learning Content & Version Control

Earlier this week, Janet Clarey wrote about the "Preservation of e-Learning Content." In response to a lawsuit, Janet had to scrounge to find old training materials and binders. She raised the question about e-Learning content and how well companies keep track of content updates. Can you prove when and how your e-Learning content has changed?

Certainly with the rise of rapid e-Learning tools and the increase in SME-published content we'll start to see an increase in the frequency of updates to e-Learning material.

As an e-Learning vendor, I think it's our responsibility to make sure that our clients have thought this through. But I've never once had a conversation with a client about this subject. This is definitely a gap and I intend to start having this conversation going forward.

After reading Janet's post, I talked with our CTO about some ways that we could build a little bit of "version control" into our Flash Course Development Templates. We've decided to add some simple text descriptors in our admin section that will allow a course creator to identify the content authors, the date originally created, update date, summary text about the course, and notes about the types of changes that were made.

As Janet mentioned, "most companies have digital document control procedures that include e-Learning content." We need to find out what tools our clients use and what systems they have in place.

If they don't do anything, find out why. Maybe it doesn't matter. More likely, if they don't have version control tools, it's because they haven't even thought about it. We'll need to advise those clients on what tools they should be using. At my company, we use SVN for version control (at a basic level I know that it's a tool that allows you to check files in and out and keeps track of versions, etc.).

We'll need to provide our clients with some guidelines for updating content and version control.

I suppose most LMS/LCMS keep track of versions on some levels. (Is that true?) In the Learning Portals that we create for our clients, we need to think about how we can ensure that updates are effectively tracked and recorded and that old versions of courses are properly archived. Again, some of this may be process on the client's end (where and how to archive).

This issue may not matter to some organizations, but imagine an airline company maintenance department that has to report to the FAA. I'm sure it matters to them.

Thanks to Janet for bringing this issue up!

Learning Visions

I'm Cammy Bean and this is my little corner of the world where I talk about instructional design and topics somewhat related to eLearning.

I've been working in the corporate training field since the early- to mid-90's. Most of that time, I've worked for eLearning vendors: companies that design and develop eLearning programs for a wide variety of corporate clients.

I love what I do because I get to learn about some new nook of the world every day. I've served as instructional designer and project manager on programs for banks, airlines, department stores, consulting firms, construction companies, training companies, and more.

I am now the VP of Learning Design for Kineo.

I started blogging in earnest in February 2006. A lot of really smart people were talking about some really interesting things and I wanted in! Every day I learn something new from the blogs I read and from the comments people leave here.

Please join in the conversation and leave a comment on my blog if you've got something to say. Don't be shy. Really.

How to comment:

At the bottom of a post, click on the Post a Comment Link. You'll see a little box in which you can type away.

You'll need to fill out the Word Verification field when you're ready to submit your comment. This is just a means of making sure that a real person is entering a comment, and not some mechanical spam machine.

Once you've entered your comment, it will immediately appear on my blog. I also get an email alert.

If you'd rather your comment was more private, feel free to send me an email at: cammybean @ gmail . com.

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Thanks for reading. I hope you keep coming back and join in the conversation!

Cammy