Happy New Year: Trends for 2013

Training Industry Quarterly spotlights 11 training trends for the new year in its Winter edition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big 11 are

• Corporate Spending: UP
  
• Job Growth for Training Professionals: UP
• Learning Leader Focus: Sustainability
• Content Curation: Integral to Training Organizations
  
• Outsourcing: UP; Complexity of Deals, DOWN
• Senior Management Engagement: UP
• Tin Can API: New Standard in Learning Design
• All Systems: More Integrated
• Knowledge Repositories: The Foundation Tool for Knowledge Transfer
• Rapid Application Development: Basis for Custom Content Development
• Mobile Learning: Major player in Learning Solutions

He looked her straight in the eye and asked, “Do you curate well?”

He looked her straight in the eye and asked, “Do you curate well?”

She replied, confidently, “Yes, of course. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“Years?” he questioned. “You’re only twenty-two; I’m thirty-four and I just learned about the importance of web curation a year ago.”

“Too bad. You should have gone to The University of Tennessee-Knoxville and taken Instructional Design Technology with Dr. Miriam Larson. That’s where I learned about Curation.”

And, so did I, as a central aspect of my final design project for 570 Instructional Design Technology. My team’s project objective was to design a training course to introduce university instructors and faculty to the benefits of an online Personal Learning Environment (PLE) to enhance traditional face-to-face courses. To meet rigorous higher-education standards a major component of our project focused on web curation. We wanted to ensure the future PLEs our participants created would epitomize instructional quality and usefulness.

The technological world is a new environment for me so my first take on the word curation was how could a term that denotes an individual whose vocation is related to either religion or a museum find its way into the www lexicon? The editors of Merriam-Webster.com/dictionary, often my go-to source for primary information, are out of the loop on the word’s contemporary meanings. Jessica Backus, a disenchanted M-W reader, commented:

Would love for Merriam-Webster to address this: Not only does “curation” refer to concrete practices of digital curation, or a human making a selection (i.e. Gilt Group) as opposed to relying on taste-prediction algorithms a la Netflix, Amazon, etc., “curation” has become the word par excellence to describe a thoughtful selection of inspiration in today’s unwieldy and diverse cultural and media landscape. 

Jessica nailed it. Her take on curation probably stems in part from the 2009 seminal blog post, “Manifesto for the Content Curator” by Rohit Bhargava, a marketer, author, speaker, professor, and self-avowed nice guy. The post articulates for the first time the 5 models of content curation. The 43,400,000 results from a Google search of the 5 models of content curation attest to its broad influence. His 2011 follow up blog, “The 5 Models of Content Curation,” Bhargava refines and extends the original concept. This is a graphical rendering/summary of The 5 Models of Content Curation.

• Beth Kanter, another well-regarded blogger in the field, posts her take on Content Curation. In that article she also posts a table inspired by another contemporary theorist, Harold Jarche. The table, “The Ideal Content Curation Practice,” captures the essence of the field’s overarching mandate: seek, sense, share.

• During my own exploration to seek, sense, and share about Content Curation, I stumbled across innumerable sites and blog posts which explore the topic and its implications for the future in great depth. A handful of my favorites are listed below. Those blogs list other sites as well. I have one favorite site. It’s created and maintained by Gretel Patch,

a Master of Educational Technology student at Boise State University and wife of an American diplomat stationed in Nepal. Gretel’s site is her professional and academic portfolio. It’s a clean, well-designed site with rich content and interesting educational and instructional ideas. The Curation blog features a 15-item Curation Checklist, created Gretel and two of her classmates.  Her post also features an interesting video with interviews with leading Content Curators, produced by Percolate, a high-flying marketing company that “helps brands create content at social scale.”

• Other blog sites that provide stimulating reading about the burgeoning field of Content Creation are:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awake-the-wheel/201103/is-content-curation-the-new-black

http://www.webbythoughts.com/content-curation-tools-resource/

http://engage.synecoretech.com/marketing-technology-for-growth/bid/134987/What-Is-Content-Curation-and-Why-Do-I-Need-It

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/scoop-this-a-comprehensive-guide-to-scoop-it-for-content-curation/38963/

http://www.socialbrite.org/2012/08/27/top-tools-for-content-curation/

http://pinterest.com/nickilincha/curation-tools/

http://www.iloveseo.net/content-curation-definition-and-generation/

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/06/content-marketing-curation-context/

http://community.paper.li/2012/03/07/why-a-content-curator-is-not-an-editor/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1834177/content-curators-are-new-superheros-web

http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2009/09/manifesto-for-the-content-curator-the-next-big-social-media-job-of-the-future.html

http://curatorscode.org/

http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/

http://pleconf.org/program/sessions/a10/

http://gretelpatch.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/curation-ponderings/

http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/

• Curation Tools On another pertinent and practical note, the all-important curation tools. Curation tools allow novices to look like pros and bring to fruition any idea they have, and pros, well, to do what they do best. I curated this list from http://www.seosandwitch.com/2012/06/content-curation.html. It’s the most complete list I’ve seen.

1- Scoop.it

2- Curata

3- Curationsoft

4- Paper.li

5- Googlereader

6- Pinterest

7- Mytweetmag

8- Bundlr

9- Netvibes

10- Newspin

11- Utopic

12- Trapit

13- Faveous

14- Collected

15- Kweeper

16- Pinboard

17- Tweetedtimes

18- Iflow

19- Pearltrees

20- Yoolink.fr

21- Retickr

22- Historio.us

23- Shariest

24- Memolane

25- News.me

26- Stribe

27- Getprismatic

28- Zootool

29- Bagtheweb

30- Bonzobox

31- Skloog

32- Crayon

33- Mysyndicaat

34- Mediaheroes

35- Yourversion

36- Pageonecurator

37- Digg

38- Zemanta

39- Chirpstory

40- Snip.it

41- Trailmeme

42- Qrait

43- Sphinn

44- Technorati

45- Flipboard

46- Storify

47- Newsmix.me

48- Diigo

49- Flocker

50- Dropmark

51- Schoox

52- Feedly

53- AtomicReach

and, I’ll add a 54th. Ta-da! WordPress has its own curation tool, called MyCurator http://www.target-info.com/ exclusively for WordPress users.

• Well-curated sites I’ll leave you with four examples of what others and I deem well-curated sites, There are hundreds more out there. Send me your favorites.

http://pinterest.com/MercedesBenz/

http://www.scoop.it/t/story-and-narrative

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

http://www.elearninglearning.com/kirkpatrick/taxonomy/

Well, that’s all, folks. Happy curating!

A Small WordPress Victory! Links are Mine!

Celebration! I just learned to add links. I couldn’t imagine the blog about web curation I hope to post tonight without live links. So, a little peregrination solved the problem. To strut my new stuff, here’s where to go to create links in a blog. Sweet and easy.

 

 

Messing “About”

Anna Lea West (http://annaleawest.com/) had a thing about About, “My blog has been held up by my inability to write an “about” page. To stop this ridiculousness, I’m giving myself 5 minutes to tell you all you need to know. Here goes.” Then she launches into 12 bullet points about herself. Anna Lea’s picture is not on the About page but on the home page she’s captured in the passenger seat of what looks like a mini-van. I found Anna Lea on the “Freshly Pressed” tab @ wordpress.com. Peregrinating the Web wasn’t held up for lack of About, but without About, it lacked. At least in my opinion. A blog with an unpopulated About is not as welcoming, dimensional, and appealing as blogs that introduce their author. About is about relationship and trust. Just who is this person anyway?

So, the calm Saturday three weeks ago, before the Thanksgiving and end-of-semester rush, seemed to be the perfect time to add a pic and blurb to the About section of Peregrinating the Web. First step: Follow instructions. So, to I started at   . The more step-by-step help the better. Only issue, that day I could not find good info about About so I reasoned that if I completed the Profile section that information would automatically update About. Wrong. Nonetheless, the process proved instructive. I learned about adding media through the “Add Media” tool. From the “Choose File” box I found a picture that I could tolerate then clicked “Upload.”And, Voila..

 

Failed! How could that have happened? I followed directions. That was enough for one day. A body can only stand so much!

Fast forward to today. A new day. A fresh chance. This time the instructions advised to go to Dashboard    and click on Pages.  A drop-down menu appeared

and I clicked on “All Pages” and

checked the “About” box.

From there it was a piece of cake! My picture greeted me. What a surprise! Evidently, all was not lost from the session three weeks ago. Thankfully, the copy had been saved in a Pages document so that was a quick copy/paste action. (“Pages” is Apple’s word processing program in case you’re not a Mac diva like me.) About was done. Now Peregrinating the Web followers know a little more about its creator.

P.S. It’s always a learning experience. While completing About was much easier than expected, creating this blog taught me another lesson that’s recorded in a post earlier today.

An Unplanned Post; Timeless Advice

“Type a little; save a lot” was the big-picture takeaway my friend Linda shared with me many years ago after she had attended a week-long computer training course. Handicapped with low-vision, Linda acquired marketable computer skills at that workshop which opened a world of opportunity for her. And that sage advice still rings true, especially in blogosphere. At least for me. I confess, I haven’t followed it. In the past several weeks, failure to follow those six little words has cost time and lost content. And, I’m posting this now as a word of warning that I hope you don’t need. I am really talking to myself because the blog that should have been posted nearly three weeks evaporated for the second time today. I was merrily working away, clicking between tabs, gathering information, when, oops! I x-ed the wrong tab and away went a couple of hours worth of brilliant prose. (I’m a slow, picky writer.) Although, this little text at the bottom right of the text pad tells me the draft is saved, it lies. It didn’t save the latest draft of the earlier work and it’s not 10:44:01 p.m. So, my remedy and advice: to create in a word processor then copy and paste to the blog when it’s ready. Not before. Do you hear that, Brenda?

Impressions of Kirkpatrick Webinar

Don Kirkpatrick

Don Kirkpatrick is not the sourpuss the photo, posted to announce this TrainingIndustry.com webinar with the legendary icon, portrayed. Rather, he presented today as a warm, gracious, humble elderly gentleman, more like this photo. His role today was to trace the nearly 50-year history of the evaluation model that bears his name. The Kirkpatrick Levels of Evaluation began as part of his second Ph.D. in education to add to one in business leadership. His key research agenda was evaluation. In 1959 he wrote a series of four articles in which he broke evaluation into four parts: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. He said he never personally identified them as “levels.” In the intervening years, his model gained recognition and renown. One purpose for today’s webinar was to highlight his organization’s current focus. Now run by his son and daughter-in-law, Kirkpatrick Parters is tackling the struggles many organizations experience with Levels Three and Four of the Kirkpatrick Model. They call it “the new world levels.”

Their focus is to demonstrate value of Training Effectiveness. They find that most organizations deal with Levels One and Two well, but shy away from, lack the courage to fully confront Levels 3 and 4. Throughout the webinar the Kirkpatricks emphasized two key elements:

1. The End is the Beginning. So, they stress beginning with Level 4 to set criteria for success in the ROI, Return on Expectations.
2. Value must be created before it can be demonstrated. They strongly advise not to let the metrics define value at the end of the project but to make sure it works along the way. Training alone does not get results and must be built with performance checks and drivers.

Their presentation contained specific “required drivers” to support the evaluation process.

The entire webinar is available on-demand at the Training Industry website (www.trainingindustry.com), and resources and materials from the webinar are available at this link. http://www.trainingindustry.com/media/15260939/11_5_12_executiveseminarseries_materials.pdf

Visual Blooms

Visuals speak my language. Peregrinating for information to complete this week’s assignment while contemplating Types of Learning. The TOLs sparked some Bloom’s questions so revisited Bloom’s Taxonomy with a web search. There, I tripped over a blog from a 4th grade Australian teacher, Kathy McGeady, who had posted this graphic on her blog (http://primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au/2009/08/13/blooms-taxonomy-in-the-digital-age/) along with the following details:

“Most teachers are probably familiar with the Bloom’s Taxonomy model which details the six levels of thinking from lower to higher level thinking (remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, creating).

Mike Fisher, an American instructional coach and consultant has come up with an interesting revision of the Bloom’s Taxonomy model based on 21st century skills. The model incorporates online tools that can be used to encourage each of the levels of thinking. Mike has created a wiki called Visual Blooms to share ideas on where various online tools could fit into the Bloom’s hierachy (obviously many online tools could fit into different categories depending on how they are used). This is still a work in progress but definitely worth checking out.”

Mike’s Visual Blooms site (http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com/Visual+Ideas) sports several other visual Blooms on its main page as well as several additional representations on the side menu. However, it doesn’t appear to have been updated recently. It’s too bad; it gives new meaning to digital blooms.

Truth in Blogging

This morning I showed the twenty-something SailAway staff member Peregrinating the Web. Her dark almond eyes widened as she stared. “Wow!” It was all the praise I needed to keep me going. Then she asked the question. “How did you do it? It looks great!.”

I should have told her the truth right then and there: I didn’t. She thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. Mostly it just…happened…serendipity.

Two days earlier she had shown me how to format a blog site. The rhythm of her click-and-paste, finger-thumb tango across the “Appearance”menu

seemed like child’s play. Her fingers whirled and twirled and images appeared and colors splashed on the board. “See. It’s easy,” she said as she prepared to leave for the day. I didn’t believed her. I left my screen open to “Themes”

in the “Appearance”drop-down menu from Dashboard…for two days. I was concerned I might not find it again and furthermore, It took me that long to screw up enough courage to click again. Oh, I forgot a small item: the color palette had frozen on my  helper. Only the Lord knows what havoc that glitch might wreak on my frail confidence.

When I came back, lo, and behold, “Themes” was still there with dozens of themes to the right. I scrolled through many worthy options until Twenty Eleven caught my attention. So I clicked and, voila! a whole new Peregrinating the Web. There was even a headline picture. How on earth did that picture get there? It didn’t fit a peregrinating theme and furthermore it changed every few seconds. I remembered my twenty-something assistant had gone on line, found a picture she liked, and inserted it into her site. Seemed like a no brainer. I poked around the options under headline picture and there was no insert option. So, I kept an close watch on the scrolling stock-options until something with a peregrinating feel appeared. Ocean! Perfect. Click. Done deal.

Oo, the plain white background did not fit. Hey, background option. In addition to the fearful color palette it offered a personal selection option. Ah, here’s the chance to use that really poignant peregrinating photo the headline wouldn’t accept.

  Nice, huh? Great photo for a headline; rotten for a background. Out you go. So, back to the color palette. The dreaded color palette. Surprise! It cooperated  and that beautiful, deep sea blue is the result. I liked it. Quickly published before any further disasters to could happen.

I did it! One small step for the immigrant in the new land.

New Media Consortium

Earlier this semester I discovered New Media Consortium, the research center that tracks emerging technologies, and its yearly Horizon Reports. Below is a short summary about NMC Horizon Reports and links to those reports.

NMC Horizon Reports

 

With well over one million downloads in the past ten years, the NMC Horizon Report series serves the higher education, K-12, and museum communities across the globe in their desire to understand the impact of emerging technologies on their chosen field or discipline. Not a predictive tool, the NMC Horizon Report provides insight into the technologies that are most likely to make a significant impact across three time horizons, based on the consensus opinions of the self-nominated advisory board.

Expert Research and Analysis
In 2002, the NMC launched the first NMC Horizon Report and expanded its reach in 2008 and 2010 to cover both formal and informal learning in the higher education, K-12, and museum sectors. The reports provide a detailed overview of six emerging technology topics and explore the relevance of each for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry through action-based examples and recommended further readings. Each NMC Horizon Report is released with a Creative Commons attribution-only license and may be freely replicated and distributed.

International Perspective
Because of the growing desire from institutions in different parts of the world to gain more region-specific insight, in 2011 the NMC expanded the work of the project to include the series of NMC Technology Outlooks — special editions of the NMC Horizon Report that focus on the future landscape of learning in particular regions and/or countries. This new series of reports is the product of collaborations between the NMC and innovative organizations across the world that seek to leverage the well-known medium of the NMC Horizon Report to bring important research, trends, and challenges in their regions to light.

Consensus Among Thought Leaders
Each edition of the NMC Horizon Report or Technology Outlook begins with the formation of an international, multi-disciplinary group of between 40 and 50 technology experts from both within and outside higher education. That group engages in dialog and discussions about potential applications of emerging technologies — most of which may not be obvious if the technology is very new. Participation on the Horizon Project advisory board is by invitation after self-nomination, and participants are honored with a special listing and acknowledgement in the NMC Horizon Report. Since 2002, hundreds of experts from all over the world have served on an NMC Horizon Project advisory board.

> NMC Horizon Project

> NMC Horizon Reports

• > Horizon Report: Higher Ed Edition
• > Horizon Report: K-12 Edition
• > Horizon Report: Museum Edition
• > Technology Outlook
• > NMC Horizon Report: Press

> NMC Horizon Project Navigator

Adding Categories

It’s not a big thing. It’s really a baby step in the world of blogging. But it’s a baby step I took and didn’t fall down. One of my stated goals for Peregrinating the Web (PTW) is for it to be a place that digital immigrants can find support, comfort and help. Another goal was for this PLE to have visual and content structure. So, duh, why did it take me over a month to recognize that “categories” is intended for such a site-organizational task. I’m sure there are other ways to organize a blog, better ways. But, this one will do. So, for all you fearful first-time WordPress blogger-persons, like me, here’s how I learned to create the lovely categories you now see on PTW.

First, I went to this website: http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories/ and scrolled down to the section on adding categories from Dashboard.

 I like Dashboard; it’s friendly and not too intimidating. I decided to add a picture so you’d know what it looks like. (Note: Adding pictures is a little outside my present comfort zone because I haven’t learned how to make them behave the way I want them to. So we’ll see.) I clicked on Categories and  sure enough, just as the site foretold, a nice fillable form

appeared that was pretty self-explanatory. My intentions for this site are to make it easy to use and follow. During my visioning about what I wanted this PLE to be, structure was important. Voila! here is the mechanism to accomplish that. So, I entered the type of categories I had already considered in the “Name” box. Under “Name” is a box marked “Parent.” Love at first sight! Here was the way to structure posts by theme and topic. So, now there are five Parent categories, two of them with sub-categories.

I’m satisfied. It turned out okay.