I'm not quite sure why there is so much angst within the eLearning community regarding terms. You know the ones I mean: eLearning, mLearning, TWearning (Twitter learning), and my personal favorite - bLearning. For those of you that missed
that blog post, that would be "b" for Blog Learning...or Brent Learning in my case, maybe not yours ;-)
Over the years I've come to the very simple conclusion that learning, training, and education are all very different things. Yea, yea, I know they are certainly related and bla, bla, bla. What I mean is that you use all 3 TERMS in very different situations. Education for schools, training for corp/gov work (and pets), and learning for individuals.
Here is a good example of a battle you should stop fighting: Training Departments taking responsibility for Learning within Corporations. Give it up folks. Making employees learn, without their full and complete cooperation, is NOT possible. So give up the dream that you are all about "creating learning". Try it! You'll find it quite liberating.
After letting go of the lie of learning creation, you are now freed to actually DO something productive for your organization. Yes, in fact, there is still work to be done even if you don't "create learning". Remember your instructional systems design certificate course, or masters program that taught you about ADDIE. The "A" is probably the most important and least used in that system. Analysis of your People, the Context of their work, and the Content they seek/create, is the most important job to be done.
Most of a Training Developers work starts with the content. "We need to create a course ABOUT X,Y,Z". Then you scurry off with your team and do an "analysis" of who is impacted by X,Y,Z and you interview a few of them. Then you are assigned a "content expert"...ONE, maybe TWO if you're lucky. And you know the drill from there. Instead of starting with content you should start with your people and the content will come.
Training is, and has always been, a support function (cost center), yet we operate training departments like little programming houses, or manufacturing units cranking out the eLearning widget of the day. Shouldn't we be thinking of a support function as SUPPORTING the people that DO the work that makes money for the company? After all, without THEM the company dies. No training department? No problem. Company still lives.
People are responsible for their own learning, period! And people are more connected than ever with access to more people, and content than ever before. People are empowered to get the answers they need better, faster, and cheaper than waiting for the next opportunity to take a training class. The paradigm is changing and our internal customers are now in control. Much like how you as a consumer are empowered to compare products, and purchase online without ever leaving your comfy chair. Your trainees will no longer put up with being bored for a day...even if they do get to leave the grind for a while.
The context of an employees job defines what he/she needs in order to be successful. This includes what software to learn, what device is used to learn, and how much time is available to learn, amongst other things. Your job as instructional designer is more like that of an anthropologist. By studying the context of an employee's world around him/her, you begin to see where new applications can unobtrusively fit into the existing environment. You will also discover the content that should be delivered and even gain insight into how often that content should be delivered and in what format.
With all of the conversations around
formal v.
informal learning, and
classroom v.
eLearning we've done nothing but create confusion and frustration amongst ourselves. The truth is that I can't see ANY method or model that so bad, and useless that it should be completely eliminated. Getting together with a group of people in a room with a leader/teacher will always happen...ALWAYS! We will also learn something new through informal means...even in a 140 characters or less. ALL of the new technologies are offering us new ways to connect people, and deliver content into the right context. And it doesn't matter what you call them or what they call themselves.
Learning is never about the technology...its about the people. Instead of cranking out the content, try focusing on your people, context, and content. Let me know how it goes.
You can talk to me more about this at...
I was a little surprised to see a ZDNET story cover the topic of MOODLE and Powerpoint and so I checked it out. I discovered many conversion tools that I did not know existed. I also learned a couple methods of getting powerpoint into MOODLE. Good tips and tricks and well worth the read if you were ever curious about this stuff like I was.
With that said, their is one man leading the IT charge in the world of 2.0. Harvard Business School's 
David Pogue