TLDCast - Stella Lee Talks About Aging Workforce

Special Guest Stella Lee Talks About Issues Facing Learning and Development Professionals

I'm really looking forward to today's #TLDCast with Stella Lee.

She is going to help us answer these big questions:

• How do we support the aging workforce? 
• How do they prefer to learn? 
• How can we leverage data to improve learning and performance support? Is big data the answer? 
• What is the role of the L&D department for employees in preparing the future of learning (e.g. AI/machine learning/automation replacing workers, jobs being obsolete, etc.)?

Live Streaming Daily Conversations for Corporate Training,  Learning and Development Professionals

Weekdays:  8am Pacific - 11am Eastern - 4pm British Summer Time

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TLDCast - Open Forum - Host Brent Schlenker

#TLDCast is going to be FANTASTIC this week! Get it on your calendar.

Monday through Friday 

8am PT - 11am EST - 4pm UK

Don't forget to get registered for Monday's open forum conversation. These are my favorite. The serendipitous nature of community conversations is always surprising me.

We will likely review the video challenge that I presented the community on VideoFriday last week. Since it was #NationalDonutDay I created the following challenge:

TLDC VideoFriday Challenge:

Create a dramatic 10sec Video of yourself eating a doughnut (or other food).
1) Use 5 shots/edits or less
2) Straight cuts only - no transitions
3) Must be completely produced on your mobile device.
Those are the only rules!

TLDCUK Meetup

Don't forget to RSVP for the TLDC-UK Meetup coming June 21st.
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Congratulations TLDCast! Today is the 200th Episode for Training Learning and Development Professionals

THANK YOU TLDCommunity!

Thanks to everyone who joined us today! Luis and I appreciate all of you. If you'd like to continue the TLDCast conversations, please join us in the slack group. #TLDChat will continue in slack making the connection between live streaming broadcast and text-based chat conversations.

TLDC18 January 29-30 Phoenix, AZ

We're also looking forward to seeing everyone in Phoenix January 29th, 30th for TLDC18!
It's the best for a professional development opportunity that you will find. Join us for TLDCast and ask others why they're going. You don't want to miss this!



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Christmas Items for the Training Professional on Santa's Nice List

Check out these 3 great lists of gift ideas for the corporate training professional in your life.

This is a 3 Part Series from The eLearning Blog.

Books
Trainer's Emergency Kit Items
Video Recording Gear

You can also see the Holiday Gift Guide for that Special L&D Professional in Your Life from Brian Washburn at his blog Train Like a Champion.

Brian was the inspiration for part 2 of the Litmos blog series the Trainer's Emergency Kit. So, I'm certain you'll find more cool stuff in his latest post.

There are big items and there are stocking stuffer ideas. You're sure to find something for the trainer in your life. Let's stop giving apples :)

BSchlenker Talks about eLearning - Episode 4 - Learning Rebel, Shannon Tipton

This is episode 4 of The Brent Schlenker podcast. Shannon Tipton, Founder of LearningRebels.com, is my guest. Shannon is the 4th corporate training professional I've interviewed for this podcast.  We covered a lot of ground in our conversation and had a lot of fun.

If you would like to be a guest, feel free to contact me @bschlenker on Twitter, or leave a comment here. Or if you'd rather just ask a specific question you can always send me your questions with the hashtag #askBschlenker. (...because #askBrent is already taken by Brent Rivera who apparently tweets naked.)

BS Talks About eLearning - Episode3 - Microlearning with Tom Spiglanin

This is episode 3 of The Brent Schlenker Podcast.  In this episode I chat with Tom Spiglanin, engineer turned training professional. Tom and I have been connected online for a long time, but only recently met face-to-face at DevLearn2014.

We talked about microvideos, and microlearning, as well as answering a question about keeping up with rapidly changing content.

After you listen to the podcast I'd love to get your feedback.  Hit me up on twitter @bschlenker, or just leave a comment here.

The LMS is Evolving...NOT Dying! (audio)

If you'd rather read the blog post you can find it at Litmos.com/blog.
 

My Weekly Review - eLearning Tools, Iterative Development, Pedagogy, and more

I started the Week in Review posts on July 11th...yea...I've missed a few weeks...Sorry.

Here is my review for this week August 4-8.

eLearning Content Creation tools

Okay, so they aren't specifically tools just for eLearning. They are general content creation tools, but WOW! They are pretty darn cool! I suppose we have HTML5 to thank for giving browsers the ability to do this kind of content editing. Check out my posts at the Litmos blog to get my reaction to Adobe's Voice App for iPad, and 2 browser based tools: Canva.com and Placeit.net.

Iterative eLearning Development

My Litmos blog posts on tools distracted me from my series on iterative elearning development. But I will be getting back to it. Honestly, I was beginning to think that my thoughts on 21st Century Corporate Training Development were perhaps a little too radical...perhaps before its time. But then this morning I saw a post on G+ from my UK eLearning friend, Clive Shepherd. His post is "Why eLearning Should be in Perpetual Beta". He is such a great writer, and has SO much industry experience that perhaps you will better understand the process I'm attempting to define by reading his posts on the topic as well. Here's a small piece...

"I once asked the CEO of a major e-learning company how much of their work was maintenance of existing content, thinking that this would be a substantial revenue earner. I was surprised to find that hardly anyone maintains their content. They just wait four or five years for the content to become obsolete, then they start all over again."

I believe, no matter what we call it, corporate training development and support as an ongoing service is where 21st century learning development is headed. The days of a 1-off product launch are numbered:  Still necessary in some situations, but not the norm.

My Hangups with Pedagogy

I published a post recently titled Mobile Learning - No Pedagogy Required! It sparked quite a conversation which I enjoyed immensely. I like to think out loud...publicly if necessary. Go to the post and catch up on the comments if you would like to engage.  But as a review I wanted to comment on the conversation.  Everyone was kind and rational in stating their views, thoughts, and opinions. Even the disagreements were cordial and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who spent so much time on thoughtful responses.  

Seeking clarity and understanding is not always easy. Asking questions on the internet often leads to putting people on the defensive and the conversations spiral downward out of control. But conversations like this remind me why I love the social nature of the internet.

Random Stuff...

The Litmos team has started weekly webinars focused on different aspects of LitmosLMS. This week's webinar tutorial was a big success! If you're a Litmos user be sure to put it on your calendar...or watch the recordings. Madeline (@mghonig) Does a fantastic job!

#lrnchat was fun this week. I was distracted by...SQUIRREL...#dadchat though. Lots of fun with those folks as well. But the best part was finding this...Thanks daddydazed.com.

And with that I'll leave you to your weekend! Cheers!

It's DEVLEARN Week!!! Embracing Technologies for Training and Development

 

It's monday and it's DEVLEARN week! I'm probably looking forward to this DevLearn more than any other.  Of course, it's bitter sweet since it will be my last as the program manager for the event. 
I'll be posting more on that later.

DevLearn 2012 is about Embracing Technologies for Training & Development.  Part of that also includes the fact that Technology is embracing US! The Training & Develpment industry has no choice but to change and adapt with emergence of such wonderful technologies like the iPad (and now the mini iPad), the cloud, better and smaller cameras, and video cameras, and the list goes on.

With such a massive wave of technology hitting us all, it's ALSO important that we do not forget the human elements of training and development.  It's very easy to get excited about new technologies and to see the many educational uses they provide.  And for a high tech conference like DevLearn you'd think we would fall into that trap as well.  But as the pendulum begins to swing too far towards the technology side of learning, I begin to see our responsibility as one of bringing it back to center by talking ALSO remembering the human side of learning. 

My hope for DevLearn 2012 is that we can begin to bring the communities of instructor-led learning and the communities of tech-based learning together and bridge the gap.  There is no one right answer.  We are all in this business for the same reasons.  Let's enjoy this week and celebrate the unique human elements we all bring to Training & Development.
 

The Learning Polemic [Guest Post]

[Guest Post by Jeff Katzman, Founder and CLO, Xyleme] The views of this post are that of the guest and not my own. However, you can feel free to comment here to engage with the author.

We're seeing a polemic emerge pitting proprietary systems and exclusive content against open systems and open content. Recent developments in standards have the potential to up-end the status quo, and re-draw the competitive landscape of learning technology providers, and learning content providers. It will be interesting to see how the stakeholders in the proprietary camp will react to the changes brought with the adoption of the new standards.

We know what proprietary systems look like. It's what we have now in the current breed of Learning Management Systems. Typically, they are closed systems that offer a limited choice of tools to draw from in designing your learning experiences. If you wanted to include a discussion, or take a quiz, or have students write a blog for an assignment, you had to use the system’s native capabilities. And once you did this, the content became proprietary and could only run on the system on which it was created. While there have been attempts to develop standards, they have largely fallen short. For example, if you create a course in Blackboard that uses native tools, then export that course to Common Cartridge (the standard package format), and re-import it, the course is unrecognizable. The idea behind Common Cartridge was to provide an interchange format where you can run the same course on different systems and have it work the same. Unfortunately, the set of features that is common from LMS to LMS is small, which means the standard can only address the lowest common denominator.

Coming changes in standards will also impose new challenges on the traditional educational publishers. Historically, K12 curriculum choices were made by a committee that decided which one-size-fits-all textbook the teachers should use. Curriculum providers have enjoyed lock-in exclusive deals. This has tied the hands of teachers and stifled innovation in the classroom. 

K12 is in the midst of radical change driven by race-to-the-top initiatives where the focus is on individualized learning.  By aligning education to standards, students take assessments that measure the student’s proficiency toward the standard. The teacher then can use this information to create customized assignments that match the student’s needs and learning style. For this to work in practice, learning content needs to be re-imagined. It needs to be granular, and aligned to the standards. To date, the publishers have had a difficult time disaggregating their content and have continued the “swallow it whole” business model of exclusive lock-in deals. 

Cloud services, enabled by adoption of new standards, have the potential to disrupt this dysfunctional system of proprietary technology and content.

The IMS Global Consortium is defining the next generation of standards that make this market transformation possible. The emerging model will have open content, open ePortfolio, and open tools. 

• Open Content - Content exists in the cloud where vendors stand should-to-shoulder and compete on a level playing field. Users make choices best suited for their needs and are informed by quality and price. 

• Open Portfolio - A cloud service that is the single place to store your learning records for your entire life. It’s your portfolio, untethered from your school LMS, or the corporate LMS, allowing you to maintain lifelong learning records that follow you from institution to institution and job to job.

• Open Tools - Like content, learning designers seek the ability to not be bound to the capabilities of the LMS they are using. IMS has released an update to Learning Tools Interoperability that allows learning designers to connect to remote services, authenticate the user, and return a result.  

The cloud is pushing the market toward openness and this is threatening to powerful interests. It will be interesting to see how the benefactors of proprietary systems will react. 

Meeker Report Can Help Your Mobile Learning Strategy

If you are still fighting with...sorry...encouraging your peers or your company's senior executives to embrace mobile learning, then more ammunition just arrived.  The Annual Meeker Report is here and it is filled with all the technology trends you need to support just about any eLearning strategy you can imagine. And that's all I'll say about it so you can just jump right in and see for yourself.  Tell me what you think! See you at mLearnCon.KPCB Internet Trends 2012

Cell Phone is 5th Most Ubiquitous Possession

I was trolling through G+ (I know, I know, who actually hangs out there, right?) and saw this post from noted Futurist and Senior Maverick at WIRED Magazine, Kevin Kelly. In the first paragraph he writes this...

The most ubiquitous technological possession on earth is the steel blade. Second is the cotton T-shirt. Nearly every forest person will have at least these two. Next is an aluminum pot and then a plastic bottle. After that it is a cell phone. Even the most remote farmer or lowliest street sweeper will pay for a cheap phone. These are not the most profound technologies - they would be television and antibiotics -- but the most common among humans.

I was a little stunned that the cell phone beat out pants, but maybe having pants puts me into another minority group.

I do trust Kevin Kelly's data and I assume this data is probably explained more deeply in his latest book, What Technology Wants! 


But even if the cell phone only hit the top ten, or top twenty even, that would still be a remarkable thing.  And something we as training and development professionals should not take lightly.  Yes, we are annoyed by walking and texting pedestrians, and scared by driving and texting teenagers, and struggling to adjust the social norms around these devices.  But one thing is certain, and that is your learners have cell phones, period! Embrace this knowledge and use them to your advantage.  Resistance is futile!

Make the best of this situation and commit to learning about how cell phones will work in your school, or corporate enterprise.  And learn how people are using them.  Use-cases matter...maybe even more than the technology.

Get all the information you need about mobile devices and learning at mLearnCon.  It's your future! Don't be left behind.

Putting the Dance in Your mLearnCon Attendance

The mLearnCon event is 3 weeks away.  If you are designing learning experiences in any way, you've got to take mobile devices seriously.  This is not a fad that will just go away if you keep demanding that your students check their devices at the door.  mLearning is something of a buzzword these days, but no matter what you call it mobile devices are everywhere and in everyone's hands...most with more than one mobile device.  Mobile is how we live our lives, it's how we access a global world of knowledge, and it's how business gets done.  

Ignoring mobile devices in training and education is as bad as being an entrepreneur and ignoring money.  

mLearnCon is in it's third year and continues to grow.  The most influential mobile training development experts will be there to answer all of your questions.  Since this is a niche conference you won't feel lost in the crowd.  It's hyper focused on one thing...MOBILE! 

If You're New to mLearning

If you are just getting started with mobile learning then mLearnCon is the place for you.  You could spend days, even weeks, searching the internet, reading reports (Mobile Report), and consuming other content in effort to get your mind around mobile.  But in the end you'd still have questions and you'd still lack the confidence to move forward.  Do your homework and then register for mLearnCon.  You'll want to sign up for a pre-conference workshop as well.  It's well worth the extra expense.  

Once you've registered you should start creating your strategy for attendance.  What? You don't create a conference strategy when you go to conferences? Well, If you are one those boondogglers, that's cool too. There's plenty of golfing near San Jose.  If you're serious about your conference attendance, then you really should be planning your attendance.  And this doesn't need to take long.  And it's NOT all about choosing which session to attend.

Step One

Step back and take a look at your current environment.  Define the context of your current job.  If you are a manager then you'll be thinking about your long term strategies and which projects are currently in progress or in the pipeline headed your way.  You should also understand your enterprise environment and your IT departments strategy.  You do not want to run off to a conference and find a beautiful hammer only to come home and discover there are no nails.  

If you are a designer or developer, these issues are important to you as well but you'll also want make a quick list of what tools you use, how you use them, and what you think you might be missing.  You've no doubt already encountered projects where you thought a mobile solution could be useful as part of the overall solution.  If your company has settled on a certain development tool then whether you like it or not, you should find a pre-conference workshop on that tool and a few sessions to help you hone those skills.  Remember, learning more about your tools is valuable. REALLY valuable in today's marketplace.  If you get the opportunity to learn more about your craft, do not squander it.

Step Two

Now that you have a solid picture of your own personal current environment, you should craft a few questions.  The questions you craft now will be what you use to refresh yourself when you've gone off track...and you will go off track.  The excitement of seeing colleagues, friends, keynote presentations, expo hall booths, etc., will no doubt begin to overwhelm you.  A short list of questions crafted BEFORE the event will act as your compas to get you back on track.  You don't need to define specifics on how these questions will get answered just yet...trust that the event and a little serendipity will offer the moments of enlightenment.  But if you don't have those questions on your mind you could very well miss the opportunities to gain the knowledge you need.

Step Three

NOW you're fully prepared to handle the detail work of reviewing the specifics about the event and how you will allocate your time.  This is when you'll engage with the conference mobile app.  If you don't have it then just use the web site. Review all of the sessions the first time by quickly scanning for the ones you think might answer your questions.  Don't think about it too much, just do a quick pass and see if anything jumps out at you.  Then do it again but look a little more closely, this time eliminating the ones that you are CERTAIN you will not need to attend.  Then do ANOTHER scan, this time dig a little deeper into the ones that are still remaining.

Make sure you have at least 2 or 3 selected in each time block.  Once you get to the event things happen fast and you don't have a lot of time for decision making.  You may find that one of your questions has been answered on day 1, and so that means a day 2 session is no longer necessary.  Having multiple sessions selected makes it easy to know exactly which one will fill in the gap.  It's no fun making decisions 5mins before sessions start, because you'll be frustrated going into what ever session you chose and every little thing will begin to annoy you.  I've experienced this many times and have heard the same from others.  Some times in those situations you get lucky and you wander into an amazing session...that's the serendipity that often occurs.  But the opposite can also occur and your state of mind going into a session that isn't working for you, is critical.  You don't want to be "that guy/gal" that starts nitpicking a well intentioned speaker because you were rolling the dice on their session.

Step Four

The greatest of plans often change in an instant.  This is where you need to put the DANCE in your attendance. Going with the flow works well if you are prepared to make adjustments without much thinking. The pre-planning takes most of the work out of decision making and allows you to feel more relaxed about the decisions you make.  When when need to adjust, it shouldn't be a big ordeal.  Just consult your session list first for alternatives.  If things have completely shifted and your session selections are no longer useful then refer to your questions and the quick environmental scan you did in in Step 1 and 2.  Because if things change THAT much on site, you will most definitely be flustered, so having your original image of the big picture will help you adjust and focus more quickly.  Remember, don't panic! Breathe. Dance.

The pre-planning may seem extreme, but I'm hoping you'll do something to prepare yourself for mLearnCon.  You cannot prepare for the changes in training and development without understanding mobile.  It's complicated.  It's different. It requires a new mindset around what training is and what it WILL be.  Moving your Powerpoint slides to mobile delivery services is NOT the solution.  Commit to being better than that.  Your learners deserve it and so do you.

Have We Lost the S...in ISD? What Should Workforce Learning Graduates Hear from You?

Allison Rossett posted a fabulous fake commencement address 2 days ago.  I loved it.  She nails a point I'd like to emphasize here.  The work we do at one level is extremely focused on the micro solutions we call courses, but more than ever we need to be thinking about, and designing, systems.  And I'm not talking about Learning Management Systems.  Just reading her post made me realize that so much of our industry is focused on the ID, Instructional Design. And back when I first started in this business it was mostly referred to as ISD, Instructional SYSTEMS Design.

I'm not sure what happened to the focus on systems but it seems to have faded. According to Wikipedia the terms are synonymous.  From a purely academic perspective I might agree.  But from many years of observing our industry as a whole I'm not so sure. I see two very different practices emerging within our industry: 1) The Instructional Design of Courses, and 2) The Instructional Systems Design of Enterprise Solutions.

The Instructional Design of Courses
For the most part, this is the work of creating the final product. The instructional design required here helps developers work with SMEs, understand the content, create the media, and design the flow in which the content is presented, as well as creating some form of assessment.  Much of this work is seen as requiring one technology for the solution.  You might choose to design a classroom experience, or you may design a fully interactive immersive simulation.  But no matter what tool you choose, for a certain period of time your sole focus is on creating that solution and implementing it successfully. You may also need to make sure it conform with a larger system design that is part of your enterprise and that is where ISD comes in.

The Instructional Systems Design of Enterprise Solutions
Mostly defined as the strategy and management issues of training and development, there is a certain level of Instructional Design that seems to have been lost at this level.  My feeling is that those with the power and authority, and responsibility, to implement enterprise systems solutions do not take instructional systems design into consideration.  After all, "I have instructional designers that do that".  I believe it's a rare manager today that thinks about instructional systems design during the many times that decisions need to be made.  It's far easier for me to see a manager interested in buying an LMS because legal, IT, or HR asked them if training was being tracked or "managed" in some way. Legal needs the information to fend of legal action. IT needs to know because their enterprise vendor has one that could be thrown into the deal. HR needs to know because of compliance, new hire training, and employee development.

So, is there a difference between Instructional Design and Instructional Systems Design? Should they be two different roles within the training team? What does this mean in the corporate world vs. higher ed?

I don't know the answer, but I know what I see and hear from so many colleagues managing training departments, and creating eLearning course solutions.  I hear the terms of the industry being tossed around in various communities with different meanings attached.  I participate in frustrating conversations because many use the same words, but mean different things.  Maybe parsing ID and ISD will help.

I love it when the veterans of our industry talk about our field at a very high level as Allison did in her post. I wish more would do so.  Perhaps Allison's fake commencement address will kick off a trend.

If you had to give a commencement address to a class of graduating learning professionals, what would you say? If you post it, let me know.

UPDATE: I got a couple twitter responses to this post and I wanted to share some interesting content.  Donald Clark retweeted my post and when I checked out his stream found this gem on design models. Reuben Tozman also reached out and reminded me of his post on systems titled 7 Metaphors for Experience Design.

Mobile Learning Report Shows Significant Increase in Intent to do MORE mLearning

Mobile Learning: The Time is Now was just released by The eLearning Guild.  With the mobile market being the fastest growing industry you'd be wise to pay attention to how mobile devices impact your learning audience and in turn how you develop and deliver your learning solutions.

Guild members have shared the impact of mobile learning on their organizations and their strategies.  The questions they've answered have given us a solid picture of the mobile learning space.

"The number of Guild members who say they intend to use mLearning continues to increase. In 2010, 45.6% of Guild members said they intend to do more mLearning. In 2012, that figure has increased to 65.7%."

This mobile research report is nicely timed in anticipation of the mLearnCon Conference and Expo.  The major mobile learning industry players can be found at this event. You don't want to miss it.

Can Corporate Training & Development be Gamified?

I don't think we can really answer that question until we truly understand what Gamification is.  And luckily, we now have a book to help us do just that.  Dr. Karl Kapp has just launched another blog book tour for his latest book Gamification of Learning and Instruction.

The Book Tour starts HERE.
The Facebook page is HERE.
Buy the book HERE.

Follow the blog book tour.  Read the Book.  And join the gamification conversation.

There will be plenty of gamification conversations to be had at this year's DevLearn event for sure.  Start your planning today!

Screen Resolution Alert for eLearning Developers!

Statcounter Global Stats reported last week that 1024x768(XGA) has been overtaken by 1366x768(WXGA) for the first time. If these numbers make no sense to you then think of it in terms of aspect ratios.  What the report basically says is that the 16:9 aspect ratio has become more popular than 4:3. Think of it as old TV beginning to die out slowly and the newer HDTV growing.

If you are an eLearning developer this is important news. But if you are an eLearning developer this should not be NEW for you.  And, in fact, this may not even impact you.

Let this ALERT serve as a reminder for those who consider themselves eLearning developers but don't know the standard screen resolution supported by your IT department.


I would guess that many of you are not seeing this change within your organizations.  The data is based on global internet usage in general and if you track usage stats for your web sites behind your firewall you should be able to see for yourself.  Or ask your IT department for the report.

3 Reminders to every Corporate Training Department


1) Be connected to your IT department.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  If you are developing anything with software being delivered to your organization digitally, then you MUST have a solid partnership with your IT department.

2) TEST, TEST, TEST!  Always test your eLearning courses on as many different screen resolutions as possible, and on as many devices as possible.

3) Don't forget about the big screen! With the industry chasing down mobile learning at such a rapid pace it's easy to forget about the desktop.  This alert is your wakeup call.  Remember that your corporate audience is STILL most comfortable viewing your courses on a desktop with a high resolution monitor.  Make sure your content looks beautiful in that space.

And if you really want to dig deeper you can check wikipedia for everything you ever wanted to know about Graphic Display Resolutions.

SCORM-ify YouTube Videos with ScoTube

SCORM.com issued a press release about ScoTube this week.

Many eLearning professionals are locked into creating SCORM compliant courses for their customers and that has been limiting in regards to new user-generated content on services such as YouTube.  It's nice to see tools addressing these concerns moving the industry forward.

From the press release:

"The first of its kind, ScoTube marries the power of SCORM with the wealth of content available through YouTube. Users select the video they want to share with learners from YouTube and ScoTube creates a SCORM course using that resource. "

 If you are required to create SCORM compliant solutions, you should definitely check this out!

Bloomfire Secures $10 Million in Series A Funding

Bloomfire has certainly taken the eLearning industry by storm.  Or should I say, set it on fire? <rimshot>

Chris Pacitti, from one of the two investing companies, Austin Ventures had this to say... 

“Bloomfire addresses old-school productivity problems with a new-school approach, using social software to create and share valuable information within an enterprise. It essentially allows you to clone your best sales people, reducing costs, improving productivity and accelerating new business opportunities that drive your bottom line.”

I'm so happy for the guys at Bloomfire.  Seriously, these are some of the most creative, hardest working guys I've known.  Every time I see a Bloomfire logo I can't help but remember seeing an naked Nemo wrapped in a Bloomfire banner running through a reception at Learning Solutions.

That was the year I started seeing that the eLearning industry was changing.  The old guard had been asleep at the wheel and frisky new startups were tackling the problems of the corporate training industry.

Of course today there are many new players and old tools have evolved, and embraced social media, collaboration, the cloud, mobile and other new technology shifts.  But I've seen a few startups fail for whatever reason, and it's just really nice to see a startup hitting on all cylinders and catching the eye of venture capitalists.

It's a great time to be in the eLearning game.  Innovative corporate training solutions are needed now, more than ever.  Even if Bloomfire is not the right tool for your current corporate need, you should still take some time and check out what their doing.  Someday it could be exactly what you need.

Check out the latest in mobile learning solutions at mLearnCon in June.

Skillsoft Acquires Element K for $110 Million

The business of eLearning in corporate training continues to shift.  You may have already heard this news, so I won't bother you with the details.  You can read the full press release here.  I'm just pointing it out as a "heads up" that the eLearning industry is alive and well and corporate training departments need to continue to stay up to date on the latest moves within our industry.

"The acquisition adds to SkillSoft's existing offerings in learning content and learning platform technology through the addition of Element K's complementary offerings in e-learning content, virtual labs, ILT print materials and custom development services."

The Learning Solutions Conference and Expo had a 50% growth or vendors in the expo which tells me our business is alive and well.  What we do as corporate training professionals will only continue to be needed in the coming years.  But it's also important to keep your skills up.  Don't rest on your old skills.  Yes, you are needed.  But the world is changing and you need to step up your game.

Check out the media tools report for more information on the tools of our industry.