Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Social, Collaborative, and 3D Learning (Virtual Worlds)

December Online Forum: Dec 13 & 14 REGISTER HERE

This Online Forum explores different types of collaborative and social technology-based learning. It will examine the use of these technologies to support your current learning initiative or as stand-alone learning environments. You will see how to use different tools to build collaboration into learning, as well as new development techniques and processes. You will also see a wide variety of examples, and discuss their design and development aspects. Take this opportunity NOW to incorporate collaborative and social aspects into your e-Learning and...

• EXPLORE how to incorporate collaborative approaches into your current learning curricula
• EXAMINE how to use social learning to create business value
• DISCOVER how generational and cultural differences impact social learning design
• ENSURE that your learning programs draw upon the knowledge and experience of all learners

Yes, of course I'm biased. BUT, this is my favorite topic in all of elearning these days. Its not all of elearning but its a much bigger part than many want to believe.
I have a special interest in hearing my old Intel colleague Josh Bancroft talk about his experience implementing the internal corporate wiki that is known as Intelpedia. Its a GREAT case study in implementing a wiki using MediaWiki. His session is at 8:30am Friday. Josh is actually on sabbatical and so I extend an extra special thank you to him for giving us his time and sharing his experience.

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Employee guidelines for virtual worlds? Intel? Huh?

IBM leads the way in utilizing SL within the corporation as a viable tool. IBM has embraced the possibilites of emerging technologies as a tool for internal employee productivity and development. But Intel? I don't think so. This just in from Virtual Worlds News:

"This week IBM will release a set of rules for its 5,000 employees who use Second Life and other virtual worlds. Intel is working on a set of voluntary classes and guidelines to follow suit."

I think Intel may have 5 employees ALLOWED to access Secondlife certainly not 5,000. Intel marketing might consider throwing up adds in SL, and buy an Intel Island. And the software group might also support their external software communities, developers, etc. within a fun little SL conference room.
(Actually, the one I experienced was quite nice) But Intel will NEVER allow their rank and file employees to participate in emerging technologies like SL. No Intel team members from different geo's will ever meet in a SL area for training, project meetings, etc.

Oh good grief. If ANY company in the world was going to create useless guidelines this early in the life of a technology I should have known that it would be Intel. Only the Paranoid Survive, right Andy? Let's figure out if Second Life is even going to be a viable corporate tool before we turn on the paranoia machine.

I wonder if any of those Intel employees are aware that they can't even get into SL from with in the corporate network. So, now corporations are creating guidelines for activities that can ONLY occur on your OWN machine on your OWN free time. Somehow that just seems wrong to me on so many different levels.

Can anyone from an Intel training function with an internal customer base comment on this? Did the IT department actually cave in, and open all the UDP ports (or whatever they're called)? I was told for years that there wasn't a snowball's-chance-in-Arizona of ever getting UDP ports opened.

With all that said, YES, I think tools like SL have the ability to become (are) extremely, EXTREMELY useful learning environments. And apparently so do many of my learning colleagues as well. I would encourage my colleagues to check out what Proton Media has to offer...VERY cool stuff!
And from The eLearning Guild's data we find "93.8% of members believe that immersive learning simulations are BETTER [than other elearning offerings]." Check out the Immersive Learning Simulations report if you want the ammunition to get those software guys to open up Intel Island for internal training use.

Proton Media - Corporate Virtual Worlds

One of the big surprises at the eLearning Guild Conference was seeing the many improvements over at the Proton Media booth. Lots of buzz amongst my colleagues in this space. The integration of many Web2.0 tools directly into the virtual 3D environment is very slick, and compelling.

but I'm scanning my feed reader and notice this little company...UNISFAIR (via Read/Write web).

At first glance it does not look like UNISFAIR has the same integration of collaboration tools because its focused on the events market. But Training Events are big business. I just discovered Ron Burn's blog from ProtonMedia, so I'm hoping he can add some insight to this conversation. It looks like he was as the Virtual Worlds conferece recently prior to attending the eLearning Guild event. So I'm looking forward to his next posts.

I must say that I'm a big fan of opensource tools, but coming from a decade with Intel I do see the benefits and reasons why an integrated "enterprise" solution is preferred over a free consumer app (i.e. secondlife). It all depends on your needs, and what your trying to accomplish.