Pecha Kucha in learning!

Pecha Kucha is an attractive presentation format that originally came from artistic people in Tokyo. It forces you to bring your message effectively and attractive by setting some rules: you have only 20 slides with images and you are only allowed to talk 20 seconds per slide. This way you will finish your presentation in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Last week with Learning 2007 there was a Pecha Kucha night with educational shows. I found it a very inspiring format as a teaser for a further discussion and it keeps you from those 4 hours, 96 slides PowerPoint disillusions.

Yesterday I created a Pecha Kucha myself and it took me 3 hours to create it. Quite long and that is not surprising: the format force you to really focus on the essence of the subject. It is not an easy thing to do. I think I'm gonna use this format for my learners at some trainings and workshops.

See my first try about Learning 2007, click on the PLAY-button (and yes, I know it is not the best thing ;-)

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BTW: the audio possibility in SlideShare is great!!

e-Learning for a Worldwide Audience > Learning 2007

Our session at Learning 2007
Today was the big day for Erika and me because we had our session about multicultural e-Learning. It was great! We had an interesting group of people that discussed with us the implications of different cultural dimensions on e-Learning. As you know we used the model of Hofstede to define guidelines for instructional design of e-Learning for a multicultural audience. You will get more info on this when we will be finishing the Fe-ConE project. I will publish some nice and rich materials on this blog. In the meanwhile you can go to the site of our session today to get the hand-out with some practical information: www.learningwiki.com/739



People working really hard to find out about cultural aspects

Wikinomics
For the rest I went to a session of Don Tapscott. This author of Wikinomics has some interesting points on the netgeneration but it was not really new to me. The new focus was on Talent 2.0. I think this comes very close to the thesis of Joost Robben. Basic message was that for young people there is a thin or no line between work/entertainment/learning. The working environment should be fun, collaborative, customizable, authentic and fast.

Some extra nuggets of info
I went to a nice session on the use of storytelling and in particular about the educational use of Manga. This was a inspiring session and you will see more on this on my blog in the next months. I used cartoons for educational use a few times and we are now working on a cartoon kind of learning for a customer.

Wayne Hodgins was announcing a new and independent organization that will take over the role of ADL. This is the organization behind the learning standard SCORM. Because this is a worldwide used standard the learning community wants to take it away with the defence orientated ADL.

Last thing I visited was a good session (PIT training) that offers a learning experience with a real racecar. I had the same experience at the ISAGA conference. Probable an engaging way of learning although we missed the real debriefing and transfer of the regular training. Check out the video.



Last thing that interest me was the use of HD videoconferencing over the internet that was used by the Manhattan School of Music. They are using this quality connection to teach musical lessons. The called it an export and import of educational resources. Very interesting. They needed high quality because of the importance of the details. Check this student (although this is no HD after YouTubing ;-))

Rightbrainers & Snowflakes > Learning 2007

Rightbrainers
Today we started at 8 am and it was an inspiring day again. It started with some good sessions, one of the better ones was from Dan Pink (see also his blog). I have read his book "A Whole New Mind" a long time ago and still there are some challenging thoughts. He is telling us that it is time has come for the 'right brainers', he relates the left side with rational ways of thinking and the right side with the more emotional and artistic side. He keeps telling us that we have the focus on jobs and services that cannot be outsourced or automated. And than we talking about right-brain attitude and values. Pink comes up with some ingredients that can make a difference in business and learning:
- design (differentiate one product/service from another);
- storytelling (places facts in context and provoke emotions);
- symphony (focus on syntheses);
- meaning (what is the real value);
- empathy (feel what the user is feeling).

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi had a more sophisticated and sound message but I like the style and way of thinking from Dan as well. So do yourself a favor and buy his book.

Snowflake effect
Two other good moments today: Experiences on Storytelling from Ikea (wonderful examples) and Wayne Hodgings from Autodesk. I saw this guy already a lot of times and I keep visiting his presentations because he is so passionate about learning and he has a good sense of trends. His story today was again about mass personalization of learning. He called it the Snowflake effect. Challeging message with some nice examples that I didn't know. One good one is www.pandora.com were you build your own profile by rating songs. Go see it for yourself. I think his idea can be implemented if we are looking for some help by users when we are talking about creating personalized content.

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Training with your whole brain! > Learning 2007

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi was catching our attention from the very start of the session on brain-based learning. Today I joined the 6-hour pre-conference session on this interesting subject. A couple of days ago I out a digital assessment (HBDI) on our styles of thinking. Today we got a full report on our own styles. That was very interesting and challenging. She is working for a lot of years in this field and can back-up all her stories with sound research and experience.

She is using the four-colored quadrants that represents different styles:
- Analyze
- Strategize
- Personalize
- and Organize.

My very own profile!

Very good to think about the implications on this for your learning design. In the best training you have to address all ways of thinking. With the help of Ann we discovered practical translation of this model into e-learning reality. They gave us really great goodies (cards, posters, profiles etc.) But please visit her website for more info and great resources.

This night we also had the general opening session. That was also good although there was a (for Dutch) strange thing: 4 veterans walked in with flags and there was a very patriotic song. Mmm, but after that it went better with e.g. a talk from Dr James 'Butch' Rosser, this surgeon, researcher and teacher was explaining his research that shows that surgeons that are playing videogames perform significant better on their job and also surgeons that are playing videogames as a warming-up before the surgery, perform better. See an article about this!



For more info visit the Learning 2007 websites:
- General website
- Learning Wiki (with lot's of resources)

Intercultural presentations!

At this moment I'm waiting at the airport in Detroit. Tonight we will go to Orlando to be at Learning 2007 from Elliott Masie. I can't wait! My colleague Erika and I are hosting a session with the title 'e-Learning for a worldwide audience', we will use the Hofstede model to explain the design guidelines for e-Learning.



Last week I was in Lituania to present about this issue at well, although this was a small seminar, it was interesting to share thoughts about cultural contexts with people from 20 different countries.



The same week I was working for the Council of Europe, this was a general session on e-Learning but I showed the intercultural course and also here people got really into the subject of cultural dimensions of learning.




I'm wondering how many people will show up at our session in Learning 2007. I am surprised by the many conversations and request for presentations I had on the subject of multicultural approaches in e-Learning. It is certainly hot.

You will find more on Learning 2007 on this blog (daily base) and for the Dutch readers: I will publish a daily post on www.e-learning.nl