Share Your Skies With Us

In a very different job opportunity from what I had previously been doing, I found myself required to master a great deal of terminology quickly - and to be examined on it.  I was in my early 30s, out of school for several years, and never strong on memorization.  I hunted online, and purchased a "flash card" software for my Windows PC - and proceeded to use it extensively to memorize the new lingo.  All turned out well, and I still respect the power of flashcards.  The infographic in this article is helpful because it actually explains why flashcards can work - and for what types of learners.  Now, with phones and tablets, it is more feasible than my Windows-based tool of many moons ago - and it still makes sense where memorization or prompting for response will be required in testing. 

This short article, in the TrainingZone, highlights the use of HTML5 as a critical technology in modern e-learning.  Certainly, vendors of e-learning products have moved en masse to get on trend with this - quite simply, HTML5 is a requirement in e-learning production today given the forced golden years of Flash-based technologies.  This article makes what I believe is a strange case for the use of web content management tools as the foundation for building e-learning programs in HTML5 - for whatever reason, that just seems like a mismatch, and that we need something more screen-based for e-learning (vs the traditional CMS).  I personally am fascinated by projects such as H5P and Adapt, and was really impressed with the DZSlides project... and I think we will see even more evolution along those lines, outside of CMS offerings. We need powerful yet easy-to-use interfaces to replicate the slide/screen experience usually associated with e-learning, and we need good tools to make e-books that can leverage themselves into digital job aids.  Stay tuned as the technology emerges - we're in for an interesting ride.

Guiding Star's first forays into customer journey mapping quickly led to interesting dilemmas about things like sample size for validation of maps and map visualization (i.e., what will a map look like).  There certainly aren't many standards yet out there for those interesting questions.  But it likely should be argued that what's truly important is to do it - to map customer journeys across an organization, to map business processes, etc.  The goal is to understand touchpoints with customers and stakeholders and improve what happens across the journey in a conscious fashion. This article does a nice, although top-level, job at introducing the concept of a customer journey map, and tackles some of the big questions about why, what, and how.  I'm hoping readers from the learning realm can also see the wisdom in creating learning or learner journey maps, a derivation from the customer journey map for which Guiding Star has been an instigator and pioneer.  On journey mapping - stay tuned, Guiding Star plans a big announcement about relevant technologies this spring!