My readings for this week ...

Harold Jarche, Life in perpetual beta, offers a list of tweets or blogs he has come across.  This weeks has an interesting article on psychopaths ...

Articulate community offer very good elearning development tips, especially to improve delivery ...

Jenine Ruby offered some advice on writing and grammar that inspired me to add her link to my Facebook page I use for my Business trainees ...

I also shared this with my Business trainees - designing text-based information ...

I learned how to keep up with thinking in my field ...

and for some relaxing reading I go here

Agile eLearning

A blog I read recently attracted my attention from Workplace Learning Today on Agile eLearning.  Agile eLearning has emerged from agile software development.

As I understand it, the focus is moving away from predictive to adaptive; from documentation to collaboration; from periodic reviews to continuous feedback; from specialisation to generalisation.

elearning Technology blog has gathered together a number of articles on agile learning, here.  A quick search indicates that people have been talking about this form of learning since about 2007.  For me the model has potential for learners and teachers.

One thing I like about this model or philosophy is continuous feedback.  I came across a good presentation on giving and receiving feedback here.

Have you come across this and if so, what are your thoughts?

Related links:

On becoming agile and adaptive through collaboration

Agile eLearning

My Personalised Agile or what I have learned from it

The Agile Elearning Design Manual

Tightening the feedback loop

Agile Learning

Tools for learning - facebook

I created a page on Facebook as a resource and access point for trainees studying the Certificate III in Business. I spent many hours creating discussions and adding loads of links. So far, I couldn't say this page has been very successful, although at present three students have liked the page out of a possible 10.

At a Moodle session I recently attended, the instructor stated: "resources do not teach" (or words to that effect).  I was much struck by this.  The other thing I've realised is I need to be active and/or proactive on this page.

Anyway, I found this article from The Edublogger to be of great interest.  I'm now wondering if I could persuade my workplace to set up a Facebook page for its students and trainers to develop community and communities of practice.

I would love to know what you are doing in this area?

Email

I came across this very informative post from Mashable:

The Past, Present & Future Infographic

Back in the day ...

I didn't go to university.

I went to the Hobart Technical College to study the Commerce Certificate (Secretarial).  At High School, I chose typing, shorthand and commerce instead of languages, art or music.  When I reflect on this choice I can only surmise that I had made up my mind to be a secretary when I was 11 and I cannot for the life of me recall why, when or how!

After one year at Hobart Tech I achieved the Commerce Certificate (Secretarial).  I was ready to work!

During this year I achieved a typing speed of 55 wpm on a manual typewriter.  This is one skill I'm very pleased to have learned back then as it has been so useful when computers became ubiquitous.  Touch typing provides me with delight, especially when I can talk to someone while continuing to type!

and a shorthand speed of 90wpm (I haven't kept this skill up, sadly)

I recently bought an old portable manual typewriter (on a whim), it's gorgeous.  Bright yellow and in very good nick.


I had forgotten the sound of typing, the clack, clack of the keys and the little ding when the end of a line is reached.  Oh the memories.  The only advantage to using a typewriter is that the document is printed as you type.  Making a mistake is difficult to fix and finding a ribbon could be tricky.

Back in the day, good for reminiscing but technology has moved on ....