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Friday, November 30, 2007

Getting Value from LinkedIn

For a person who I generally think is pretty smart Thomas Davenport (his book Thinking for a Living is generally quite good), I find him saying some pretty weak things. A couple months ago, I took him to task in Thomas Davenport and Blogging - He is Wrong!

In his book he tells us basically that blogs have
detracted from productivity, not increased it. ...
He misses the value proposition of Blogging as a Learning and Networking tool.

Now Davenport is at it again with a post (on his blog no less - I guess he doesn't want to be productive himself) - LinkedIn Is Not a Social Network. In this post, he says:
I’ve been on LinkedIn for several years. I never initiate a “connection,” but I dutifully accept invitations to connect, even when I don’t know the person. When I do know the person, I often wonder why, if they really want to connect with me, they don’t just send me an email or call me on the phone. I can safely say that I have gotten nothing out of the site other than emails saying that so-and-so would like to connect. Occasionally people I know have asked me through LinkedIn for access to my connections -- which an email notifies me of -- and I wonder why they didn’t just send me an email themselves. It’s a funny world.
He never initiates a connection? What!?!

Either Tom doesn't get it, or Tom doesn't ever need to find expertise on a topic. Maybe he should look through his network for something like "social networking" to find some expertise on the topic as he's thinking about the possible value proposition?

I've met fantastic people through LinkedIn. The key ingredient is being able to formulate what you are looking for. Most people I've met through LinkedIn are quite willing to spend time talking with me about the particular issue. I never abuse it. I've done my homework first. But there's nothing like drilling down on a topic with a person for 30-60 minutes.

Or maybe Tom should ask a question on LinkedIn such as "How do people get value from LinkedIn?" to help him learn how to formulate requests? He would get wonderful responses on this.

Tom also wonders "why people didn't just send him an email" when they are making a connection. It's because, the person making the request has done a search on LinkedIn and is routing it through you.

I'm really convinced Tom has never tried this before. Once you've done this a couple of times, it's pretty clear how it works and how you get value.

Note: I personally no longer ever go more than to a 2nd level connection. One hop away. That way the person doing the introduction knows both people. With a few hundred connections, depending on the specific need, you often have quite good people only one hop away.

Tom did say in his post...
let me state that I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. At a conference a while back on social network issues, a speaker asked the audience, “How many of you are on LinkedIn?” Virtually all of the 100 or so attendees raised their hands. Then he asked, “How many of you have gotten anything valuable from LinkedIn?” Only one person had his hand raised. I didn’t know him, but I’m guessing he had used it to look for a job.
I've heard similar things as well. I believe that many people, not just Tom, must not have really tried this out. Or they've gone onto LinkedIn without a specific need. If you are just browsing around, you will be disappointed. But with a specific need, it's a fantastic tool.

And, of all people, Tom should understand this. He talks very specifically in his book about being able to maintain a network and access it when needed to derive value. Quite often I find value from my direct connections using LinkedIn - and I didn't realize they knew about the topic until I searched. It's a very efficient way of tapping into your network. I wonder how Tom does it? I'd be curious about the productivity around his approach?

Oh, and while I'm complaining about Tom. Cmon man, respond to comments left on your blog. Respond to blog posts - like this one. And stop putting things like:

If you're interested in my consulting services ...

If you know you want my speaking services ...

as the only possible reasons to contact you (on your contact page). It makes it seem like you wouldn't want someone to contact you unless they are willing to pay.

Or maybe this is starting to explain part of the reason why Tom's not seeing value in LinkedIn, blogging, ...

For more discussions on networking and LinkedIn see Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California, Secret for Networking at Events – Prenetworking, Pre-network with LinkedIn, Local Event Organizers Need to Adopt Social Media.

Big Question is Back

I just wanted to alert folks that Learning Circuit's Big Question has been revived. We've lost Dave Lee's forms, but we are going back to the old manual approach. I hope you'll join the party and submit your thoughts on the question:

The Big Question for December is:


If you are new to blogging, this is a great way to get your blog noticed.

Semantic Web Applications - Mundane or Interesting

A recent post by Richard MacManus on
discusses several semantic web applications. Richard explains semantic web applications as:
A key element is that the apps below all try to determine the meaning of text and other data, and then create connections for users.
For example, ClearForest provides a Firefox extension called Gnosis. It is a bit of a dog, but it can "identify the people, companies, organizations, geographies and products on the page you are viewing." It recognizes Companies, Countries, Industry Terms, Organizations, People, Products and Technologies. Each word that Gnosis recognizes, gets colored according to the category. This technique is often called entity extraction.

What got me to post was that Stephen Downes tells us:
all this semantic goodness is now so common-place, it's impossible to see any distinguishing features...

None of it really speaks to me.
I'm somewhat in agreement that by themselves, many of these applications don't seem all that interesting. But, the title of the article was "to watch."

Take entity extraction as an example. When you combine that with relational navigation as is offered by Siderean, you get an interesting result. Go visit Environmental Health News. Do a search, such as for "cancer" and you get a page with a sidebar that looks like the one shown to the left.

It's really powerful to be able to see content organized in this fashion, especially with counts. It helps makes sense out of any body of information. Helps you navigate through it using a browse mode in combination with search. It's a very powerful tool in a lot of contexts.

The key ingredient though is having a means to extract the meaning out of the content.

This speaks to me.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Facebook Alfresco Platform

Found via Publishing Enterprise Content To Facebook -

Alfresco - a content management system has provided hooks for it to be used to deliver content to Facebook users.



This model, where Facebook becomes a platform for application development has some really interesting aspects. However, the open aspect of OpenSocial likely will win out in the long run. Especially with some of the pain of developing Facebook apps.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

eLearning Guild Research Reports

In my last post on Flash Quiz Tools, I mentioned how I had used the eLearning Guild Research to streamline my effort of find the right tools.

This post is probably long overdue, but the use of the data from the guild has been a really great resource and has lead to posts such as:
I personally get the most value by having direct data access to the reports. That way I can slice and dice the reports as I need. However, the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:

The eLearningGuild recently announced that they would give copies of the PDF reports to all Associate Members (which is free with a profile completion). This level of membership also gives you several other nice things such as the eMag, access to data behind eLearning Buyers Guide, Training Modalities, the e-Learning Salary & Compensation Report, and the e-Learning Projects Database.

And, if I'm not mistaken this includes direct data access to the Tools Satisfaction data that I just used in my last post!

It's definitely worth the price, i.e., the time it takes to fill in the profile.

The PDF research reports include the following, but I believe that you also get access to some of the slightly older reports such as Informal Learning, Future Directions, Extended Enterprise, etc. You can click on the images to see more information about each report.

Immersive Learning Simulations
Learning Management Systems
Synchronous Learning Systems
Mobile Learning
Measurement

Flash Quiz Tools

Update June 2008 - added one free flash quiz tool based on a question I received. This tool is listed at the bottom.

A client wanted to create online quizzes that would live inside of a larger site. They didn't really need tracking of user responses, instead they wanted them to be fun. I suggested a couple of tools, but then wondered if I had given them the best list of tools.

So, the eLearningGuild research again to the rescue... Here's guild member satisfaction ratings for tools in the test / quiz category. Note: there are additional rating items such as would use again, vendor responsiveness, etc.



Note - the empty column now contains links to more information on the tools. So I could quickly gather specific data on the product. Unfortunately, it didn't tell me how they produced output and the desire was for self-contained Flash. But, I could quickly link to the sites to find out more and finally recommended that they should look at:

Articulate Quizmaker allows you to easily create Flash-based quizzes, surveys, and assessments. And, Quizmaker allows you to track your results with your standards based Learning Management System as Quizmaker output is SCORM and AICC compliant.

Adobe Captivate is the easiest way to create professional-quality, interactive simulations and software demonstrations in Adobe's Flash format. Without any programming or multimedia skills, users can automatically record onscreen actions, including editable mouse movements, text captions, and scored click boxes. Add e-learning interactions like data-entry fields and customizable quizzes.

Respondus StudyMate is a Windows authoring tool that lets you create numerous Flash-based activities and games using four simple templates. StudyMate provides an authoring environment that requires no experience with Flash programming, game design, or HTML. Questions and items can also be imported from MS Word, IMS QTI, Respondus, rich-text, and other formats. This makes it possible to create interesting, interactive activities from existing content. Other features include an Equation Editor, a spell checker, the ability to include image files and web links, and question/answer randomization. The Flash activities that can be created with StudyMate include: Fact Cards, Fact Cards Plus, Flash Cards, Fill In the Blank, Pick A Letter, Matching, Glossary, Crosswords, Quiz, and Challenge. It is also possible to generate three activities that can be used with iPods, PSP players and other portable devices.

OnDemand Presenter provides the ability to develop robust multi media content allowing you to easily incorporate both conceptual and transactional information into interactive presentations. Creates interactive questions and tests using 14 different question and survey types.

Rapid Intake Flashform Rapid eLearning Studio creates interactive Flash-based AICC or SCORM-conformant e-learning courseware. Quickly create Flash-based e-learning courses, quizzes, and tests. Add an integrated glossary - Add external audio, video, and images into the course content Flashform is customizeable and extensible by any knowledgeable Flash developer.

So, I had missed a couple that we've not used in the shop. And, I'm sure I'm missing others as well, but since these were at the top of the satisfaction list, I figure it's pretty reasonable.

New tool added June 2008 -

Class Marker - Free. Create multiple choice, true false, free text, short answer, fill in the blank and punctuation quizzes

Monday, November 26, 2007

Camtasia and SnagIt for Free

Found via Leonard Low.

TechSmith is giving away SnagIt and an older version of Camtasia Studio for Free.

SnagIt is a handy tool for capturing screen shots, especially portions of the screen. If you frequently do this (and then copy and paste into your graphics application to cut the portions you want), then go get this tool. It also gives you some nifty delivery options.

Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (English)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (German)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (French)

Click here for a key to register SnagIt 7.2.5 demo as a fully licensed version.

Camtasia Studio is a great screen recording tool. It consistently gets pretty good satisfaction ratings. You are able to get a full, but older, Version 3.1.3 for free download.

Click here to download Camtasia Studio 3.1.3.

Click here to request a software key to register Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 as a fully licensed version.

Top eLearning Posts

Given the nomination, I'm not sure how much new traffic will come to check out this blog, but I know that it's always hard to come to a blog and get a sense of what the person talks about. This is the reason I created the First Time Visitor's Guide. However, it's been a while since I last updated this page.

Based on my Aha Moment - del.icio.us as Indicator of Valuable Content I've tried to go back and figure out what people were finding valuable.

I first took what I was getting from Google Analytics to see what was viewed over the past six months (approximately 125,000 page views in total). You'll notice that it skips from roughly 600 to 300 in the number of views. That's because I started including pages based on number of del.icio.us bookmarks. Roughly pages that were saved five or more times, I included. See another sort below...

Post Views Comments Bookmarks
18,308
247
6,890 16 152
4,337 11 35
2,345 17 67
1,988 6 40
1,820 9 24
1,724 2 11
1,655 6 98
1,503 0 1
1,500 22 52
1,368 1 22
1,206 17 21
1,199 3 23
1,155 8 6
1,147 2 28
1,140 9 43
972 1 6
967 0 1
959 38 16
949 1 1
911 10 20
880 2 5
847 7 3
837 4 11
832 4 10
814 8 5
754 3 40
702 5 25
701 6 13
667 5 1
602 2 20
298 15 8
276 5 5
237 5 12
180 2 5
109 1 15
107 4 8
106 1 12
57 9 9
51 2 5
46 4 6
31 0 5
19 5 7
16 2 6


Then I did it again, but this time sorted based on number of del.icio.us bookmarks:

Post Views Comments Bookmarks
18,308
247
6,890 16 152
1,655 6 98
2,345 17 67
1,500 22 52
1,140 9 43
1,988 6 40
754 3 40
4,337 11 35
1,147 2 28
702 5 25
1,820 9 24
1,199 3 23
1,368 1 22
1,206 17 21
911 10 20
602 2 20
959 38 16
109 1 15
701 6 13
237 5 12
106 1 12
1,724 2 11
837 4 11
832 4 10
57 9 9
298 15 8
107 4 8
19 5 7
1,155 8 6
972 1 6
46 4 6
16 2 6
880 2 5
814 8 5
276 5 5
180 2 5
51 2 5
31 0 5
847 7 3
1,503 0 1
967 0 1
949 1 1
667 5 1

In my mind, this second list order is a much more accurate representation of what's good to read on this blog.

We're a Finalist - Edublog Awards 2007

The Edublog Awards just announced their finalists for 2007.



Thanks to all of you for participating, talking, blogging, commenting, etc., helping me with ideas, nominating this blog as a finalist, and generally inspiring this. It was great to see the other finalists as well. Clive and Wendy, congrats! Mohamed and Susan as well (although I don't think we've exchanged as much). Wendy, I was especially happy to see your nomination as I often hold you out as an example!

You can see the other blogs who were nominated, vote for your favorites and go to the Award Ceremony which will be held in Second Life. To vote, click on the link below.
Vote Here

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Stock Photo Image and Other Media Sources

Weird - after posting, I just saw a post in my blog reader from HeyJude -Find free images online - my list!

She points me to (I don't have time to clean this up. Sorry.)
    • Bigfoto.com offers pictures from around the world, including America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Pacific.
    • Clip Art for foreign/second language instruction. Basic but still valuable.
    • EveryStockPhoto is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver, BC. They aim to be a community for designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web. This is a single integrated search, allowing users to bookmark their photos with private and public tags, and increasingly we will be offering advanced searching options, rating systems and other tools.
    • FreeDigitalPhotos.net has over 2000 free images that you can use in commercial and noncommercial work. You are not allowed to sell, redistribute, or claim these images as your own. You can browse by category or search for exactly what you need.
    • FreeMediaGoo.com has a large collection of images, audio, textures, and other visual mediums that you can use for free with some restrictions. You do not even have to credit the images. The site also features some amazing digital images if you are looking for something different.
    • FreeFoto.com says it is the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet (link back and attribution required).
    • FreePhotosBank.com allows users to have non-exclusive, non-transferable license to images. You can search for photos, see which photos are the most popular, and which ones have the highest ratings or the most downloads.
    • Fotogenika.net has photos for free download for personal, educational, and nonprofit use. The site is well organized, and it includes categories such as architecture, animals, people, and textures.
    • The Geo-Images Project attempts to make images (mostly photographs) that are useful in teaching geography more widely available. Navigate via map points on the globe, and capture images around common themes. Love the one on transport! and community is cool too!
    • MorgueFile.com offers stock photographs in high resolution digital. With over 55,000 images, divided into several categories, they are sure to have something you can use. The thumbnails are small, but your search results display quickly, and the photos are of top quality. (The term “morgue file” is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web’s morgue file)
    • Pics4Learning collection is intended to provide copyright friendly images for use by students and teachers in an educational setting. Lesson plans also included.
    • Stock Exchange offers high quality images taken around the world by amateur photographers. If you have an interest in photography, you can even submit your own pictures. There are various searching options and over 100,000 images. The photographers establish the terms, so read the fine print, but most pictures can be reused immediately.
    • TurboPhoto provides free stock images from 10 categories all of which are in the public domain.
    • UVic’s Language Teaching Library consists of about 3000 images useful in the teaching of basic vocabulary in a variety of languages. Its purpose is to provide a set of those graphics most basic and useful for low-level language-teaching, and at the same time, to make them as easily searchable as possible. Transparent an matte images included.
    • Riya - Visual Search provides royalty free images. Riya contains images of People and objects. Each of these also contain subcategories.
    • Wikipedia: Public domain image sources - though in this case you will need to check the copyright.
    • Yotophoto is now indexing well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images.
Inexpensive (but good)
(1) iStockphoto.com

One dollar for low-rez images and two-three dollars for higher-rez images. This is my favorite site.
(2) Dreams Time
About one dollar for high-rez images for members.
(3) Shutterstock
750 royalty-free downloads per month for $139 (US) subscription.
(4) Fotolia
One or two bucks an image.
(5) Japanese Streets

Excellent source for Japanese fashion, street scenes, people, and much more from right here in Osaka. About $1.50 per pic via paypal.
(6) Photocase. A German site (English and German versions). Low-cost download options.
(7) Stockxpert. Great pricing and great images. Easy-to-use site. Uses credit system.
(8) ShutterMap.com. From $1USD to $4USD for high-rez.
(9) Creative Express (Getty Images). With Getty's Creative Express you can buy one-month or one-year subscriptions and download up to 50 stunning images a day. The Express catalog has 75,000 great Getty images. The license works differently for subscription, but this may be a wonderful option for the right project (check out the FAQ). I will be using this for certain.

Free (but not bad)
(1) Morgue File
Providing "...free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits.
(2) Flickr's Creative Commons pool
Search the myriad photos people are sharing on flickr by the type of CC license.
(3) Image*After
From their site: "Image*After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture...and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial."
(4) Stock.xchng
Close to 200,000 photos. Some gems in there if you look.

(5) Everystockphoto. Indexing over 283,000 free photos.
(6) Studio.25: Digital Resource Bank.
(7) Freepixels. About 2000 photos.
(8) The Photoshop tutorial blog. This cool blog has a laundry list of free photo sites.
(9) Robin Good has a good page dedicated to helping you find good images.

Fonts (free or cheap)
(1) 1001 Fonts.com. A lot of free fonts. You get what you pay for, but many are pretty good. Find by most popular, highest rated. Articles, message board, etc.
(2) 1001freefonts.com. 4000 fonts for $9.95 (download).
(3) iFree. This Australian site links to free stuff in Australia and worldwide, like fonts, freeware, etc.
(4) Indezine on fonts. There are so many font sites out there, I trust the folks at Indezine to narrow it down. They list about ten.
(5) HighFonts.com. Database of about 3000 free fonts.


This post is actually more for me so I can remember these. If you know of some that I'm missing, please let me know:

Photos

www.fotolia.com

www.photos.com

www.istockphoto.com

www.shutterstock.com

www.liquidlibrary.com

www.photospin.com

Stock xchng

bigFoto

FreePhoto

Wikimedia Commons

Free Images

Free Digital Photos

Free Foto

Artzooks

Dreamstime

iStockphoto.com

photosphere.com

Pics4Learning

Pixelperfect Digital

stock.xchng

Freefoto.com

Freeimages.co.uk

Fotosearch Stock Photography

Other Sources:

Google Image Search

www.imageafter.com

www.flickr.com

Clip media

www.clipart.com

JAC Clipart Archive

Absolutely Free Clipart

Animation factory

Classroom clipart

Clipart connection

Discovery School Clip Art Gallery

Animation

Animation Online

Animine

Icons

IconBazaar

Icongalore

Leo's Icon Archive

Sounds

www.soundrangers.com

Sounddogs.com

FindSounds

www.soundsnap.com and features over 30.000 royalty free, high quality sounds, samples & loops, that are created by our users

SoundBible

Ideas

www.creativecow.net

www.commarts.com

Fonts

www.dafonts.com

www.1001freefonts.com

Textures

www.textureking.com