ok….so its taken a while to organise the first event of the year but everything is now in place!

The first e-learning forum of 2009 will take place on March 18th at the St. Andrews Financial Services Academy in Norwich. Richard Hubbard from Renaissance Learning is going to be demonstrating the AlphaSmart Neo 2. Richard is bring along a whole set of Neo’s so that people can actually participate in this session. Over the next few days we’ll be emailing out an invitation with more details of the event.

If you are interested in coming along and don’t think you are on the email list please use the contact form at http://www.norfolkelearningforum.co.uk/ or http://www.realprojects.co.uk/contact.php to request a place.

We’ll also have a quick review of new material and products from Learning Technologies and Bett.

I’ve been on the road quite a bit recently and I’ve bumped into a number of friends and colleagues. IT was nice to get comments that people actually do read the blog!

Hello to all of our readers….I’m not sure quite how many readers we have!

At learning technologies I saw Clive Shepherd deliver his seminar on e-learning in a downturn. He mentioned blogging and how you needed to be prepared to contribute to the blog regularly, how right he is! I’d like to blog a bit more than I do but it is quite tricky to do this every day, although I’m going to try to make a few more blog entries than last year.

This month I’m making the final touches to the first norfolk e-learning forum event of the year and we are working on a number of projects in the public sector. I’ve also taken some time to write a series of short articles about project management which we might upload to the website.

Thank you for taking the time to read the blog, I hope that there is something interesting from time to time…

oh….I bought a PSP at the weekend so we planning to do some R&D as well as road testing an acer aspire one. My first acer aspire only lasted a week before the screen blew!

Last week the Bett show took place at London Olympia, before setting out I’d been thinking about whether the show could get any bigger. Well, after a first walk around Olympia which seemed to take hours, I found that it had grown! The side hall (Olympia 2 I think) was used to house many more exhibitors. The sheer size of Bett must make it difficult for anyone to get round in one day.

Some of my favourite things were:

Microsoft Surface and the SMART multi-touch table

Ed and I were able to get a demo of the SMART table and tried many of the applications that were available. SMART told us that they were currently working on new development for the table and that the initial cost was over £4000 but they said that this would come down once it went into full production. There was a very neat addition activity where you are asked to sum 2 numbers and the users provide the answers by making contact points with the screen.

Surface uses similar technology with Microsoft also demonstrating its authentification process which can be used by placing a card on the table.

Garageband Live Demo

Apple had a great stand featuring live demos on all days of the show. James and I both watched a great session with Joe Morreti of makemoremusic. Joe did a session showing the new features of Garageband 09 including how to use the app as an applifier. With a guitar and a sax his session provided a great insight into online digital music education.

I also spent time talking to Sony about how the PSP is being used in Education and also by the Navy to deliver e-learning. Becta had a lot of information regarding next generation learning, including information for suppliers and developers which was great for us. Many of the hardware suppliers were showing off new notebook machines with one stand having their laptop section virtually ignored when I was there.

The standard of visual and interface design was very impressive with some of the primary content showing some fantastic graphic and character design.

As we work through all of the material that we collected we’ll share some more of our thoughts about the show….In 2 days we are heading to Open Innovation in Norwich and then next week it is off to Learning Technologies.

Hello to all of our friends that we managed to meet and bump into at Bett!

Working in e-learning I’m often asked by people what the benefits of e-learning are. This can lead to quite a lengthy discussion covering Rapid development, induction modules, animations, instructional design and many other areas of e-learning.

E-learning and learning technology covers so many elements it can be difficult to cover all of the benefits and some of the issues that also arise.

After talking to some of our clients, friends and colleagues we’ve listed some of the benefits that they have come across!

Learning from home
Courses can be deployed over the internet and via a range of devices from Blackberry to a PC allowing the learner to access the content at a time that is suitable for them. Access to online materials also allows part-time, job share and employees who work from home access to training material.

Handheld devices are opening up e-learning to a new user base, check out the blog post on e-learning on a blackberry.

Reduction in travel time
The use of online learning can lead to a reduction in travel time and associated costs, one of our clients reported that they were able to reduce the number of training classes that were held each year. Team members were also pleased that they could reduce their personal travel time.

Deployment across multiple locations
For businesses with multiple locations, e-learning allows for multiple location deployment. It also allows learning to take place in environments where getting trainers and holding training courses may have been difficult. At Real Projects we developed an e-learning course that was used by employees on offshore installations which could only be reached by helicopter and had no internet access. We used a cd-rom to allow learning to take place on the installation.

Learn at your own pace
Many e-learning courses and modules allow learners to work through modules at their own pace. A well constructed module will also take the learner through all of the learning outcomes and ensure that they have covered all of the subject material.

Fast and effective content updates
e-learning content is often stored on a Learning Management System (LMS) that allows learners to access content from a PC, Mac or other device. The content is in an electronic form which means that updates can be performed quickly and effectively with new releases being deployed across an organisation in an instant.

This is not an extensive list, just a few of the benefits that we’ve come across over the past few months when talking to clients.

Every year we get back to the office and it’s right back into things. Bett, Open Innovation and then Learning Technologies - 3 exhibitions in 3 weeks. It makes for a great start back to the year as we always have a number of projects and demos to get ready for our clients.

Bett appears to get bigger and bigger every year, I wonder if it is actually possible to visit all of the stands in one day! There is normally a great buzz surrounding Bett and it is always good to meet old and new friends and look at new and interesting innovations and technology. The RP team will be at all 3 exhibitions so if you’d like to meet up please give us a call on 01603 762772 so we can arrange to meet.

I’m really interested to see how handheld learning and SMS devices are being used and I’ll be on the look out for innovations at Bett and Learning Technologies. Jack Schofield has published articles on the handheld culture in the Guardian this year and I’ll be looking out for content being delivered on anything from an ipod to a playstation portable. In an earlier blog post I wrote about e-learning on a blackberry. I’m really interested to see how these devices and other handhelds are going to be used in the next couple of years.

After each exhibition I’ll be updating the blog and I’m also planning to talk about some of the most exciting things that I see at the next norfolk e-learning forum

…it took a little longer that we expected but we’ve moved. Our new home is blog.realprojects.co.uk. For a while we wanted to have the blog on our own domain name and also with our own theme. We ended up getting really busy with client work so we had to leave some of our own projects to one side.

you might have also noticed that we’ve added some more content to the website. We also have some whitepapers and podcasts which we also want to get uploaded.

On the subject of moving we’ve just celebrated one year in our new offices in Norwich. I can’t really believe that it was one year ago that we moved. As a company and a team we have moved on a great deal which is down to the great team of people that we have working at RP and those who have worked at RP!

We are hoping to have another open day next year so we might see some of you over the coming 12 months. If you want to have a site visit then please give the office a call we’d be only too happy to welcome you along!

we are moving our blog to your website and are planning to locate it at blog.realprojects.co.uk.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll keep this blog updated with news of when the move is ready. In addition we are also planning to upload some of our new whitepapers which will be available at www.realprojects.co.uk/resources

When I first has the idea to set up an e-learning forum in Norfolk I wanted to make sure that we listened to the people who came and improved the event. I’ve been able to move the event from an idea that I had last year to something that is well supported and valued by those who attend.

Reading this…you might be thinking….how does he know it is well valued!

At our last event I invited the customer feedback company, during the event they ran 2 live trials using their mobile phone feedback system. They asked a simple question about whether people found the event worthwhile and would they recommend the event. It was pleasing to see so many people post comments and then to read the positive ones! I still want to make improvements to the event and continue to improve the sessions.

The feedback system allowed us to view real-time feedback and we were able to collate the most feedback that we have ever had!

Jonathan Newcombe from the Customer Feedback Company was our guest speaker at the norfolk e-learning forum. He delivered a great session on the mobile phone feedbadck system demonstrating how companies such as Tesco are using the feedback system and the many possible uses for it.

When I first met Jonathan we talked about what they did but it wasn’t until I saw the technology being used that I actually began to understand how it could be used and how many potential uses there were. Since that first meeting we’ve had loads of ideas abotu how it can be used and we are going to have an open day at our offices so more people can come and see some of our ideas.

The session today must be one of the only ones I have been to where you were asked to leave your mobile phone on! I didn’t hear any comedy ringtones so a lot of people must have been on silent!

After the session there was an excellent debate on the possible uses of the feedback system for a range of education and commerical uses. A number of attendees stated that organisations that the worked for were already using or were looking at ways in which the technology could be used.

We were also able to give out a 3 free whitepapers which were provided by Rob Hubbard, Real Projects and The Customer Feedback Company. For more information on the forum including how you can attend please visit http://www.realprojects.co.uk/about.php.

I’ve recently read a number of articles about the iphone, google phone and other pda’s which are apparently going to change the way that we think about out internet usage. These super fast devices are going to let us browse on the move, check email, get GPS positions and a whole host of other applications. Whilst reading the articles I thought back to my first mobile phone purchase: the size, the cost and the weight of the thing! Just when did mobile phones become so widely adopted in our society?

In 1993 I had access to a shared mobile (more of a breeze block than a mobile device) which was used mainly for incoming calls. It was pretty impractical and the thought of carrying it around let alone using it to check emails seemed a tad ridiculous. 5 years later I had my own mobile phone along with most of my friends. Along came flashing aerials, text messages, address books, using it overseas; it all became common place without anyone realising it.

When will I look back and think about how obvious it is to use my mobile phone to provide a gps of my position, which then pings me traffic news, food options, relevant shops and loads of other information via some kind of information burner. I can imagine a scenario where I am overseas trying to book some train tickets but need somehelp. My position is sent to my personal web profile, I’m then sent a series of learning packs to help me, a short podcast, time information, cultural information, perhaps a translation to show the assistant….or my profile generates a personal bar code which I pass over the ticket machine. My online ticket account is debited and the train ticket uploaded to my pda.