Your Massive Visual Memory!

Research recently published by Tim Brady and his colleagues, indicates that the storage capacity of your long term visual memory may be on an astonishingly higher scale than previously thought.

"One of the major lessons of memory research has been that human memory is fallible, imprecise, and subject to interference. Thus, although observers can remember thousands of images, it is widely assumed that these memories lack detail."

What is exciting about this research is that contrary to this assumption, they are able to show that long-term memory is capable of storing a massive number of objects including the details.

Their research indicates a "massive capacity-memory system, in terms of both the quantity and fidelity of the visual information that can be remembered," the researchers said.

Whilst, the full implications of their research has yet to filter into both the academic and corporate worlds, it is interesting to think about the importance of visuals in learning, and the power of an image to convey a thousand words. Visualisation, diagrammatics and information design have often been neglected in training circles, but perhaps this research will give it some much needed focus, because actually seeing the process (for example) may have a greater importance than we originally thought.

How do you outsource you elearning development?

There seems to be an emerging trend over the past couple of years for corporates to buy in specific expertise rather than purchase an entire elearning project. In part this has appears to have been driven by the growth of generic publishing tools. But there also seems to be much more significant re-evaluation of where vendors add value, almost on a project by project basis.

This fragmentation which coincided with the growth of Rapid elearning also suggests some interesting new potential. Will we see the growth of syndicates of development specialists dealing directly with corporates rather than operating through a standard elearning vendor? These hubs of expertise already work on a contract basis for many of the established vendors... so why have the middle man?

Socially Transmitted Education?

For those of you who haven't seen http://www.splashcast.net/ you may have been missing out on an interesting development in what they had considered calling Socially Transmitted Entertainment.

http://blog.splashcastmedia.com/2008/09/12/socially-transmitted-entertainment/

What is fascinating about this as you view the channels is how adaptable this medium would be for any organisation that was interested in Socially Transmitted Education.

Two thoughts occur to me.

If we think about LMS 2.0... is the viral sharing of learning content and embedding it in your "Corporate "FaceBook" an interesting way to develop an overt learning and knowledge sharing culture... You could see what your boss and his boss have been reading/learning and wants to share with you from your corporate education channels.

http://www.splashcast.net/web_watch/

But perhaps what is more exciting is the opportunity this has for reseller and value chain education programmes, where you want advocacy and community from people who don't work directly for you. The opportunity to provide training, updates, news, chats, and product competitions is immense...

Afterall - what you want is for people to share learning and this seems to be one way to reach and excite your audience... with a little creativity using http://www.animoto.com/ and some video expertise, even throw in some links to assessments, or Polls and.... you could have a lot of fun...

Konichiwa.

Are you a corporate Spielberg?

Whilst many corporate networks groan and wither, and IT network managers visibly turn green at the very slightest mention of video, the winds of change are definitely blowing. In a paper released this autumn by Wistia, there are some interesting trends in the way video is growing in organisations, especially in the field of training and communications. One of the most telling statistics is that 52% of all video used within corporates is produced by internal teams... and that figure is likely to grow; this is especially true when you consider the ambient availability of video devices and the increased simplicity of editing tools.

This trend will obviously give many network managers sleepless nights, but for organisations that want to capture the passion of their people, share ideas, learn and communicate, this is going to become as much a part of the daily routine as conference calls.

And as we become immersed in the media age, developing the skills that enable you to be impactful in front of and behind the camera are going really important, because these skills will be critical to the influence you can exert within an organisation.

How long it takes for corporate networks to fulfil this aspiration it's difficult to say, but for those who are ready.... what are you waiting for? Solutions are evolving at quite a pace.

http://wistia.com/documents/video_training_report.pdf

Google Video for Business - Revolutionising E-learning!

By announcing today that it is adding YouTube like video communications features through its business application suite, Google may well have instantly revolutionised what we think about collaboration and learning in organisations.

By making video-sharing among office workers as easy as trading e-mails or instant messages it may redefine our entire approach to internal communications and what it means to be a learning organisation.

In any democratic orientated organisation that relies on "The Power of We", this is certainly going to have a transformational, if not revolutionary effect in bring people and their knowledge closer together; and when combined with viewer ranking, comments, creativity and the search power within this Google App, it raises some very interesting questions about what LMS 2.0 may turn out to mean. And as content delivery formats converge the power of Google Video may be broader than they originally thought.



http://www.pcworld.com/article/150472/article.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN0150543220080902?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DYK24T50FSRFUQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=210201551&pgno=2&queryText=&isPrev=