It’s later than I’ve wanted to post this, of course. My M.Ed. capstone project is looming large, so there may be very little going on here for a couple of weeks. Or there may be a lot more than usual… you can always tell when a writer is on deadline because the house is clean, right?

With my time somewhat limited, though, I’m only going to post the few recaps for sessions in which I took away something I particularly wanted to share here.

Learning, Identity, and Social Media: The Changing Landscape

Brandon Carson of Yahoo! guided this session and first of all, I have to give him props for doing something different with his presentation. From the visual design of his slides to the music playing when participants walked in to the way he introduced himself (using MIT’s Personas project), it was a really refreshing experience. His presentation focused on a social learning environment he had built for a previous client and how the participants functioned in that arena… sometimes well and sometimes not.

Also refreshing: This case study wasn’t a success story. It was a good illustration of the pitfalls and bad behavior that can result. Thanks for letting us learn with you, Brandon. (And by the way, his slides tell a good chunk of the story even standalone.)

Game Design Principles for e-Learning

Rick Raymer is a game-developer-turned-self-described-“level-19”-instructional-designer. (In WoW, that’s 19 out of 85… pretty much a n00b.) Again, I think he brought something really refreshing to the table, coming from actual game design instead of the elearning world. There were two things that I want to highlight in particular:

1) With the background he has, Rick is clearly encouraging elearning designers to push the envelope with their designs. The participants had pushback, as is always the case, because of no budget for graphics, 3D modeling, blah blah blah, but that’s not the most important part. I’m going to insert my own interpretations here, so Rick, feel free to add and/or disagree: If you’re looking to upgrade your tools and your ID skills, focus on making things that adapt to the learner, that allow for exploration, that allow for chance. Think variables, not clip art packages.

2) In the “pre-concept” phase that Rick outlined, he encouraged the participants to live a more creative life. Seriously. Some ideas to expand your horizon (both from him and the participants): make a big cultural shift for a week, such as watching completely different TV (or no TV!), buy completely different food. Play games. Yeah. Seems kind of obvious, but how can you really understand game design principles unless you play?

Great job, Rick. I’m interested in seeing more as you continue to level up your ID.

Social Media: The Myths and Magic

Jane Bozarth had several sessions on various aspects of social media at this conference, debunking myths and getting real at every turn. I was only able to stay for part of this session, but it was enough to learn about how the State of North Carolina expects its employees to be active in social media. It sounds like they are being very grounded; their governor doesn’t freak out when someone calls her an idiot on Facebook or Twitter any more than if it happens in traditional media.

On the other hand, social media can definitely be an amplifier: She used as an example the dust-up created a couple of weeks ago when HCI sent out a very tasteless email. It became a trending topic over the next couple of days while HCI’s Twitter bot continued to push out marketing links. Some powerful examples, for sure… her Social Media for Trainers is near the top of my book stack for post-M.Ed. reading.

Tomorrow: the expo and networking…

Folks, this was an absolutely outstanding conference. Many props to the e-Learning Guild’s conference planners. The sessions were educational, the keynotes were inspiring (and educational), the networking was great. Today, my highlights from the keynotes…

Dr. John Medina

What a great speaker to start the conference off with a bang! He was incredibly dynamic and I thoroughly appreciated that all attendees were able to start off with a presentation solidly grounded in brain science that they could then “bounce” other information off of for the rest of the conference (and hopefully far beyond). I hear that much of this is in his book, Brain Rules, which I will be buying shortly.

Key info I took away: Even brain scientists know very little about how the brain works/learns. Once something enters short-term memory, it must be repeated (or thought about again) within 30 seconds or it’s gone. If it’s repeated, it enters working memory, where it bounces around for TEN YEARS and is highly subject to corruption. Once it enters long-term memory, it is no longer highly subject to corruption. He suggested a model for learning that facilitates repetition of material on timelines that promote retention. Also suggested a future software/hardware combo that could detect when students didn’t understand something and dynamically rechart a course to review the appropriate older material.

Favorite quote: Brain science is about information processing, so is elearning… it’s SO time for us to get together.

Nancy Duarte

Again, a great speaker… she certainly walks the walk. One of the things she wrote about in the book was doing research on your audience before the event, and sure enough, Nancy was in our tweetstream a couple of days prior to her arrival (and responding a couple days after, as well).

Key info I took away: I read Resonate when it came out and it actually had a big impact on my HTML5 presentations this year (yes, even with such a dry topic). So this presentation was more a cementing experience than a learning one, but still, here they are: OBSESS about your audience (such a great message for our industry; how much do you do it?). You’re not the hero of your presentation (read: elearning); you’re the mentor. Your audience is the hero. Be emotional about what you’re trying to sell/teach. If your audience gets attached to that emotion, they will pick your ideas over others.

Favorite quote: Steve Jobs is the greatest business communicator of all time. Yet.

Michael Wesch, PhD

My brain was so full by the time his keynote rolled around that I had to stop the tweeting and just experience it. And from that, I learned one thing that Twitter does for me: reinforce ideas and bounce them over to working memory (and also give me something to look back on to review those ideas again). So here, I’m going to Wesch’s YouTube channel speak for itself. Start with one you probably have already seen: Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us. I think I will have more thoughts to share with you as his ideas percolate…

I was going to post a list of other recaps here, but seriously, just go to Misadventures in Learning. Props to Dave Kelly… he’s doing an awesome job of aggregating for the community, and it also benefits people who were at the conference but left their clones at home. What a service.

Tomorrow, I’ll tackle the education sessions I attended, and Thursday, the expo and networking. Stay tuned.

4/3/11 Update: How could I forget this picture? (Did I mention I’m a bit of a Nancy Duarte fangirl?)

I got another email blast a few days ago for the ASTD ICE Virtual Conference and realized I hadn’t given ASTD10 the same “what I’m missing” treatment as Learning Solutions. I meant to, but… Things have been a little busy lately, catching up from the semester and getting ready for babies!

Not that I would be at all of these conferences in a normal year anyway, but I do usually enjoy them when I can make it. So you tell me… what did I miss? What was your favorite session or takeaway? Help me out; I’m stuck here in the middle!

Also curious what the buzz is going to be at mLearnCon, and especially whether people will be talking about HTML5. I’ve been doing some research and writing about that lately, which I’ll share very soon…