Software

“A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.” (Wikipedia)

I’ve been preparing some extended notes for some presentations about The Social Learning Revolution – in particular how social media is impacting all our working and learning lives, and what this means for the Learning & Development department.   I’ve been looking at the following:

How we have traditionally understood “learning” in the workplace and how we really learn in the workplace

• How we are using social media in the workplace and how the Training Department is responding
• How social businesses are emerging and how we can really support social learning in the social business
• What new services will be  needed in the social business to support social learning  and the new role of the workplace learning professional.

If you would like to read my extended notes together with thumbnail images of the slides I will be using, you can find them here: The Social Learning Revolution 

Here is my pick of 10 articles about social learning since my last posting just before Christmas. I have listed them below in chronological order, and also added a short quote from each of them to give you a flavour of what each is about. If you want to read further articles you will find many more that I have saved in my 2012 Reading List ....

Read the full post in myLearning in the Social Workplace blog

Here's the latest news from the Social Learning Centre - what's been happening in January and what’s coming up in February? Membership has now reached over 700.  For non-members I've been adding some new (free) resources and some free on-demand tutorials.  How to use Twitter for social learning is particularly popular.

First of all, the Introduction to social learning in the workplace programme begins on 20 February. I want to build a small group of participants with a common interest so that we can have some good discussions around this topic. There are a few places left, so let me know if you would like to join this one. Details are on the page (link above).

Secondly, on 22 February, I have my first In Conversation with .. webinar, with Jane Bozarth. This is going to be fun. It won’t be the normal presentational-style webinar, but a dialogue where I talk to Jane about her job, her books, and her thoughts about the use of social media in the workplace. Joining instructions once again are on the In conversation with Jane Bozarth webinar page, and how you can also information on how to leave your questions for Jane.

I am lining up a number of great guests for this series of webinars; and you can find out who’s coming up on the Webinars page.

During January I also added a few more interest groups to the list including: Google applications for Learning, Social Learning Theory, Meet the ITA Team  and Community Leadership. You can view the full list of interest groups here.

I’ve also enabled the site-wide Activity stream so you can get a better view of all the public activity.  You can use this to post directly into the groups of which you are a member (and these are listed in the pull-down menu), so that other  group members are notified of it.  Note, if you post into your Profile – it will only be visible in the Activity stream and in your profile.

Updates in the group and site-wide Activity stream are also now editable within 10 minutes of posting – so if you realise you made a typo, you can now easily correct it.

And just a reminder, that both members and non-members can keep up to date with general news about the Social Learning Centre by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Following my last post Social Learning: Are you starting from the right place, I was asked to explain what “social learning” actually is in an organizational context. Rather than provide a bland definition, I thought I would provide some quotes from some key resources that will give a flavour of what it is all about ...

Read the article on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

When I hear people ask for advice about how to “do” or “implement” social learning it reminds me of this Irish joke.

“Paddy stopped cutting the hedge as the big car drew up beside him and an English visitor enquired, 

“Could you tell me the way to Balbriggan, Please?”

Read the rest of the article on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

At the Social Learning Centre I am going to be hosting a number of short online “programmes” about social media, social learning and social business. These “programmes” will use a very informal, social, collaborative approach: there will be no formal classes and no monitoring/management of your learning in a LMS. Rather the programmes will be hosted in dedicated group spaces on the Social Learning Centre (which is powered by a social and collaboration platform).

Each day there will be an “activity” that consists of an introduction to the topic with links to additional reading (if desired), an individual or group activity, and a group discussion question to encourage the exchange of thoughts, ideas, experiences and resources of participants.

Here are three upcoming programmes. Follow the links to find out more about them, their agenda as well as how to join up – currently there is a special launch price available.

20 February – 2 March 10 days (weekdays only)
An introduction to social learning in the workplace
How social media is impacting the way that we work and learn in the workplace, and how L&D can support learning more widely in their organisations.

12-23 March 10 days (weekdays only
How to create and sustain an online community
Guidance on how to set up and maintain an online community

16-27 April 10 days (weekdays only)
Using social media in a formal learning programme
Ideas for how to use social media in a formal learning programme - classroom based and/or online.

More programmes to come.

Thursday, March 1 is Adobe Day at the CSUN Conference. We’ve got five sessions lined up, all in Elizabeth C (2nd floor):

• Acrobat X, with Greg Pisocky and Pete De Vasto, 9:20am
• Accessible e-books with Adobe Digital Editions with Kiran Kaja, 10:40am
• HTML Accessibility with Adobe Software with Michael Jordan and Matt May, 12pm
• Video and CVAA Compliance with Adobe Tools with Andrew Kirkpatrick, 3:10pm
• Adobe Town Hall with the whole Adobe Accessibility team, 4:20pm

There’s more to come. (Probably involving hors d’oeuvres.) But for now, mark your calendars, and we’ll see you in San Diego.

My colleague Harold Jarche has created the following presentation which brings together some thoughts (in the form of short quotes)  about workplace transformation from each the 5 Principals of the Internet Time Alliance (ITA).

ITA Insights 2012

When Mark Britz tweeted about this slideset, he said

ITA Insights 2012 slideshare.net/jarche/ita-ins… via @slideshare / Quote on slide 8 now on my Org email signature. — mark britz (@britz) January 25, 2012

Which quote would you use on your email signature?

We have also integrated our best articles into our new website, in a section called Insights, so if you are looking for more in-depth thinking, take a look there too.

The Assistive Technology Industry Association’s annual conference, ATIA 2012, will be in full swing tomorrow, and our own Greg Pisocky will be appearing in three sessions:

• “Implementing ISO 14289 (PDF/UA)”, Thursday, January 26 8:00 am to 9:00 am Caribbean 6
• “eBook Accessibility with Adobe Digital Editions and EPUB”, Thursday, January 26 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm Curacao 3 – 4
• “Creating Accessible Documents More Efficiently with Adobe InDesign CS5.5”, Friday January 27 9:20 am to 10:20 am, Caribbean 3 and 4

That’s just the first outing of the year. In February, Adobe will be presenting at Techshare India, the 6th European eAccessibility Forum, and the CSUN Conference. We’ll keep you updated with sessions and times.

In my new monthly series of webinars at the Social Learning Centre I will be talking to industry practitioners and thought leaders from around the world about their work with social media and their current thinking about its use in the workplace.

I am very pleased to announce that my friend, Jane Bozarth has agreed to be my first webinar guest. I’m sure you all know Jane, as she has written lots of useful practical e-learning books including the recently published Social Media for Trainers, and speaks widely about the use of social media in the workplace.

I’ll be talking to Jane about her job as the Elearning Coordinator for the North Carolina, USA, Office of State Personnel, about her book, and also about some of the myths around the use of social media in the workplace.

The In Conversation with Jane Bozarth webinar is scheduled for
Wednesday 22 February
18.30-19.30 pm GMT, 13.30-14.30 pm ET, 10.30-11.30 am PT

As these webinars won’t be traditional presentational-type webinars, but a dialogue with my guests, I also want to include questions from the audience.too, so if you’d like to find out more about this webinar, how to register and how to leave your questions for Jane, you can do so HERE. I hope you can join us.

BTW I’m gathering together a line-up of future guests, and those that have agreed so far, are listed on the Webinars page.

As a final note, the picture of us together was taken at DevLearn 2010 in San Francisco, as we were just about to start a live #rnchat Twitter session.

I’d like to introduce you to my latest venture, which I’ve  been working on over the last few weeks with a number of early users: the Social Learning Centre.

The Social Learning Centre is the place where learning professionals can find out more about the use of social media for learning, as well as exchange thoughts and ideas with their peers and leading practitioners and thought leaders around the world. Become a member of this global learning community and get involved as follows:

• Take part in scheduled (or on demand) online programmes - which offer a structured approach to learning about social learning
• Participate in webinars - where I will be having conversations with leading practitioners and thought leaders
• Join a range of special interest groups - for continuous updates and discussions on social learning topics.

In addition to these Community activities, the Social Learning Centre also aggregates a number of resources about social learning, which can be viewed without being a member.

To become a member of the Social Learning Centre‘s global community of learning professionals: register for a free account on the site, and this will enable you to join any of the public groups set up for the interest groups, webinars and some social programmes. Note:  a number of the online programmes require a small fee to join.

If you want to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Social Learning Centre, you can read the News here and/or subscribe to the news feed.

I’ll be featuring some of the current and upcoming activities at the Social Learning Centre  in further blog posts during this launch week.

As you will know I finalised the 5th Annual survey of  Top 100 Tools for Learning in the middle of November 2011, and at that time placed the presentation on Slideshare. I’ve just noticed that in the subsequent two months it has been viewed over 200,000 times!

You will also know, Twitter topped the list again for the 3rd year running, although in 2008 it was only ranked 11th and in 2007 it was 43rd on the list.

This made me wonder what the best performing tools were over the last 5 years. Would Twitter top the list again?

So I did some calculations and to see the list of the top 20 tools over the last  5 years, please read the post on my C4LPT blog.

Adobe InDesign CS5.5 added a number of new features to make the accessible production of complex documents easier. Now the InDesign team has added an Action for use with Adobe Acrobat X. Once you install it, the Action will walk you through the most common steps for polishing up InDesign documents, including setting a document language, running Acrobat’s accessibility checker, and outputting an optimized, tagged PDF. The InDesign site has all the info, and the InDesign Action for Acrobat X can be found here.

In his recent post, Informal Learning , 95% solution, Harold Jarche provides the reason why many workplace learning professionals can only think about “informal learning” and “social learning” in terms of how they can manage them within a blended training solution – rather than simply support them,  as they happen, naturally and continuously, in the workflow.

“Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”

But to be fair, it is not just Training Departments that think like this, there are still many people in other parts of the business that believe that “learning” has to be “organised” or  “packaged up” (in the form of “training”) to be seen as a valid solution to a problem … Read the rest of the article heret

Support for Digital Editions with assistive technologies continues to improve and this update is a tip for users of the Window-Eyes screen reader.

GW Micro has published an app designed to provide support for Digital Editions 1.8.1 that’s comparable to the support provided by other screen readers including JAWS, VoiceOver and NVDA. From the Window-Eyes Control Panel, Press ALT-A to get to the App Menu, and select AppGet. When the list of available apps is displayed, You’ll find Digital Editions in the “Program Enhancements” group.

Digital Editions 1.8.1 can be found at:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/

Comments are welcome as always.

Authors looking for additional guidance on how to meet the W3C WCAG 2.0 for PDF documents can now look to the W3C techniques repository for additional guidance. Techniques for PDF authored over the past two years since the release of the last update to the WCAG techniques (which included techniques for Flash) are now part of the larger collection of techniques. View the full set of WCAG 2.0 techniques or view PDF techniques on their own.

These techniques provide a clear path for demonstrating that a PDF document can meet the most current accessibility standard from the W3C.

As with the Flash techniques for WCAG 2.0 and techniques for all other technologies, the PDF techniques are presented as examples which the WCAG Working Group viewed as sufficient to meet WCAG 2.0 success criteria, not as the only way to meet any given success criteria. Authors may discover a new way to address a success criteria, in a way not yet covered in the existing techniques, and be able to demonstrate why it is sufficient. The techniques offer a collection of strategies that have been reviewed by the working group, but the techniques collections for all technologies are works in progress as there are always additional ways to address success criteria.

The table below provides a listing of the WCAG level A and AA success criteria and the PDF-specific and General techniques that authors can employ to meet success criteria. It is worth noting that not all success criteria for WCAG 2.0 have technology-specific techniques. For example 1.3.3 (Sensory characteristics) has only general techniques, and in this case and similar ones I reference the relevant general techniques section. In some cases there are relevant general techniques as well as PDF-specific techniques and for these both are linked.

Update: I neglected to acknowledge the hard work of Mary Utt from The Paciello Group on the PDF techniques initially, but Mary was a tremendous help in moving this work forward and I offer many thanks. Many people on the WCAG working group also worked very hard to help make these techniques reach this final stage. Thanks to all!

Please send general comments, comments or questions on the techniques, or suggestions for new techniques.

WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria and Applicable Techniques for PDF Success Criteria Level Techniques 1.1.1 Non-text Content A

• PDF1
• PDF4

1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded) A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-av-only-alt

1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-captions

1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded) A

•  General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-audio-desc

1.2.4 Captions (Live) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-real-time-captions

1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded) AA

•  General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-audio-desc-only

1.3.1 Info and Relationships A

• PDF6
• PDF9
• PDF10
• PDF11
• PDF12
• PDF17
• PDF20
• PDF21

1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence A

• PDF3

1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-content-structure-separation-understanding

1.4.1 Use of Color A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-without-color

1.4.2 Audio Control A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-dis-audio

1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-contrast

1.4.4 Resize text AA

• G142

1.4.5 Images of text AA

• PDF7
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-text-presentation

2.1.1 Keyboard A

• PDF3
• PDF11
• PDF23

2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap A

• G21

2.2.1 Timing Adjustable A

• PDF3
• G133

2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-time-limits-pause

2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-seizure-does-not-violate

2.4.1 Bypass Blocks A

• PDF9
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-skip

2.4.2 Page Titled A

• PDF18

2.4.3 Focus Order A

• PDF3

2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) A

• PDF11
• PDF13

2.4.5 Multiple ways AA

• PDF2
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-mult-loc

2.4.6 Headings and Labels AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-descriptive

2.4.7 Focus Visible AA

• G149
• G165
• G195

3.1.1 Language of page A

• PDF16
• PDF19

3.1.2 Language of parts AA

• PDF19

3.2.1 On Focus A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-consistent-behavior-receive-focus

3.2.2 On Input A

• PDF15

3.2.3 Consistent Navigation AA

• PDF14
• PDF17
• G61

3.2.4 Consistent Identification AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-consistent-behavior-consistent-functionality

3.3.1 Error Identification A

• PDF5
• PDF22

3.3.2 Labels or Instructions A

• PDF5
• PDF10

3.3.3 Error Suggestion AA

• PDF5
• PDF22

3.3.4 Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-minimize-error-reversible

4.1.1 Parsing A

• Not Applicable: PDF is not implemented using markup languages

4.1.2 Name, Role, Value A

• PDF10
• PDF12

Predictions for an upcoming new year are inevitably based on the “flow” from the current year, so if you have taken a look at my Top 100 articles of 2011 (or even my complete 2011 Reading List), you will not be surprised to hear that many predict that 2012 will be the “Year of Social Business“.

Up to now, for many organisations, Social Business has been about social … Read the rest of this post on the C4LPT blog

My primary blog is now the C4LPT Blog based at http://c4lpt.co.uk/blog. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/feed/ 

In my second blog post reviewing 2011, I take a look at some the key moments of my own year in terms of resources, blog posts and presentations I have produced.

January

In January I published my Social Learning Handbook (both as a paperback and a PDF).  This book aggregated a lot of my thinking and activities from 2010.  Its main premise was that social learning happens all the time …

Read the rest on the C4LPT BLog

With only a few more days left of 2011, this is the first of a series of posts reviewing the past year and look forward to 2012.

From nearly 500 links to articles, blog posts, slideshows, reports and (this year also) infographics that I saved in my 2011 Reading List, I have produced a list of the 100 articles that I enjoyed or that impressed me most in 2011.

This is my 4th Top 100 articles list, and this year I’ve added a quote beneath each link to give you a taster of what it is about.

In fact just reading the quotes themselves will give you an indication of what this year has been about for me: i.e. it has not been about the social media tools per se, but how they are impacting personal, professional and organisational learning practices and behaviours.

To the right you will see this year’s Wordle that summarises the main themes in this year’s list (click on the image to see it full size).

And now for a link to the list itself: TOP 100 ARTICLES OF 2011

In March we released a closed captioning pod for Adobe Connect 8, and now we have a new version with additional features. Version 1.5 of the Connect Captioning Pod is available for free download.

This version still has all of the features available in the earlier version, but the new version also introduces the following features:

• Additional preset for caption providers using Streamtext. Streamtext provides an online caption delivery service utilized by hundreds of real-time captioners in North America and Europe.
• Support for word-by-word caption delivery and caption correction. End users can receive captions as they are entered by the stenocaptioner rather than waiting for a full line of captions to be delivered. Stenocaptioners also have the ability to correct mistakes in the captions by backspacing to delete errors and retype the correction. This feature is an option for the caption provider – at present Streamtext and CaptionFirst support this feature.
• Support for in-meeting captioners. Sometimes a meeting is scheduled when a stenocaptioner is not available, or budget doesn’t allow the hiring of a professional. For these situations, it is now possible to assign a participant the role of captioner. The captioner’s work will be viewed in the caption pod and can be exported to text or HTML and is archived as part of recorded sessions just like captions delivered by stenocaptioners. In-meeting captioners are less expensive but also typically deliver less high-quality captions for end-users. If experimenting with in-meeting captioners, make sure to ask end-users who need captions how effective the results are.
• Updated documentation for caption provider implementation is provided in the download package. Any caption service can deliver captions to Adobe Connect’s caption pod with this information.

Some images of the new pod:

As with the last version of this pod, development work was done by eSyncTraining, and we hope that you are as pleased with the results as we are!

The new pod, and documentation for incorporating it into your Connect meeting, is available now: Connect Captioning Pod v1.5 at the Adobe Connect Exchange.