Via Techcrunch I found out about a mobile service called Mozes . I registered the keyword "elearning" to see what (if any) implications it has for elearning / mobile learning.
To join, text the following:
elearning to 66937 (only available in the US)
My preliminary tests reveal that it is only asyncronous, meaning that I can broadcast a message to all members via SMS but responses are not re-broadcast. I would like to know if members use the "Smack" feature if it goes out to all member's cell phones or if it is only displayed on the "Smack Board" at Mozes.
One nice feature I have found is the ability to send out a Poll question and members can respond by voting with their phone.
I figure we can test this out over the next week to see how it works. I promise not to flood you with text messages and remember, you can leave the Mozes elearning "Mob" at any time.
Mark Oehlert recently found iLearnium and has some very good questions that I will try to answer.
Brief History: At the end of 2005 I left an elearning consulting company where I was the Director of Media Solutions. I quickly began absorbing all things Web 2.0. as well as Open Source web apps. In an effort to leverage and demonstrate my competency with many of these technologies, I created iLearnium.
The vision for iLearnium arose from my need to organize all of the various pieces of the elearning puzzle, thus the elearning bloggers directory and the review and rating sections. As Social Networking became more widely adopted, I added that component along with forums.
So, from a personal level the goal was to demonstrate competency. As the only person behind the scenes with no current plan for revenue generation, it is a part-time labor of love.
I really just wanted to see what happened if I built a platform and connected all of the pieces to form an elearning community and put it out there. The old adage, "Build it and they will come" just isn't true for the web anymore, if it ever was and maybe even less so for the elearning industry.
My web server logs and Google Analytics do show I am getting visitors from all over the world largely from the US, Europe, & Hong Kong. The majority of which are reading and linking to elearning bloggers. However, community participation is non-existent. The reason for that may largely be in part to the fact that I haven't answered your question, "What is the motivation for participation?"
Maybe if I built a revenue model that distributed a percentage of the profit to the most active participants? I don't really know what the answer is at this time. I am certainly open to any suggestions anyone may have.
Here are some answers for some things:
Why visit / join /participate at iLearnium?
It's free!
Information Overload - Centralized location for reading and linking to the various blog posts from thought leaders within elearning as well as news and technology sources.
Product Reviews - Centralized location for reviews and ratings of tools related to elearning.
Networking - Ability to browse and meet people in the members directory.
Community - Ability to post questions, thoughts, insights, rants, or whatever else related to elearning in the forums.
ps. Mark, most people won't be using Yahoo Pipes. It's a tech tool for tech geeks ;)
In the course of my blog scanning AND reading I stumble across a tidbit from Albert Ip on his post Informal Learning - an oxymoron if you read to the bottom you will find this quote:
How many times we search for the same piece of information to solve the
same problem? It is because we DID NOT MAKE an effort to take in that
piece of information (ie we did not learn) so that we need to search
for the same piece of information over and over again. The learnt skill
that was used in this situation is the "search skill" which has been
learnt before!
How many times have I searched for that bug fix, line of code, or some other answer to a problem!! Yep, I certainly have learnt the "Search Skill" without a doubt.
I wonder which is more important - knowing the answer or knowing where to get the answer. I suppose it depends on the situation right? The man or woman on the operating table wants to damn well be sure that the doctor who is operating knows the answer. And more importantly, knows how to fix the problem. They don't want to hear, "I'll be right back, I have to go find the answer and the steps to conduct this medical procedure."
Having knowledge and having the ability to apply that knowledge are not the same. So the question arises (which I know has been discussed many times before somewhere), is the process of gaining knowledge learning or is the process of gaining a new skill set learning?
NOTE to Albert Ip: comments are disabled on your blog, otherwise I would have left one.
To anyone who wants to discuss or share their thoughts, feel free to leave a comment here or in the Forum.
I have noticed a significant increase in traffic to the site coming from Google search terms. I am very happy to announce that iLearnium has made it on to the Google first results page for a number of search terms!
Here are the terms that people are searching for on Google (and our link position):
ondemand personal navigator review - #15
camtasia studio 4 reviews - #17
Ok, so why is this exciting and why does it sound like I am tooting the horn? Well, 3 weeks ago, iLearnium didn't even have a place on Google...we hadn't even launched yet ;) Now it's time to keep the momentum going and continue to add content...that is the huge challenge.
ps. don't forget to leave a review on any of the software you have had experience with - your opinion matters and it will help others who are looking for good reviews on these products.
I just came across this interesting post that Brad Feld made a few days ago. While he was pointing out the "coolness" of the Activity Map which is updated in real-time, I was more impressed by the hard numbers they had displayed on top of the map.
2,000,000 Registered Users
27,000 Customers
50,000 Meetings per day
Now that is impressive!
My real question is whether or not those meetings are individual user
sessions or actual meetings with multiple users at each meeting.
Regardless, those numbers are substantial.
December 8th - we'll call that the iLearnium official hard launch date. Why is that you may ask? Well, that is the date that Stephen Downes reported iLearnium on his blog. It was only a matter of time before his post was syndicated, aggregated, re-post, and indexed by several leading search engines and social bookmarking sites.
As a result, traffic at iLearnium has been steadily climbing, a handful
of people have registered as members, and we recently had our first product review submitted!
Thank you Stephen!
And thank you to all of those who have signed up so far!
How did you hear about iLearnium? Post a comment here.
iLearnium Blog 
