Archive for September, 2006

News Release – Launch of NanoLearning

NANOLEARNING™ LAUNCHES AT DEMOFALL

A Marketplace for User Generated Learning Content

AUSTIN, TEXAS and SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – September 25, 2006 NanoLearning™, the peer-produced learning marketplace, launched today at DEMOfall ‘06, a premier showcase for launching new, cutting edge technology products. The event takes place in San Diego from September 25-27, 2006 and features the most innovative new companies in the world.

Everybody has unique expertise to share, but not all subject matter experts are computer experts. With basic computing skills anyone can create NanoLearning™ for the marketplace that contains not just text and images, but interactive activities and assessments. Without any programming, people can create rich, interactive learning in minutes and publish it in the marketplace where anybody can find it, review it, and provide feedback on it. NanoLearning™ is always online and immediate, so authors can incorporate feedback from learners to improve the quality of their learning constantly. Enterprises are finding NanoLearning™ a great way to provide performance support by hyperlinking learning to operational systems and business process flowcharts. Key features of NanoLearning™ include:

  • The ability to create learning content that is accessed via a standard URL, without any programming
  • NanoLists to aggregate and publish learning collections
  • RSS feeds to notify authors and users upon updates or new comments
  • Change the skin (look, feel, and screen size) with one click
  • Go mobile instantly with no changes

Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMOfall ‘06 handpicked NanoLearning from a highly competitive field of companies. “Until today a public marketplace for learning didn’t exist, yet learning is something we all do every day,” she stated. “NanoLearning is empowering everyday people to create, share, and aggregate interactive learning experiences.” Organizations are embracing rapid learning tools that empower users and efficiently deliver small chunks of learning, according to Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, a leading research firm specializing in enterprise learning and talent management. “Our recent studies show that over 50% of the training issues in enterprises are time-critical, and many are dependent on information from subject matter experts,” he said. “Speed is essential in today’s competitive business environment, fueling a 60% growth in the market for tools such NanoLearning.”

About DEMOfall
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com.

About NanoLearning™
NanoLearning™ is the marketplace for user-created learning. With NanoLearning™ anybody who can access the web can create, share, and aggregate interactive learning content. Bersin & Associates estimates the market for rapid learning tools to be approximately $500 million, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 60%. The company is privately held and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. To learn more about NanoLearning™, visit www.nanolearning.com.

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NanoLearning in Brazil

We are very fortunate to have a great article on NanoLearning in today’s “O Globo” newspaper in Brazil. O Globo is one of the top newspapers in the country with over three quarters of a million readers. The article included some great screen shots, and appeared on page 4 of the paper.

In the event that you can read Portuguese I have attached a PDF of the page.

The technical architecture for NanoLearning was created to support Unicode, and therefor multiple languages from the start. Users in Brazil can create NanoLearning in Portuguese and share it with other users. We would really enjoy seeing content in all kinds of languages.

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Alvin Toffler

alvin toffler

Originally uploaded by Deidre Woollard.

Last month in the Financial Times, noted futurist Alvin Toffler is quoted:

“Standardised education is among the slowest institutions to adapt. If you were a cop monitoring the speed of cars going by, you would clock the car of business, which changes rapidly under competitive pressures, at 100 mph. But the car of education, which is supposedly preparing the young for the future, is only going at 10 mph. You cannot have a successful economy with that degree of desynchronisation.”

One of the major value propositions we strive for at NanoLearning is enable people to create learning faster. Speed is critical in business today, and sometimes there isn’t time to engage the training or learning organization. Today’s rapid learning tools are just replayers of annotated Powerpoints, screen captures, or video sessions. They are not very interactive. We let end users create flash-based interactive learning activites using a “wizard” approach. This way learners interact and engage, becoming active participants in the process.

You will be amazed to see what you can create in just five minutes.

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Workforce Performance

I just returned from a speaking engagement at Workforce Performance, an event for professionals who are interested in the field of performance support and measurement in their organizations. The event was mostly attended by training professionals who are trying to figure out how to align training programs with organizational performance. Some interesting observations:

Performance Support - When talking about job aids or guidance while you are performing a task, people don’t have time to enroll in a course on their Learning Management System (LMS). They need it now, and it needs to be short and to the point. Just get me past the task that I’m trying to accomplish.

Mobility - I attended a session where the speaker had research that said up to 50% of the average office worker’s tasks are performed away from the desk. Very fascinating. And with the rise of some great new devices like the Blackberry Pearl and the Treo 750 perhaps mobile learning will become more commonplace.

All of these things validate the NanoLearning approach in terms of microchunking and mobility. Yes you read that right, I typed mobility. Not a pre-announcement or anything, but lets just say that we’ve got something in the works.

Bryan Menell

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