NanoLearning

Bersin & Associates released their “Top 10″ list of predictions for 2007. Here at NanoLearning we’re always interested to see what people are writing about, especially industry analysts who have a wide view of what is going on in the marketplace. Sure enough, NanoLearning fits right in with one of the top predictions according to Bersin:

“First there were online self-study courses; then came virtual instructor-led training. The next stage is self-published training — resources such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts. Innovative training organizations are now working to harness these resources.”

We couldn’t agree more.  Why is self-publishing important in leading organizations?

• Wisdom of Crowds. A mixed collection of experts and neophytes will give you a better result than a group of just experts. Learning published by the subject matter experts themselves, then refined and reviewed by colleagues will have higher quality than learning produced by a training group in conjunction with SME’s.
• Speed. Give the SME’s the tools to create learning themselves and you break down all the expensive coordination required to publish e-learning.
• Accuracy. Many people think that learning produced by the central hierarchy will be more accurate than learning produced by the SME’s. Our opinion is that centralized content creation is as prone to error as decentralized. Maybe more.

Thanks for the predictions!

If any of you are readers of Trace Urdan’s market research in the area of learning, training, and education then your read today’s “2006 Year in Review” issue. It also contains six trends for 2007. What is the #1 trend for 2007?

“The trend toward end-users, consumers, teachers, and students creating content for themselves and their peers delivered in writing, in audio files, or in video clips.”

We couldn’t agree more, of course, and we think people will want to create content that is a little more interesting than just “writing.” That’s why we help to create a more visually rich flash-based learning experience. The current crop of people entering the marketplace are comfortable with new technologies, and information sharing. They’ve also grown up on graphically rich video games, the internet, and MTV. So they expect more than just plain textual content.

This is no surprise really, especially since Time Magazine named “You” the person of the year — a position usually reserved for the likes of Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Bono, or Bill Clinton. Hello peer producers! You are it!

In case you missed it, we rolled out a couple new features toward the end of the year.

Search Enhancements

If you type in a search word like “listening” now you will get richer search results. NanoLearning will search not just the description of your Nano, but also the text of it. The search results show some context of the search term it found, as well as icons showing if that Nano contains visual images or sounds. You can click on the name of the NanoLearning item returned in the search to go right to it and check it out.

New Template – Full Page Image

Have you ever wished that you could have a page that was just one big image? Now you can. Use your Photoshop skills to create whatever you want to display on the page.

Enhanced Template – Flash Movie

The “Flash Movie” template will let you upload a SWF file. We’ve had that for a while. But now if you want to display a YouTube video, you can check the box and enter the URL of the YouTube video. We’ll display it for you.

We’ve been hard at work on some other features that we’re getting ready to roll out, so stay tuned for more! Happy New Year!