Part of the excitement about attending a conference like Learning 2007 is that it isn’t about SCORM and the related technologies exclusively.
Highlights of the session for me:
- Elliott, as he is wont to do, sent us to talk to two people we didn’t know. In each case, when I told them that we (Rustici Software) help people with SCORM, they both said, “We need help with that!”
- Pat, who I spoke to first, indicated her biggest desire it to allow her experts, her SME’s, to be able to produce content. Get the technology out of the way and let those people with the expertise put together the content.
- Dr. “Butch” Rosser does some interesting work. More or less, he’s figured out that games and simulations (fancy word for games) help surgeons achieve at higher levels. Dr. Rosser seemed to me a unique combination of surgeon, teacher, researcher, and Southern Baptist preacher.
- As part of Learning 2007, the Masie’s are donating a malaria net on behalf of each attendee to Malaria No More. At 2087 attendees, that’s $21,o00 worth of mosquito netting. Pretty cool.
- Jenny Zhu from ChinesePod.com was fascinating, and I never would have guessed it. Jenny’s site is a great example of how content will be created. We, at Rustici Software, need to be producing the tools that will accommodate, discover, and distribute this content for learning. We’re working on it.
- To this point (early in the conference) Jenny and her content are the enduring image from this conference for me.
- Doug Lynch spoke about ROI. While I recognize the importance of this… I got distracted with this blog post… Funny, though, was when he referred to Elliott as the “Willy Wonka of Learning”, noting that if everyone came along with Elliott, we’d be a lot farther along.
