Bottom-Line Performance

Each week Brandon Penticuff, Bottom-Line Performance’s Director of Technology and admitted app-obsessed iOS user will share an app that he is using that week. Whether it is an app to make you more productive, teach you something, or simply entertain you, we hope that you’ll enjoy learning about them!

This week’s app is “SayHi Translate”, an extremely impressive “Pocket Interpreter” that will enable you to quickly translate phrases that you speak out loud into many different languages. Your conversation can also be translated the other way, with your communication partner’s response also being translated back into your primary language.

It may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. The app’s design is incredible, it’s hard to imagine it being any more simple to use. The design mimics a text-messaging conversation between two people (one blue, one green). The blue represents the Primary language chosen, and the green side represents the Secondary language. The application defaults to English and Spanish respectively, but you can set either to one of over 30 available languages in the settings menu. When you tap one of the supported languages and speak it, it automatically translates the text of what you said into the message window, and then speaks your phrase out loud and provides the text of the translation as well. This let’s you not only confirm what it is attempting to translate, but visually see the translation once it is completed. An entire conversation can be maintained within the app, and then selectively shared via email, text message, Twitter, or Facebook.

In addition to providing a handy way for you to quickly communicate with someone that doesn’t speak your language, you can also use this app to practice your fluency and pronunciation with a foreign language you are trying to learn. By tapping on the Secondary button you can speak in that language and have it confirm with you what it heard, and then translate it back into your Primary chosen language. By using the tool this way, you can practice your speaking skills and work to perfect your intonation and clarity.

I absolutely love apps like this that provide multiple uses, are cleverly designed, and leverage the ability of my iOS devices in new and interesting ways. Throw in the fact that it’s a universal app that works on both the iPad and iPhone with a single purchase and this one is easy to recommend.

SayHi Translate – [.99] (Universal App)

Note: This app is currently on sale for .99 and will be $2.99 after a introductory period.

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

Social Learning is not a “new” course or LMS feature…it’s something that happens naturally.

At best, a “social learning solution” is similar to carefully decorating and cleaning your house for a dinner party. The ultimate goal is for the guests to arrive and enjoy the environment as a group, sharing stories and laughing with one another. It’s the host’s job to create the conditions for this fun, not to be the sole conduit for the  entertainment. This requires a meaningful shift from traditional top-down, command and control training programs.

There is a difference between following the herd as it adopts a new technology…and approaching the tools and technologies as an artist to craft something truly unique and wonderful. A few examples:

• James Cameron’s “Avatar” was the first movie to use 3D, and the results were breathtaking. But movies that have used 3D since then have not had nearly the same effect on audiences. When it is only being implemented to follow the latest trend in moviemaking and maximize the profit that can be made in movie theaters, the final product will not be as enduring or entertaining.
• QR codes and social media links are being slapped on all sorts of advertisements. Some of them are highly effective and drive traffic to carefully considered experiences and knowledge sources…but most of them are merely an after-thought. The “everybody’s doing it” mentality is never a precursor of success.

So, L&D professional…as savvy as you are, are YOU currently working on an initiative that would add social media buttons and sharing features into a course or game just because you can? This might be a good move, but there are plenty of things to consider first.

We learned this through our launch of College Hoops Guru, the latest question pack we created for our Knowledge Guru game engine. It uses repetition and spaced learning to carefully guide learners towards mastery of a set of objectives. We like to sprinkle in a new batch of features and user interface improvements with each go-around, and this time we added Twitter functionality. While our staff had lots of fun tweeting our scores and interacting with the game during testing, we did not see much use of the social sharing features from the game players. No matter how smartly you place a button in a user interface, if it is not part of the authentic user experience, it will not be utilized. We only saw a few players take advantage of the ability to tweet their score.

So, what’s the secret ingredient you need to get social sharing features utilized in your learning solution? Proper set-up and the right audience. Make sure you clearly introduce and articulate how social media sharing can and should be used within your course or game. Show the benefit to the learner and make them believe they will gain value from using social as they learn. Make sure resources and learning materials are easily available and relevant within social media.

Most importantly, your users must be comfortable and familiar with social media if they are to use it within your learning experience. If you are planning on introducing your team to Twitter for the first time, make sure they have plenty of time to adapt to the tool and become comfortable with using it in their daily workflow. Teach them about Personal Knowledge Management and how social media can help them achieve this. Show them how Twitter will add real value to their careers, then let them explore. If your audience is already social online, all the better! But you still need to encourage them and show the benefit.

College Hoops Guru’s social sharing features are highly useful within a dedicated group of learners, particularly when encouraged to do so by a facilitator. If you want your learners to use social media within a course or game, you will need to actively encourage and support this behavior when introducing and managing the learning experience. Inviting them to the dinner party is not enough: you have to set the table.

Chances are, someone has told you how you should or should not be using Twitter recently.

Did you know that Twitter chats are a fantastic way to share informal knowledge and spark conversation within  your field or even inside your organization? Think about it: You spend all day every day sitting in your office, siloed off from the world of information ebbing and flowing all around you. What if there was a way to tap in to the collective expertise of industry experts and thought leaders, creating synergistic relationships both inside and outside your organization? This is all possible. Best of all, it’s cost-effective and easy to implement.

For the past month, Bottom-Line Performance has been hosting Thursday Tech Talk, a weekly chat on Twitter. Each week, we extend an open call for users to submit articles on emerging trends, gadgets, or tech and we curate three of our favorites to include in our discussion. You can follow along and even join in by following @BLPIndy on Twitter to see the upcoming articles and saving the #TalkTech hashtag as a search. Here’s a transcript from our chat on Thursday, 2/16:

A few tips to get you started:

-Pick a hashtag that is short yet memorable and unique: We started our Twitter chat using the hashtag #T3 and have since changed it to #TalkTech. Since Twitter limits the number of characters per tweet to 140, we thought using a short hashtag would enhance people’s experience by allowing them to fit more in to one tweet. However, we quickly realized that having a hashtag that is unique and specific to your talk is important. The stream for #T3 was always cluttered with spam and errant conversations we did not want to view. #TalkTech has been much more successful thus far.

-Brevity is the soul of wit…and good conversation: New Twitter users sometimes balk at the 140 character limit per tweet. “How will I get my point across?” Rather than being a deterrant, we’ve found that the 140 character clause actually helps participants be more concise and form their thoughts better.

-Embrace different consumption preferences: Some of our BLPers are digital natives who find it easy to rapid-fire Tweets on any topic (I fit in to this heap). However, others prefer to receive and process information at a more controlled rate. We recommend using a service like Storify to gather the conversation and preserve a record of it for easy viewing. Users who prefer to interact with Twitter at a slower pace will still benefit from the conversation by reading it later and may even become more comfortable with the medium in time. Making a transcript of your chat available after the fact will greatly enhance its value. 

-It takes time to build participation: We have been encouraging BLP employees who do not normally use Twitter to hop on and try participating in #TalkTech. It has taken some time for those not used to taking part in this medium of communication to get used to sharing thoughts in this format, but we have seen great improvement from the first week.

-Twitter isn’t perfect: The platform itself has some limitations that are worth noting: Tweets do not always load immediately when you are monitoring a keyword and the stream of commentary can become confusing for some. Remember that the added value of Twitter versus a closed off chat room is the openness of the platform itself: every Tweet being shared can be searched and viewed by anyone on Twitter, any time. There is always an opportunity for someone unexpected to chime in with a new insight. Sharing your thoughts and expertise in such a way is also a great way to improve the credibility of your organization on a chosen topic.

Our experiences with #TalkTech have been all-together encouraging and we plan to continue our weekly chats. We’ll keep posting the Storify summaries once a week on this blog.

I would encourage any organization still standing on the side of the pool dipping their toes in and grimacing a bit to take the plunge in to social media and try hosting a Twitter chat of your own. You can also try participating in one of many Twitter chats already going on. Just search for what you are looking for, and odds are you will find it!

Well, that was fun.

The last of the celebrities and East Coast football fans have left Indianapolis, and what a party it was! It was hard not to get caught up in the “Big Game” buzz last week. Football was on everyone’s brain, and we are so happy to have been able to share Gridiron Guru with you. This was part 1 of our m+s+g=l? learning lab experiment.

Our sign-ups were modest, but we had players from all over the world take part. The top score achieved topic mastery of all four paths AND amassed a Grab Bag score of 126,000,000. Talk about self-directed learning!

Part of social learning is that the “teacher” learns too. Unlike the bearded character in our game, we are NOT Gurus who have achieved mastery. We know what we are good at and love using our expertise, but there is always more to learn. And boy, did we learn a ton from putting this game together! Here are 5 take-aways for you to consider as you begin looking at ways to “gamify” your training and create opportunities for informal, non-traditional learning on mobile platforms.

1. Respond to results in real time. Social learning platforms enable facilitators to respond to the needs of learners in a more immediate, direct fashion. The admin side of the game engine we created for this (KnowledgeGuru)  has a robust set of reports that allow us to see what learning objectives and questions were the hardest. Here is a quick view at part of a learning objectives report:

Okay, so maybe 67.5% of statistics are made up. Nevertheless, it is commonly quoted that 75% of what we learn is “informal.” (See Marcia Connor’s 2004 article on Informal Learning to see the research on this.) Connor explains:

“Most learning doesn’t occur during formal training programs. It happens through processes not structured or sponsored by an employer or a school. Informal learning is…what happens the rest of the time.”

She goes on to explain that companies invest all their $$ and time in creating formal learning programs when informal learning is where companies are going to get the most bang for their buck.

Connor further distinguishes between what is intentional learning and accidental learning with this helpful graphic:

Notice that she categorizes “informal” and yet “intentional” learning as that which occurs via community, teaming, and playing. There is also informal, yet ”accidental” learning that comes from self-study, exploring, and internet surfing. This intentional learning is going to come from blogs, social networks, project opportunities at work, and interactive opportunities (i.e. playing). Social media was just starting to appear when this graphic was produced in 2004. It will be especially interesting to see how social learning applications evolve as social platforms achieve increasingly high levels of saturation.

The concept of informal learning is quite the rage these days as everyone talks about Web 2.0′s ability to make informal learning easier. At BLP, we have even launched our own Learning Lab to explore the possibilities mobile, social, and gaming platforms hold for learning. (You can play “Gridiron Guru” here)  While I myself am excited by the various Web 2.0 applications I see, I’m starting to have my doubts as to how easily these applications will make informal learning EASIER. Will the inundation of social communities cause us to opt out entirely? Where is the saturation point? As our attention becomes more fragmented, how can authentic “learning” occur? And what is “authentic learning,” anyway?

Many of us find ourselves sticking our toes into the water of social media without making a significant enough investment to drive value. I “dabble” rather than dive deep.

Companies who see informal learning as the Holy Grail that will eliminate the need for expensive, formal training need to think carefully. Informal learning IS largely what self-motivated people do.  Often, this description of “self-motivated” is not one that fits the profile of people who come to formal learning opportunities. If an “informal” forum exists, a non-motivated learner isn’t likely to seek it out even if it exists. A self-motivated employee likely will…if he/she can find information easily.  If various departments and pockets all set up their own social networks – or create collaboaration sites – suddenly we’ve created a nightmare for employees who are drowning in information. We’ve bombarded them with STUFF…much of which they won’t have time to use.

Companies need to give intentional, planned consideration to how they want informal learning to take place in their organizations – at least the part of it that involves online communities. One or two are great…there is a huge drop-off in ability to participate beyond that point. The same truth goes with blogs…exactly how many blogs can you keep up with? Again – planned consideration is the key. Creating a bazillion sites and blogs – just because it’s easy to do – sets companies up for disappointment. Always remember that LEARNING is the goal and all of these tools are just a means to an end.

As always, I’m interested in views that either contradict or support my own. Tell us what you think of the growing interest in informal learning…and social. networks as a means to facilitate it?

We’d also love to also have your participation in our social learning lab. Give Gridiron Guru a shot by clicking the image below:

Yes, we’re all hearing the buzz. The holy grail of learning is shifting to games/gamification, mobile, and social. Within my team at BLP, we actually are already believers of the value that blending these three things together can have on a learning experience….but we want proof, not just gut feelings about this. So – we invite you to join our newly-created “learning laboratory” at Bottom-Line Performance and be part of a little three-part experiment we’re going to do.

Part 1 coincides with the Professional Football Championship Not to Be Named for Copyright Purposes. Since it’s in Indianapolis this year and so are we, we felt it was a perfect fit. We’re creating a game called Gridiron Guru that targets the casual football fan. If you can already explain how teams score, but you’re clueless or unsure when you hear things like intentional grounding, pass interference, 4-3 defensive formation, nickel defense, etc., then this game should help you learn…while you also have fun and engage with other people who are doing the same thing as you.

We chose a fun theme and approach, but our goal is serious. How well does a social/mobile/gaming approach work in helping people learn…particularly when no one is pushing them to learn? You get to opt into our little experiment – and you only play as far as you want to play. Yeah, we are providing a small incentive (Top 3 scores entered into drawing for $25 App Store card), but there is only ONE winner and, hopefully, lots of learners/players. Let’s see how much learning happens with this format.

Our game begins Monday, January 30th. If you want to play (and we hope you do), start following @thekguru on Twitter. He’ll announce the game’s start and send out the game link on the 30th.  You will need to create an account to play – but you only provide a name and email…and we aren’t adding you to any contact list. This is just for the game. Ideally, you’ll play on your iPad. If you aren’t lucky enough to have an iPad yet, you can play on your desktop. Android is not an option for this little experiment of ours….yet.

Our game ends at kickoff time Sunday, February 5th. We’ll tweet out the winner (as well as posting on the Knowledge Guru game site). We’ll analyze our first round of data and send out the results.

For Part 2 of our experiment, you can expect a college basketball-themed game (in March, of course) that focuses on the game of basketball for the casual college b-ball lover. We’ll deliver Part 3 at the end of April or beginning of May, and focus on the far more serious topic of  effective learning design. We’ll use the Knowledge Guru game engine again for our March game – and then go 100% social at the end of April when we play our learning design game on Twitter.

So – come play with us and learn with us. We’ll share our results after each game – and then results overall. We’ll share what people seem to retain, like, dislike, etc. and how much people learn (our game engine has some wonderful reports we can share!!).

With Apple’s education event looming this Thursday, all eyes will be set squarely on the future of learning. How can ebooks, the iPad, and social media shape the future of learning? We may not the know the answer, but what we do know is that a change is coming. In fact, it has already begun.

In preparation for that change, professionals everywhere are starting to turn their attention to digital and social platforms to figure out what all the fuss is about. Do I need to be using this for my business? What should I be doing on Twitter? Seasoned pro or greenhorn, we are all figuring it out as we go.

The early adopters of social media can be intimidating: they have thousands of followers and subscribers and seem to be posting constantly. How is a beginner supposed to keep up? Here are 5 practical tips for the professional just looking to get started on Twitter.

1. Show us the real you: Setting up an account is a great start, but don’t forget to include a photo and short bio. If I see an account does not have a photo or has not offered a short blurb about who they are and what they do, I usually assume their account is not active. It’s hard to know “what to write” about ourselves, but think of that 140 character bio as your chance to provide some context on yourself. It’s your elevator pitch in the world of social media.

2. Filter the noise: Twitter becomes useful when you start filtering! The best way to do this is to add people to lists when you start following them. I have created lists for eLearning, Social Media, Technologists, and even friends for my own Twitter account. When I want to check my streams, clicking on each lists provides more context for what I am looking at. It is easier to find what I need, when I need it.

3. Set up listening posts: Twitter is like a 24/7, asynchronous coffee conversation with the world, sharing the most current and useful ideas in any field imaginable. It is easy to tap into these fields by picking some keywords you are interested in and setting them as saved searches. For example, just typing “#eLearning” into the search bar will yield tons of posts from people all over the world discussing the topic. You can click “Save Search” then access your saved searches from Twitter whenever you want to check up on that topic.

4. Curate useful content: Don’t let that little voice in your head keep you from Tweeting. You know what I’m talking about. “But I have nothing to say!” “My thoughts don’t matter!” Nonsense! If you are a working professional, you obviously have some serious expertise in at least one field. Start sharing your insights because chances are someone else needs to hear it. Post links to interesting articles and blogs in your industry and be sure to provide some context as to what people are reading.

5. Do not protect your Tweets: Twitter is all about the open sharing of ideas. For those who have been working in a corporate setting for much of their careers, the idea of leaving something unprotected online can seem foreign and even scary. However, protecting your tweets will keep your thoughts and insights from being visible to the wider community that can best use them. Resist the urge to protect your tweets and always remember that YOU control what you post and what others will see. “Protect” your Tweets by keeping them relevant, on-topic, and interesting.

Focusing on these 5 basic tips will give you a great start on leveraging Twitter as a profesional and learning tool. We’ll follow up next week with a few of my favorite tools and utilities that can help you be even more productive once you’ve gotten started.

From Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, courtesy of C-2 Pictures (Get it? #T3)?)

Happy belated New Year from BLP! Now that the last chorus of  Auld Lang Syne has died down and the egg nog is put away, we are diving back in to our continued search for the best, RIGHT learning solution. The entire staff is sporting brand new iPads (happy holidays, right?) and as always we are elbow deep in discovering fun new apps, games, and gizmos.

If you are like us, you love talking about this stuff and sharing your take. That’s why we want to invite you to join in on our first ever Twitter chat for techies, nerds, and those obsessed with the latest, greatest gadgets and emerging technologies. It’s called Thursday Tech Talk, #T3 for short. No, we won’t be Tweeting with our Arnold Schwarzenegger voices.

Here’s how you can join in the fun:

1. Share your favorite tech article by posting to Twitter with the hashtag #T3 throughout the week. Be sure to include why we should read it!

2. Follow @BLPIndy on Twitter so you are ready to join in the conversation.

3. Join us (almost) every Thursday at 3 pm. We’ll gather the most interesting articles and Tweet out three of our favorites. We will then debate, discuss, yell, and postulate about them for 10 minutes each. You can follow the action by searching the hashtag #T3.

Sound fun? We thought so too! We’re looking forward to discussing the latest tech news with you.

–Stay tuned for more from Bottom-Line Performance in 2012.