Knowledge Management > Learning Strategy > E-Learning > Flash
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Evelyn Jeanette, or Evie, was born at 12:21 this afternoon. A very healthy 9 lbs, 10 oz and 21 inches tall… she has wavy brown hair and deep blue eyes. Mommy and baby are doing very well, and Daddy and big sister are extremely proud.
The next several postings to this blog will likely be authored in the middle of the night, likely in-between feedings 
I apologize if you tried to read this blog today, as around 8am this morning, Flash For Learning was hit with a comment-spam attack — approximately 500 comments were force-entered in about the span of a minute or so, which somehow corrupted the database backup of the wp-options part of my WordPress install… this in turn made my site pretty much unusable.
It took me most of the day to figure out what happened and most of this evening to fix it. Normally, I would have left it to my hosting provider, Dreamhost — except after over 12 hours, I DIDN’T GET SO MUCH AS AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF MY SUPPORT TICKET. Normally, Dreamhost has been pretty good to me, but this is the third time now that I’ve had some kind of catastrophe on one of my blogs. The last two times, they got in touch with me right away and gently broke it to me that there was nothing they could do to help me. This time, though — not even a pulse. That’s pretty weak sauce, Dreamhost.
If any of you readers have suggestions for equally affordable hosting with better customer service, I’ll be listening. It’s such a pain to transfer my domains over, but it is equally painful to be distracted by the fact that the customer service and support that I pay for with my hosting plan (paying two years in advance like a good soldier, even), and I can’t get so much as a two-hour turnaround (much less the twelve-hour turnaround) on an emergency support ticket — that’s just not right.
I apologize if everything’s not quite to normal with RSS feeds and stuff over the next couple of days. I’ll be working vigorously to get back to good, or better.
FINAL UPDATE: It looks like I was able to now restore everything. Let me know if you find something missing.
UPDATE: Full Feedburner goodness is restored, so you can save this to del.icio.us all you want.
UPDATE: Pictures and other attachments on this domain are still down, probably until Friday of this week (need to still restore from my laptop, and uploading is slower than downloading). [5:41AM]
UPDATE: Feedburner RSS is restored, which is probably why you’re even reading this [10:35pm]
In no particular order…
I’m not getting any click-through (not that I really expected any) and it’s absolutely as ugly as I thought it was — before I started using it. I know how to share what I know, and given an honest task to do — I can make a good buck or two doing just that. Some people are awesome at making Amazon or Google revenue. I’m awesome at E-Learning, so I’m sticking with that, and getting rid of AdSense will help me stop worrying about why no one isn’t clicking on the crappy ads that have been appearing on this blog.
I may from time to time write in on any number of other issues that come up — like how I might go back to school this coming year for some kind of Business/Adult Learning/Organizational Change degree (want: Ed.D. — might get:MBA of some stripe). But my passion is growing far beyond playing with the tech toys — I’ve been really re-energized this last year from looking at the change I’ve helped stir up in my organization and I want to hone my strength in the Force (metaphorically) so I’m not just wielding “change” like a wild person — I want to be focused, measured, deliberate and most of all — I want to be even more right, and I want to keep doing it at a higher level with larger and measurable impacts. I think I sit very much at the generational divide in both actual age this coming year and in work habits, and these should be some very exciting times to be a professional educator. Toss in a hefty dose of shifting an organization that loves structure, silos and hierarchy and transition it to a knowledge economy that bubbles up information from the users… it’s going to make the change from buying E-Learning to rolling our own E-Learning this past year seem like a very very small thing.
This year has in many ways been a big payoff for several years of effort. I got the job I pretty much always wanted, working with smart people who work hard and (luckily for me) are gracious with feedback (both glowing AND poignant). But as my favorite song of 2007 recites, “It can’t all be wedding cake, it can’t all be boiled away…” I can’t rest on my laurels, and even though I’m rolling on with the growth I’ve had in 2007, I know that I need to have a direction to go in (and the plan on going back to school isn’t quite good enough).
With any luck, this year’s going to be another wonderfully stable year professionally for me, with another kid on the way and a spouse returning to full-time school in the fall (that’s the plan anyway). But I’d be lying if I wrote that I didn’t miss speaking at conferences, learning what’s at the bleeding edge of our craft and trying to make it make sense. Our first learning game is underfoot; there are some opportunities opening up in my organization to do some very interesting things with Knowledge Management, Performance Support and user-generated content… I’m interested in so much that’s going on in this profession — I just need to pick a handful of ideas that are at least vectoring in a similar direction and then “go that way.”
I meander a lot. I also “go native” as a techie when I’m under stress and I need to get better about keeping up with what questions I’m really being asked — because often I’m answering questions that no one is asking. I get cut a lot of slack (both in the FFL mailing list, the blog and even at work) because I come up with good responses more often than not — but I can do better as a consultant.
It’s not unnoticed by me that I write a lot more about everything but Flash on this blog. I need a practical reason to use ActionScript 3 so I can learn and apply what I learn to a task. Once I have that (or create it), we’ll be talking about a lot of code.
In the States, it’s the Thanksgiving holiday and my wife bought me an early Hanukkah present — a Wii with Guitar Hero III and a few other games. So it’s going to be a little quiet on this blog or on the mailing list for a few days. New toy, shiny object… you understand, I’m sure.
So don’t “fret” (get it — fret? Guitars? Sometimes I only amuse myself) — I’ll be back next week, probably with a few cautionary tales of working with Captivate 3 and Articulate since I’m pressing on with a few projects using both.
Enjoy the holiday if you’re in the States, and if you’re not… uh… have a laugh
A little over a year ago, I hung out with Martin Dougiamas, the big head behind Moodle, at the ILCE Conference in Mexico City. After spending quite a bit of time playing around with Moodle in the ensuing weeks, I humbly suggested on Dreamhost’s suggestion board that they I voted for Dreamhost to create a one-click install for people who host through Dreamhost that would auto-setup Moodle.
Fast forward about 16 months, and this just came in:
Hey! This is just a note to let you know that we’ve now completed the suggestion: “Allow one-click installation of Moodle.” from the category “Goodies - One-Click Installs”. Here’s some details on the resolution of this suggestion: Moodle is a one-click now! Thanks again for taking the time to vote for what you’d like implemented, it really helps us keep on task! Sincerely, The Happy DreamHost Suggestation Team
Moodle FTW!!!! Think of how many microcommunities can now just start up just by clicking on “install Moodle.” I’m pretty hopeful this gets more people thinking about creating learning environments.
CORRECTION: I thought I initiated the idea, but it turns out that I voted for it. So I don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s still cool that Moodle is now a one-click install on Dreamhost.
Aside from the occasional commenter, I really have no idea how much traffic I’m getting to this site, much less what people are looking for — and like any other blogger on the web, I want to be relevant.
I could analyze Google’s metrics for the site, but I prefer the more straightforward approach of polling the audience. As I keep implementing and consulting on the job, are my notes about GTD, Six Sigma and ISD, Basecamp, Articulate, Captivate and maybe even some Flash useful to you? Do you come here looking for SCORM information?
Help me help you… or just say hi. I’ve added a guestbook to the site.
With a lousy left hand, I’ve been forced to innovate (or just accept the future) and use the toys available to me on my MacBook Pro — I took my outline, whittled it down to slides in Apple Keynote, exported them as PNG files and imported them into GarageBand to put together this first podcast, covering at a (hopefully coherent) high level what I pulled from the three days I attended the IMS Quarterly meeting, kicking off an official convergence between SCORM and IMS.
Click here to download or view the podcast yourself.
Alan and I wanted to share our general thanks to Macromedia, as well as everyone who came to our sessions on SCORM, Flash and Captivate — and a huge thanks to the other developers and designers who contributed some excellent dialogue to our sessions, as well as those who gave some excellent presentations that we were fortunate enough to attend.
Between watching my White Sox clinch the World Series berth on Sunday, the great discussions with Director folks, putting names to faces on the Open Source Flash mailing list and getting to talk shop with so many of you in the E-learning sector who are succeeding and struggling in similar ways to what we go through in our daily trade — this was an excellent experience for us and it’s all due to you.
It may not be clear on how to contact me if you’ve attended MAX 2005 (or even if you haven’t).
Email me at aaron.silvers [at] gmail [dot] com
Obviously, this is slightly obfuscated so that I don’t get a ton of automated spam. You can also register for this site and include your e-mail address if you’d like me to contact you directly, either for answers on SCORM and your specific needs, or any consulting you need in that space if you need more in-depth help.
I’ve registered the domain name flashforlearning.com, which is the domain name this site will be transferred to in the next several weeks. Think of the .com as a “dot community.”
With over a month since this site has started, I’m still hoping to collaborate with the friends made at FlashForward who helped dream up this project. So far, there hasn’t been a lot of activity (other than an occasional post or e-mail from me). I’m still going to promote and encourage community involvement, but until the feedback loops are in place for a self-sustaining online community (and the systemic feedback loops are in place to keep the system perpetuating and correcting itself), it appears I’ll be posting the majority of content here.
So barring opposing activity by the four other people viewing this site so far, I’m going to focus this project squarely on the use of Flash for e-Learning. Now that involves two huge domains: Flash and Education. The sweet spot is where these two domains overlap, but anything in those two domains has a place in this project. So everything from what we’re learning about making Flash games to Constructivist theory and its implications for online-enabled learning are fair game.
Post away… or keep watching for flashforlearning.com.
