Read Online at: http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/ezine/guru5_9.htm

New Blogs to Visit (Mobile Learning & More)

• I met Matthew Nehrling at E-Learning DevCon and he has a great blog dedicated to mobile learning (http://www.mlearning-world.com/)
• From his blog I stumbled on Leonard Low's mobile learning blog (http://mlearning.edublogs.org/)
• The folks who unleashed Articulate Presenter (love that tool!) have a blog at http://blog.articulate.com/

10th Anniversary of Flash
Wow, has it been 10 years?! Flash has done more for the e-learning movement than almost any other technology. Cool animated presentation over at the Adobe site. Click here.

Learner Motivation Model -- www.arcsmodel.com
Returning from a long road trip I began purging hundreds of spam messages from my in box when I stumbled on an unexpected e-mail from one of my ID heroes, John Keller, PhD. Dr. Keller is the father of the ARCS model for maximizing learner motivation. I’ve written and lectured on it throughout my career -- now there is a website dedicated to this topic at: http://www.arcsmodel.com/home.htm.

Ads in Textbooks... I'm wrong, Greg is right!
In the last issue I mentioned how one college textbook publisher is offering free textbooks that have ads embedded in the text. I didn't think it was such a bad idea. But Greg Sapnar at Bristol-Myers Squibb used an Evidence-based Training principle to explain why it's wrong, wrong, wrong...

I believe the theory of the Seductive Augmentation Effect provides the best support for not polluting instructional materials with ads...advertisements, within the content of a textbook, will hurt learning. While we may believe that college students are media savvy and will tune out advertising, the fact that advertisers continue to see the results from their efforts proves otherwise. I would expect to see an abundance of advertisments for credit card companies in those college textbooks....

Vyew.com - browser based conferencing, always free

• Instant meeting: No client to download
• Annotate and share: PPT, DOC, XLS, JPG, SWF, etc.
• Real-time Desktop Sharing
• Support up to 20 attendees
• Always Free
• Site

Is Apple Hijacking Language with "Podcasts"?
Larry Tagrin sent me this e-mail recently. I completely agree with him, but feel it's a losing battle not to use the mass-understood term "podcast." Shows more about the amazing marketing job Apple has done -- similar to past successes like "Xerox" for copies, "Kleenex" for tissues, etc.

One item I would like to bring up concerning "podcasts" is the hijacking of the language by Apple. MP3 files were being posted, downloaded, and played on portable players before Apple tried to hijack the market by pushing the stylish, but not particularly innovative ipod. There were sites that posted these files for years before the term "podcast" came into being. Unless you can differentiate a "podcast" from a "file in MP3 format posted for download or emailed" you are being suckered into supporting a dishonest appropriate of the language for commercial purposes.

CBI's Pharmaceutical Sales Training Summit
October 19-20 in West Conshohocken, PA. Description. I'll be moderating a panel on innovation. If interested I can get you $300 off the ticket price. Send me a note at kkruse@e-learningGuru.com.

Correction on Free SCORM 2004 Testing Toolkit
I mentioned the folks at Rustici Software in my last issue with their new tool, but I mistakenly called it "Score" instead of SCORM Test Track. Check them out.

Here's to a world that now has Flash,

-- Kevin

Kevin Kruse is a writer, designer, and entrepreneur. He is the President of AXIOM Professional Health Learning. He can be reached at kkruse@e-learningguru.com.