David Kelly’s Curated Content for the Week of 10/10/16

I read through a number of articles and blog posts each day, and every Monday I curate a few of my favorites for members of the eLearning Guild Community, and for the learning and performance field as a whole. Each shared resource includes a brief introduction explaining why I find the link to be of value and recommend you read it.

Here’s the content for this week:

Google’s Daydream View VR headset goes on sale next month for $79 by by Adi Robertson and Jacob Kastrenakes
The growth in virtual reality’s emergence continues. This week Google shared details about it’s new Daydream View VR headset, which goes on sale next month. In addition to being an example of yet another hardware platform in the emerging VR space, I think the context of this article brings up some interesting hurdles VR will need to overcome in it’s journey to mainstream, and it’s use in learning and training environments. For example, I may not have many concerns about keeping my headset clean, but keeping a headset that is shared within a training department is a much larger concern. This article explore how Daydream is addressing issues like this in it’s design.

What Do You Know: Why Do People Forget What They Learn? by Patti Shank
Why do we forget? This post examines some of the common research and ideas around forgetting. It explores some of the misconceptions about forgetting, challenges some of the existing research, and most importantly, puts all of that commentary into the context of what it means for designing instructional programs.

Google Translate Gets a Deep-Learning Upgrade by Jeremy Hsu
When I explain the difference between performance support and learning to someone, I often use language translation as an example. If I need to understand someone speaking a different language, I can learn their language, or I can have a translator present to convert the person’s words into a language I can understand. Technology is increasingly serving as the source of that translation, and this article explore the latest upgrades to translation from Google. I share it both for a glimpse into how technology-based translation is evolving, and also for it’s exploration of “deep learning” technologies that are opening new doors for learning.

Is Training the Right Solution? by Trina Rimmer
Training is an important part of an orgainzation’s learning and performance strategy. For many, it’s the default response to a need, shaped by both from the training departments patterns and the expectations of the organizations’ stakeholders. However, training isn’t always the best solution to a performance problem. This post, and the article by Jane Bozarth it references, provides a great process for determining if training is the right solution for your problem. It also takes the process and embeds it into a nice branching scenario to help reinforce the decision making process.

Augmented reality: The past, present and future by Paul Sawers
While virtual reality is getting a the majority of attention right now, many (including me) believe that augmented reality is a technology that will more fundamentally change our lives. While VR has tremendous potential, it is still a replacement of the physical environment. AR’s ability to augment the physical world allows it to play in almost any context, which makes it much more useful to training and development. This article is an excellent primer for those new to the AR discussion, exploring where AR got it’s start, what it looks like today, and what it’s potential is for the future.

Top 200 Tools for Learning 2016 by Jane Hart
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Jane Hart’s annual Top Tools for Learning list. Seeing how what changes year-to-year is always interesting as a snapshot to explore what learning looks like and how it is changing. It’s also a great site to bookmark for new tools to explore.

What are you reading?

If you have an article, blog post, or other resource that you think others in our community should read, please feel free to send it to me along with a few sentences describing why you think the resource is valuable. Your link may be featured in a Community Curation highlight in a future post.

Until next week!