July 2012 NewsletterKINEO NEWSLETTER Contents this month:
>> Editor's note: Welcome to the summer special. It’s a month to take a look at the great TotaraLMS for Sony Europe, be thrilled by Captivate 6 new features, and intrigued by some new ideas for game design and project Tin Can. Hopefully it creates a nice summer breeze as it whooshes through your inbox…what do you mean, you’re out of the office? We’ll just wait for you to get back… Stephen
***Dates for your diary*** ASTD LearnNow Conference: July 25-26, Boston, MA
Totara Demo (via Totara): Thursday 26th July, 2-3pm BST
Contact us at events@kineo.com to find out more and to arrange to meet us at any of the upcoming events. Join the E-learning Professionals Group on LinkedIn: Over 5,000 of your fellow e-learning professionals are already sharing here. Ask questions, get help – find out what’s really going on in e-learning… ------------------------------------------------ 1. 100th Totara client: Sony Europe, see the site… It’s just a little over a year since we launched TotaraLMS with our partners Catalyst and Kineo Pacific. TotaraLMS is the open source LMS for business, based on Moodle, with extended functionality. We’re delighted to announce that Sony Europe is the 100th Totara client. For their new platform, The Knowledge Portal, Sony selected Totara LMS as the basis of the new platform and worked with us to design and manage the site along with the development of the associated e-learning product knowledge modules for over 30,000 dealers, distributors, consultants and end-users. It’s a great site, and what’s more it’s open to everyone. Find out more and see it here.
2. Kineo Totara and Moodle user group: how it went An unusually sunny day in July saw Kineo and over 50 clients meet in London for Kineo’s inaugural Moodle & Totara User Group Event. Richard Wyles, CEO of Totara, flew over from Wellington to join Kineo MD, Steve Rayson, in demoing some of the new features coming to Totara in the next few months. The day also saw Kineo LMS clients sharing their experiences of working with Kineo and best practice examples with the rest of the group through a number of case studies and discussion groups. We’ve had some great feedback from those who attended, and if you didn’t make it, you can find out what you missed here.
3. Tool review: Captivate 6 Captivate 6 has arrived. It promises a lot of new features – but does it deliver? If you’re looking at Captivate as just systems training tool, we reckon it’s time to look again. Read our review here.
4. Top tip: Take a look at Project Tin-Can More than 800 eLearning professionals descended on San Jose June 19-21 for eLearning Guild’s 3rd MLearnCon. While talk about native apps vs web apps and htlm5 vs Flash and tablets vs smartphones were all around, the real buzz was about the launch of the Tin-Can API. If you haven’t heard about Tin-Can yet, you certainly will soon, so we think a quick brief is in order. It’s this month’s top tip. Get it here. Find the rest of our top tips here. Or let our top tips find their way to you through our free Top Tips app on the App Store: And of course let’s get social and talk
5. Book review: Gamification of Learning: What’s your game? Gamification of learning experiences. Easy to say (well, sort of). Less easy to do. Karl Kapp, emerging gamification guru (looks nice on a business card) has a lot to say on designing games in learning – how to, why you should, why sometimes you shouldn’t. We read his book – so you don’t have to. Though actually, you probably should. Read our review here.
6. More books: Your summer reading list Let’s stay bookish for a minute. In the northern hemisphere, some of us are packing up our beach bags and heading to the beach for a little rest, relaxation and…research. It’s true, our passion for learning design never ends, even poolside. Here are some of the books you might find in some of our beach bags (by which of course we mean on our Kindles and iPads) this summer season. Here’s our list.
7. Market update: Training spend rises – you can prove it Proving business benefits is driving up learning technology budgets. This month we look at further research confirming the growth in learning technology budgets as the business benefits become clear; and why there has never been a better time to prove the value of your learning. Read the update here.
8. News: Articulate summer discount offer, now hiring Articulate Summer Discount To celebrate the arrival of Articulate Storyline, which we reviewed last month, Kineo has a special summer articulate offer to bring some sunshine in to your life. We’re offering 10% off all Articulate products including Storyline plus a free training webinar for all purchases before the end of August. Articulate Studio is one of the leading rapid e-learning authoring tools. It uses Powerpoint as your core authoring interface and allows you to add animations and quizzes. Articulate Storyline enables you to create sophisticated e-learning which can be published out to desktops and iPads. Kineo is an Articulate partner and develops content and provides training for over a hundred different companies using Articulate products. As part of the summer offer Kineo will also be providing a free webinar training session to get you developing content quickly and effectively. Read a review of Articulate Storyline here. Contact Kineo at articulate@kineo.com to get your discount.
Now hiring We’re looking for passionate, creative, enthusiastic people to join us as:
View all Kineo vacancies here. No agencies please.
9. Surveys: Retail sector, Towards Maturity 2012 Benchmark Study Retail Sector survey We’re keeping our sector themes going – if you’re in the retail sector, we want to hear from you. You can access our sector survey here. You can see some of what’s possible in retail learning by looking at our examples here.
Towards Maturity 2012 Benchmark Study Laura Overton and the team at Towards Maturity always do an excellent job in compiling the annual benchmark survey, and as an Ambassador of the Towards Maturity benchmark study, we’d urge you to join the 1800 organisations that have already taken part in the largest learning technology benchmark in Europe. Don’t hesitate - an astonishing 73% of participants report that just taking part in the study had given them new ideas to improve the impact of their learning services. Find out more here.
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