Milamber Blog

People learn more when they play.

They remember more when they do.

They engage more when they share.

So why is most learning so ineffective and boring?

Christmas is a time when our lives are filled with ‘Games’ and ‘Stories’. Our TV’s are packed with stories, both old and new. We gather together with our families and play games, like Charades. Asking such questions like is it a Book, Movie or TV program. Our DVD’s come now with software that un-package the movie so that is can be played on multiple devices such as iPad’s, iTouches, iPhones, or even on your Laptop. Books can be played on Kindles, iPad’s, and read the old fashioned way on stuff we call ‘paper’.

Whichever medium we experience these Stories there are ‘Seven Basic Plots’;

• Overcoming the Monster
• Rags to Riches
• The Quest
• Voyage and Return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

One theme that resonated this Christmas was the Hero’s Quest or Hero’s Journey. A hero is faced with a challenge and has to overcome various obstacles to achieve some goal. The focus is the achievement of the goal or objective and this can be in this world or another.

Joseph Campbell’s used the term monomyth, when referring to the hero’s journey and this was described by Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).

Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.’

This can be broken down into various Acts and Stages as shown by the following diagram:

What was also evident this Christmas was the Quest theme was being used not only in movies, but also in games, as we see below:

Questing in Role-Playing Games: the basic PLOT……

The quest in a role-playing game may begin with setting the objective of finding a lost artefact, or treasure, or some form of knowledge. This artifact might be in several pieces, and to collect the various components results in overcoming one or more challenges by the hero.

By designing the quest around specific challenges, various skills may be taught, improved, honed to excellence etc. thus a carefully designed quest may allow the heroes to shine and show the qualities that make them heroic or just improve them. Basically certain traits can be built into the game structure so that the architect of the game can teach the player or hero to learn through participating in the role-play and thus attain certain skills or improve those skills.

A Few Examples:

The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones series, etc.

The basic quest story can be broken down into a series of stages:

1. The Call – the hero has a calling from someone or due to an event that must result in a long difficult journey to achieve some sort of goal or objective.

2. The Journey – the hero sets off (with or without companions) on a long tortuous journey encountering a series of trials, challenges, or ordeals. For example, battling monsters, dealing with temptations, travelling between two different kinds of opposites or worlds.

As part of the journey there must be capture or daring escape’s, hospitality or life threatening ordeals, helpful advice or cunning trickery, wisdom or guidance and other themes can be built into the storyline to enhance the skills that want to be transferred to the hero.

3. Arrival and Frustration – the hero sees the goal, can almost get there but then new barriers, or obstacles or challenges arise that block him or her from the goal. At this point the hero is often at a low ebb and must dig deep to summon the strength to overcome these last challenges to reach the goal.

4. The Final Ordeals – here the hero has to undergo a series of final tests or challenges, or tasks to prove that they are worthy of the prize, be that an artefact, treasure or knowledge. There may be a guard or monster to the artefact which requires a battle to overcome them to release the prize.

5. The Goal – the hero finally overcomes the last obstacle in a death defying feat and wins the prize, or secures the knowledge, and lives happily ever after…..

So this structure within the role playing game has the capability to be designed in a way to teach certain skills or hone certain characteristics and in a highly effective way:

Which is why we are leading with the following messaging in 2012:

Learning via games:
Engages our curiosity
Encourages active decision making
Taps into deep human needs for challenge and mastery
Connects human desire for novelty and reward
Breaks learning up in to bite sized chunks
Activates more of our brain than traditional learning methods.

This ‘youtube’ video gives a very pictorial representation of the Hero’s Journey from a Joseph Campbell (sort of) perspective using Star Wars, Harry Potter and clips from the Wizard of Oz to highlight key points – the author of this video accentuates 5 key themes:

“Peter Frederick is a black belt in persuasive writing.” – Andy Hasoon, Entrepreneur and CEO of Milamber!

This is the quote that I wrote for the back of Pete’s book.  Well when a guy as talented as Pete writes a proposal (with no presentation) and just by using the power of the written word helps secure £750k in funding as a grant from the Technology Strategy Board you confirm that he is a master at persuasive writing.   

http://www.milamberblog.com/milamber-digital-gets-technology-strategy-board-funding-for-1-5m-project/

And this one is a win-win for Milamber as well as for Peter. We did the introduction to Pearson’s brand Prentice Hall Business which resulted in getting Peter’s first book published. The reality is that quality and talent always shine brightly.

I  have to say having worked with sales people and bid writers through-out my career this is one of those books that really is a ‘must have’ for anyone serious about winning proposals, but its more than that. Let us say you are a manager or director of a company and have to write something in order to help persuade someone or a group of people to come around to your way of thinking – this book nails on the head all sorts of ways of doing that practically and easily.

Peter sent me the early manuscript of the book and frankly I found that I learnt a huge amount about how to write more persuasively, and succinctly to get across key points to a potential buyer or audience. I found that I started using his tips and lessons in day to day written materials not just proposals but e-mails and letters to colleagues and staff, and I found that the message I wanted to deliver was getting to through to them more effectively.

This is a little gem and we have already decided to help Peter further – we have offered to build a whole series of virtual tools around this topic.  

For more information on Peter’s book please go to:

 http://www.persuasivewriting.co.uk/

(London, 10 March, 2011): The Milamber Digital Consortium has secured a substantial grant from the Technology Strategy Board to build a next-generation Digital Learning Marketplace (DLM) on which to develop and test-drive a number of state-of-the-art innovations in the use of metadata.

The grant was awarded following a successful application to the Technology Strategy Board’s “Metadata – Increasing the Value of Digital Content” funding competition.

The Consortium consists of Pearson Education, Milamber , Redtray, 2SMS, Lifecycle Software, Ashridge Business School and Warwick University.

The aim of Milamber Digital is to create a platform to help increase the value of business learning content to creators, publishers and consumers by making such material more accessible and useable. A key goal is to render digitized learning content into standards-compliant formats for mobile delivery in an app store type model.

“What’s stopping publishers from unlocking the full potential of their learning assets?” asks Andy Hasoon, CEO of Milamber and leader of the Consortium. “A babel of formats, protocols and platforms that do not talk to each other”, he says. And, he adds, “the difficulties of protecting intellectual property….and getting paid”.

The member companies of the Consortium are charged with developing a set of tools to deal with these and other roadblock issues, including:

• A set of extensible translation modules to allow content using various proprietary metadata formats to conform to common internet formats based around recognized standards.
• Support for digital watermarking and fingerprinting of multimedia assets to allow tracking of intellectual property rights  even when content is broken down and repackaged.
• Provision of reliable semantic search by exploiting detailed metadata, meaning that a DLM user can quickly find relevant material and create tailor-made training content with ease.
• Developing a licensing and rights registry for IP. This will allow owners to submit metadata for ownership and licensing rights in the DLM as well as the tracking, billing and payment of appropriate royalties to content owners.

The total cost of the project is £1,476,000 and the £737, 000 Technology Strategy Board grant is payable over an eighteen month period for delivery against Consortium defined milestones.

The Milamber Digital project begins on 1^st May 2011.

End

Note to editors

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org.  

1) Capsule para:

The goal of the DLM is to enable educational publishers to increase the value of their content by developing and deploying key innovations in metadata use. These include searching for content in disparate formats, managing rights and paying royalties.

For further information contact:

Andy Hasoon, Milamber Group Ltd

Email: andy.hasoon@milambergroup.com

Tel: +44 (0) 247 623 6971

Here is the article that TSB released to announce the overall funding for the competition.

http://www.innovateuk.org/content/press-release/new-research-and-development-will-address-challeng.ashx

Here is part of the Press Release – you can find the full release at:

http://www.skillsoft.com/about/press_room/press_releases/February_15_11_50Lessons.asp

NASHUA, N.H., February 15, 2011 – SkillSoft, a leading SaaS provider of e-learning and performance support solutions for global enterprises, government, education and small to medium-sized businesses, today announced the acquisition of the assets of 50 Lessons Limited, a provider of leadership video content that helps organizations around the world develop their employees by leveraging the power of story-based lessons. SkillSoft intends to market this video content under the 50 Lessons brand name as a distinct SkillSoft content collection that can be licensed standalone or fully integrated with SkillSoft’s Leadership Development Channel. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The 50 Lessons Library, comprising over 1,000 video business lessons from over 200 world-class business leaders, is an important tool for companies looking to develop and deliver highly engaging and effective leadership programs. Many of the speakers featured in the 50 Lessons Library are well-known, C-level executives from around the globe including Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, Prof. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, Anders Dahlvig from IKEA, and Neville Isdell from the Coca-Cola Company.

“50 Lessons naturally complements SkillSoft’s Leadership Development Channel by adding the element of story-telling, which is considered by many to be a very effective and engaging technique for broadening business perspective,” said John Ambrose, SkillSoft’s senior vice president of strategy, corporate development and emerging business. “More and more organizations are recognizing the obvious benefits of video as a tool to engage and inspire their global workforces.”

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On a personal note I just wanted to say, ‘Well Done!’ to Matt Burr for his commitment over the past 18 months in leading the company as CEO and working extremely hard to get this deal executed.

50 Lessons on the electronic billboard’s of Times Square!

50 Lessons in Times Square, NYC

One of my favourite TV Shows was the West Wing and in it are two characters acted by Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff – playing the parts of the President’s Speech Writers – for me they were the hero’s of the show. I remember watching the President played by Martin Sheen deliver the State of the Union speech and how the different audiences emotions and reactions are being measured real-time as he delivers this vital oratory masterpiece written by Richard and Rob’s characters.

Recently, when David Cameron delivered his speech without notes but from memory, the nation was almost shocked that someone had the skill to deliver a speech without notes or aide de memoires.

So from time to time as I am fascinated by what makes the art of communication truly effective I look around the internet to see the latest views on what makes great speeches successful and recently found this article:

JFK’s inaugural speech: Six secrets of his success
By Max Atkinson published 18th Jan 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12215248

So having read it I look up who this Max Atkinson the Author of the article is as I am intrigued? And get a link to Max’s blog – I click on his blog…..
http://maxatkinson.blogspot.com/

and aside from being mesmerized by the musings and content on speeches within the blog, one of the things that hits me is that Max is literally down the road 10 miles from me in Wells, Somerset. Small World.

I now enter a world of insight into what makes great speeches, how to harness the power of words and to deliver exemplary oratory. Not only that by going to the blog I get to link to a host of other experts like Andrew Dlugan, Charles Crawford, Kethy Reiffenstien etc. Within a few minutes I have accessed a whole host of ideas, lists, tips, analysis, thesis, and examples on what makes great speeches.

The question that lingers as I digest this material is this………how to synthesize these musings into some useful, into something coherent, that is comprehensive and useable and can be applied on a day to day basis? That is something we are working on…….in the meantime I finish my tour of great oratory by listening to one of the most amazing speeches of the last century:

In my job I get to meet some fascinating people and this week was no exception. I met with Dr Liz Miller author of Mood Mapping an extraordinary lady who has her finger literally right on the pulse of the mood of you and your team.

Dr Liz Miller

Liz is a GP, psychologist and occupational health physician and works with companies and individuals to help people better manage their mental and physical health.

She first trained as a neurosurgeon until becoming ill with bipolar disorder. It was through that experience of managing her own mental states that she developed mood mapping and her strategies for improving moods.

She co-founded the Doctors’ Support Network with Dr Soames Michelson in 1995, took part in Stephen Fry’s 2006 TV documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and was voted Mind Mental Health Champion in 2008.

In 2009 MacMillan published MOODMAPPING™. She currently see’s clients, run’s workshops and is writing her second book Mood and People.

So prior to meeting Liz I realized that whenever I walk into an office the first thing I ascertain is the mood of the people – whether the place has a buzz or as in numerous cases whether it feels ‘dead’.

So what Liz has to talk about resonates with me personally i.e. ‘Mood Mapping’ provides a simple graphical way to quickly capture the mood within a team, department or enterprise.

This data can then be used by the leadership team within any company or organisation to make evidence-based decisions on how to improve mood, morale and productivity.

Whether an organisation is expanding or downsizing, a workforce with a positive mental attitude and an ability to combat stress can be a critical success factor for business improvement. What I found out is that effectively Mood mapping can help improve the mood of employees in a cost-effective and easy-to-implement way.

With Liz’s methodology she provides you with numerical data, therefore, mood mapping can be an important addition to a companies key performance indicators, balanced scorecard and/or executive dash board. What’s more it is important to keep on top of the ‘mood’ of your organization so Liz’s team can provide you with a view of the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual mood of your whole organisation at the same time as ensuring individual employee privacy.

They tailor the mood mapping tools to best meet the unique culture of each organisation and can undertake the analysis of the data and provide reports as an outsourced service and / or train your staff to carry out this task themselves so Liz and her team provide second line support for them only.

Think about it – if you and your team are in a positive mood and feeling good you can do anything. In fact its the strap line of this blog. But as leaders how many times have we ignored morale, at the cost of productivity.

On the front of Liz’s web site is this simple diagram – and for me it hit the mark and showed what she is all about!

www.moodmapping.co.uk

I started thinking about how if you could harness the mood of an organisation in a positive way then all sorts of things would happen, including increases in productivity, and profitability being the by product. Seriously, what organisation can not afford that sort of positive change in this climate!

For those in the UK that have not seen this advert by Kaplan – please do – a very powerful message about adapting learning for today’s digital world.

Mike Johnson Chairman of the FutureWork Forum has just finished a mega survey of 7000+ young people (aged 19-29) across Europe and he and his partners have now released their report – and the results show that our Next Generation of employees are in trouble!

50% of those interviewed where students  i.e. young people with college or university education and they can’t get work experience – As one put it “No Experience = No Job. No Job = No Experience.” A vicious circle that needs to be broken.   

Schools, Colleges and Universities are teaching young people for jobs that have vanished or not applicable in the real world today. What they are being taught has no practical application in getting them employed or skills that can not be used once employed!

What’s more these young passionate, smart NEXT generation graduates are giving up on mainstream employment and deciding to work for themselves. This is very positive in itself but raises other issues. Firstly, there is not enough funding to help young people try and secdonly, we don’t teach our young people how to succeed in setting up on their own. We must put in place the resources to help them succeed and thrive when they choose this course of action.     

If you would like a copy of the FutureWork report please visit this URL: http://www.futureworkforum.com/pdf/NEXTReport2010.pdf

As to the educating of our young people on this major issue of self reliance – Mike Johnson, Chairman of FutureWorks is lobbying about it currently, with release of his new highly practical book “Starting Up On Your Own.”!

Click to link to Amazon

We need more people like Mike who are prepared to help educate our young people with practical, no nonsense advice on how you can successfully get your business up and running and more importantly make it sustainable over the long term.   

You can find out more about Mike at: http://www.mikeajohnson.com/

I recently met with Spencer Holmes who is the managing director of Global Project Leaders Ltd. He runs projects, trains and consults globally on the subject. His passion is for helping project managers develop the resilience required to thrive in an increasingly pressurised world. His company can be found at www.projectleaders.com

Anyway Spencer manged to convince me to take Psychometric test for Project Managers at  http://www.thepsychometrictest.com/

At the end of answering some simple questions (truthfully) you are given a report that assess your personal potential for project leadership.  The facets that are measured are shown in this diagram:

How is it then that despite the fact that this sort of training has been around for donkey’s years, I keep hearing very similar stories about project disaster (blame the training maybe?).It seems that, whilst technical training is important, it is maybe the wrong tool to solve modern project problems, or at least an incomplete tool kit. My exposure to off-shoring in the flat world suggests that project challenges are less practical than political, less mathematical than multicultural.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerholmes

Voting at Learning without Frontiers has now opened and I’d invite you all to vote…. for Makrini!

PIXELearning are constantly talking about Makrini™. Why? Becasue its a great product developed for Global Novations, a US provider of Diversity and Inclusion, Marketing and Talent optimization services. Makrini™ is a breakthrough approach to diversity and inclusion training, being the first-ever gaming simulation on the topic.

Being the first of its kind the species of Makrini™ are wanting to get noticed, hence its entry for Innovation Award at Learning without Frontiers.  For information about voting please see below.

Aimed at a wide corporate audience the simulation tasks the learner with a mission to a commercial space station where diversity and inclusion skills must be applied to interact productively with intergalactic associates, and to attain better business results than competitors.

It’s a learning simulation of self discovery based on the learners own preferences, decisions, critical thinking, opinions and beliefs.

The key learning objectives of Makrini™ are:

• Increase personal diversity awareness and inclusive behaviors.
• Increase understanding of the business impact of diversity
• Recognize one’s own perceptions and biases that may limit inclusive behaviors
• Develop the knowledge and skills to build solid business relationships across dimensions of diversity.

VOTING

There are two ways to vote for Makrini™.

For the UK: Using the code [MAKRINI] cast your votes via SMS or Skype SMS* to 07950 080 667

For the USA: Using the code [MAKRINI] cast your votes via SMS or Skype SMS* to +44 7950 080 667

Multiple votes from the same number for the same finalist will count as a single vote, so no funny business ok?

*Votes are charged at your standard network rate and votes the UK may attract an additional network charge. To make it fair each mobile vote from outside of the UK will count as 2 votes. If you’re outside the UK you may find it’s cheaper to use Skype.

Award for INCLUSION: Worlds of Makrini, Global Novations, USA [MAKRINI]

Please circulate ! 

If you want to see Makrini in action e-mail helen.axe@pixelearning.com