We’ve been invited by a client that serves synagogues to put together a series of quick-hit webinars based on common problems their constituency has with technology. We’re still not sure which will be the most welcomed by the community, so I wanted to open up to you for your vote. In exchange, we’ll host a presentation on the same topic for no charge. You can post your thoughts by clicking the comments link here or by contacting me directly.

Which would you rather learn?

• Put your first video on YouTube
• Create your first podcast
• Start your first blog
• Understand search engine optimization
• Create a Facebook group/cause
• Put photos on Flickr
• Understanding RSS
• Effective e-mailing

Thanks for your vote!

One of the most frequent questions we get at Talance is, “Why does social media matter to my nonprofit?” Well, it matters for many reasons, which I regularly expand on in these pages.

N-TEN is also trying to address the relevance in a new curriculum project called We Are Media. Here’s a blurb from a release I received on my Facebook account:

We are Media is NTEN’s Social Media curriculum project where the community is the curriculum! We invite you to join the conversation each week as roll we out a new theme related to social media and nonprofits.

The first module looks more in depth at social media any why it does (or doesn’t) make sense to fold it into a social media strategy for a nonprofit organization’s overall communications plan.

It’s an interesting initiative, and one that aims to provide some guidance for a question that’s commonly asked but not so commonly answered.

Now’s your chance to introduce yourself: two events are coming up where I’ll be making presentations online.

One is a show and tell event about our online learning services, which you can catch on the Nonprofit Technology Network (N-TEN), a good network you should get to know anyway.

The other is a web primer on what a CMS (content management system) is, why it matters and how to budget for a new one:

Both are free and open to the public, so sign up, pass the word and say hi.

If you’ve heard the words “Drupal” and “Joomla” but think they may be ancient tribes, have I got the online seminar for you. Since one of the most common questions I hear from a potential client is “What is a CMS, anyway?” we’ve put together a webinar to answer just this question.

Sign up on our website (for free), and you can learn:

• What a CMS (content management system) is and what it does (hint: it’s a great way for you to manage your website)
• Why it’s important for nonprofits
• Advice on how to budget for a CMS project
• And more!

Hope to connect with you May 20 at 2 p.m. Eastern.

http://www.talance.com/event-registration

According to an article in today’s New York Times, 500,000 kids in America take classes online, with many of those receiving all all their schooling from virtual public schools.

That’s right, public schools. These programs receive funding from the state, and they’re not considered home-schooling.

This calls for more people who know and understand how to use online learning. The same article says a state audit in Colorado “found that one school, run by a rural district, was using four licensed teachers to teach 1,500 students across the state.”They’re spread enormously thin, and there’s got to be a better push for education of online educators.

Despite my earlier report citing the Sloan Foundation that e-learning is catching on, not everyone is seeing the same trends. A Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CPID) survey from the UK found just the opposite online learning is on the decline.

This report from Martin Belton at Learning Technologies gives his findings on why e-learning initiatives fail, namely significant costs and high attrition rate. Still, it’s hard for organizations to deny 24/7 access, flexibility and elimination of travel costs. He also gives his top 10 ways for projects to succeed, very much worth reading. Here they are in short form:

1. Link training to performance reviews
2. Make managers accountable
3. Provide accreditation
4. Set time limits
5. Track performance
6. Ensure content is relevant
7. Provide formal rewards
8. Create a social dimension to e-learning
9. Launch a communications campaign
10. Tell them it’s important!

Even small universities can reach large student audiences through online learning programs. Take, for example, the University of Illinois, which has an exemplary online learning program and wants to reach 10,000 new online students by next year, according to a report this week by NPR.

Nowadays, many colleges require students to take at least one course online, so it’s little wonder that U. of Illinois, which has a relatively small on-campus student population, is looking for a new way to break ahead with this new learning.

The students, many of whom are plugged in 24/7 anyway, aren’t the hiccup to adoption. It’s the teachers. Learning the basics of podcasts, blogs and Second Life is a crash course for many of the educators, who are the same ones who teach in-person classes. The U of I puts teachers through a tech-ed bootcamp before turning them loose on the online sector of their students.

This makes me think the market for e-learning-only educators will continue to shrink as everyone becomes an expert in e-learning.

To that end, here are some handy tools that I share with the educators I work with so they can learn more about teaching online:

Illinois Online Network
http://www.ion.illinois.edu/Resources/tutorials/overview/index.asp

Simple Course Planning Worksheet
http://www.talance.com/planning.html

Weblogs, part II: A Swiss Army website?
http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Winter2002/feat.weblogging2.html

Second Life Education Wiki
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Education Podcast Network
http://www.epnweb.org/

A fascinating report from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation indicates that more educators are finally catching on to online learning. The study indicates that “Online enrollments have been growing substantially faster than overall higher education enrollments.”

To wit:

• Almost 3.5 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2006 term
• The 9.7 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.5 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
• Nearly twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2006.

Heading the curve are 2-year colleges, which have the highest growth rates and account for over one-half of all online enrollments for the last five years. Surely because online learning is extremely valuable for working adults, who can squeeze the lessons into their work schedules.

I’ve been working in e-learning for five years, and battling skepticism has been an uphill struggle. It’s good to hear that more people are loosening up to the notion.

But as an online course software developer, I still see huge roadblocks with many of the online learning platforms. They can be ungainly, unintuitive, quirky and expensive. Especially in early days of adoption, we find making a usable system is paramount.

For more reading, listen to this related report from NPR.