While suffering from the unavoidable nasty winter cold this month, I have spent many cozy hours on my couch rereading the Harry Potter canon. I’ve been mulling over all the examples the Harry Potter story offers of how motivated people can create learning opportunities and collaborate to accomplish team goals. ... [more]
OpenSesame is a new tech company, and we’re embracing social media outreach to connect with the elearning community. It’s my job to put OpenSesame in front of the people who can benefit from participating in our marketplace. I do that primarily through blogs and social networks, as well as direct outreach.My participation in the elearning community has helped me understand some principles of what people do successfully to engage their audiences. I am not an expert, but I’m happy to share what converts me from an impression to a click.Sell without selling. ... [more]
The OpenSesame crew is proud to announce the newest feature in our elearning marketplace: a SCORM video player, which unlocks millions of hours of high-quality video content for use in enterprise learning management systems. We understand that organizations need to track learners' participation and performance to meet compliance requirements and understand their employees' skills. ... [more]
I am celebrating Valentine’s Day with a love letter to the elearning community, in appreciation of the group’s collective willingness to share resources, exchange ideas and encourage peers. ... [more]
At OpenSesame, we love the saying "eat the dog food". This is particularly appropriate in our office because our CEO, Don Spear, was previously an executive and cofounder of PetSmart. Of course, it doesn’t actually mean that he wants us to eat kibble.Don wants us to try out the products, tools and techniques that our customers use in order to do a better job meeting our customers’ needs. It’s great advice.I eat the dog food by testing applications like Yammer, taking the courses that are for sale in our marketplace and testing out demos of learning management systems and authoring tools. ... [more]
I spent last week in San Jose with the OpenSesame team for the American Society of Training & Development’s annual TechKnowledge conference, enjoying beautiful weather, great discussion and connecting names (or more likely, Twitter handles) with faces. OpenSesame looks forward to conferences for the opportunity to connect with the elearning community to better understand how we can unlock elearning and create connections between buyers and sellers in our marketplace. ... [more]
I work for a technology company, which means that I’m surrounded by genius software developers who actually wear “There is no place like 127.0.0.1" shirts. I’m not a developer, so I’m usually on the outside of the cool kids club when it comes to discussing Drupal, CSS, modules and so forth.But the computer discussion reached a new technical high last Friday when my colleague Brian (at left) told us that he’d be spending the weekend at a LAN party. ... [more]
Social media has made me better at my job. Not just because it's part of my job to use it, but because social networks make it easy to surround myself with new ideas, great information and useful resources. In this day and age of doing more with less, social networks enable the (free) creation of a strong personal learning network.A PLN is a self-generated group of people who share information and ideas, provide mentorship and advice and work together to solve problems. ... [more]
eLearning is making education accessible to anyone. This is no surprise to anyone who devotes their days to connecting professionals to learning and development opportunities. But what we’re talking about now is a free, world class, self-paced high school or even college education.Sure, the free option means that you don’t have a certificate or degree to add to your resume, but you have knowledge, skills and abilities that connect you to success in the modern world. For adult learners, this is your opportunity to supplement your knowledge on the topics you skipped in college. ... [more]
This spring, the OpenSesame crew will travel all over the country to connect with the elearning community and fulfill our own professional development goals, and we want to meet you!If you’re hitting the road to attend any of these events, please connect with us. ... [more]
