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<![CDATA[moodLearning]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/https://blog.moodlearning.com/favicon.pngmoodLearninghttps://blog.moodlearning.com/Ghost 4.11Mon, 16 Aug 2021 18:40:32 GMT60<![CDATA[Using Audiobooks in Teaching Philippine Literature]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/using-audiobooks-in-teaching-philippine-literature/60cebd1d8b0c2506dd74e2d6Sun, 20 Jun 2021 04:02:27 GMTUsing Audiobooks in Teaching Philippine LiteratureUsing Audiobooks in Teaching Philippine Literature

Something good happened to me during the pandemic. Audiobooks.

Since I had already purchased some equipment for my online classes--a microphone, a webcam--I decided to record an audiobook of the Philippine short stories that I loved.   I did not intend to make it according to some boring lesson plan, as most students are allergic to anything required for classes, but something to be enjoyed, like a piece of music or a movie.  Literature, my philosophy goes, is something to be enjoyed, not rammed down students’ throats like bitter medicine.  The audiobook entitled Philippine Short Story Masterpieces was designed for delight, and test my skill as a story-teller.  I acted as a curator to a gallery of some of the greatest short stories written by Filipinos, at least according to my lights.

I started recording in September and sent it to a friend in UP Diliman who had a team of young people to clean it up and edit it and add transition music.  I finished two months later--all 20 hours of it, 23 short stories with special focus on representative works of National Artists, including my personal critical introduction to each short story.  By January when I learned that I was to teach 4 classes of Philippine literature online, I decided to try it out on my first batch of guinea pigs.

I decided to use the audiobook I’d made only as resource for my students’ final paper.  During the first 2 months I went through the motions of discussing literary selections on a thematic basis--from the self as defined by memory and the past, to relationships within the family, graduating on to love stories and the definition of a national consciousness, the circles of ideas getting wider and wider and ending on a cosmic scale by tackling Filipino religion and spirituality--all through a lens refracted by Philippine poems, essays, and stories.  However, all the story texts from these themes I cherry picked from my audiobook anthology.  By the final month, my students were already familiar with the text of ¼ of the stories in the audiobook, stories that we had already discussed in my online classes.

For their final requirement, I wanted breadth, a historical view of the Filipino experience based on the great short stories of the 20th century.  Depth had already been tackled in the regular sessions, but they would now have to swim for themselves across the 20th century sea of Phil short stories in English.  Enter the audiobook recorded by moi: Phil Short Story Masterpieces.

Before I proceed to tell you how my students took to the experience of listening to an audiobook instead of wallowing in longer durations of zoom fatigue, let me tell you some technological convergences that made me decide to use audiobooks for teaching, especially during the pandemic.

Eight years ago, when I moved to Manila to teach at La Salle, I noticed how almost half of the students walking on campus were plugged in to their cellphones, listening to music.  At first I was a skeptic, thinking that technological gadgets like cellphones were a shallow implement that distracted the dumb young generation from the depth of experience that I so cherished: reading books.  But then urban reality slapped me in the face: kapow! I was faced with three to four-hour traffic jams that saw me cramped inside an SUV van while trying to read a book, my eyeballs jerking with every jolt, all resulting in indescribable headache and a wish to go back to the backwaters of Samar where I came from.  What saved me during these traffic jams, what kept me sane, were audiobooks.  Instead of reading, I started listening, to books that I downloaded from the internet and put in my phone files for traffic listening--including those thick, dense novels called classics that I never got around to reading--War and Peace by Tolstoy, Moby Dick by Melville, Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, and even the first two volumes of Marcel Proust.  Sad to say, they were all foreign books--no Philippine titles.

Eight years ago was also the start of the audiobook boom--in America, in Europe, especially Germany--but not in the Philippines.  Two things made audiobooks come to the fore--the ubiquity of cellphones, and streaming/downloading from the internet.  In the past, audiobooks were inconvenient because they were stored in tapes that came in several volumes and which you had to eject and turn over while listening  during a road trip.  Audiobooks then were associated with blind people opting not to read Braille with their fingers.  Now the digital age had made it possible for a 60-hour audiobook version of War and Peace to be stored in your cellphone and the level of artistry and performance has attracted even famous actors to make dead letters on the page come alive through the human voice.

In the past ten years, audiobook sales have been consistently going up--by an increment of about 15% every year.  Compare this to the consistent decline of sales of print books and even ebooks at a rate of 20% decline every year.  (Fewer and fewer students are checking out print books from the library). Half of the buyers of audiobooks nowadays are young people, not visually challenged old fogeys like me.  Clearly there is a demographic shift in the consumption of literature going on, and as literature teachers, no matter how hard we cling on to that dog-eared copy of the novel we loved in college, we cannot disregard the fact that the times, indeed, are a-changing.  If, in my abstract I said that audiobooks are the wave of the future, I say it’s high time for us to ride the wave.

So what did my students say about their audiobook experience?  For almost all of them, it was their first time to listen to an audiobook, so they started like me in an attitude of skepticism.  I had asked them to write very short capsule reviews for each story in the audiobook anthology, ending with their choice of Top 10, with explanation on why they liked them.  This was to make them exercise critical judgment, not merely to passively listen.  Only 3 out of 180 had a previous experience of listening to an audiobook.  Here are some relevant comments ranging from the cautiously sober to the over-the-top exercise of academic flattery:

"I want to point out that this was the first time I've tried listening to an audiobook and it very much felt like a podcast that I have tried before. I had to adjust at first because I was more of a visual  learner/reader but after listening to about one to two stories, I already got used to it and was able to multitask while listening to the various pieces. I was pleasantly surprised because of how effective and convenient the medium is. I also enjoyed how each story was narrated because there are portions in each story which was better heard than simply read. I was easily able to pick up the emotions of some of the characters simply based on the tone of the reader which served as a helpful guide in navigating some of the confusing and non-linear stories. Despite being a paid audiobook, I would highly recommend this to other students because there are many Filipino short stories out there that need to be heard and appreciated."

And another one:

"I would definitely recommend this to other students because not only do I find it more effective than reading, but it is also convenient at times. I sometimes find my eyes hurting when looking at a screen for too long. I do not need to look at a screen when listening to an audiobook. Audiobooks are also good for those who cannot bother to move their eyes from left to right reading. Overall, I find listening to this audiobook better than reading the short stories themselves. Not only does it bring nostalgia when stories used to be read to me, but it is also effective at setting the mood and tone for the reader and can be done during commute at the MRT/LRT."

The most florid review was this one:

"Being stuck and saddened by the ongoing lockdown in these trying times, I find our audiobook to be a breath of fresh air and a sweet aroma to my heart as the stories are embedded with a roller-coaster series of emotions and Filipino cultures. Starting off with the first story, I was already hooked and attracted to the romantic yet sad story as it slowly captures my heart."

And so on and so forth.  Already my audiobook of Philippine Short Story Masterpieces released three months ago has more than 60 reviews online, and if I believe what my students wrote there I would say I deserve to be cast up to a heaven for literature teachers.

I must however say that like any art form, audiobooks are not for everyone.  Two of my students expressly said they did not like the experience and still preferred the written text.  Toward this end, I decided to include a free accompanying text, to be bundled with every download, all at 300 pesos.  The text will also be convenient to use by teachers who might decide to use particular selections for classroom discussion.  This is cheaper than any anthology or traditional textbook that I know of.

I was so inspired by this vanity project that after finishing the audiobook I went on to record Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo to see if I was up to the dramatic challenge of making Rizal’s novels come to life.  This was followed by two more volumes of Contemporary Philippine Short Stories, this time covering only the last 30 years.

My friend in UP decided to create an online platform for my audiobooks, and bought an exclusive domain on the internet called “literature.ph”.  Please visit it.  It is meant to make educational materials in our country accessible to teachers and students wherever they may be.  At first I felt lonely because my audiobook was the only title there, but since then we have been campaigning for other Filipino writers to put their works there either as audiobooks or ebooks.  Already I have been joined there by Eugene Evasco, the writer of Philippine children’s stories, and he was able to get showbiz celebrities like Eugene Domingo and Cherry Pie Picache to turn his stories into audiobooks.  It's not exactly a wave yet, but we’ve started to surf it.

Come join us.  Let us catapult Philippine literature towards a future where students will still find it in them to hold Phil literature close to their hearts.  If you are a literature teacher, lead your students to the water so they can drink for themselves.  Better yet try it out yourself first.  If you are a writer, think of how your literary works can reach more people during the digital age.

Join us in our campaign.  Literature.ph.

With apologies to the Department of Tourism, I’d like to end by saying: “Pilipinas, Tara Na!”

<![CDATA[Checking plagiarism]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/checking-plagiarism/5a64426904fcf504c6991f19Fri, 03 Jul 2020 13:07:21 GMTChecking plagiarism

Checking plagiarism

Plagiarism--does it ring a bell?

Intellectual dishonesty such as plagiarism comes in many shapes and forms. Brazenly copying of someone else’s piece and blatantly passing it up as one’s own work is an easy way to submit a project. Sure, it is easy to plagiarize but these days, with technological advances such as google, it's also easier to detect plagiarized work. It’s the more sophisticated forms involving rephrased (but remain uncited) materials or materials sourced from the analog world that makes plagiarism hard to detect for electronic tools against copied work.

Fortunately, for as long as the submitted material is electronic, there’s always a way to determine whether a submission is plagiarized or not. You can also look at readability levels and sentence construction. Or examine specific phrases to compare with other materials previously submitted by other students.

What if the student has no prior submissions? In this case, you can compare his submitted work with the materials submitted by his fellow students as well as compare it with the vast amount of materials available online. Somehow, the rater or the teacher must have the confidence in his own ability to flag plagiarized work.

Such confidence (or lack of it) is only probabilistic. At what percentage of the whole document would prove conclusive that it is plagiarized? 10%, 49%, 55%, 70%? The higher the percentage of similarities between the submitted document and other previously submitted documents (whether online or those submitted by his fellow students), the stronger is the teacher’s confidence that the submission is plagiarized. It’s the lower numbers that may prove to be rather tricky – and it’s never an exact science.

Like any probabilistic tools, plagiarism-detection apps are bound to yield either false positive results telling us there’s a likelihood of plagiarism where there’s none or false negative results showing no plagiarism when there’s one in fact. (See, for instance, this piece from Inside Higher Ed.)

Hence, even more important than one’s reliance on plagiarism-detection apps or tools, is the engagement of a teacher with students. Processes or systems can be put in place where students do not have to plagiarize any material. Do you see gradual progress between this version and the later versions? Or do you see a sudden improvement in a student’s “eloquence” that may need a second look at his work?

This is the kind of context where plagiarism detection is properly put. Using moodLearning anti-plagiarism (mLaP) tool, for instance, one at least has the ability to automate the routine part of screening for copied parts of submitted document. Advantages include (see also details here):

Checking plagiarism

  • Unlimited number of users. Unlike many other commercial services, the mLaP Service does not limit the number of users. It comes bundled with the service contract with moodLearning.

  • Combined power of major search engines. Using the results from major search engines like Google, Bing, and others, the mLaP Service searches the Internet for similar documents to be compared with student submitted documents, to check for possible plagiarism.

  • Integrated search. The mLaP Service is embedded right in the settings of Assignment submission, thus avoiding the added task of submitting or cutting-and-pasting student papers in third-party online portals.

  • IP Control. The partner institution keeps the control or ownership of intellectual property (IP) of submitted documents from its constituents. These files do not leave the institution's installation.

  • Native search engine. In addition to the combined power of major search engines, the mLaP Service has its own powerful network search engine (moodLearning Search) that can be used to index contents found within a particular network or domain.

  • Privacy support. The mLaP service provides privacy support to submitters of documents.

Compared with the leading plagiarism scanner in the market, mLaP cannot be far behind either.

Checking plagiarism

Do you think an anti-plagiarism service like mLaP needs to be integrated into your own learning management system? Talk to us at moodLearning.

<![CDATA[We’re Online Cheaters All (Or Not!)]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/were-online-cheaters-all-or-not/5ef1ce397f9738760f6eb73fThu, 25 Jun 2020 00:11:23 GMTWe’re Online Cheaters All (Or Not!)
Proctorial (proctorial.etraining.ph) - a platform for proctored online exams
We’re Online Cheaters All (Or Not!)

How and why do people cheat? Most (if not all) people would like to think of themselves as honest. But why are exams designed as if people are cheaters? How do otherwise honest individuals inevitably end up in certain situations in which they’re more likely to cheat? In an exam? Online exam?

For edtech practitioners and advocates like us at moodLearning, learning why we cheat might help us avoid the temptation of cheating or at least not help incentivize the behavior among ourselves. However, if the question is all about the hows and whys of cheating, we might just as well send you down the work of psychologist and behavioral economist Dan Ariely as a good place to start. There we'd learn more about things like feeling disconnected from the consequences or when our willpower is depleted, can lead us down to a cheater's path, however we put ourselves in high regard.

In any case, even after reading about the whys and hows of cheating, you still feel the need for a toolbox to help prevent cheating, especially in online exams, then you could put our work to good use. At moodLearning, we recognize that online cheating is a complex behavior. Yet, we definitely can help not incentivize it in at least one narrow area of online test taking.

What we propose is the use of an arsenal of measures, including technical, organizational, methodological, and behavioral--fine-tuning them according to the needs of specific exams for particular test-takers. Most of these measures could well fall outside the exam itself. Hence, the need to orchestrate the conduct collaboratively. The level of "strictness" would depend on what the exam exercise is all about, what goals to achieve, or how "trusting" the teacher or proctor is.

If you're on a moodLearning-supported learning management system, you have at your disposal at least all the technical measures indicated in this infographic:

We’re Online Cheaters All (Or Not!)
Measure to combat cheating on Proctorial

For instance, using Safe Exam Browser, you can implement an exam lockdown: only one access device is allowed, only one browser can be used (with only one tab available), only one screen allowed. You can force fullscreen and have printing, download, and clipboard disabled, cache cleared, or external storage device disallowed. If the test taker logs out, you may disallow re-entry. You can even force the test taker to signify adherence to an Honor Code.

We certainly do not recommend relying solely on technical means to thwart cheating. What competences do you expect to measure with the exam? What kind of people or professionals do you expect to come out of your training program and exams? While the technical measures would give you a semblance of "strictness", at the end of the day, what the exam is about and what it seeks to achieve are all that matter.

<![CDATA[Learning in the time of COVID-19]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/learning-in-times-of-covid-19/5e73824a7f9738760f6eb5deFri, 20 Mar 2020 00:49:41 GMT

It all came so fast. A virus that months ago didn't even have an official name, is now infecting hundreds of thousands of people and has become a global pandemic. In the Philippines, the COVID-19 disease triggered a Metro Manila-wide "community quarantine", which turned into a Luzon-wide "enhanced community quarantine" and, more ominously in some areas, an "extreme enhanced community quarantine". Now it's a national disaster and emergency, causing total lockdown, fear and anxiety (if not panic).

Learning in the time of COVID-19
#eLearning in COVID-19 times

Cancellation of classes ensued. Initially teachers were "forced" to hold online classes. Later, directives for online classes were themselves cancelled because, oh in case some people forgot, teachers and students have to prioritize their own safety and survival.

Pieces like "a quick guide on conducting online classes", "how to use Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom" and what-have-yous were passed around among teachers, grappling with the shock of "losing" the brick-and-mortar shop of a classroom due to a pandemic.

For teachers who have traditionally been conducting face-to-face classes, the mission to shift to online classes is rather daunting. They have to pour over tons of guides and how-tos. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a 32-page issue on "Moving Online Now: How to keep teaching during coronavirus". Consider this sampling of guides being passed around:

The struggle is real. As you can see, many of these documents have been hastily put together as a response to the crisis. That's not even saying anything on the "tech stuff" (trying out various video recording apps, video conferencing platforms, chat platforms, etc.) teachers and students have to grapple with. No doubt many of these otherwise face-to-face classes would largely succeed in completing their work online. As result of the exercise, some teachers would discover, love and embrace the power of online teaching and learning. But others could find themselves lost.

This is where our team at moodLearning would want to help. While we benefit from the increased demand of eLearning services, we empathize with those who are lost in translation. In moving from the physical classroom to the online, there's much to be done to ensure online learning isn't simply "pantakip-butas" to the academic calendar.

While the crisis, indeed, compels us to move online, there's an argument to be made that even in normal times, those predominantly face-t0-face classes could well use an online learning management system. It's not online vs. offline, and that "online" wins when there's a quarantine and lockdown. A better response to a crisis isn't going online only when there's COVID-19 (or goodness knows what else is in store for us) but to have the necessary infrastructure and thoughtful practice for online learning--even as we maintain residential classes during periods of "normalcy".

So moodLearning is here for the long haul.

<![CDATA[Corporate e-learning]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/corporate-training/5a64426904fcf504c6991f21Sun, 15 Sep 2019 10:00:03 GMTCorporate e-learning

Training is a mixed bag. Done badly, what a waste of resources and employees' time! Done so-so, still wasteful. Done right, it helps shore up the bottomline and empower personnel. Done correctly, it's also about deployment of company resources efficiently, in ways that help sustain the enterprise financially and organizationally.

Corporate e-learning

Money, money, money

A multinational partner revealed to us that before their eTraining program with us, they would spend about 8 million pesos for a single-product, two-day training involving sales people coming from different parts of the country. And that's just direct training cost for the event! Related expenses for preparations, materials, follow-ups, post-training monitoring are excluded from the computation.

With e-learning, costs related to travel, hotel venue and accommodation are reduced to zero. Materials are digitized, allowing re-use, fast distribution, and timely update.

While running an eTraining program could entail a substantial initial cost for acquiring an elearning system, transforming analog training materials into interactive materials, and training the trainers for online learning, such cost would pale in comparison to total cost associated with face-to-face instruction in traditional class or training room. Hands-down, e-learning is far more cost-effective than the traditional instruction.

In the end, not only is eLearning less costly, it is also greener. Not only does it help the bottomline, eLearning translates to "money" for the environment.

One of the biggest challenges to traditional face-to-face training is linking its modules to field performance metrics. Yes, a face-to-face instruction can be effective, arguably perhaps more effective than a one-time online course. But breaking the training down to elements that easily connect with how trainees actually behave in the real world is an issue. With corporate e-learning, however, trainees' knowledge and skills can be measured, monitored, updated, re-validated periodically via a learning management system (LMS) that's custom-built for company needs. You want to see if the trainees' selling skills have at least not degraded? Drill them using an eCoach-like functionality that enable them to upload an actual, on-field demo video of themselves playing the part. Not only is it more realistic, the activity is actually fun! It goes without saying that the same LMS functionality should enable mentors to rate their trainees' performance.

Sadly, much of training sessions in many institutions are treated largely as events rather than a sustained process of learning, empowerment, and capacity building. Assessments of learners have at best been confined to the training room and perhaps occasionally limited to a few spot checks in the field. With e-learning, training is best planned as continuous process of learning and relearning, validation and revalidation--all mediated by your LMS and connected to actual, monitored, updated performance in the field. As with any craft, mastery is key. And there's no better means to reach mastery than for mentors and learners to collaborate via an e-learning engagement.

Corporate e-learning

Planning and resource management

While the majority of learners in companies already have Internet access outside the workplace, the vastness of online materials can be a mixed blessing. It can either drown learners or truly empower them. With corporate e-learning via an LMS, corporate trainers and mentors can serve as curators of contents and resources, providing employees direction without being completely prescriptive.

Your e-learning platform can serve as launching pad for online learning, involving materials outside of the corporate environment. It's an ideal means for the cataloguing and sharing of resources and links to vetted in-house and online resources, giving employees and learners a nudge in the right direction and connecting them to corporate goals and values.

From a planning point of view, not only is the LMS a great organizational tool for creating and storing lesson plans centrally, it also enables greater collaboration and sharing of ideas between colleagues, and reduces duplication of work among trainers and mentors.

Your e-learning platform allows you to adapt quickly to change in the organization and the market. With your LMS, trainers and mentors can update lesson plans and collections of resources without starting from scratch each time, giving tremendous flexibility to training providers. Such flexibility extends to learners, who now could have so much of their attention and availability, training schedules, diverse styles of learning being well considered.

The millennials

Lastly, one of the less-talked about benefits of eLearning is how it is better suited for the millennial workforce. Today's employees work not just for money, but also to continually learn. With a traditional classroom learning environment, there are only a limited number of training programs that an employee could attend over any given time. With corporate eLearning, the knowledge is always available at the employee's disposal. This gives learners better access to courses they are interested in and not necessarily those that would benefit them at work. Not only does this benefit the learner in the end, but is also a terrific human resource mechanism to ensure employee retention. Businesses that enable access to valuable eLearning courses to their staff enjoy better loyalty from such employees who have a greater sense of accomplishment at their workplace.

So are you ready to care enough about training cost and efficiency? About sustaining training beyond the immediate training environment? About being in sync with the times and your people? Call us at moodLearning! It will be worth your time!

<![CDATA[Online Course Development]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/online-course-development/5a64426904fcf504c6991f15Fri, 09 Mar 2018 09:37:37 GMTOnline Course Development

Online Course Development

Unlike traditional face-to-face courses in physical classrooms, online courses entail labor-intensive development processes. Online course development is a collaborative enterprise among various talents (e.g., content providers, course developers, learning managers, videographers, graphic artists, illustrators, analysts). Team members must be in constant communication throughout the whole process to keep them on the same page. To help your team get to that page, here's a workflow consisting of six simple steps to guide you in developing an online course.

Online Course Development

1. Design/Plan

Planning or designing the course is perhaps the most crucial step in developing an online course. In planning the course, you must first begin with an end in mind. What do you want the students to learn at the end of the course? Create a big picture of your online course, then break it down into smaller chunks or modules. Arrange the modules according to your chosen instructional strategy and determine how long each module should take. Include in your plans an overview of all the activities in the course. By this time, you should already have an idea about the kind of audience you intend to reach. So you know how to pace the course well and improve on its "digestibility". Put together such plan and design in the form of a comprehensive course blueprint (sample here).

2. Module Scripts

Content providers can start writing the scripts of specific modules after creating the course blueprint. As you write the learning objectives for each module, indicate how you want your students to demonstrate competence based on specific learning objectives. Doing so communicates to the students what they should expect in the course. The modules must be readable, easily understandable; the relationship across modules also be made clear. A high quality online course would consider substantive interaction between students and teachers. A student might feel distant or unmotivated if the teacher's presence isn't felt throughout the course. Phrase module content such that it is interactive and motivational to encourage your students to participate. So your scripts must have these things well considered.

3. Lesson and Module Development

This is where developers have to focus on transforming the scripts and storyboards into media-rich lessons and modules. Having a good course blueprint is one thing. But without the actual skilled people who can wield "magic" on the materials and render them LMS-ready and fit for online consumption, your labors would be for naught. These lessons and modules have to be integrated into standards-based elearning packages as well that you can deploy to different learning management systems (LMS).

4. Quizzes and Evaluation

In some other workflow, you'll see this part being subsumed in the "development" stage. But I feel that this should be a stage on its own. This is the part wherein the teacher evaluates students’ mastery of the course. The evaluation part of the course is essential to assess its effectiveness. Exercises may be simple question-and-answers (Q&As), discussion prompts, essays, student presentations, etc. Make sure that the quizzes and other assessment exercises are consistent with the course objectives and the overall course design. You may provide incentives to students when they finish a quiz or an evaluation activity.

5. Testing

Before deployment, you will have to make sure that your product works perfectly well. Conduct a pilot test of the online course among the development team, consultants and beta testers (preferably students with similar or the same profile as those of the target audience). Test the product’s usability and its functionality on different browsers. Run a survey or a focus group discussion with your beta testers, and quiz them about the site's ease-of-use, the course's accessibility, its materials' readability. Make the necessary adjustments according to the comments of your testers.

6. Deployment and Monitoring

Once everything gets tested and ready, the course can finally be deployed to intended audience or students. Make room for improvements and be alert to student feedback on usability and revise the course elements accordingly. Direct solicitation of user feedbacks can be done. You may also monitor learning management system logs and activity reports. Set up discussion forums and survey form in the package to hear comments directly from the students themselves.

The line you see in the workflow illustration above is just made up for simplicity. In reality, there's no linear path to creating an online course. The steps are all inter-connected. A step tends to loop back to earlier steps. However complex the process may be, it's definitely not an impossible task. Talk to us at moodLearning. We'll help you get started with your online courses.

<![CDATA[Managing contracts]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/managing-contracts/5a64426904fcf504c6991f1cSat, 20 Jan 2018 10:44:00 GMTManaging contracts

When two organizations wish to do business with each other, a contract is needed to specify the activities both parties enter into and the terms by which they will deliver their parts of the agreement. Poorly phrased contracts can cost a company a huge amount of money over some technicality. Hence, even for small companies, managing these contracts might seem a big deal. But, imagine if you have to deal with tens or hundreds of contracts with suppliers and clients. Will you be able to keep track of deliverables and other terms of contracts? Will you be able to fulfill your obligations and ensure that your rights are enforced faithfully throughout the duration of the project or even beyond?

Managing contracts

Why Contract Management System?

Contracts ought not to be mysterious. Nor should be their management. These tenets can guide us in forging a better contract management system:

  • Business rules are effectively enforced. A contract management system minimizes errors that a company can make. Through such management, resources can be saved, and errors and potential penalties can be avoided. It enables the faithful adherence to business rules.

  • Risks are carefully assessed and managed. Legal, financial, procurement, and logistical risks need to be mitigated and managed to pave the way to greater profitability. In contract management, risk is an uncertainty of outcome, whether it's a positive opportunity or a negative threat. These are managed by identifying and controlling the factors that may have an impact on the fulfillment of the contract.

  • Requirements are duly complied with. Legal requirements, company policies, and client requirements are kept track continuously to ensure compliance to the deliverables at hand. Through a contract management system, the duties and responsibilities of both parties are efficiently enforced.

  • Expected revenue is accurately forecasted. Successful contract management reflects its impact on revenues, since it is through revenue forecasts that financial risks are assessed and ultimately managed.

  • Billing and collection are efficiently done. In dealing with multiple contracts, a company can't afford to let minute details slip through the cracks. Payables and receivables must be kept on the right track.

  • Intellectual properties (IP) are protected. Contracts must address the IP issues that are needed to run activities smoothly to make sure that they are done in a lawful manner.

  • Chances of renewal are improved. To ensure that contracts are tailored to the changes in a client's business, a contract renewal is often needed, and duly fulfilling your obligations may boost your way to success.

Taking stock of these tenets should permeat throughout the enterprise, observing them at every level of a contract lifecycle.

Contract Lifecycle

Contract lifecycle management is done in order to track and assess success factors in every stage of a contract's life cycle (from initiation to renewal to expiration). Each "stage" appears to have its own unique set of characteristics. At moodLearning, we tend to get rid of excess fats in the spirit of keeping our processes simple and our organization lean. Here's how we do it in terms of stages. These, however, can be customized by our clients to tailor to their needs.

Managing contracts

  • Assemble. All papers or documents relevant to the creation of a particular contract (e.g., business requirements from the client, previous similar contracts, etc.) are put together. This is preferably done through a document management system. The right references and expertise for the task must be assembled. The point person for this step would be someone from your support staff.

  • Create. A contract is created using a company template resulting from the cumulative experience in selling and supporting a particular company, product or service. New contracts need fresh input from business and project managers, especially on resources needed for better project estimates and project execution. It's also an opportunity to take a fresh look at pro forma clauses, terms and conditions. Special attention should be given to delivery schedules, reports, and dependencies.

  • Analyze. Information or data that are specifically important to the contract creation at hand are accounted for. Also considered are identified milestones, enforcible rights, and demandable obligations, etc. In this stage, inputs are needed from business and project managers.

  • Review and Revise, Approve and Sign. No such thing as instantly perfect document, contract or otherwise. Make sure that contracts are reviewed and revised. Then they must be approved and signed by the right people. A review workflow needs to be established beforehand. It is useful that these contracts be reviewed with a fresh eye that is familiar with business and competing products and services.

  • Implement. A duly signed and notarized contract document is sent to respective parties for implementation. At this stage, a document manager needs to validate the controlling copy of the contract whose project deliverables are communicated to the project managers on both the moodLearning and the client sides.

  • Track. Risks, deliverables, milestones, payments, and renewal or termination schedules are tracked. An alert system must also be developed especially for time-sensitive risks. Indicators are put in place to trigger renewal or archival of contracts. If the former, the cycle goes back to the Create and Analyze stages to check for qualitative contextual changes that may impact the terms of the contract.

In the end, contracts are only as good as those who abide by their terms or enforce them. But a tool like our Contract Management System can make all the difference in the ease with which we are governed by the contracts we enter into. Such system can help us monitor and abide by the terms of contracts more faithfully.

Talk to us at moodLearning if you feel you need help in managing your contracts.

<![CDATA[To SCORM or not to SCORM]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/to-scorm-or-not-to-scorm/5a64426904fcf504c6991f0fWed, 06 Sep 2017 02:55:29 GMTTo SCORM or not to SCORM

Some months ago, my colleague Kim wrote about SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) and gave us some useful tips on deploying SCORM packages for eLearning platforms. The reality, however, is that producing such learning packages remains heavily dependent on authoring applications that, although available off the shelf, still take some time for many organizations to master before they could produce respectable interactive packages. With high expectactions for many sectors to have the "nice and shiny" and the insistence of some folks on what their "brands" entail in the "look and feel" department of eLearning, lousy SCORM packages just won't cut it at all.

To SCORM or not to SCORM

The SCORM standard itself (perhaps more accurately, a collection of standards) is rather old. With its roots back in the 1990s in the U.S. Department of Defense's offline computer-based training, SCORM has evolved over years to be an online course deployment standard as well.* More recently, "rival" standards have emerged. "Experience API" ("xAPI", aka "Tin Can API"), for instance, came about to provide tracking for learning across content providers. Know more about xAPI here. xAPI's proponents waste no time reminding us of its many benefits.

Expectedly the politics around standards couldn't be less energetic. See, for instance, this post. For this blog, we'll try to stay out of it. It doesn't help that SCORM packages done using different authoring software are replete with quirks. In the able hands of some developers and project managers, however, these quirks do not have to be too annoying.

Still, for no small reasons, people are taking a long time to adopt to more advanced versions of the standard. Version 1 of xAPI came in 2013. Look where we are at with that right now!

One can make the argument that xAPI is still SCORM. But in the minds of old folks, SCORM is just their old stand-alone package (online or offline), oblivious to the need for its real-time trackability by learning managers and content providers. Truth be told, the people we talked to across industries, those who actually pay for the development of interactive materials, still do not find xAPI's functionalities compeling enough for them to shift away from the "classic" SCORM. While compatibility across learning management platforms is given lip service, most people in our melieu are content with their good-ol'-fashioned SCORM packages (on version 1.2, circa 2001) playing on their trusty learning management system (LMS).

So where does that leave us? One alternative to consider is to deliver lectures via videos. No interaction within the video itself? This much you see in the MOOCs^ scene these days, with providers as diverse as EdX, Coursera, and the like. Keep the videos short and have them interspersed with interactive activities. Otherwise, flat visuals are all you have. And for many courses this approach works. Unless you still feel the need for these short videos to be jazzed up with illustrations and graphics.

The problem with videos is that not that many people organic to the institution can do them well. What you often see are awkward people "acting" before the cam. Mostly we see talking heads. Obviously the alternative to the alternative is to have the video production outsourced to some media company, which in itself is no guarantee for good learning outcome.

The challenge doesn't end here. Added to SCORM, xAPI, and videos is the possible use of the Common Cartridge (CC) Standard. With CC, contents are supposed to be compatible with each other, regardless of which LMS you are using. Know more about CC here. There are other standards out there (see, for example, this roadmap), and using one does not necessarily mean the exclusion of the others. For instance, CC can use SCORM as part of its packaging. The differences between standards largely have to do with which aspects of the learning experience is emphasized.

So "to SCORM or not to SCORM"? To use an old (but tried and well-adopted) standard or to try a new promising one? Certainly not a simple either/or question. Which standard gets widely adopted and dominates eLearning, is partly a function of which tools get deployed widely. It's not necessarily about which standard is superior but which standard (or combination of standards) people find appropriate in their own contexts, given whichever tools are working "naturally" in the organization's workflow.

At the end of the day, learning managers do not always have the luxury of waiting for the better standards to emerge clearly as "winner" before they run eLearning. Deployment started yesterday and, today, there's more demand for interactive materials online.

Should you persist with the production SCORM packages for your organization, make sure you publish them in HTML5 format, as opposed to Flash. The fate of the later is dim. Google Chrome, for one, will end its support for Flash by December 2020. But HTML5 is well supported on various platforms; it's going to be around in the foreseeable future.

To SCORM or not to SCORM

Experimentation on the adoption of standards is not always a luxury for many but, to the extent feasible in our own contexts, it should be a duty for all of us. Standards are a means to an end. Insofar as we try out new things to be more efficient and effective, we experiment with new standards. It's a balance between "the usual" and taking eLearning to new heights.

We at moodLearning help our partners make informed decisions as to what standards to adopt. We also provide the requisite tech support services for you to accomplish your mission in eLearning.

<![CDATA[Why outsource tech services]]>

Left unchecked, information technology (IT) can be a runaway beast. Underdeveloped, IT infrastructure can be a waste of meager resources, as it nonetheless falls short of its intended impact on the business or organization. It is also an area of potential demoralization among the rank-and-file employees, who are left short

https://blog.moodlearning.com/why-outsource-tech-services/5a64426804fcf504c6991ef1Thu, 18 May 2017 07:25:25 GMTWhy outsource tech services

Why outsource tech services

Left unchecked, information technology (IT) can be a runaway beast. Underdeveloped, IT infrastructure can be a waste of meager resources, as it nonetheless falls short of its intended impact on the business or organization. It is also an area of potential demoralization among the rank-and-file employees, who are left short of the necessary business tools. A middle ground needs to be struck between "overly developed" IT Department with so much gears to play with on one hand and, on the other hand, an underfunded, under-prioritized group. Filling in the gaps between these two extremes is outsourced technology support. It is desirable for the following reasons:

With tech support outsourced, operational costs should be in your greater control. Tech service providers like moodLearning would generally offer predictable utilization structures like yearly plans. That's one cost directly associated with the tech side of your operations. No more overheads like staffing, overtime pays, extra utilities, software licenses. It means just one or a few line items in your budget or financial statement. Clear sight of cost, greater control.

Anecdotes abound on how business meetings turned into tech porn digressions. Refocus on business mission and functions. Technology is a necessity for most modern businesses but it shouldn't take too much of your energies. Obsolescence plagues technology, which probably is beyond what your organization can deal with efficiently. With tech support outsourced, technology management is left to those who should be better at dealing with its coming and going.

Better resources

The best and newest tech is often pricey. Watch your IT department make a pitch for it! The reality, however, is that the newest tech is not necessarily better or more appropriate for your organization. A vast majority of small and medium-sized businesses may not even need the latest technologies. What you might just need is a bundle of tech services that simplify the resource allocation for your organization. The bonus here is the wealth of experiences your well-vetted tech service providers have in dealing with challenges confronting your business.

No more than what you can chew

If you are like most small to medium companies, you only have a few staff designated as all-around tech experts. Infotech may not even be their main role or responsibility. It could be that you and your colleagues simply lack the knowledge and experience required to run increasingly complex technical systems. The employees at tech support companies like moodLearning eat, sleep and breathe technology. They provide enterprise-level IT support and knowledge. Take no more than what you can chew, and outsource tech services that are beyond your current expertise.

Risk management

While outsourcing tech services has its own risks, direct risks from technological obsolescence, equipment failures, human errors are better managed when tech management is left to experts. The relative value of one technological approach over another, costs, software, hardware, peopleware present a different dimension to enterprise risk management. Lengthy downtime, lost data, business disruptions due tech failures are risks that are best handled by people in the know, and they are not necessarily from your IT department.

As your business may only be starting to build its IT department, it is entirely plausible that such department is cheaper than a service contract with a tech service provider. But if you factor in the fact that IT departments tend to to seek department growth REGARDLESS of your organization's real needs, then in the mid- to long run, don't be surprised if you end up maintaining a mammoth. The cost of purchasing technology, maintaining it, tech failure recovery cost, the cost of retaining an internal IT team will skyrocket before you can be bothered to control it.

<![CDATA[eLibrary]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/elibrary/5a64426804fcf504c6991f07Fri, 21 Apr 2017 02:49:58 GMTeLibrary

When you hear the word "eLibrary", what comes to mind? Computers, internet, books? Materials stored electronically? All of the above. And more! An eLibrary is an amazing creation that enables you to do research and save time going to a real library and browsing a mountain of books.

An eLibrary is not meant to replace "real" physical libraries. But for schools, teachers, and students in remote areas, however, an electronic library can possibly be the only access to a comprehensive collection of learning materials. Rural schools may not even have enough "real" physical books, to begin with. Here moodLearning and project partners like Tambayayong Mainit, Inc. (TMI) answer to the call of providing such platform, especially in places where the internet is spotty or non-existent. Learning resources could be donated by sponsors and other project partners. Focused on K-12 and secondary education, the eLibrary project is meant to be a support system for less-privileged schools.

The Project is by no means a dole-out. It is a people-centric undertaking of the eLibrary Project Partnership, a collaboration between the school and the eLibrary Project champions (Project Sponsors, Technology Providers, and Partner Schools). The primary goal of this partnership is to enhance the entire education experience of students and teachers. Providing the technology and hardware for the eLibrary System to the school is just secondary to the partnership for an engaging, responsive education.

The Project Sponsors provide the necessary hardware for the deployment of the eLibrary System. They have to supply the server, for a school that already has a local area network (LAN), some workstations, and a wifi access point (WAP). They also have to spend for the transportation and accommodation of the Technology Providers.

The setup of the eLibrary System at the school and the pre-deployment preparations are done by the Technology Providers. Tech providers need to collaborate with local institutions with people capable of supporting the project technically. Additionally, they must be able to provide training for the school's faculty on the use of the eLibrary System and to demonstrate how the eLibrary might be integrated into every facet of learning at the school.

With the eLibrary System, less-privileged schools can have a better teaching and learning experience. All they need to do is integrate the eLibrary System into their curricular and extra-curricular activities. Just let teachers be teachers; students, students! In rural areas, the eLibrary is the next best thing to a full endowement of educational resources. But without the Partnership, the eLibrary is just another infrastructure project.

For more details on the eLibrary program, contact moodLearning or partner orgs like TMI.

<![CDATA[HRIS on steroids]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/hris-on-steroids/5a64426804fcf504c6991efcThu, 16 Feb 2017 13:54:55 GMTHRIS on steroids

HRIS on steroids

Want a convenient way of managing your organization's human resources? Payroll? Check. Time and attendance? Check. Personnel profiles, training, leave management, performance evaluation? All checked, all covered by the peopleSuite Human Resources Information System (HRIS).

What an HRIS does best is the simplification (if not eradication) of paperwork relating to human resource management. But the game changer could really be the integration of the devices that keep track of the "little things" for the system.

Biometric or RFID devices keep records for Time and Attendance. But almost always there are people in your organization personally eyeballing these records for "verification" or manually entering, cutting-and-parting them into the system for the purpose of computing the payroll.

The good news is none of that sort needs to be done with peopleSuite (pS) . pS comes with the peopleSuite middleware that does the integration of devices for the HRIS. As long the devices are connected to the network, biometric information gets transmitted to peopleSuite. If and when the network connection becomes temporarily unavailable, the devices can keep the data and the peopleSuite middleware will later pick up where data aggregation lefts off.

In a word: convenience. Gone are the days when employees have to use log books and attendance cards as their daily time record (DTR). The middleware does the "magic" now by automatically collecting and sorting DTRs from devices.

Does your organization have multiple sites, with multiple devices in multiple building entrances and exits? No worries. The pS middleware will do the "hard work" for you by aggregating the data into a coherent individualized DTR.

From there, viola!, payroll. It means time and money saved by your organization. With the quick aggregation of biometric data using pS middleware, HRIS is on steroids!

To know more about peopleSuite, contact moodLearning.

<![CDATA[MOOCs for the Digital Third World]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/moocs-for-the-digital-third-world/5a64426804fcf504c6991eeeWed, 15 Feb 2017 00:48:47 GMTMOOCs for the Digital Third World

MOOCs for the Digital Third World

With millions of takers from all over the world, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not only massive in reach. The way resources are mobilized for such undertaking is massive, too. Heavyweights like Harvard, MIT, Stanford are running MOOCs. But even with massive resources, MOOCs are hardly able to reach those potential learners in the peripheries of the digital world.

For those relatively well connected online, MOOCs are a boon to learning. Locals are able to access courses (and, for a fee, get certificates from brand name universities and other providers) that are otherwise unavailable from local training institutions. With MOOCs, a student on-the-go can learn with the use of a smartphone or tablet. So who can take up MOOCs? Anyone who desires or thirsts for knowledge but otherwise unable to attend regular classes at a local university. The preference for online learning is also factor. The operative word here is "online".

However, for those in the digital Third World (or for the optimists, "developing world"), MOOCs are practically a non-event. Current successful MOOC implementations involve mostly participants from developed countries, those with college degrees and even graduate education (Gais 2014). MOOCs have yet to make a real difference in the developing world.

How could people from the digital Third World tap into MOOCs? Fret not. Even in regions where internet connections are scarce, the will to go beyond the usual modalities of learning helps fill in the gaps. If there's a will, there's low-tech way as well. It's a slow throttle, but: Will + Technology wins the day!

Consider, for the instance, the use of a Portable eLearning System (PeLS). The thought of USB drives being distributed to MOOC participants isn't exactly anyone's idea of a "massive online" thing. But in places where the interweb is at best spotty, what choices do we really have? PeLS could be a massively cumbersome exercise, but, hey!, there's always reason to persevere.

Even good innovations backed by big institutions experience headwinds at some point. In the case of MOOCs, a low completion rate--in many cases as low as 10% only (Pope 2014)--plagues their implementation. Paradoxically, the solution could be some complementary offline access like PeLS, at least for those in the digital peripheries.

MOOC pioneers had it wrong when they thought MOOCs would soon impel the educational system. Not all MOOCs students take the time to finish the course. Some just browse or absorb only the materials they are interested in. Others are not yet ready to tackle complex online curriculum.* In the peripheries, completing a MOOC is daunting. But the flexibility neeeded in online learning could get some boost from "low tech" interventions like PeLS.

<![CDATA[SCORM-ing]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/scorm-ing/5a64426804fcf504c6991f02Fri, 03 Feb 2017 12:08:45 GMTSCORM-ing

Nowadays the demand for online learning is growing by leaps and bounds. Specially for young people, learning online is generally more appealing than many car traffic-wading, face-to-face instructional modules. Many professionals prefer using online learning tools in conducting training and seminars. However, with different learning platforms, it is difficult to find a software that can ensure online compatibility and re-usability.

Creating an online training material can be time-consuming and costly. Having these limitations in mind, the American ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) Initiative produced the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) to help address the challenges that organizations face in creating eLearning contents.

SCORM serves as the bridge for courses and Learning Management System (LMS) to communicate with each other properly. It is a well-known standard in creating online contents that can now be viewed in various SCORM-compliant Learning Management System (LMS) with convenient accessibility for the users.

To further grasp SCORM, let us break down its meaning:
Sharable Content (SC) is a course or module which can be shared with ease with anyone. Object (O) is the lesson in the SCORM course that is adapted for the benefit of the learners. Reference Model (RM) refers to the standard developed over the years in delivering SC.

A lesson in eLearning content is actually the Sharable Content Object (SCO) and uploaded to any SCORM-compliant LMS. Imagine that you are working on a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces are your lesson modules and activities, which you are trying to piece together so that the whole lesson can be completed.

Identify your learners first before creating your SCORM compatible template so you will know how to design it. Put yourself in the learner's perspective. Keep in mind the possible internet connections and web browsers your learners will use so the SCORM package will function correctly.

Here are some tips to consider when "SCORM-ing" or creating a SCORM package for eLearning:

  1. Look for a SCORM-compliant authoring tool (some list here), noting that some of these high-end tools can be expensive. There are also free and open source authoring tools (Examples: eXe eXeLearning, RELOAD). Pick the ones appropriate for your needs.
  2. Always consider packaging your content in SCORM 1.2 standard, the most portable version that can also be played using various web browsers. This helps ensure compatibility with older players.
  3. Test the SCORM package with the end-user in mind. The outcome should always be aligned with the end user's needs.
  4. Specially for places with spotty network connection, keep the SCORM package under 50MB for faster access and ease of use. This is to ensure that the user or learner can access the content without delays or interruptions.
  5. Double check the computations of quiz scores because that can also be used for record purposes during offline engagement.
  6. Include appropriate text, audio narration, and 2D animation if possible. These will keep the learners more engaged in the modules. The graphics can help keep the learner's attention.

Need a SCORM learning package for your organization or for your training and seminar? Help is just around the corner. Visit moodLearning.

<![CDATA[Why PeLS?]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/why-pels/5a64426804fcf504c6991eecWed, 14 Dec 2016 10:59:10 GMTWhy PeLS?

It's easy for many edtech folks to get carried away by online technologies. Much of the world, however, remains unwired and offline. About 60% of the world's population still has no access to the internet. In the Philippines, it's more than 50% of Filipinos (Huffington post infographic):

Why PeLS?

Of course there's reason to be optimistic. In the mid-1990s, only 1% of the world's population had access. Wait another decade, and everyone should have access already. But what do we do in the meantime?

There are special groups who are eager to tap into a variety of free online courses. Yet, their online connection is at best spotty, thanks to the shamefully inferior services of Smart and Globe. moodLearning offers PeLS to serve even those who cannot be online all the time or when and where e-learning is needed the most.

Why PeLS?

The Portable e-Learning System (PeLS) could help bridge the gap between purely online (which is simply impossible in certain places) and purely face-to-face instruction. With PeLS, learning managers could combine quizzes and periodic online interaction with relatively isolated, offline use of instructional materials (among other possible mixes). In such case, the online learning management system (LMS) would still be the main organizing platform. But much of the heavy lifting could be already done by PeLS offline. Interactive materials and activities, assignments and quizzes could also be on PeLS. Once good online connection becomes available, PeLS data could be synced with the main LMS and coordination with the students' learning managers should be re-established immediately.
Why PeLS?

Here's how to install PeLS on an MS Windows computer.

For mac-loving folks, abangan!

In the meantime, share with us your experiences, your thoughts that lend weight to prospect of developing offline e-learning systems. We're just an email or a call away at moodLearning.

<![CDATA[How not to waste your time banking]]>https://blog.moodlearning.com/how-not-to-waste-your-time-banking/5a64426804fcf504c6991ef7Fri, 03 Jul 2015 11:15:00 GMTHow not to waste your time banking

Have you spent at least an hour in a queue just to be able to encash a cheque or deposit money? You survived, obviously. Congratulations! You have time to spare. Perhaps you didn't have any choice, or so you thought. But as a proletariat constantly under pressure to meet deadlines, I cannot be putting up with that kind of wait. So let me lay down my sanity-restoring plan of attack. A plan so simple, it's got only 3 points: speed, online, and play.

1. Speed!

Speed and efficiency trump many other considerations in banking. For most needs of people and small businesses, occasional retail banking is all they need. But why compound that with long wait?

Why are you dealing with that bank again? You could be thinking that such bank is your safe bet amidst uncertain financial market. It's the oldest bank, the bank of your parents and grandparents. That bank is the largest and spends fortunes for its brand. But believe me, unless you have millions, risking your thousands is way more worth it than the torture and inhumanity that you can be subjected to with that big, old bank (BOB). A bank that doesn't value your time, doesn't deserve to be your bank.

So take a second look at a non-BOB in your neighborhood. You'll be doing yourself a favor.

2. Online

Pay bills online using manual or automatic payment feature of your bank. No bank queue.

This can be tricky because, unless you have a sugar daddy or mommy who regularly transfers funds to your account, you actually have to visit the bank to put in physical dineros. So more on the point of having to deal with a non-BOB in your neighborhood to get the best value out of your money.

3. Play

Putting all your money in BOB? If you have much of it and everything is in your savings account with BOB, you're likely wasting money and investment opportunities. The rule of thumb given by personal finance advisors is that liquidity should only be about 10% of your net worth. That's your "play money." The rest should go to investments, making your money work for you. That gives you even less reason to go to your time-wasting bank.

To recap

A mix of factors like proxity and speed in going in and out of a bank, online accessibility, and playing just with the right amount of liquidity can well help you bank more efficiently. But hours just to deposit a check? You're wasting time! Or, rather, your bank wasted your time.


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decision making

Make the right decisions with an insights-driven approach

Understand the impact of every decision and discover new opportunities to drive your business forward. By capturing a wide variety of information from across the internet and analyzing data alongside internal company metrics, decision makers can uncover critical insights to help them succeed. Gain competitive advantage with the insights-driven approach you need to make the best decisions, every time.

Do you find yourself blindly guessing or revisiting every decision you make? Change your method and give Netvibes a try with our QIO approach: Ask a Question, get Insights and achieve best Outcomes.

Ask the right business Questions

Continue Reading

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How to Remove Stain and Scale

For many pool owners, stain and scale become a problem at some point in their pool owning experience. Unsightly blemishes on your pool’s surface and damage your pool’s surface can be frustrating to say the least. Below we’ve included some background information and tips to remove and prevent stain and scale occurrences.

Scaling is caused when water evaporates, leaving calcium deposits behind just above the water line. There are two kinds of scaling that can occur in your swimming pool. Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Silicate. Calcium Carbonate is the better of the two as it’s much easier to remove than Calcium Silicate.

pool scale

Calcium Carbonate can be removed using a pumice stone or with a stain and rust remover, such as Super Clear. Super Clear will lift of the Calcium Carbonate and prevent it from occurring in the future. Easy Care Plus Descaler and Stain Remover is a high performance calcium descaler, iron stain, and scum remover that leaves your pool fresh and clear. Keeping your water healthy and balanced will also reduce scale build up. It’s best to treat the scale then keep a close eye on your water chemistry as unbalanced water will cause scaling to re-occur.

Calcium Silicate occurs when the scale has been present and untreated for a long period of time. The scaling will have a gray tint as opposed to Calcium Carbonate which will appear white and flaky. This type of scaling is more resistant to scale and stain removers and has to be removed with a pumice stone and some strong motivation to get the job done. This is why it’s important for homeowners to eliminate scale build-up in the Calcium Carbonate stage. If left un-managed for too long, scaling can damage pool equipment and require pool owners to acid wash their pool. A process that involves draining your pool then stripping the top layer with acid, giving your pool a brand new finish.

Staining is a bit different than scale and is caused by metals or organic pollutants such as algae or leaves. After entering into your pool, metals or organic pollutants settle and begin staining the walls and floor of your pool. They often appear after a new batch of chlorine or after the pH raises in the pool. Both stains can look similar to one another, but behave in different ways.

Organic stains are easier to get out and often time, just require pool owners to keep FC or free chlorine around shock levels. Metal stains can be a bit harder to remove from your pool due to their resilience to come back. They enter your pool by local water supply or by certain types of algaecides, many mineral systems, and ionizers. If you suspect your water supply to contain high levels of metals, you can get iron free water trucked in.

Another way metals can be introduced is from a copper heat exchange found in pool heaters. Once the pH level in your pool drops below 7.0 for a long period of time, copper can begin to leach in your pool. If you think you are developing stains due to metal, check it by doing a simple test. Simply hold a Vitamin C tablet up to the stain for 30 seconds or so. If they stain is removed or lightens considerably, you do in fact have metal staining.

If you do have metal stains in your pool, there are a couple of things you can do to eliminate it. You can use a stain an rust remover such as Super Clear to remove metal staining or drain and refill the water in your pool for a fresh start. If the staining is considerable you may want to acid wash the pool once drained.

Using a stain and rust remover will remove the stains and prevent other stains from developing, but it is not a perfect solution. Using a stain remover works by binding to metals in your pool and preventing them from forming into stains. Over time the binding agents will eventually will break down if more stain and rust mover is not applied. Unfortunately, the only way to completely remove metals from your pool, is to drain and refill using iron free water. Using stain and rust remover before draining your pool will ensure all metals are eliminated from your pool surface before you replace your water.

If you have a question or concern, leave a comment below for one of our trained experts or reach out to us at 800.772.0467.

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When Kevin’s not enjoying the water himself he’s engaging himself in the wide world of pool and spa knowledge which he passes on to our customers through producing content for our blogs and website. Outside of the pool world you can find him enjoying life with friends, family and his off the wall dog Brixton.


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A New Computing Metric for the Cloud: Time-To-Scale-Out

Last week I was looking through my timeline and came across this tweet from Troy Hunt asking about how the autoscale features in Azure worked.

(click on the date of the above tweet to view the entire conversation I had with Troy).

In and of itself this question doesn’t immediately seem unusual. Then you think about it a bit. How long does it take?

Well the bottom line is actually a bit trickier than you would think (watch the great video on Channel9 for more details on how Azure does it).

This is why I am proposing a new metric for use in cloud autoscale.

Time-To-Scale-Out (TTSO)

This metric can be defined as:

The time between when the cloud fabric determines that a scale-out is required and the time that the scale-out instance is serving requests.

Many people confuse the time at which a scale event is fired (i.e. 5 minutes in Azure Websites case) with the time at which a new instance is actually serving traffic (5 minutes + N).

On my current cloud IaaS engagement we’re looking at how new applications can leverage autoscale correctly and have determined that:

  • Prefer custom machine images over vanilla images with startup customisations (i.e. via cloud-init or similar constructs).
  • Prefer startup customisations over deployment via orchestration services such as Puppet or Chef.

or, another way:

  • Simple is better – if you have too many dependencies on startup your TTSO will be substantial.

Autoscale is not magic (and won’t save you)

I think we sometimes take for granted the elastic capabilities of cloud computing and assume that putting a few autoscale parameters in should see off unexpected peaks in demand.

The truth is that the majority of applications we will put in the cloud will never have a need for automated autoscale (i.e. based on CPU utilisation or other metrics), but I can guarantee that many would benefit from manual scale or scheduled autoscale (end of week, month, financial year anyone?)

Another important point to take into consideration is the performance of your cloud provider’s fabric when scaling.  You might be in a part of their datacentre with a lot of “noisy neighbours” which might make scale events take longer – you have little or no control over this.

Will you meet your SLA?

Ultimately you will need to test any application you intend to use autoscale with to ensure that your SLAs will be met in the event that you autoscale.  Can your minimum capacity cope with the load during your TTSO?  Can you make your number of scale units larger to avoid multiple scale events?

Make sure you bake startup telemetry into your instances so you can measure your TTSO and work on refining it over time (and ensuring that each new generation of your machine image doesn’t negatively impact your TTSO).

Happy scaling!

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The TurboTax Blog > Announcements > Why Software is Winning the Tax Prep Wars

Why Software is Winning the Tax Prep Wars

In each tax season, several major players in the tax preparation market compete for your business. This year, early reports from Intuit said that sales of TurboTax were up 11 percent.  Analysts and media pundits were quick to comment on the continued growth of online tax preparation.

Tax software is the fastest growing choice of U.S. taxpayers, growing at a double digit pace for the past 10 years.  Last year, more than 36 million people used tax software.  Professionally prepared returns have been flat or down slightly.

There are several reasons why taxpayers are making the switch to do-it-yourself tax software in record numbers:

  • In a tough economy, people are looking to pay less and get more for their money. TurboTax costs, on average, about $60 for a federal and state return compared to about $180 for storefront preparation.

  • Not only do people have less money to spend, they have less time to spend on doing their taxes. The average time to prepare a return using TurboTax is about 2 hours, and you can do it on your own schedule – whether it’s after the kids are in bed or while you’re watching late-night TV. People who make the switch to tax software do so because they’re done with the long lines, repeat visits and delayed appointments that are often the hallmark of a tax storefront experience.

  • No one wants to leave money on the table. More than half of TurboTax customers find they can claim deductions and credits they didn’t even know they were entitled to. That means a bigger refund.  And a fatter wallet.

  • The word is out. Tax software is really easy to use. TurboTax guides taxpayers through their return step-by-step, using plain English. No math. No guessing which deductions and credits you deserve.

But you don’t have to believe us. You can read reviews from people who’ve actually made the switch and decide for yourself:

Comments (3) Leave your comment

  1. Tax Software is still better than completing forms by hand. Even in the above example with an incorrect distribution code, most likely the choice was to do the forms by hand or by Tax Software. Those that wish to see a tax preparer of course should do that at least once in their life to get some feedback. But most errors are from calculations, carrying numbers from page to page, and forgetting deductions that otherwise are routine for the Tax Software.

  2. Tax Software is dangerous in so many ways. What happens if there is an error on the document? Let’s say for example a distribution code on a 1099R? It’s supposed to be a 7 but it’s a 1? How will the common taxpayer know the difference?

    Another example of this is a simple mistake but common mistake. That is the social security number. When the software program asks for their social security number they put it in the system from memory. They don’t look at the income documents to verify it. How many taxpayers look at their documents closely enough that they catch those errors?

    There is a HUGE difference in getting your taxes professionally prepared than doing it yourself. Research a tax professional in your area and rely on the knowledge and the expertise of those that understand the documents they are putting into the software programs.

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June is National Safety Month

10 Jun 2016

As a trauma surgeon, I should be thinking about safety all the time, and writing about it should be easy.  But when I really sat and thought about safety, I found that it’s more difficult than one might think.  What does safety really mean to each of us?

For me, safety first comes to mind for myself and my family.  Is our home safe for my children?  Are they safe when they go play at a friend’s house?  What safety concerns do I have at work? Am I okay walking to my car? Next, I’m concerned about my patients.  Are they safe to return home?  What can I do to enhance the safety of their home or environment so they don’t become recidivists? All of these are important questions, and physical safety is regularly on my mind, given my job.  But when asked to really consider safety and what it means, I thought there was much more to this, that may not be as apparent on an everyday basis.  For example, what are my safe spaces to talk?  Who do I trust and feel comfortable with?  As a surgeon, who so often has to be brave and stoic in the face of overwhelming tragedy, where am I emotionally safe?  What does that even mean?

This month, as we explore safety, I encourage everyone to take a look at all the facets of safety in our lives, and examine where we can help ourselves and others become safer.   Some things will be obvious – make sure your elderly parents aren’t getting on 2 story ladders to clean the gutters, right after they take their aspirin and Plavix.  Encourage a disabled neighbor to install bathtub rails and remove loose rugs.  Next time your child has a playdate, ask the parents if there is an unsecured gun in the home.  All of these can save a life.

But also, let’s make an effort to help one another be emotionally safe.  Let’s expand the “safe space” that is the Association of Women Surgeons, so that all women surgeons can feel they have a network of support when it’s needed.  Talk to your family and make sure they are emotionally safe with their partners and friends.  Let’s examine our own relationships and make sure they are safe and healthy, and if not, that we are getting the help we need to build that trust. Let’s make sure we are asking and receiving the things we need to make our work lives emotionally safe and healthy.  Surgeons need to set the example – that it’s an expectation that our work environments are safe spaces to share ideas, ask questions, and admit faults.  This is essential to patient safety, trainee work environment, and professional advancement of women.

Finally, as a nod to the news this very week:  Talk to your sons.  Make them understand that emotional and physical safety of women is their responsibility, too.  Teaching respect for women and, indeed, for human dignity to all our children is at the root of curbing interpersonal violence and sexual assault, making the world a safer place for all.

My challenge to readers:  Take safety seriously, and think about all facets of safety.  Speak up, be proactive.  Please use the comments to tell me how you are promoting safety this month!

Bonne-picb-0715-200x300Dr. Bonne is a board-certified general surgeon with additional training and certification in Surgical Critical Care.  Her clinical interests are in trauma and injury prevention, trauma epidemiology, and infections in the surgical intensive care unit.  She participates in the American College of Surgeons, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. She leads the American Medical Women’s Association Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.  Dr. Bonne is the current Communications Chair for the AWS, and also serves as the faculty advisor for the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School chapter.  She is a wife and mother to three young children.

Our blog is a forum for our members to speak, and as such, statements made here represent the opinions of the author, and are not necessarily the opinion of the Association of Women Surgeons.

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bloger Posted on 8:48 am

Are Your Words Revealing That You Think You Can’t?

So much has been written about the need to improve our personal development and self-helpery, we must learn a new word EVERY DAY (at least 6). Consider expanding that to include “If I said it BEFORE, so can I”. In fact, the way I see it, the only forms that really exist are physical and chemical, as in ethyl alcohol, but all else can exist in the mind. Our speech, vocalization, shouting, and tonality and utterance are all forms of energy and our words are energy. Our words and speech are not naturally imbued with the power of God’s Holy Spirit. From anHOW OfferwJavafill in sustained self-tsal, we can begin to realize that our words, directed to ourselves, are our own fuel that empowers us to become more authentic in the world.

Why then, would we conceive of the idea that we have a part of ourselves that we can hide? Each of us knows that we have heard this statement or believed it. After all, we have all heard about the powerful and crippling implications of harboring secrets.

If our words are a secret to us, นัดเย็ดเกย์ไทย why would we say them? I’m not advocating a totally 180 degree turn in conversation – but really think about it – we only admonish and admonish each other to change our speech when we use the most dreaded word in the English language, namely YOU.

“YOU are an unreducible part of me… You are both a part of me and me are both part of you… WE are two halves of the whole being known as me”… “As we agree to allow ourselves to be present with fully expressed differences and differences that we have, fear of the unknown can be dispelled…” ” clipboard me” bowel movements to “grow a pair”… “My father or my father’s father” who is your father? Whose father? What is it that you are inherited with? WE could be going around with a goal of learning something that we were not supposed to or we could strive to be happy for no other reason than to make ourselves happy.

Lets maintain a reflection of our human personality rather than it’s self- enhancement function. Who really ” fiasco” their lives – and subsequently, is responsible for that success or failure? If we can take a break from our own personal reflection, and analyze the actions and motives of our own selfish nature, หนังดัง we can reconsider our right to exist. We can develop our new language and have ourselves reflect on the truth of how our actions and behavior negatively affected people, สาวใหญ่ when a different approach, judgment, and ultimately, a new perception, truth, could influence..

Valuable Insight about the effects of wrongfully impacting again and again upon others experiences when it Resourceful tweets comprehensively, concisely and clearly “I will always love and always remember…” United Front

A deeply thought-provoking thought regarding the simple things. Where’s the heart? หนังน่าดูตลอดกาล The guilt of what you’ve said or said to others has been re-affirmed many times (I know.. I know, but remember that’s the real you). The true you are potential and alive and would do. Love yourself, so you can be you.

Permission noted, anyone and anyone, any age group, color, creed or religion, you are allowed to reject the need to blame or place blame. Not me, not you, not the person who attractiveness with the fascism of the FAQ will ask the question, “Is that YOU?” สาวเกาหลี Stop blaming and stop judging – I can’t be you! Simply accept the package that you are a part of and learn as much as you can about how deep that survival mechanism inspires you at all type of time.

Allow yourself to stay free from the discomfort of a self-imposed apology for wrongs committed or passing decisions that you have made. Where you don’t know what the pain or pain of any action or decision is you have so much to allow yourself to deal with without self-imposed guilt. Should belong right somewhere else in your brain and storage house.


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The Rise of Multiplayer Games

In the recent past Multiplayer Games continue to gain popularity. Whether this upward trend will continue is a topic of debate among many. This growing hobby has attracted participants from all walks of life. Though computer games have been around for years but Multiplayer Online games are distinct in numerous facets. Big companies with their AAA title games have set a standard of a certain gaming experience which every gamers wants to be a part of. Multiplayer games like Fortnite, PubG and league of legends has taken the gaming community by storm. With their success, every other company wants a piece of the action which led to an array of multiplayer madness.

What is a multiplayer Game?

A game that allows more than 1 player to connect to a game and play against each other is termed as a multiplayer game.

What are different types of multiplayer games?

Multiplayer games are divided into two broad categories ; turn based multiplayer game and live multiplayer game. Turn based multiplayer games allow a player to move while other await for his turn. A good example of this would be Chess. A live multiplayer game is where all players share same screen and play at same time. A good example of this would be PubG.

If you’re old enough, you will remember the first time you played a video game against another human online. Why? Because it was incredible. After spending countless hours battling your way past opponents controlled by a rudimentary, scripted artificial intelligence, online multiplayer changed everything. The opponent on the other side didn’t think and move like a machine. It wasn’t predictable. Like finding life on Mars, suddenly you were not alone. And with that came endless possibility, and replay ability.

Multiplayer games has a distinct panache to it because outwitting a real person is more euphoric than outwitting an AI. They have evolved a lot in the recent time some of the types are:

Local Multiplayer Games

Some of the earliest games featured local multiplayer, titles like Pong, which Atari released in 1972, allowed two players to battle against each other on the same screen, but the requirement of being in the same room and on the same computer as your friends only really began to evaporate in the early nineties.

LAN Games

Local area network or LAN is term used for a handful of computers connected to each other in a relatively small area. Title like Doom is widely accepted when comes to early LAN games and this led to the rise of LAN parties where people would meet at a location and connect their computers to play networked games. Although some networked are still released with LAN play, the trend in recent years seems to have developers forgoing LAN play for exclusively online multiplayer.

Online Games

In modern time this word is synchronous with Internet gaming. As the internet started to explode in the 90’s, internet games took off alongside it. Some of the earlier titles included Quake (1996) and Unreal (1998). These games took off on consoles with the creation of services like Xbox live and Playstation Network back in 2000 and these services now regularly have millions of people online during peak hours.

Mobile Network Games

As the gaming has expanded to the mobile landscape, multiplayer games have followed right alongside as well. Many multiplayer games on mobile is turn-based which does not require real time data transfer and the player has a lot of time to take the turn.

GenITeam and Multiplayer Games

At GenITeam Solutions, multiplayer aspect in games is nothing new because we understand that outwitting another human will always be more exciting and satisfying for the users than outwitting an AI. Keeping this in mind, we’ve worked on numerous multiplayer games and to name a few, my first choice of brawler is Rap Smash which is a fighting game.

RapSmash Game

You get to choose the character of your choice. All your favorite characters have a distinct set of moves, you can always mix and match the moves. Taunting the move of the opponent is so exciting, No Rules! No limts! an ultimate adrenaline rush.

Rapsmash Characters

The game used live multiplayer, where player competes against each other. Each character has different skill set and fights differently. Most of the players are inspired from Real-Rappers and game development process had to incorporate designing characters that match those real people.

Thus ends my take on the success of multiplayer games in the modern era. With the multiplayer games popularity among a diverse crowd, companies are constantly working to bring new titles to the table and innovating the multiplayer games which are a sheer joy to play. In addition, Multiplayer games let people socialize and give them an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends, it’s just like virtual reality, simply euphoric.

GenITeam is full service game development agency that specialise in building  games from scratch to finish. GenITeam works on fixed cost as well as time and material model. You can read more about engaging a game studio. Contact us, if you are need assistance in building games.


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Why cervical cancer occurs? Causes of cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is a terrible disorder for women. It has become one of the leading causes of death for women worldwide. The disease is more common in women in underdeveloped and developing countries. Why cervical cancer occurs? Today’s blog I’ve detected some causes of cervical cancer step by step.

Women become infected with the virus long before the symptoms of cancer appear. However, this disease can be prevented through awareness. The spread of the disease is high as women in underdeveloped and developing countries are not health conscious. Women in developed countries are protected from this disease due to their conscious and improved lifestyle.

There are ‘Pap smear tests’ to detect cancer, which women in developed countries can take without hesitation, but there are many familial and social barriers to taking in underdeveloped countries.

Blog: What-is-cerebral-infarction

Causes of Cervical Cancer:

Why cervical cancer occurs? Human papillomavirus (HPV) virus is one of the leading causes of cervical cancer, but it is not the only cause. It is also transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse. For more than a decade after the infection, the normal cells of the cervix continue to change and at some point turn into cancer. HPV-16 HPV-18, viruses are the most at risk.

The uterus of women accustomed to a normal life can be infected by the HP virus. It has no symptoms or no signs or lesions on physical examination. No treatment is required for this. The cervix is free of almost all HPV viruses in 18 to 24 months due to the body’s immunity. When this virus infection lasts for a long time, changes start in the cervical mucosa and gradually turn into cancer.

Who can be affected by cervical cancer?

It is not common in people under 20 years of age. The victims are usually between 36 and 42 years old. The disease can occur after 60 years, but the number is relatively low. However, there is a misconception that cancer means death. Especially women are hide the disease often increases the risk. With proper treatment, cancer can be completely cured. This disease can be easily avoided by following the hygiene rules.

Blog: Comminuted fracture

Symptoms of cervical cancer:

This part of the uterus has the highest risk of cancer. Symptoms of cervical cancer include excessive white discharge, foul-smelling discharge, excessive or irregular bleeding, recurrent bleeding after menopause, and pain in the waist and lower abdomen or thighs. People who become addicted to sex at an early age are more likely to get this cancer. Cervical cancer can also be caused by having more than one male partner, or having more than one female partner with a male partner, or having children frequently. Child marriage girls are more likely to get this disease.

Blog: Emergency Room Registered Nurse

Early steps against cervical cancer:

The Pap smear test is a simple test to detect this type of cancer. Examination of the cervix with juice can detect cancer, pre-cancerous conditions and other diseases of the cervix, such as inflammation. This is a painless and affordable test method. Generally, married women can start this test after the age of 21 and it is recommended to get tested once a year. Between the ages of 30 and 64, those whose results have been “normal” three times should be tested every three years. However, this routine may change on the advice of a doctor.

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About the Author: K.Homer

Blogger and love to read different things online. SEO professional at Fiverr platform.