The Learning Revolution:
A serious call to action!
Kevin Corti,
CEO & Co-founder,
PIXELearning

• Founder & CEO, PIXELearning
• Board/steering group member of IDM &
WM Serious about games, Digital Central &
ANGILS
• Member Elearning Guild, Elearning Network &
NASAGA
• Frequent speaker/writer on ‘serious games’ in
UK, EU and US
• Based at The Serious Games Institute, UK
• Sold, designed & delivered over 40 game/sim
projects

Navigating through the cloud
-THE FUTURE OF E-LEARNING & TECHNOLOGIES
(ETD08: Prague)
Audience…
• Passionate, innovative, excited & interested
• Confused, wary of risks & fear of failure!

Don’t evangelise about
technology for technology’s
sake – it’s about doing
business stupid!
(with apologies to former President Clinton’s campaign organisers!)

But it’s all about Generation Y isn’t it?

…not yet it isn’t!!!

If you are a CxO….
• Financial performance
• Human capital
• Competitive environment
Key considerations:
1. What keeps the CxO awake at night? – not a cliché
3. Where can Learning 2.0 add serious value?

[1] Capture knowledge
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
[5] Social networks/communities
[6] Virtual worlds
[7] Game the skill
WISDOM OF CROWDS
PEER
REVIEW
THE BLOGOSPHERE

221,343 blogs were created.
245,156 new users joined.
2,638,958 file uploads
About 1,074 gigabytes of new files.
417 terabytes of content transferred from our datacenters.
3,415,871 posts and 1,120,407 new pages.
5,862,782 comments.
4,865,114 logins.
693,555,035 pageviews on WordPress.com, and another
441,241,199 on self-hosted blogs. (1,134,796,234 pageviews total
across WordPress blogs we track.)
71,351,276 pageviews in RSS feeds.
965,041 active blogs, where “active” means they got a human
visitor.
156,693,165 unique people visited WordPress.com-hosted blogs.
Source: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/may-wrap-up/

[1] Capture knowledge
RUN A BUSINESS
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
[5] Social networks/communities
[6] Virtual worlds
[7] Game the skill
BE A
ROCK GOD
RUN A COUNTRY
PERFORM
BATTLEFIELD
TRIAGE BE A SOLDIER
VISIT THE PAST

[1] Capture knowledge
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning SEARCH
[4] User-generated content NATURAL
LANGUAGE
[5] Social networks/communities PROCESSING
[6] Virtual worlds
[7] Game the skill
SEMANTIC
SEARCH
THE
ANSWER
IS OUT
THERE!
DATABASES

[1] Capture knowledge
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
[5] Social networks/communities
[6] Virtual worlds VIDEO
[7] Game the skill ANYTHING &
EVERYTHING
GAME MODS
MACHINIMA
TAGGED
PHOTOS

[1] Capture knowledge
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
SOCIAL &
[5] Social networks/communities
LEISURE
[6] Virtual worlds
[7] Game the skill
PROFESSIONAL
NETWORKS
NICHE TOPICS/DOMAINS

Members (589)
Latest Videos (821)
Latest Photos (1587)
http://seriousgames.ning.com/

[1] Capture knowledge
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
[5] Social networks/communities
[6] Virtual worlds SCENARIO
TRAINING
[7] Game the skill
COLLABORATION
& COMMUNICATION
SOCIAL, LEISURE
& ENTERTAINMENT APPLICATION
SHARING
SERENDIPITY

MEANINGFUL
[1] Capture knowledge
PRACTICE
[2] Virtual experience
[3] Support informal learning
[4] User-generated content
[5] Social networks/communities
[6] Virtual worlds
[7] Game the skill
SOMETHING
DIFFERENT
RISK-FREE
EXPERIMENTATION
PREMIUM
SKILLS
STEP INTO THE SHOES OF OTHERS

Serious games / immersive simulations
practice,
learn by doing,
experience,
challenge,
problem spaces,
compete,
apply,
perform,
assess,
game the skill…

Why use games & simulations?
• Provide opportunities for meaningful (and repeat)
practice – “game the skill”
• Focus on high order cognitive activity / skills rather
than ‘information dissemination’
• Provide realistic, transferrable ‘virtual experience’
• Experiential, problem/task-based (adult learning
theory)
• Engage and actively involve learners rather than
‘passive reception’

When is a Serious Games appropriate?
Basically…..
Is there a process, environment or
system that can be conceptually
and/or visually modelled and from
which relevant and meaningful
scenarios created?

Serious Games and sims
Serious games allow you to experience
something from an alternative perspective; to
feel what it might be like for someone else.

Pulling this all together…
• Based around real-world scenarios, systems & processes
• Task/goal-based, aligned to world of work
• Focuses on high value skills building
• Interactive, adapts to choices/performance, learns from user
• Fosters collaboration (and competition)
• Captures rich usage & performance data
• Is a mix of 2D and 3D (and net-based)
• Editing & sharing for all users
• Tightly integrated with social networking
• Fosters communities of shared interest

The ‘future’ bit…
All of this exists today….
…some of it is proven, some not so (“in Beta”)…
The real power comes when we learn how to
BLEND it all together in a coherent and
appropriate way….
….it will most likely be the users
that show us HOW

PIXELearning
+44 (0) 24 7623 6971
Kevin Corti, CEO founder & Chief Learning Architect
Email: kevin.corti@pixelearning.com
Company web: www.pixelearning.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevincorti
Blog: http://theevilnumber27.wordpress.com