ThirdForce Blog

Learning Technologies 2010 – here we come…

It's that time of year again, the Learning Technologies Exhibition and Conference is taking place next week, and it seems to come around faster every year. Taking place in the Olympia London on 27th and 28th of January, the two day event, now in its eleventh year, will be host to over 130 exhibitors, 60 free seminars and over 3,000 visitors. It’s a must for anyone involved in workplace learning and development, providing not only a huge display of the most up to date resources and services available but also provides a great opportunity to network with the leading experts in the industry.

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Season’s Greetings from ThirdForce

Everyone at ThirdForce wishes our readers a very happy festive season with family and friends and best wishes for a prosperous 2009. View our Season's Greetings e-card

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The #LearnTrends 2009 experience

By regular guest blogger Gareth Murran at ThirdForce Last week I attended my first online conference. The LearnTrends conference was a three day virtual event hosted by three e-learning luminaries. George Siemens of the learning technology centre at the University of Manitoba, Jay Cross of the Internet Time Group and Tony Karrer of TechEmpower. The theme of this year's conference was Convergence in Workplace Learning.

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ThirdForce at the annual ECDL International Forum

ThirdForce was delighted once again to be part of the annual ECDL International Forum which this year took place in Athens in October. The aim of the forum is to gather representatives from national computer societies, all the national ECDL/ICDL licensees and other relevant organisations to share best practice and discuss future developments in the promotion of digital literacy.

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Blog action day – climate change and elearning

Today is Blog Action Day, an initiative held every year on the 15th of October that encourages bloggers all over the world to write about a single global issue on the same day. This year’s issue is Climate Change, a topic that is persistently in the news and one which effects all of us. We are encouraged to do our bit in reducing our carbon footprint both in the workplace and at home and even making small adjustments and changes can make a substantial difference to the longterm threat of climate change to the world.

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Upcoming events…

As we race headlong into Q4, scratching our heads wondering how three quarters of the year has disappeared so quickly, we enter into conference and exhibition season. At ThirdForce anyway, we are gearing up for a variety of different events. It’s an exciting time as we pitch ourselves at the coalface, the place our sales teams most like to be.

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Ignite – 5 minutes to get your point across…

A not so new but growing phenomenon is spreading around the world, which I think has great potential to become a real platform for communication and learning. Ignite – an organised forum which allows speakers to take to the stage and talk on pretty much any subject they choose. At an Ignite event however, each speaker is only allowed 5 minutes, and a deck of 20 slides. The slides are automatically moved on every 15 seconds so the speaker has no control over their timing once on stage.

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As one door opens, another one…opens?

Contributed by ThirdForce guest blogger Donal O'Nuallain..... OK I think I may have mixed up my metaphors in the title but bear with me on this one, Vancouver is working towards becoming the world’s first ‘Open City’. Now I know that cities are rarely ‘closed’ but what those Canucks are planning is something truly special. They have submitted a motion to their council outlining the need to endorse and adopt open data, open standards and open source software for all of its information and data resources.

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ECDL Syllabus 5 – Are you ready for change?

The ECDL Foundation, the governing body behind the ECDL qualification or European Computer Driving Licence, is launching it's new Syllabus this year. In keeping with technology changes and advances the Syllabus is changed roughly every four to five years, which means providers like ThirdForce update our ECDL materials at the same time. Each time this happens the ECDL world goes into a frenzy to understand the changes, the roll out and the effects it will have on their centres and candidates.

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ThirdForce Skills for Life Award at the Workforce Development Awards

Contributed by regular guest blogger Lorna Tyrtania - Senior Product Manager at ThirdForce I was recently lucky enough to attend the Workforce Development Awards where ThirdForce was a proud sponsor of the Skills for Life Award. Hosting our guests for the evening from Whitbread, Mitchells and Butlers and Spirit we enjoyed a glittering ceremony in London’s Park Plaza Hotel. Presenting the awards was TV celebrity, entrepreneur and property developer, Sarah Beeny of Channel 4’s Property Ladder. Also attending the award ceremony was Skills and Apprenticeships Minister Lord Young, himself a former apprentice. In a year that saw record numbers of entries all winners and finalists were faced with extra tough competition.

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