World Cup 1 - E-Learning for England

The World Cup 2010 in South Africa is about to start and I make no apologies for the fact that for the next five weeks (or until England are controversially knocked out) my SharePoint blog is going World Cup crazy. All the funny videos will have a World Cup theme and I will try to predict four matches from the coming week each time.

So England are getting used to being at altitude, Capello is losing his cool with photographers and still nobody knows who will be in the England goal. At least the England players have all the technology gadgets they could want with many having I-Phones even if they have been banned from Twittering or using Facebook during the tournament. So how could SharePoint help the England team?

I am going to this week focus on one of the current rapidly expanding uses of SharePoint - The Management of E-Learning. This is the ability to fully manage all SCORM compliant E-Learning courses using the familiar SharePoint platform. A package called ShareKnowledge has proved very popular in schools and colleges worldwide but now more and more private companies are finding it a very cost effective way to train their workforce. With it’s very easy to use and free companion ‘Author Tool’ it is very easy to create online training courses with relevant assessments. It can take information in seconds from Microsoft PowerPoint slides and turn them into E-Learning slides. It allows the use of video or sound and can make even the least technically minded Training Manager appear an E-Learning expert.

After you have created the impressive E-Learning courses it then takes only a few clicks to upload the complete course including questions into SharePoint and assign them to individuals or whole departments. The users can then be alerted on SharePoint when they have a course to do and after they have completed the training their individual training records are updated. It really does help reduce company training budgets and also can make it easier to ensure that even employees in far off places have completed the required training courses. So in between watching the World Cup games check out ShareKnowledge and if you are in the UK why not email Frank Faulds and ask for a demonstration.

So how could ShareKnowledge help England? This is my vision that might not be shared by Mr. Capello. All squad members have laptops or I-phones linked to a SharePoint system (suppose it should really be 2010). Then a first E-Learning course could be created entitled ‘How to tackle in training without injuring your captain’ this could then be assigned to all England players or just Emile Heskey. Other courses could be created and tailor-made for certain individuals, for example ‘The Art of Not Getting Sent Off’ assigned to Wayne Rooney before every game. Then of course the one that all members of the England squad have to study the most, ‘How to take penalties’.

With so much digital media now available to all of us E-Learning can be a very affective learning tool and SharePoint is the ideal platform for it. ShareKnowledge even works on the free version of SharePoint WSS so it could even be a reason to roll out SharePoint if you aren’t already SharePoint users.

So it is time for my weekly prediction and I am going to start with England’s first game against USA. I think it will be a struggle but England will just triumph 2-1.

My other three predictions are;

Group A - South Africa 1 Mexico 1
Group E - Netherlands 3 Denmark 0
Group H – Spain 3 Switzerland 1

If you haven’t got your FREE World Cup 2010 SharePoint template yet please checkout http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=160

Come on England !!!