Blog Book Tour Recap Week One: Awesome!

The first week of the Learning in 3DBlog Book Tour is over and it qualifies as a smashing success. Here is a review of the stops on the tour. During the tour, the book, in Kindle form, reached all the way to #15,329 out of 400,000 books available on Kindle. Pretty good for a non-fiction book about learning in 3D!

Before the tour
Even before the tour started, I had a fun interview with Intellum’s Chip Ramsey about my start in the learning business, learning in 3D and other topics related to technology, learning and business operations.

Day One
The first stop on the tour started with a teaser entry last Friday. Then on the first day of the tour, ProtonMedia posted an interview called Our video visit with “Learning in 3D” coauthor Karl Kapp. In the interview I discussed how Tony and I developed the concept of the book and addressed some general questions about learning in 3D and virtual immersive learning environments. Later in the week, Ron posted with an interesting title Learning in 3D Book Tour: 30 Blogs in 30 Days. I hadn’t really thought of it like that before but that is exactly what Tony and I are doing on the tour 30 stops in 30 days.

But one of the most exciting things about ProtonMedia’s participation in the tour is that they have created a 3D virtual immersive environment where anyone (for free) can check out the 3D learning archetypes we discuss in the book. This is so cool!

Go to Download a Trial Version of ProtonSphere and, once inside, go to the menu item on the top bar on the window called Locations and then select Learning Archetypes and you will be transported to a space where you can check out the learning archetypes in the book. It is a great opportunity to you to check out a “corporate” virtual world and to try out some of the learning archetypes first hand. Take some time and go visit, it is well worth the trip.

Day Two
On day two, the tour stop by Tom King’s blog Mobile Mind for a discussion called Thoughts on Learning in 3D- Virtual book Tour. Tom introduced a little skepticism into the dialog which is healthy for the discussion and generated the most comments of the week on one tour stop. Visit his entry and add to the discussion.

Day Three
On the third day, Clark Quinn of Quinnovation had stop at his blog Learnlets called Kapp & O’Driscoll Nail Learning in 3D. Clark liked the book and pointed out the usefulness of the book and its inclusion of models, pragmatic guidance and case studies. He also pointed out some flaws of the book (a danger and virtue of blog book tours) and he pointed to some relevant and insightful work he as done in the area of virtual world affordances (worth a read).

Day Four
On day four, Erica and Driver on the ThinkBalm blog wrote a post titled Highlights from “Learning in 3D” book: steps to successful adoption. The ThinkBalm discussion highlighted the contribution that Erica and Sam made the book and pointed out two specific pieces of advice for early adopters.

• Focus on compatibility with existing technology and modes of work
• Choose the right group of people to participate in a pilot.

The stop drew a comment from future tour participant Jane Bozarth from the Bozarthzone blog.

Day Five Not to be out done, Rich Mesch at Performance Development Group’s Performance Punctuated blog enlisted the help of several of his colleagues. Rich started out with an introductory posting Learning in 3D Multiple Perspectives and then he posted his thoughts in Learning in 3D: Bringing Businesses Aboard which opened up a discussion about whether or not this book would prove to the be the tipping point for wide scale adoption of 3D virtual immersive environments for business and industry.

Next, Dawn Francis gave a perspective from a manager’s point of view in Learning in 3D: A Training Manager’s View which brought to the forefront the need that managers have to understand about 3D technology as the web moves from version 1.0 all the way to 3.0.

Then, Robin Harmony, expressed her feelings and thoughts when she experiences a 3D virtual immersive environment for the first time. She aptly discusses both the excitement and the fear of being in a virtual world for the first time in her entry Learning in 3D: Fear of Flying

To round out the group, Sherry Engel takes on 3D learning from an evaluation perspective. In Learning in 3D: Measuring the Impact, Sherry asks the question “can we evaluate 3D learning outcomes using 2D learning models or tools?” She goes through each of the traditional four levels of evaluation and postulates how evaluation may have to change for 3D virtual immersive environments.

Great First Week!
All in all, a great first week of the tour and next week promises to be just as exciting. If you are following along the tour, please stop by one or all of the blogs and make a comment.

Remember if you comment on every blog in the tour, we’ll send you a free whitepaper and some other “prizes of unmentionable value.” We’d like to encourage participation so please comment and become a part of the tour.

Also, follow the tour on Twitter using the hashtag #lrn3d.

Tony is tweeting quotes from the book and linking them back to his blog, Learning Matters as learning nuggest. Here is nugget number 11.

If the tour has gotten you excited about the book check out the Learning in 3D web site.

And become a fan on Learning in 3D’s Facebook Page.

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