This month's newsletter contains an exciting collection of items from across the Network. We encourage you to share the news and information below with colleagues.

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The winners of the "2004 Live Online Awards" were presented on October 12th during a live webcast produced from San Francisco, CA and New York, NY. "The Lolas" are the only awards program dedicated to recognizing outstanding achievement in the design, delivery and production of live online learning events. Winners were selected by a panel of experts from among a wide range of high-quality nominations received from across the globe.

A complete list of Lola winners and a publicly accessible link to the awards ceremony webcast can be found on the official Lolas website at:
http://www.TheLolas.com/winners.html

We are pleased to announce that the TCC Worldwide Online Conference has opened the 2004 Conference Community and all of its resources to the public, at no charge. This includes over 60 papers, webcast recordings and chat session transcripts presented last Spring during the 9th annual TCC online conference.

To join the TCC 2004 Conference Community for free, please visit:
http://home.learningtimes.net/tcc2004

The TCC Worldwide Online Conference is hosted annually by University of Hawai'i, Kapi'olani Community College in association with Osaka Gakuin University (Japan). The virtual conference held entirely online is designed to enable faculty, staff and administrators in higher education worldwide to share their expertise and engage in productive forums about innovations and practices that accompany the use of technology for faculty teaching and student learning.

LearningTimes continues to collaborate with the TCC to create a community experience for the 2005 online conference (April 19-21, 2005) with a full spectrum of real-time and on-demand learning and networking activities. Visit the TCC web site later this week for the call for proposals for next year's conference:

http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/

LearningTimes is pleased to be acting again as the sponsoring producer of the 3rd Annual Illinois Online Conference for Teaching and Learning which will take place completely online February 16-18, 2005. This online conference was created to focus on issues and concerns of K-20 classroom faculty and related technology support, learning resources, student services, and workforce development trainers.

http://www.ilonlineconf.org/AdminFunctions/conf_proposals.cfm

To learn more about last year's conference, feel free to review the "IOC 2004 Wrap-Up and Awards Show" -- a multimedia piece which provides a summary of the IOC 2004 conference on teaching and learning.

http://www.learningtimes.net/ioc2004awards.shtml

4 - LEARNINGTIMES' LATEST HYBRID CONFERENCES

Dr. Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan leading a live webcast from the LearningTimes/InSync studio at the TrainingFall conference in San Francisco.

The LT Team just returned from San Francisco where we produced the "Training Fall Online Conference" in collaboration with InSync Center and VNU Learning. This online event ran concurrently with a live conference - expanding the overall audience, while building a rich and unique community for everyone involved. Organizers offered a dozen interactive webcasts, image galleries, discussion boards, as well as onsite correspondents delivering daily reports via integrated blogs. (See item #12)

Beverly Kaye leads a live session on retaining employees for online conference participants while she was at the venue-based TrainingFall event.

Several more "Hybrid Conferences" are in the works, including the "Training 2005" Conference in February and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference in April. Stay tuned to the LearningTimes.org "Webcasts & Events" section for details. If you are planning a conference of your own, do know that the LearningTimes Network team can help you add a vibrant online component. Write info@learningtimes.net or visit the LTN website.

5 - LT SPONSORS NET*WORKING 2004 ONLINE CONFERENCE

Net*Working 2004 is an online conference focused on using technology to deliver education and training more flexibly to boost business performance. The conference is an initiative of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) 2000-2004. LearningTimes is pleased to help support this professional development event and enable conference presenters to interact live online with colleagues across Australia and around the globe. http://flexiblelearning.net.au/nw2004

Have you noticed a "CSTP" designation on business cards, e-mail signatures, or resumes of your colleagues? Or seen a Golden Squirrel Seal hanging prominently on an office wall? These unique symbols represent that this person has acquired the skills, experience, and dedication to merit the title "Certified Synchronous Training Professional".

LearningTimes and InSync Training are proud to have issued several hundred certificates this year. CSTPs build high quality interactive and collaborative educational and training programs, and maintain a level of professionalism that has led to several recent industry awards recognizing their efforts. CSTPs produce these courses and events on every major synchronous platform in the market, which has certainly helped their organizations take full advantage of a wide range of educational and community building technology investments.

Online classes begin each month, and include a Synchronous Training Primer, followed by Facilitation, Design, and Certification classes. Consider joining us on October 28th for our next free "Learn to Learn Online" class:

http://home.learningtimes.net/insync?go=557582

... or visit http://www.learningtimes.net/certified.shtml for more information.

	Please join us in welcoming one of the newest members of the LearningTimes Network, National Wildlife Federation (NWF). NWF is America's largest and oldest protector of wildlife. With more than four million members and supporters, NWF is committed to educating and empowering people from all walks of life to protect wildlife and habitat for future generations.
NWF will be using their LearningTimes Network community to conduct educational outreach activities, collaborate and interact with groups across the country, and deliver virtual press conferences. http://www.nwf.org

Dell, Inc. has joined forces with LearningTimes to sponsor a free online webcast workshop on educational grant writing. The one hour session will provide participants with a better understanding of grants and the grant process. It will focus on effective strategies, tips and advice for researching funding sources, developing relationships with funders, writing winning grant proposals and other important considerations.

Malcolm Munro

LearningTimes partner BMRA, a women-owned small business that provides professional education to Federal, state and local government agencies and other organizations, has invited LearningTimes members to view the archived recording of a recent session, entitled "Foundations of Organizational Behavior, Or Why Does That Person Annoy Me and What Can I Do About it?" The session kicks off a 5-part series on "Timeless Solutions for 21st Century People Problems".

To view the free recording of the first session, visit:
http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=567313

Malcolm Munro's five-part, one-hour webcast series, "Timeless Solutions for 21st Century People Problems", gives practical information and advice on the fundamentals of individual and organizational behavior. The next webcast in the series is scheduled for 12 noon New York time, October 22. More information about the "people skills" webcast series can be found at:

http://bmra-proservices.com/hr

Vanessa Middleton Wayne State University

The "International Research Online Learning Community" is an online learning community of faculty, librarians and scholars with international experience in the areas of teaching, research, or consulting. The initiative, headed by Vanessa Middleton of Wayne State University (WSU), has been funded by a grant awarded by WSU to facilitate discussion on international research and scholarship in librarianship.

The goals of the online community are: 1) to promote and raise awareness of international research, teaching or consulting to a larger community of scholars and librarians; 2) to utilize technology to continue the discussion of current issues and topics related to international research, teaching, consulting and scholarship; and 3) to create an online community of librarians, faculty and scholars with similar research interests to facilitate collaborative projects and scholarly research.

You are invited to join the online community and participate in these discussions. The International Research Online Learning Community will be launched this month on the LearningTimes Network, and will feature a live webcast this coming January.

For more information, please email Hope Kandel, Director, Library and Information Service Programs, at hope@learningtimes.org.

LearningTimes.org, the flagship community in the LearningTimes Network, remains the fastest growing free online learning community for education and training professionals. Here are some recent news items and statistics about LearningTimes.org:

• There are currently over 30 Global Collaboration Grant (GCG) recipients using learning tools and virtual spaces inside the LT community for global research and collaborative learning.
• There are over 60 free session recordings available in LearningTimes.org, and over 250 others in the connected communities accessible freely from the "Affiliate" link in the LearningTimes.org community. LearningTimes.org is one of over 45 online communities produced by the LearningTimes Network.
• There are now nearly 6,000 active LearningTimes.org members. There are about 28,000 members in the LearningTimes Network of communities as a whole, making it a vibrant place for education-minded people to gather online and learn from one another.
• A new home web site launched recently at:
  http://www.learningtimes.org

The "LT Feed Room" contains the most recent entries from a variety of web logs (blogs) and listservs relating to online education and training -- accessed conveniently from the "LT Feed Room" link within the LearningTimes.org community. Share your favorite education-related blogs with other members. Send an email to help@learningtimes.net with the URL of your favorite learning-related blogs -- or your own blog! -- and we'll syndicate select feeds within the LT Feed Room to help get the word out about these great resources.

http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=567505

13 - TIP #72:
Adjusting Frequency of Email Updates

Community Email Updates are sent out automatically to you when new content or events are posted in online communities to which you belong. You can control how often you receive activity updates from the online community. It can be set to update you of new activity on a daily, weekly or monthly basis -- or never at all. You are only sent an update IF activity has taken place or new or upcoming events have been posted. Therefore, setting your update to daily does not necessarily mean you will receive an e-mail every day.

When you first joined a community, you selected the frequency of the updates. To edit frequency now that you have an account:

• Follow the link at the end of an email update, or visit the "Preferences" link along the left-hand side navigation of the given community.
• Under "Activity Updates", use the pull-down menu to select the desired email frequency (daily, weekly, monthly or never). Then click "Apply Changes" to save your preferences.

That's it! Your email updates will now arrive -- if there is new content -- at the interval you selected.

14 - TOP 5 RECORDINGS / AUDIO BLOGS

There are hundreds of informative recorded interactive webcasts, on a wide-range of topics, available throughout the LearningTimes Network. Based on recent archive access data, we are pleased to present the "LTN Top 5 Archives" for October 2004:

"Hybrid Live Learning Events or 'Multiple Venue Productions' (MVPs)" - This live, online session focused on the emerging genre of hybrid workshops and conferences (i.e. live learning events with both an online and a face-to-face audience) and explored the possibilities and pitfalls of living at the confluence of these two modes of interaction.

"K-12 Professional Development - Trends and Opportunities" - This interactive webcast explored current trends and opportunities in Professional Development (PD) for K-12 educators. In particular, the focus was on school districts looking to third party resources for PD services and materials.

"Sen. Hillary Clinton and Panel on 'Non Traditional Students'" - Senator Hillary Clinton made her first ever interactive webcast appearance as a keynote speaker during the TCC Online Conference. Senator Clinton's remarks were part of a panel discussion on the "Non-Traditional Student".

"Audio Blog: Instructional Technology Institute at Utah University" - Paul Stacey reported live from the 16th Annual Instructional Technology Institute at Utah University. The conference, and Paul's audio dispatches, focused on reusable media, social software and openness.

"Audio Blog: Museums & Education Photo-Audio Blog from AAM" - Jonathan Finkelstein and members shared perspectives, interviews and innovations from leaders in the museum world with educators in LearningTimes.org, live from the American Association of Museums annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.

It is exciting for us to be a part of a network of people cooperatively sharing their insights, their best practices, and their time on a daily basis with peers across the globe. I don't think we could have foreseen that what started as just one community, could have grown to a network of 45 connected communities and over 28,000 members, in such a short amount of time.

We look forward to seeing you online.

Warm regards,

Founder
The LearningTimes Network
http://www.learningtimes.net

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