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Supporting Information
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| Q1 | Who is Pebblesoft Learning? Pebblesoft, a new internet software company, provides a superior software suite that customizes, delopys and manages real time, interactive, web-based learning. |
| Q2 | What is the Pebblesoft Learning philosophy? Pebblesoft Learning is--first and foremost--a learning compny. We believe that the process of learning is primarily an individual process that can be supplemented with group interaction. |
| Q3 | What unique aspect has Pebblesoft Learning brought to real time, interactive,
web-based learning? Pebblesoft Learning has created an open architecture built around learning objects. The archtecture allows customization (such as use of style), reusability, and discreet access to the exact information needed for a particular learning objective. Pebblesoft's unique architecture makes it possible to monitor the progress of those being trained and the quality of the course of instruction so adjustments can be made in"mid-flight". Previously, the only real feedback of education and training has come too late--when the student or employee leaves the classroom and steps into the unforgiving workplace. In addition, with Pebblesoft, learning is continuous--students have access to material as often as needed to master it. |
| Q4 | What are the functions of the Pebblesoft architecture? Pebblesoft's Learning provides software that creates and stores learning objects; retrieves and distributes them and tracks usage and results of the learning process. |
| Q5 | How does the content environment work? The content enhancement and storage process is ìtightly coupledî with the most popular authoring tools (e.g., Netscape Navigator Gold Editor). Instructional Designers may continue to use authoring tools of their choice. In other words, Pebblesoft's Learning capabilities will appear within the authoring tools, thus facilitating a seamless course authoring process. The ability of content providers to content providers to continue to use their current authoring tools is just once example of our open architecture. |
| Q6 | What about existing courseware? Pebblesoft Learning provides content conversion service and remote launch capability. CD-Roms, Viedo and Power Point material can be converted to run on the web through Pebblesoft, and the courseware can be "mediatized" (enhanced with graphics, animation, question and answer, and interactive collaboration events) to make the resulting course more interesting to the learner. |
| Q7 | Is the Pebblesoft software always installed at the customer location? Pebblesoft Learning has hosting services for the customer who wants a ful-service provider. In this case, Pebblesoft Learning will provide a separately priced turnkey service--establishing and bringing up the network connections, the software, the server, and the content. |
| Q8 | How does Pebblesoft provide a different and more effective learning method than
traditional classroom training? Delivering education through the Internet using Pebblesoft Learning has several significant advantages over traditional classroom training (passive instructional systems). By allowing learners to coordinate their own schedules, learning is more convenient and flexible. Second, the ability to log on at any location with an Internet connection is cost-effective with reduction in travel time and expenses. Third, unlike classroom training where the content model is "one size fits all", the Pebblesoft Learning Environment can be tailored to the user's preferred learning style. |
| Q9 |
How does Pebblesoft support learner centricity?
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| Q10 | How will clients find content providers in order to make good and timely use of the Pebblesoft environment for developing courseware? To complement the software, Pebblesoft Learning has established PebblesoftNet, an on-line service for matching corporate web-based learning creation requirements with the right resources to get content created quickly and at the lowest cost. Systems Integrators, content providers and instructional designers will be PebblesoftNet Certified. This certification allows them to bid on clients needs to add to a total solution for the learning process. |
| Q11 | Why do content providers want to use Pebblesoft as their "host" or "content
enhancer"? Pebblesoft provides several direct benefits to the content provider, including ready-to use web environment to deliver their content, tracking of usage patterns, and the ability to obtain learner feedback. In addition, using the tools and functions built into the Pebblesoft environment, the content provider can add networked interactive multimedia characteristics to the content immediately without having to create and deploy technology solutions themselves. In short, Pebblesoft helps to deliver a complete solution to their clients. |
| Q12 | If a content provider is interested using Pebblesoft's hosting or content enhancing
services, what is the procedure? Contact Molly Zemke, Marketing/Corporate Communications at 408/746-7099. |
| Q13 | Pebblesoft is currently in the final stages of several VAR agreements and has
an official VAR relationship with Amdahl. Please explain this relationship. Amdahl provides learning solutions that include the Pebblesoft Learning Environment. As a global leader in selling and servicing large corporations, Amdahl accelerates the customer's ability to increase their corporate productivity. |
| Q14 | Why do companies want to be value added resellers (VAR) for Pebblesoft Learning?
What are the benefits? Most of the companies interested in representing Pebblesoft believe Web-based learning represents a huge portion of future corporate training, and their investigations have indicated to them that our database driven approach is approximately six months ahead of the market. Value added resellers have the opportunity to sell a leading edge learning technology. |
| Q15 | If a company is interested in becoming a Pebblesoft VAR, what is the procedure? Contact Molly Zemke, Marketing Corporate Communications at 408/746-7099. |
| Q16 | What is the next step for a customer? Most corporations can easily install and begin using Pebblesoft in a matter of days. Call us for a hosted solution or for information about installation on your server. |
"Learning is an organization's only sustainable, long-term competitive advantage."
Peter Senge, Director of the Center for Organizational Learning,
MIT's Sloan School of Management.
In today's market you can't have a business strategy without a people strategy. Companies must adjust to this new way of thinking because knowledge is doubling at a remarkable rate. Technology has allowed us to accumulate and access enormous amounts of information at lightning speed. In the current competitive marketplace, those who not only can get the information, but understand it and integrate it faster into new concepts have a compelling strategic advantage.
An organization's value is expressed in human capital. As a company's most important asset, human capital must be maximized by helping people realize their potential. This can only be accomplished by stimulating natural learning.
In today's language of business, continuous, integrated learning is the hallmark of the new learning corporation. A learning corporation is a nimble corporation, one that competes in a changing marketplace because it can respond, retrain, and redirect its core asset, its people, almost immediately.
The foundation of a dynamic people strategy is managing an organization's learning process for maximum value.
"Organizations are a human enterprise, and their highest purpose is to make the strengths of people effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."
Peter Drucker,
The Drucker Foundation
We are well into the "knowledge age" Drucker predicted five years ago. Workers today are knowledge workers. In this knowledge era, separating work from learning simply won't work. There are few jobs where people can be trained in tasks they will perform for the next several years. Most jobs change within a matter of months. Thus, learning must be an integrated part of a job. In fact, the leadership organization of the twenty-first century will be part technology-based, part customer service and part adult schoolhouse. Its most distinguishable asset will be a culture of continuous learning.
The rapid changes in today's work environment afforded by high technology have had tremendous impact on how people think about their jobs and their roles in a corporation. It is a world of uncertainty. People measure a company's attractiveness by its capacity to provide learning and experience. Access to training, mentoring and challenging projects are often more important than pay or benefits. Employees value the opportunity to develop their skills to increase their own marketability.
Continuous learning is not only essential for competitive advantage, but paramount to attracting and keeping the best people in an organization, in other words, increasing the value of its human capital.
The crisis in education and training is really a crisis in learning.
Continuous, dynamic learning in corporations has been difficult to accomplish because learning has largely been relegated to formal training programs in out-of-work settings that create a mental separation from everyday work. This disconnected process of information transfer essentially parallels the linear teaching methods people experienced in standard school environments. We were taught content, not methods of thinking that are relevant to our everyday lives.
With the emphasis largely on conveying information and covering content, genuine understanding or constructed meaning were missing. This is the crisis in education today. With information exchanging hands at rapid speed, education as a cause-and-effect model doesn't work. Students need to learn how to think and construct meaning in a rapidly changing, nonlinear world.
Learning is a natural, active and messy process.
Recent discoveries in many fields of science from evolutionary biology to neuroscience suggest people continue to change, learn and evolve in a nonlinear fashion. The brain doesn't work like a computer waiting to be programmed with organized zeros and ones. The brain doesn't wait for information to be input in a linear fashion. Instead, the brain is a self-organizing neural network. As such, learning is a natural, active and messy process of pattern formulation and constructed meaning.
As corporations are trying to do more with fewer employees, their training programs must become continuous learning programs in order to maximize individual capacity. Workers must demonstrate a high degree of skill to be effective and productive in their jobs today. To stay productive, companies must invest in continuous, natural learning.
Natural learning is built upon the principles of connection and coherence, creating mutual meaning and dynamic relationships. Natural learning doesn't happen in fits and starts, nor does it happen in isolation of everyday activities. Importantly, natural learning recognizes that the human experience itself is evolutionary.
A new way of learning is required. Effective learning programs of the future must be:
Web-Based Learning...The new, flexible medium for learning.
New learning requires using new technology. Timely, continuous learning must happen in real time as an integral part of the work day. Thanks to web-based learing, learning happens right at the desk. Increasingly companies' information technology includes an Intranet or Internet system ideal for web-based learning.
Web-based learning means that students access all learning materials and course instruction on their own computer via their company's Intranet or through the World Wide Web. Web-based learning programs are interactive and can provide instant feedback and performance appraisal.
Web-based learning features such as chat rooms and libraries allow students to broaden their education far beyond the reach of any other learning medium.
Web-based learning is the most flexible and effective medium for learning. It is superior to other technology-based solutions like CD-ROMs and video conferencing for the following reasons:
Neither CD-ROM nor video conferencing offers team-building or collaborative approaches to learning, which are essential in maximizing human capital.
Web-based learning is the most effective learning medium in today's marketplace for ten distinct reasons:
Cost-effective, immediate and relevant, web-based learning is the medium for learning today.
"Organizations are created through a system of patterns which function as language. New understandings about learning are enabling us to create a pattern language for conceiving and describing learning environments."
Christopher Alexander,
Author of "The Timeless Way of Building"
Pebblesoft -- The New Language of Learning
Pebblesoft is the premiere company dedicated to web-based learning. As one would expect, Pebblesoft's language follows the covenants of the new learning. It is not linear, it is a living language building on a company's learning objectives and its people, as individual learners. It is inherently flexible and relevant to learning today.
We call it the Pebblesoft Learning Environment: Cohesive, customized web-based programs that create the patterns and structures necessary to facilitate learning in any business or academic environment.
The Pebblesoft Learning Environment not only recognizes learning as an active, messy process driven by pattern formulation, but acknowledges that people learn best when the structure corresponds to their own learning styles. Pebblesoft has developed learning modules for visual, auditory, textual, random, and contextual learning styles. Initial, simple diagnostic tests define each learner's type. Some learners will begin in the middle, others will end at the beginning. The Pebblesoft Learning Environment works for everyone.
A system of open architecture means that content and tools can be infinitely adjusted to suit all kinds of training programs from finite, entry level accounting skills to more abstract management learning skills, like team-building and strategic thinking.
Organizational development executives have defined effective training by the 4 J's:
The Pebblesoft Learning Environment provides the language to meet all these tenets:
Learning happens daily as an integrated part of work.
Pebblesoft's payoff is in people performance.
The initial cost for the entire Pebblesoft Learning Environment varies according to the size of the learning environment. Most companies report a return on their investment in less than nine months in increased productivity and job performance.
A typical corporate training program produces only 10-20% return on investment, based on an estimate of the trainees who will actually end up using the training on the job. Pebblesoft Learning delivers 100% return on investment in the first nine months, and continues to increase the asset value of a corporation's human capital indefinitely over years for real competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Assessing Pebblesoft's application to your organization.
Almost any corporation can easily install and begin using Pebblesoft in a matter of weeks. All it requires is a 486 or better PC or MAC with popular web browser software like Netscape or Microsoft. A UNIX or NT server is required with an Illustra database initially. Other popular databases will be supported in a subsequent release. A few low-cost plug-ins are required. The server and the above mentioned accompaniments can be provided by Pebblesoft for an additional fee.
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