Last week we were at Learning Technologies 2012 in London braving the winter chill here in London. Just as we expected this is probably the best show for the sort of products and services we offer. I met many prospects (which is always a real need), some existing clients/partners (always good to catch up), and some casual visitors; and a couple of walk-ins at the show to get the ‘flavor’ of the show. All the interactions were interesting and we learnt something from each one of them. We left the show more educated and very tired – after being constantly on our feet for two days.

Just over a week since we released UpsideLMS 5.0, and the interest it has generated in these few days is mindboggling! For those of you who still haven’t taken a look at this stunning, best value LMS, we suggest you do it now.

UpsideLMS version 5.0 is an outcome of the sweat and thoughts put in by our engineering and UI experts. Our designers have put themselves in the users’ shoes to understand the nuances of User Experience (UX).

This new version promises to bring a burst of freshness to the users’ desktops along with a slew of new features. To give you a taste of the new version, here’s a quick take on the 5 top features in the new UpsideLMS.

One of the prime forces that drove us to release a new version of the website (back in 2010) was enabling visitors make the most of their time spent on our website. And as such, our website has reflected information that is accurate and to the point. Little did we know that one day these efforts will put us on the chart of the best websites!

www.upsidelearning.com, our official website has made it to number 26 in the ‘Top 100 Highest Ranking Websites In Learning Technology’ chart.

The release of the new UpsideLMS version – 5.0, is generating a lot of excitement at Upside Learning. The Marketing team has been on their toes, getting the collaterals and other launch activities ready; the Sales team is now itching to show it off to prospects after laying their eyes on the new version.

Our stunning, best value Learning Management System, UpsideLMS v5.0, is built to include features that trainers and learners have always wanted in an LMS. It has the features, the performance, the user interface and experience, the awards and recognition, and your trust! Here is what you will find in the v5.0 of UpsideLMS.

One week into the New Year it’s the right time to look back on the year gone by. So we thought it would be interesting take a journey down our blog for some of the most popular and noteworthy posts of 2011. We have pulled these up based on social signals (views, comments, twitter and more).

So without much ado, here are Top 50 eLearning Posts of 2011 from our blog as determined by you, our readers. Read them. Reflect on them. Debate them. Enjoy them!

HTML5 is adoption for mobile learning is picking up; perhaps the iPad is one driver of change , rapid improvements in regular and mobile browsers rendering HTML5 another. Recently, while speaking to customers, we encountered one of the primary issues that corporate stumble upon when deciding on HTML5 for pilots or technology exploration initiatives. Large companies, especially in the BFSI market need security built into their technology solutions. We have been aware of the security concerns around HTML5 and the mad scramble amongst browsers to implement ‘their’ way of rendering HTML5.

Some other aspects of the complexity theory I found interesting:

Even if the agents comprising the population of the system are complicated and heterogeneous (just as people in a learning network are), this variability tends to “average out”; while the agents may be complicated, the objects can be modeled as being homogenous as a first approximation. While it goes without saying that humans are extremely complicated as a species, I don’t quite agree that the objects we create can be modeled simply. Some of the artifacts that a learning network can generate are extremely complex. However, I have a sense that the objects will be homogenous in a reductionist way.

Have been reading about the science of ‘Complexity’ recently, and find that many of the aspects described apply equally well to learning. Without doubt, learning is a process that is riddled with complexity – which might the reason we don’t understand it very well.

How might ‘complexity’ as a scientific concept affect learning? Especially if you consider learning as a complex adaptive network that is driven by human desire for knowledge (learning) and sociability. I had some thoughts about that.

In July 2010, I wrote about a cheap tablet that India is developing in a public-private partnership . There was a lot of skepticism floating around how and when these will become available. Now it is here – The Aakash to be made available for about 45 USD.

Came across this really interesting article about gamification at SAP. Definitely worth a read.

SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe is saying “If I look at how my kids are consuming software, if it’s not desirable immediately, they throw it away. Can you imagine what happens to your IT landscape when these people come into business?”

Every now and again I wonder about the multi-user 3D environments, or virtual worlds that were all the rage just a couple of years ago, the finest example being Second Life. Second Life itself was a promising collaborative 3D learning platform. Yet, as I trawl the web looking for successful implementations of such 3Dverses for learning, I find very little substantive information about companies implementing such systems with any reasonable success. While there are many experiments, very few are able to justify any sort of return on the expense. I personally believe that 3D simulation and collaborative environments have huge potential.

This article by Sarah “Intellagirl” Smith-Robbins is quite interesting. She does a great simple description of gamification, something I’ve written about before.

“Education has been a system of status and points since the dawn of the Industrial Age.”