This year, as our company Christmas gift, we thought we would continue our charitable history but bring it a little closer to home.  The economic challenges are great this year and each of us are aware of many families who are struggling to provide for their basic needs.  In keeping with the importance of both family and community, Iona decided to Adopt-a-Family this Christmas.

Realizing that the need is great, employees contributed personal funds to the company allowance knowing that joining together, we would make this Christmas a little brighter for a local family.  Working with Peoria Friendship House, employees divided into teams that had the responsibility to shop for one family member.  This program targets families with children in 8^th grade and younger to provide a new outfit and one of the toys on the child’s wish list.

It was a great effort as everyone pitched in – from shopping for their person, to donating additional monies to go to the family shopping, to helping wrap the gifts.  Our front hallway was lined with 11 very large, very filled bags.  They contained toys, electronics, clothing, coats, boots, hats, scarves, gloves, cleaning supplies, games and hot cocoa.  They are filled with our Iona family helping out another family that needs help.

We are all blessed in so many ways.  What a great way to share those blessings with others and a nice way to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

BJ Aberle, Jeremy LeBeau, Mark Tovey, Matt Forcum and Jeff Idleman wrapping gifts

he Iona Group is pleased to announce that it is working with Campus Vena, a division of Veolia Environnement, to develop an eLearning orientation module as part of their Veolia Induction Program for new managers. The module will be developed using Iona’s Doctum® Learning Development system. In order to meet the learning objectives of the course and to effectively influence this particular audience, additional functionality is being developed in Doctum. The additional functionality will provide a user interface that reinforces the key message and provides real-time feedback to the learner. “This eLearning module must do more than just educate our new managers. We want it to influence their attitudes and their sense of pride about Veolia and the people they will lead,” says Gina Gardner, Training Manager for Campus Veolia.

Campus Veolia is a new division of VENAO LLC (Veolia Environment North America Organization) established in April 2008 in Lombard, Illinois. It forms part of the VE Campus network which is present in 14 different countries, the largest of which is in France. Campus VENA is headed by Ronnie Bennett who successfully set up and ran the Campus in the United Kingdom for 7 years.

Two prominent Peoria area service organizations, the American Red Cross and Catholic Charities began using Iona’s Doctum® eLearning Development System in March. Both organizations will be using Doctum to create their own, custom eLearning courses that can be delivered to employees, volunteers as well as those who use the services of Catholic Charities and the Red Cross.

Doctum, with its easy to use interface and variety of output options, offers several advantages for service organizations looking to produce eLearning content. Doctum’s web-based interface allows training professionals and individuals who have little or no eLearning development experience to quickly and easily produce eLearning modules. In addition, Doctum facilitates collaboration between individuals by providing an easy way to review and comment on modules as they are being developed. Doctum’s Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model makes it simple for those new to eLearning to experiment without incurring the higher costs associated with purchasing packaged software or hiring outside consultants to do the work. “The Red Cross is always searching for effective ways to reach more people with disaster prevention and health education. Iona’s Doctum eLearning Development System is an exciting opportunity to expand our training.” Anne Fox, CEO, American Red Cross Central Illinois Chapter.

In today’s economic times, organizations are turning to eLearning as a way to do more for less. The “create once, share with many” nature of eLearning allows non-profits who have a large constituency to distribute learning to many people at a significantly lower cost than delivering on-site, instructor-led training. “Using this software will be a great asset for our workers and help us reduce travel costs and time away from the office for training,” says Becky Cobb, Training Coordinator/HR Specialist at Catholic Charities Diocese of Peoria. ELearning also has the advantage that it can provide people the ability to work at their own pace. Plus, once they have taken a course, it can be easily used as a reference or taken again at a later time as a refresher.

Recently Caterpillar Racing learned of an opportunity to promote the team and the company by displaying a 30-second video on the Sprint Vision jumbo monitors at the Fontana Raceway in California. That was the good news. The challenging news? The video had to be in California in just days. Cat Racing called on The Iona Group because of their in-house capabilities to produce high-end, high impact video and because of their deep experience with the company and Cat branding. Iona was able to bring fresh ideas to the project as well as leverage existing application footage to create a video that was bold, loud and fast enough to capture the attention of even the most discerning race fan. The video crossed the finish line under budget and was at the raceway quicker than expected resulting in the client giving Iona the checkered flag.

The new version of Doctum has been completely re-architected, using Adobe’s Flex and ActionScript 3 technologies. This advance increases Doctum’s flexibility for developing custom eLearning applications while maintaining the usability and intuitiveness of previous versions. In addition to the architecture change, the newest version of Doctum has several new features including:

Selectable course “Layouts” (for menus and navigation) Selectable course “Skins” (user interface appearance) Support for H.264 Video (including High Definition video) Multiple file uploads

The new version will be made widely available early 2009. We look forward to bringing to market a strong application that helps our clients build cost-effective learning in a rapid, collaborative environment.

“Learning in a Web 2.0 World” was the theme of DevLearn 2008 Conference and Expo sponsored by the e-Learning Guild. Wikis, blogs, tweets, mobile learning and serious gaming were several of the topics covered at the conference. The Iona Group’s Chad Udell and John Feser attended this year’s event in San Jose, California from November 10 – 14.

The conference began on Monday, November 10th with the Adobe Learning Summit. This one day event provided attendees with the opportunity to see some of Adobe’s latest products and learn how they can be used to produce effective tools for learning. On Tuesday, the Guild’s preconference workshops and symposia were offered with topics ranging from Measuring eLearning Success, to Mobile Learning and Immersive Learning Simulations. The main conference went from Wednesday through Friday. Each day featured a key note speaker. Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly media discussed innovation and the Web 2.0 phenomenon on Wednesday. On Thursday, Dan Roam, Founder of Digital Roam, Inc. discussed using simple pictures as a way to explain and solve complex problems. Dr. John Medina, author and developmental molecular biologist rounded out the conference on Friday by discussing his research into how the brain works and the implications for developing effective learning.

While the theme of the conference focused on Web 2.0 technologies, a wide variety of eLearning topics were covered in the more than 125 various break-out that were offered during the three days. The conference was well designed and catered to everyone from the experienced instructional designers to those just beginning to explore the power of eLearning for their organizations.

For The Iona Group, a highlight of the conference was DemoFest. This event provided DevLearn Conference participants with an opportunity to showcase their own eLearning work. Chad and John participated in the event by demoing and discussing the International Society of Arboriculture’s Introduction to Arboriculture set of 10 eLearning modules. Iona developed the suite of ISA learning modules over the past 3 years.

The event proved to be a great learning experience as well as a great forum for networking and meeting new people all focused on producing and delivering great learning solutions. Iona came away with a much stronger understanding of the current state of learning and as importantly, where effective, low cost learning is headed in the future.

The Iona Group assisted the Museum of Science and Industry in producing a high-definition video presentation that connects with real time data to inform museum visitors of the environmental impact they have by using the new grey water reclamation system recently installed in the museum.

The presentation uses Adobe® Flash® platform technology to load high definition video and then connect to a web service containing usage data from a Sloan® Water Reclamation system being used in the restrooms at the museum. The data is then overlaid on the video with high quality motion graphics and informational illustrations to form a complete presentation.

All of this is shown on a high-definition 52” 1080p display that is mounted on a wall and connected to an unseen PC that handles all the display logic. The presentation shows live usage metrics coupled with water usage facts to provide the museum visitor with actually being a part of an educational experience

We have begun redeveloping our innovative Doctum™ Learning Platform in order to better serve our clients by giving them more control of the learning development process. Currently, Iona’s design staff is working with our clients, our designers, and developers who use the platform to provide the improvements which lead to more efficient eLearning development. The new Doctum™ 2.0 platform promises to allow Iona and our clients to work more efficiently and effectively towards delivering effective learning solutions.

Iona’s Doctum™ platform is a standardized development tool which supports the design, production, and implementation of highly effective learning solutions. Doctum™ also allows clients to collaborate on course content in real-time. By using Doctum™, clients have greater control over their projects through the ability to make updates, revise scripts, leave comments, and provide feedback instantly to course developers.

Improvements planned for Doctum™ 2.0 include:

• Reinvestment in our core technologies
  • Increased stability
  • Modernized infrastructure
• Increased usability
• Developer utility
• Eased module creation
• Standardized system implementation
• Strengthen template design
• Modernize codebase
  • Transition to Flex and Action Script 3
  • Allow for easier templating from Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop Designers

A 9-year-old Oakdale Elementary School student hopes to get to Chicago to see the video taped in her classroom. “I was nervous,” said Joke’ (pronounced Jokay) Adanri of Normal, after repeating several lines that will be part of a video shown at the Museum of Science and Industry from Jan. 25 to March 1. A three-person crew from The Iona Group Inc. of Morton filmed several students and the entire class. The Green Revolution exhibit explores green technology and features black architects, scientists and innovators.

Learn More at The Pantagraph.com

The Iona Group continues to grow and consolidate its production and post-production resources through expansion and training. Recent improvements include an additional Panasonic DVCPro Field Production Kit that is entirely P2 based, Final Cut Pro editorial laptops for all Experience team members, and three new editorial suites that boast real-time AJA hardware and 8-core PowerMacs. All of our editorial facilities are tied together through a dedicated post network and utilize an enterprise class storage and backup system.

Our camera operators and video editors recently attended a Panasonic workshop on P2 workflow and its interaction with Apple‘s Final Cut Pro. We continue to improve our ability to effectively utilize software to create great looking and engaging work that is efficiently produced. Other improvements include Gridiron‘s Nucleo Pro render management software which is used to maximize our workstation processors to make sure the job gets done on time!