I came across this nice presentation from Inman Next Agent on the 20 Mobile Tools that Will Make You Stand Out.  Though many of them are uniquely for the United States (the Multiple Listings Systems (MLS) systems integrated with many of these RE apps are institutionalized and light years ahead of ours), some apps recommended can be used by Philippine real estate professionals.  Do you recognize or use any of the following sites:

Localmind

Flipboard

Prezi

iMovie

DualBrowser

Open Home Pro

Zite

360 Panorama

Realtor.com

Zillow

Quicklytics

Carbonite

Evernote

Mobile Card Cast

Slydial

CalcMoolator

MagicPlan App

Kik Messenger

Glympse

Here’s the full SlideShare presentation.

Closer to Manila, there’s one, ground-breaking Philippine mobile app that Filipinos can be mighty be proud of.  The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) developed the Metro Manila Traffic Navigator for the iPad and iPhone. If you’re wieldy enough with handling your phone while weaving thru traffic, then the Metro Manila Traffic Navigator is the closest you’ll get to a free GPRS.   

As a progressive Philippine real estate broker, sales person, entrepreneur, or developer you may be already selling properties on the Net, or may be seriously considering to do so. You might even have a running internet marketing campaign to sell Philippine real estate.

• But do you hit your online lead targets? Are you doing it right?
• Do you want to increase the number  and quality of your online leads, while building a loyal community of customers?
• Do you want to convert more leads into sales?
• Do you want to earn more out of your real estate blogs and websites?

If you’ve been looking for  quality internet marketing training for Philippine real estate professionals, register now for our course:  Workshop on Business Blogging, Websites & Social Media Marketing for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Developers and Homebuilders.  

Dates:
Face-to-Face/Hands-on Workshop: 
November 18, 2011, 1-5 pm
November 19, 2011, 1-5 pm

Online Phase–Project Presentation, Critical Group Review, Subject Matter Expert (SME) Consultation:
November 20-26, 2011

Join now, limited seats available!  Click here for details and seminar outline.

Avail of the Early Bird Rate if you register on or before November 11, 2011.  The workshop aims to equip participants with foundations of good business blogging, monetizing blogs for real estate, ethical and effective online promotions for real estate websites, and carving a niche in online real estate promotions thru the power of social media marketing.

Learn the best of internet marketing from respected industry practitioners who are also trained educators.  Janette Toral is the founder of DigitalFilipino.com , and several pioneering Philippine e-commerce sites.  Among a long and impressive list of credentials, Ms. Toral is a known social media guru in the Internet space, director of various internet and mobile marketing associations, as well as a sought-after speaker and lecturer on digital entrepreneurship, blogging, social media and online PR. She has been called “the Mother of E-commerce Law”.  She authored “Blogging from Home”, and is publisher of numerous research reports on e-commerce and the Internet.

Joining her is  Maita Herce Siquijor, a seasoned real estate broker and  digital marketing practitioner.  As an advocate of IT literacy and online education to help raise the real estate service professional’s global competitiveness, Ms. Siquijor has been invited to talk on Internet Marketing in several Philippine real estate conferences and seminars.   She is the founder of several property brokerage sites, including Architerra Manila Properties, Your Condo in Manila and ResidencesManila.com.

This workshop’s expected audience:

• Build-and-sell companies and entrepreneurs
• Condominium and housing project developers
• Property owners in the  leasing business
• Serviced apartments  & boutique hotel owners
• Real estate professionals who want  a firmer grasp of  internet marketing as applied to their  practice

Register now!  It’s time to not only do Internet Marketing to sell Philippine real estate, but to do it right. Consider the facts:

• As of  March 31, 2011 the Philippines has 29.7 million total Internet users.  As of July 2011, over 25 million of them are in Facebook. The latter make up for a 25.51% Internet user penetration rate.
• A total of 41% of the Facebook users from the Philippines are within the 25-64 age bracket.
• There is a growing number of Philippine real estate  brokers, agents and direct sellers from the Philippines that are now on the internet. If you’re not on the Net, are you losing the chance to sell your property to the right buyer, and close a sale faster?
• If you’re targetting an OFW market:   In the US market alone, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) 2010 Profile indicate that buyers and sellers mostly use BOTH the real estate agent and the Internet to search or sell properties.  We can expect a derived trend from this for Filipino users, who are comfortable with using the Internet.

So Philippine real estate entrepreneurs, developers, homebuilders and professionals:  Register NOW, and learn the right internet marketing tools and tactics. We hope to see you at our workshop on business blogging, websites, and social media marketing this November 18, 2011.

I am pleased to announce that the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) has launched the country’s first, full online courses for the Philippine real estate industry:  The Diploma and Master in Land Valuation and Management.  Classes start on November 12, 2011.  Registration ongoing til October 25, 2011.

This is a major win for raising the bar for Philippine real estate professional education program and online learning in the Philippines.   The program meets the Philippines government’s need to form competent and qualified valuers.

 The Diploma and Masters online valuation courses are designed for private and government valuers and property managers, whether residing in the Philippines or elsewhere in the world.  Those with no background in land valuation and management but wish to enter the profession can also apply for the course.

The programs’ goals were taken from Declaration of Policy of the Real Estate Service Act (RESA) of 2009, otherwise known as RA 9646, Art. I, Sec. 2 and as a strategic program to implement the Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) of the DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES (DENR).

Graduates of the online course will have the competencies of globally competitive, professional valuers and property managers as well as the awareness of the role of the sector in sustainable development.

This is a laderrized program.  Those who graduate from the Diploma in Land Valuation and Management (DLVM) course may progress to the Master in Land Valuation and Management (MLVM) program.

As stated in the University of the Philippines Open University brochure,  50-70% of the country’s wealth is in real estate.  Yet the contribution to our Gross National Product (GNP) from this industry has only been 6.3%  for the past ten years. With a concerted effort from both the private and public, real estate is positioned to be the next major engine to spur the Philippines’ economic growth.

I first learned about the program’s inception last year from Professor Juvy Gervacio,  an assistant professor of the course and a member of the Philippine E-learning Society (PeLs).  It began as a 6-module Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Program developed in coordination with the LAMP.   This month Atty. Ariel Martinez, National President of the Philippine Association of Real Estate Boards (PAREB), endorsed the program to the members’ for their enhancement and continuing professional education.  Here’s some more information on  UP Open University’s Diploma and Master in Land Valuation and Management (images on DLVM/MLVM from Atty. Ariel Martinez, as circulated in the PAREB E-Bulletin):

For your comments or inquiries, fill up the form below:

*(denotes required field)

First Name: *

Last Name: *

E-Mail Address: *

E-Mail Address again: *

Please enter your E-mail Address a second time.

Subject: *

Message: *

CAPTCHA Code: *

Revisiting old posts and checking on updates, I searched for the 2011 report on the Horizon Project .  This has been an ongoing longitudinal research since 2002 by New Media Consortium and its research partners. I first encountered the Horizon Project  in 2009, in watching trends for e-learning that may be applicable in the Philippines set-up.

The Horizon Project is a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectors around the globe.

Though this speaks more about key drivers of educational technology, these validate what we already are experiencing in the era of the rising prominence of  social media.  E-books, augmented reality, mobile learning, game-based learning, gesture-based learning and learning analytics are key trends that are expected to be adopted into the online learning space within the next five years.

For us, there are two trends that would work for e-learning for continuing professional education in Philippine real estate.  Most familiar to us are the use of electronic books (e-books) , which have been widely used to date for circulating anytime-anytime referencing.  This is specially so when training, knowledge exchange and even marketing promotions need a bit of ‘e’ and ‘tech’ in their endeavors.  But what’s  exciting is not the text, nor the device that’s used to access it with, but the quality of reading experiences made possible thru new reading interfaces and rich media collaborative elements.

As for mobile in learning, a recent study report from mobile manufacturer Ericsson shows that by 2015, 80% of people accessing the Internet will be doing so from mobile devices. Perhaps more important for education, Interne-capable mobile devices will outnumber computers within the next year. In Japan, over 75% of Internet users already use a mobile as their first choice for access.

This shift in the means of connecting to the Internet is being enabled by the convergence of three trends: the growing number of Internet-capable mobile devices, increasingly flexible web content, and continued development of the networks that support connectivity.

Let us know if you have any thoughts to share about New Media Adoption.

For your comments or inquiries, fill up the form below:

*(denotes required field)

First Name: *

Last Name: *

E-Mail Address: *

E-Mail Address again: *

Please enter your E-mail Address a second time.

Subject: *

Message: *

CAPTCHA Code: *

Welcome to EstateClass.com, your site for real, world-class e-learning for Philippine estate professionals worldwide.

We offer continuing professional education courses for real estate practitioners.  Teaching & training will be delivered online or thru blended learning mode, together with the traditional classroom style seminars and courses.

We recognize the need for curriculum and materials that comply with the industry requirements for accreditation, licensure or license renewal for real estate service.  However, we see the opportunity for you, the professional,  to gain real competitive advantage with high-quality continuing education courses in the real estate service industry.

E-learning is not just about digitizing materials and downloading it over the Web. Just as there are classrooms, curriculum,  and teaching methods that work better than others, there are also best practices,  authentic e-learning methodologies  and quality-designed materials that provide a better online learning experience for adult learners.

With EstateClass.com, experience real estate online training courses that  engage, transform your knowledge, and provide you with global standard skill sets no different from  that learned in a classroom set-up.

We aim to provide you with the best Subject Matter Experts in the industry; internationally trained facilitators & curriculum designers who are also industry practitioners; global standard learning environments; well-researched content; and  participation in online communities designed for real-world knowledge exchange among like-minded professionals.  Learning about the land will now be in the palm of your hand, to help you get ahead of the game.

With all those benefits, would you ever want to miss a class?

The new report is out for the Horizon Project for new media studies:  http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page

Found these new free sites to add interest to any blog or learning endeavor. On MakeBeliefsComics, you can create your own cartoon.  On Slide.com you can create your own online slide show .  The funky themes and eye candy are a come-on for younger users, compared to other online slideshow sites such as Slideshare.com   .

As the buzzword for late 2008 to early 2009 seems to be ‘recession’ , I would like to counter the pessism it connotes by offering some resource links to those who need to cut their budgets for acquiring new tools, but believe in using good technologies to move their learning–or their business–forward. 

Visit http://directory.fsf.org/ , the Directory for Free Software, for a treasure trove of free applications  for education, business, content management systems and other possible uses, at relatively little or no cost to us.

M-learning was a trend based on the the rise of handy, Net-enabled mobile phones. It was considered to be the most popular, most promising blending learning methodology as the portability of the device helped reinforce learning in ways that classroom teaching could not.   2008 was heralded as the year of m-learning in e-learning circles.   

 However, in the most popular technology article for 2008 in TrainingZone.co.uk,  m-learning  was proving to be elusive as people didn’t know how to maximize the use of these devices.  So what is the trend at this time? Find out more by visiting the article’s site.  

Now that I’ve finally been caught in the web-within-the-web social network of Facebook , tried poring over the applications if there’s anything on e-learning.  A quick scan shows FB applications such as Study Groups (whose developers look like teenyboppers to me!) ,created by the members themselves. 

Then there’s Teach the People.  As reported by Crunch Base, the application lets anyone with specific subject knowledge or a useful skill set share it by setting up a Teach the People learning communities with 1gig of free storage. So if you have a burning question on a topic of interest, you can inquire from the bigger virtual community.  With people coming from different countries, backgrounds and influences but brought together by a passion for a single cause, diversity should breed innovation and real learning.

But as an FB user for less than 45 days, I feel that FB works best if you leverage the power of the exisiting, face-to-face network and continue the conversation thru FB.  There are definitely a thousand and one tools to enrich conversations, engage learning with those cute applications, personalize the experience with so many synchronous communication tools.  It would be a challenge for the online community developer to try to elicit conversation between members with weak links/social ties to engage them to interact, or if they are from different cultures and countries! 

The FB experience thrives on nostalgia and memory-flooding, as evidenced by the flashbacking exchanges of alumni members.  What keeps them hooked is the surprise element of finding someone you haven’t seen in 20 years, then reliving memories.  It’s definitely addictive at times, but sometimes to the point of being irritating if people feel comfy enough to send you unsolicited information, poke you virtually, or invite you to some cause of theirs in the middle of trying to nudge some learning in the process.

Teach the People already received a  cool USD25,000 for being one of the top 25 finalists, besting 600 other applications developers.