Podcasters Beware.

I place this in the category, the closing of the internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is constantly battling to keep the internet open for all to use, has posted this statement about how they are now taking up arms to defend the rights for anyone who has a microphone, computer, and access to Internet to create and distribute podcasts. It seems a company named Volomedia has received a patent for exclusive rights to the process of podcasting.

The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.

EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Research Online

The University of Wollongong in Australia has made a book on mobile learning available for download as a series of .pdfs: New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education. The following is the table of contents and the preface.

Table of Contents

• 1 - Introduction: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning³, Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney and Brian Ferry
• 2 - Professional development: Faculty development for new technologies: Putting mobile learning in the hands of the teachers⁴, Geraldine Lefoe, Ian Olney, Rob Wright and Anthony Herrington
• 3 - Adult education: Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education⁵, Anthony Herrington
• 4 - Early childhood education: Digital story telling using iPods⁶, Ian Olney, Jan Herrington and Irina Verenikina
• 5 - Environmental education: Using mobile phones to enhance teacher learning in environmental education⁷, Brian Ferry
• 6 - Information technology education: Incorporating mobile technologies within constructivist-based curriculum resources⁸, Anthony Herrington
• 7 - Language and literacy education: Using iPods to capture professional dialogue between early career teachers to enrich reflective practice⁹, Jessica Mantei and Lisa Kervin
• 8 - Mathematics education: Role of mobile digital technology in fostering the construction of pedagogical and content knowledge of mathematics¹⁰, Mohan Chinnappan
• 9 - Physical education: Using iPods to enhance the teaching of games in physical education¹¹, Greg Forrest
• 10 - Reflective practice: Collaborative gathering, evaluating and communicating ‘wisdom’ using iPods¹², Lisa Kervin and Jessica Mantei
• 11 - Science education: Using mobile phone cameras to capture images for slowmations: Student-generated science animations¹³, Garry Hoban
• 12 - Visual arts education: Art on the move: Mobility – a way of life¹⁴, Ian Brown
• 13 - Design principles: Design principles for mobile learning¹⁵, Anthony Herrington, Jan Herrington and Jessica Mantei

Preface: While mobile technologies such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and digital music players (mp3 players) have permeated popular culture, they have not found widespread acceptance as pedagogical tools in higher education.

The purpose of this e-book is to explore the use of mobile devices in learning in higher education, and to provide examples of good pedagogy. We are sure that the rich variety of examples of mobile learning found in this book will provide the reader with the inspiration to teach their own subjects and courses in ways that employ mobile devices in authentic and creative ways. This book is made up of a collection of double blind peer-reviewed chapters written by participants in the project New technologies, new pedagogies: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning.

The book begins with an introductory chapter that describes the overall project, its aims and methods. The second chapter describes the professional development process that was used for the teacher participants involved in the project. This is followed by 10 chapters, each describing a mobile learning pedagogy that was employed in the context of a subject area within a Faculty of Education. The final chapter presents guidelines or design principles for the use of mobile learning in higher education learning environments.

We wish to acknowledge the support provided for the project on which this book is based by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. This research was also funded by generous support from the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wollongong. Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney & Brian Ferry, April 2009

The chapters and full text are arranged alphabetically by author below:

Research Online

The Curse of my.barackobama.com

Whether you approve or disapprove of President Barak Obama or the Tea Bag rallies, this piece in Newgeography is certainly a clarion call to leaderships concerning the double-edged sword that is social media.

The days of politics as usual are over. The Obama team will have to play the game under a set of rules that have not all been written yet. This new era in politics will be much more open and subject to more public scrutiny than at any time in history.

The same communications tactics that won President Obama an election in 2008 may prove to be his greatest challenge in building public consensus for action going forward. In the age of “buzz” our young President will face challenges like none other. His greatest challenge may be in learning how to tame and control the inherently unruly politics of the information age.

There are unintended consequences to all leadership – be it politicians, business executives, or educators – to giving the masses an unfettered voice. It can be invigorating or frustrating since everyone is talking at once and those who would lead us are incapable of deciding whom to address first.

Even if they do make a decision, many will stop listening and starting talking themselves which will further infuriate and insult the leader. The leader unprepared for this eventuality will likely dismiss those individuals as we witnessed this summer with the Democratic leadership in Congress and in the old “media” where leadership is still struggling to come to grips with the loss of power that social media has stripped from them.

From an educational perspective, leadership must come to grips with the fact that social media is stripping the last vestiges of the “sage on the stage” from their hands. Sure they talked a good talk about being the “guide on the side” letting learners explore topics on their own, but make no mistake that as long as the “guide” was controlling the curriculum and the timing then the “sage” was still present as a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

In fact the guide on the side is even more insulting than the sage on the stage because the guide only provides a veneer of autonomy to the student, but it was the “sage” that continued to hold the ropes and was the ultimate arbiter of whether the student had mastered a specific skill.

With social media students are free to draw their own conclusions and post them without the pressure of meeting an instructor’s predetermined outcomes. Conflicting ideas that gain grass roots support cannot be ignored or silenced by the leader without serious repercussions. I’m not sure there are many leaders out there that are willing to take that chance.

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 23, 2009

Michael Erard offers a short manifesto on the future of attention. An interesting read as we race to incorporate Twitter, Facebook, etc. into the learning environment.

I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.

Harold Jache writes that as companies switch from silos to networks our means of communicating will change resulting, in part, in training becoming marginalized.

History shows that significant changes in how we communicate result in significant changes in how we work. Many silos of support functions will not work in a network-centric organization as there’s too much redundancy, duplication of effort and slowness to react. It’s becoming obvious that only highly networked organizations are going to be successful.

Harold’s piece was based off of a piece written by Jay Cross and Clark Quinn regarding the future of Learning and Development in the corporate workplace. Their conclusion, is that:

[B]e aware that this is a permanent climate change, not a passing storm. Most of the time, the global economy is cyclical. It has its ups and downs, but the underlying pattern remains the same. A swing in one direction is balanced by a swing in the other. But what we are experiencing today is fundamental. Things are not going to return to where they were, for we are witnessing the birth of a new world order. We’re moving toward continuous change.

Over at 2¢ Worth, David Warlick posts an interesting list of what 21st century learning involves:

• Questioning your learning experience,
• Engaging your information environment,
• Proving (and disproving) what you find,
• Constructing (inventing) new learning and knowledge
• Teaching others what you have learned
• Being respected for the power of your learning, and
• Being responsible for your learning and its outcomes

I’m not sure I totally agree with this list, but that may be the subject of another post.

FatDux Blog offers up 20 tips for writing for the web. The eLearningPost focused on #2:

2. Apply George Orwell’s rules
George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are – they’re all gems:

1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.

2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active

5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent.

6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!

At the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Facebook Group there is a listing of a series of free webinars:

Online Learning Technologies: Past, Present, and Future
Wednesday, September 2 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Leveraging Social Media Tools to Improve Workplace Learning
Thursday, September 3 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Janet Clarey
http://ems3.intellor.com/index.cgi?p=304441&t=14&do=register&s=sumtotal&rID=105&edID=89

Selecting a Learning Management System
Wednesday, September 16 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Tom Werner and Richard Nantel
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Improving Knowledge Flow in Organizations
Thursday, September 24 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://sabaex.centra.com/main/saba/m/Registrar/NewRegistration.jsp?event_id=0000004e579475012263639ad100763e&locale=en_US&source

The Armed Forces Journal has an essay by retired Marine Corp Colonel Thomas X. Hammes outlining why PowerPoint is a poor decision-making tool. Top take-away:

Rather than the intellectually demanding work of condensing a complex issue to two pages of clear text, the staff instead works to create 20 to 60 slides. Time is wasted on which pictures to put on the slides, how to build complex illustrations and what bullets should be included. I have even heard conversations about what font to use and what colors. Most damaging is the reduction of complex issues to bullet points. Obviously, bullets are not the same as complete sentences, which require developing coherent thoughts. Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide building. Slide-ology has become an art in itself, while thinking is often relegated to producing bullets.

The BBC reports that another study shows that the ability to multitask is highly questionable especially amongst those people who proclaim to be expert multitaskers.

At eLearn Magazine’s online blog Roger Schank asks Must e-Learning Be ‘Cool?’ His rant is focused on the use of Second Life, and I have even heard proponents of Second Life say that it is valueless if you are just going to gather people in a single virtual location in Second Life to speak with them. Money quote comes at the end of his post:

People who do e-learning need to learn to fight the demand for cool and cheap. Insist on effective.

There is interesting give-and-take in the comments between opponents and proponents of Second Life.

Jane Hart points to an article by Mind Map Inspiration outlining 100 reasons to mind map. Top ten reasons are:

1. Explore a subject
2. Study & learn a new topic, culture or country
3. Plan your schedules
4. Innovate & invent
5. Create new ideas
6. Expand existing ideas
7. Tap your unique talents
8. Increase your brain power
9. Consolidate your existing knowledge
10. Summarise your skills

Patrick Batty provides a brief discussion of Blended Learning and how social media can have a role in that environment. The post culminates in an invitation to a free, live webinar discussing social networking in the classroom.

Brandon Hall offers free webinars

At the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Facebook Group there is a listing of a series of free webinars:

Online Learning Technologies: Past, Present, and Future
Wednesday, September 2 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Leveraging Social Media Tools to Improve Workplace Learning
Thursday, September 3 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Janet Clarey
http://ems3.intellor.com/index.cgi?p=304441&t=14&do=register&s=sumtotal&rID=105&edID=89

Selecting a Learning Management System
Wednesday, September 16 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Tom Werner and Richard Nantel
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Improving Knowledge Flow in Organizations
Thursday, September 24 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://sabaex.centra.com/main/saba/m/Registrar/NewRegistration.jsp?event_id=0000004e579475012263639ad100763e&locale=en_US&source

A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention: Observatory: Design Observer

Michael Erard offers a short manifesto on the future of attention. An interesting read as we race to incorporate Twitter, Facebook, etc. into the learning environment.

I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 16, 2009

The Training Zone provides a high-level review of what it takes to be a successful coach. Of course being the iconoclast that I am, I was put off by the statement that in the marketplace for coaches, credentials are becoming more important. “A post-graduate qualification or equivalent should be the benchmark for all professional coaches.” Verity Gough, the author, admits that proof that you passed a test does not prove you are a good coach, but it does signal that you are interested enough to pursue formal training.

Via Facebook: Greg Walker notes that the faculty of Education at the University of Regina is offering an open access course on Social Media & Open Education. He notes that it open to both registered and non-registered students and features live and recorded presentations. The course is built upon the wikispaces environment.

An interesting online forum on Monday, Aug. 24th at 1 pm. The Ontario Educator Meetup is holding a free online session on the strengths and challenges of mobile learning. The forum will be held in an Adobe Connect conference room and headset and microphone is required to participate.

An unnerving article in Slate about our instinctual desire to search is addictive and can be as dangerous as any other drug addiction. Money quote:

Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one. Panksepp says the dopamine system is activated by finding something unexpected or by the anticipation of something new. If the rewards come unpredictably—as e-mail, texts, updates do—we get even more carried away. No wonder we call it a "CrackBerry."

Cole Camplese provides a fascinating review of the recent OpenEd conference in Vancouver B.C. Not only does he recap, but he provides links to actual videos of the talks given. These were posted to UpStream (a YouTube video hosting site. Here is Gardner Campbell presenting “No Digital Facelifts.” He argues that the changes in communication brought on by social media is as civilization changing as the invention of the alphabet.

Elliot Masie is soliciting thoughts on how learning will have changed by the year 2019.

Jane Hart is seeking input on how organizations are using social media for learning purposes.

I've decided the best way to do this is to use a Google Docs form and collect them in a spreadsheet where users can easily view and sort responses. So below you will find the form embedded in this posting if you'd like to contribute and start the ball rolling.  Once I have gathered a number of responses, I will, of course, share the URL.

Over at the eLearning Post, the author’s point to a sample chapter of  Kristina Halvorson’s new book Content Strategy for the Web, in which she argues that content audits are necessary before creating additional content.

Before you ever begin to brainstorm about which content you need, you must understand exactly what you have. Before you can decide where to focus your web improvement efforts (and allocate your budget), you need to know exactly what needs improving and why.

The TrainingZone celebrates PowerPoint’s 25th anniversary with some useful do’s and don’ts for learning professionals.

Gina Minks at Adventures in Corporate Education writes about how social media in the enterprise may never take off due to malware that is accidentally installed by following links found in social media. Read the whole thing at Will zombies be social media’s downfall in the Enterprise?

Using Social Media Tools To Improve Workplace Learning

View more documents from Janet Clarey.

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 9, 2009

The Technical Editors’ Eyrie provides a discussion on Developing a departmental style guide. I thought this item was extremely interesting.

Too many style guides get turned into tutorials on grammar, spelling, and punctuation. When the style guide is intended to be used by people who are not professional writers, this emphasis is understandable, but still misplaced.

Web Strategy blog provides an ongoing list on how to kick start an online community. I think the key proposal was made in the comments where it was recommended:

Make it easy for people to participate. Also, push content out to community members in the format they choose to keep the community at the forefront of their minds. If they like e-mail, give them e-mail. If they like RSS, give them RSS.

At the Training Zone, they offer a video on how to deal with “interrupters” in the classroom. It is presented by Monty Python alumni John Cleese. Free registration is required. They also provided a video defining how to work with the “waffler.”

The Rapid eLearning Blog demonstrates several techniques to build creative elearning courses, of course they all require the use of Articulate.

Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day lists some free online courses about e-learning hosted by the Brainshark Content Network.

Some people are suggesting that Adobe’s Acrobat and Flash “…vulnerabilities and exploits are on the rise while Microsoft’s is falling.”

JISC provides a guide to use Second Life in the learning environment. Among the advantages of Second Life is “that lecturers are not Potential advantages of teaching in Second Life are that lecturers are not limited by physical space in a classroom.  Sessions can be recorded and the online interaction can give confidence to quieter students, which can stimulate more open and reflective discussion than would be possible in a traditional seminar.”