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.”

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 2, 2009

The key to creating a coaching culture within an organization is the understanding that the coach recognize that that each situation is different and must be flexible enough to adapt. This makes developing managers as coaches a critical task, so says David Minchin, director of the School of Coaching and Leadership Development in a Training Zone article.

Lindsay Campbell offers two suggestions for how instructors can prepare themselves to project their voices once they are in the classroom.

Will Richardson reflects on whether he has becom a slave to technology after a confrontation with a New England contrarian.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog offers three practical ideas for using Twitter in e-learning: 1) follow an SME after a formal course is presented; 2) follow a specific topic on twitter using the application’s # command; and 3) use Twitter to build a community by again using the hashtags or signing up for a site like Twibes.

Training development should begin with a focus on what learners should do in the real world, not what they should know about the task in their head. Hat tip to Clive Shepherd, via FaceBook.

A fascinating piece on the shift from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. In my mind the money quote from this piece is the following:

If institutions viewed their primary rationale as fostering scalable peer learning, they could create learningscapes that would help individuals develop their talent much more rapidly than these individuals ever could on their own. Of course, there is a huge transition required to get from here to there, but growing competitive and economic  pressures will ensure that institutions either make this journey or fall by the wayside as a new generation of institutions emerges to take their place.

Be sure to check out the Shift Index Report as well.

Educause posts a long piece on Web 2.0 storytelling.

There is an interesting post about teaching to learn over at the blog of proximal development. The key statement in mind was this:

But let’s not forget that merely bringing Web 2.0 tools into the classroom misses the point. Yes, they do promote peer-based interactions and self-expression. But adding blogging or wikis or even global collaborative projects to our curricula is not going to magically transform our static classrooms into interest-driven communities, and it certainly is not going to prepare the students to safely and effectively navigate “networked publics” (Ito, Horst, Bittani, et al., 2008, p.8). These tools are not going to magically create interest-driven communities.

The whole post is wrapped around the author’s, Konrad Glogowski, reflections on the Living and Learning with New Media report published in 2008.

Jay Cross posts the text of an article he wrote for Chief Learning Officer about informal learning. Its class Cross in that he dismisses the old-school formal learning model that still holds sway in most organizations in favor of informal learning processes based upon “…drip-feeding, interaction, ease of access, timely reinforcement, peer coaching, respect for reflection, setting standards, cognitive apprenticeship and so on.”

In the Mailbag

Jacob Nielsen’s Alertbox explores the growing use of social networking on corporate intranets. His research is based on case studies from 14 companies in 6 countries. His advice to obtaining wholesale adoption is to gently guide users by integrating new web 2.0 tools into the existing intranet so that users encounter them naturally.

This week’s eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions e-Magazine is out with articles on the use of instructional graphics.

• Gestalt Your Graphics: Improving Instructional Graphics explores four “laws” to help get your point across by treating pictures as information
• Being an e-Learning Developer Doesn’t Excuse You from Being Careful cautions developers against trying to use licensed media illegally by doctoring them to make the media look different.

The e-Magazine can be downloaded here from Team Connection.

My Twine email contained a link to an 11-page .pdf involving workplace collaboration. That discusses the three levels of workplace collaboration from local team to network – how collaboration can be fostered at each level, and the role of the workplace leader in encouraging it.

I leave you with this You Tube video, the first of seven parts, of Neil Postman's speech on Technology and Society.

Learning for the week of 7/27

Pete Rainger at Skills for Access reports on new metadata standards that address accessibility of learning objects. The new metadata would describe what type of media or interactions learning objects contain.

Training Zone points to a company that claims its Creatix system can measure a company’s innovativeness.

Don’t what to make of this, Jane Hart points to a Learning Footprint Calculator that will offer the eLearning community a means of calculating enrionmental savings from swtiching to eLearning over classroom training.

Coming soon to an electronic device near you…CALO: Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes. It is described as software that learns in the wild and “uses transfer learning to apply lessons from one domain to another. Pipe dream? Maybe, but its being supported by DARPA, and for those of you who don’t know about DARPA, well, if you’re reading this online you can thank DARPA they created the Internet. Source: eLearn Magazine.

Kindle or just Kindling – educators are split over the value of replacing text books with Kindle-like ereaders. Source: Stephen’s Web.

Jane Hart updates and re-launches her resource list for Social Media in Learning.

Clive Shepherd reviews a SkillSoft survey that indicates that European workers believe that their employers are not providing enough training opportunities including opportunities to learn at their own pace, to revisit materials later (informal learning) and to practice skills learned.

Charles Jennings asks Who needs learning objectives? in a post at trainingzone. His argument focuses on learning objectives and teaching to the test rather than teaching to performance. Free registration is required to read the whole article. I would also recommend reading through the comments as well.

Ghostwriter Dad offers 10 useful tips on how for powerful proofreading. My favorite is #7 Read Backwards. Hat tip to LifeHacker.

For the Virtual Bookshelf

The J Paul Getty Foundation releases a free on-line book devoted to an Introduction to Metadata, described as “an online publication devoted to metadata, its types and uses, and how it can improve access to digital resources. Stephen Downes gives a tentative thumbs up.

Stephen Downes also points to a post by Susan Nash that she is making her e-Learner Survival Guide as a free .pdf download. Also available in dead-tree format from Amazon, the book is described as:

[A] broad reaching collection of essays on e learning examines accomplishments, new directions, and challenges from many perspectives. The essays are arranged in categories, which include e learning and e learners, teaching and instruction, student engagement, learning communities, outcomes assessment and institutional leadership, all of which relate to learners and programs from college, K 12, career, to corporate training. Of special interest is a focus on successful outcomes for students and programs, and essays on often overlooked niches of learners, including generational differences (Gamers, Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y), stay at home mothers, working mother e learners, homeschoolers, bilingual online education and training.

In the Mailbag

The eLearning Guild has scheduled its next online forum for Aug. 13 and 14 called Designing and Managing Learning in 3-D Virtual Worlds and Immersive Environments. Anyone who would like to attend should contact one of Vangent’s Member Plus: Dennis Coxe, Tracey Lyon, or Sally Brett.

Sally Brett sent us all this link to an article titled Measuring Learning Results by Will Thalheimer that she posted to the document library on our Team Connection website. The article explores why we assess learning, the methods of performing these assessments and ends with a list of recommendations on how best to perform assessments.

OK, this is just not right, while reading my Gmail there was a link to an open source software solution that incorporated Moodle and Drupal. Curious, I went to the sight and read this:

Now, that’s just wrong.