Freezing a laptop

This video suggests the fault lines that are rapidly developing in the real-time learning world over the use of technology in the classroom.  The person who posted this video states that it was not a functioning laptop and the incident was staged, presumably to make a point.

I can appreciate the instructor’s point-of-view. I teach a religious education class to sixth graders one night a week and I am constantly having to tell them to put away their smart phones as they text their friends that are not in class. On the other hand, I would have killed to have a laptop or a netbook to take notes with when I was in college.

The big question is whether outright banning of technology from the classroom to try and force students to pay attention to the lecture the route to go? I don’t think it is, but somehow students do need to learn the proper time, place, and decorum for using technology in the classroom. Who should be teaching this and when?

Huh?

I understand that you want to take precautions in the face of a winter storm, but I was left dumbfounded by this early closing announcement in my local newspaper. I thought the whole purpose of holding a webinar is for people to participate without leaving their home or office.

Source: The Day of New London

I’m not dead yet!

I’ve always liked this part of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I use the line “I’m not dead yet!” whenever someone asks how I’m doing. But it also seems appropriate for the recurring discussion of the state of instructional design.

The latest discussion is cropping up on the University of Georgia’s Instructional Technology list service. It began with  a post by Bev Ferrell who points to a blog by Cathy Moore who uses Google Trends to start a discussion about whether instructional design is still valued. Since you need to subscribe to the list service to read it (which is free) I will copy and paste his post and some of the relevant responses here.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2009/06/no-time-for-design/#more-597<http://elearndev.blogspot.com/2006/07/learning-trends-isd-down-web20-upway.html>

No time for design? Quality? Does rapid design make ID irrelevant? ADDIE
dead?

Bev Ferrell
Moderator ITF

The posting she pointed to is more fascinating for the comments section, which Bev noted in an early response, than the original post. The comments turned into a B***h session for IDs. I highly recommend reading it. Bev’s initial post lay dormant for a day, but then resulted in a response from Rod Sims.

Interesting that this question should emerge again!

I can recall many years ago (1992 @ AECT) when we put "ISD on Trial" - I recall Dave Merrill as one of the participants ... and ISD was sentenced to 10 years Drill & Practice. All in good fun yes, but the questions were being asked nearly 20 years ago!

While 'instruction' is more commonly used in the US than many other parts of the world, the real questions for me relate to how we view learning, how we view performance and what are the best strategies to achieve learning or performance.

What can be argued is that the creation of formal courses, delivered by instructors and based on assumptions that students 'do not know' just miss the point. That is contrary to current philosophical and theoretical perspectives.

Similarly, the growth of networks (not just social) now provides the opportunity for learning from those networks - with 'experts' emerging as the knowledge-need arises. In this case we don't need ID, we just need an interest in 'learning'.

What I would argue is that we need different approaches and understanding of the world in which we live and thus different approaches to enabling learning - but the notion of rapid ID or other fads seems more about making a dead horse interesting rather than a serious attempt to make learning better.

Surely ID, traditionally, is about an empowered teacher and disempowered learner. If that's what you want, then ID is the answer. If not (which seems to align with current rhetoric) then we need something different - and why not? ID has been around for decades and surely approaches more aligned with today's world will achieve the environments we are looking for.

This then produced a posting by Timothy Spannaus who wrote:

Ah, yes, I remember it well. I was the defense attorney for ID, though I think it might have been at one of the last conventions of ADCIS - the late Association for Development of Computer-based Instructional Systems.

Another take on the long-running argument, Rod, is that,in spite of twenty years of efforts to kill ID, it's still here, still useful, still evolving. It was never about "an empowered teacher and disempowered learner."

For a really good discussion of the topic, see the edited book by Tobias and Duffy, Constructivist Instruction: Success or Failure? It gets beyond the typical constructivist/ID discussion and gets to the research and philosophy that drive the discussion.

Instructional design as a formal activity has only been around since World War II and in my mind is evolving. The ADDIE model is sound in its approach if applied wisely. The concept of rapid training design still applies ADDIE, but tries to only condense it to a smaller window. Informal learning is heralded as just-in-time learning, but I fear that corporations are latching on to it as another way to save money by eliminating formal instructional elements.

Bottom line: to paraphrase Mark Twain: The report of instructional design death is an exaggeration.

Curious Pages: Grammar Can Be Fun

The picture says it all:

 

Curious Pages: Grammar Can Be Fun

January Thiagi Gameletter

The first 2010 Thiagi Gameletter has been released by Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagaraja. For anyone unfamiliar with Thiagi, he is a long-time advocate of developing training that is both fun and to the point. The January edition contains a thought-provoking piece for any instructional designer labeled Ten Exciting Ways to Waste Your Training Dollars. In this piece Thiagi skewers conventional wisdom around analysis and planning, content, and delivery. For example, here is his take on multimedia.

5. Multimedia Spectacular

Conventional wisdom: Invest time and money in producing slick media materials. Participants are used to watching TV shows and animated computer graphics and reading five-color printed materials. They have high expectations for production quality. So use the latest technology and the most attractive layout for your training package.

Reality: As my friend Richard Clark points out, it is not the production quality but the instructional design quality that contributes to effective instruction. For example, a fancy television documentary may not result in more effective learning than an inexpensive handout. Also, most non-print media take a longer time to produce and much longer time to revise than paper and pencil approaches. And as my friend Ruth Clark points out, sophisticated graphics and animation may actually distract people from learning.

Recommendation: Use the least expensive and most portable medium for training. In most cases this turns out to be paper and pencil.

All 10 of his items serve as a sobering wake-up call to instructional designers everywhere. Other topics covered in his January newsletter are:

• An article about synthetic culture activities, which are a special type of simulation game.
• A positive psychology activity about five approaches to increasing your feelings of subjective well-being.
• An Guest Gamer interview with Scott Nicholson.
• A Textra game with the immodest objective of bringing about world peace.
• 99 words of advice from Brian Remer on how to ride out life's turmoils.
• Articles and activities by Brian about different aspects of breathing.
• Information about game design workshops in Zurich and Chicago.
• Tracy's single topic survey about new-year's resolutions.
• A report on last month's single topic survey.
• An invitation to our podcasts, hosted by Matthew Richter.

TGL: January 2010

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.”

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.

Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook - Times Online

This story is a cautionary tale about the use of Facebook.

But entries by his wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

How do businesses balance employees’ use of social networking tools and their concern for protecting proprietary information and other secrets.

Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook - Times Online

Don’t Fence Me In

Stephen Downes questions when lawmakers will recognize that the laws that result in multi-million dollar judgments for sharing songs over the Internet are wrong. I’m afraid Stephen that things are going to become a whole lot more restrictive. Stephen writes:

When a court awards a $1.92-million penalty for sharing 24 songs, we have to ask, when will it become clear to people that the law is wrong? Because, any law that allows this, is wrong. Some other things that are wrong (via Charlene croft): a city in Montana requiring job applicants to submit all of their Web 2.0 logins and passwords. And a bill introduced here allowing government to intercept internet transmissions and gather user information from ISPs. Wrong. And I say: there is a fundamental disconnect between government, and the people they purport to be governing.

I tend to see the freedom provided by the Internet much like the freedom the old West afforded people. Both were initially populated by early adapters who were resourceful and independent. They did not like the restrictions mainstream society offered and the control that the rich could impose on that society.

Of course, this chafing of restrictions also tended to create a situation where lawlessness also grew. As long as it was early adapters there was no problem. In the old West feuds were settled with gun battles; on the Internet it was flame wars in forums.

Then the railroads, major businesses, started to move westward as enterprising individuals found resources that the East could use. This led to more people moving west; people who were not early adapters and who wanted the civilization of the East imposed upon the West. It took time, but as more individuals became wealthy from the railroads opening the West it became apparent that the wildness of the West had to be brought under control and probably by the 1910s, when Arizona became the 48th state accepted into the Union the west was tamed.

The same thing is now occurring in the Internet. By 2004, Nielsen reported that three-quarters of the United States had Internet access. With this influx of people corporations followed, not just with personal websites but also entrance into social media. It’s not unusual now to see corporations advertising to follow them on Facebook. The music industry is just the first industry to discover the wildness of the Internet and are actively fighting to tame the West. They were quickly followed by the motion picture industry. DRM laws are the equivalent of the fences erected to shut down the freedom to roam as property rights took precedence. Frankly, I don’t hold out much hope that the freedom that existed with the Internet will continue much longer.

Small voices will be shouted down by the bigger corporations who have the resources to take control. It’s apparent that Google who offers the largest platforms for individual voices to be heard (Blogger, YouTube, etc.) already caves and censors the Internet for the People’s Republic of China. From my perspective, the freedom and independence offered to the individual by the Internet is not long for this world.

I want to learn this…you want me to learn that…

A fascinating post on BoingBoing blog by Cory Doctorow, an author that I have a great deal of respect for, concerning learning. It tells the tale of a student at San Jose State University who had a run-in with his professor over the posting of his homework (computer code) on the Internet.

While the details of the incident are probably a repeat of incidents dating back to the first time a teacher and a student did not see eye to eye over sharing of information with other students, it was Cory’s assessment of the important learning moment from this tale.

There's a lot of meat on the bones of this story. The most important lesson from it for me is that students want to produce meaningful output from their course-assignments, things that have intrinsic value apart from their usefulness for assessing their progress in the course. Profs -- including me, at times -- fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc.

I would agree with Cory’s assessment up to a point. I think it is true when the course is focusing on something the student wants to learn about, in other words, they are already self-motivated to learn. Other courses that may not necessarily interest the student, but are a required program by the university or corporate management, may not generate that level of interest.

This raises the interesting issue of how do we balance what we want to learn versus what others want us to learn? Of course every teacher thinks that his subject is the most important, but his students may not agree. It all depends upon their motivation. The question is how do you convince the student that even though he is not personally interested in a particular topic it is in his best interest to strive to perform to their highest level…to produce meaningful output, not just regurgitating what he thinks the teacher wants to hear.

The easy answer is to provide a motivating statement at the beginning of the course; this has been a staple in the corporate learning world for as long as I can remember. Provide the learner with a reason why they should want to learn the material. But is that always feasible. You ask any student and they can provide you with a class that they are required to take, but which they see no need to know the material.

My point is that not every class needs to involve producing meaningful work…sometimes proof that you are aware of the subject matter may be all that is necessary. Maybe the solution is to take the approach the state of Virginia is advancing, give students the option to take end-of-year tests or having their final grades based upon a portfolio of their work. The drawback with this effort is twofold.

1. You have the issue that Cory talks about, the “lazy trap” that teachers fall into. It is easier to grade multiple-choice tests than it is to evaluate a portfolio.
2. Is an “A” based on a final multiple-choice exam the equivalent of an “A” based upon a body of work.

The big question is how far as a society should we go in requiring students to learn information that they may not ever use. Is the concept of a well-rounded education a thing of the past?

Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course - Boing Boing

Reprimanded For Facebook Post

This seems to be an up and coming issue as social media moves off of high school and college campuses and into the work world. An Associated Press reporter is reprimanded for a post to his Facebook page.

The minidrama is an increasingly familiar one as companies and workers navigate the landscape defined by sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Firings and reprimands over postings to social networking sites have become commonplace over the last year.

As learning professionals we need to ask ourselves and our clients if the workplace environment is conducive to such open communications before we recommend the use of social media.

AP Reporter Reprimanded For Facebook Post; Union Protests | Threat Level | Wired.com

The Social Media Gender Gap

Business Week has a fascinating report that instructional designers should keep in mind before floating Web 2.0 ideas to a customer. In the article The Social Media Gender Gap suggests women are more apt to adopt web 2.0 applications then men.

It's no shock that men and women act differently online, just as they do in everyday life. The Web is an extremely social medium, and Web 2.0 is all about being social. Traditionally, men are the early adopters of new technologies. But when it comes to social media, women are at the forefront. At Rapleaf we conducted a study of 13.2 million people and how they're using social media. While the trends indicate both sexes are using social media in huge numbers, our findings show that women far outpace the men.

Hat tip to MetaFilter community blog which also points to articles that Twitter appears to be the one social media that is dominated by men.

Creative Commons Flickr Photo from Kanaka’s Paradise Life.