e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Welcome to e-Clippings: The Prologue

About this blog... I want to say that while I love having readers, that is not the most important thing for me about blogging. This is almost an internal conversation I am having in a very public way. I welcome and appreciate your comments, ideas, criticisms, and readership.

This blog is primarily about how culture and technology come together over the space we call 'learning.' It covers a lot of ground but the overarching theme (at least in my mind if not always evident) is how these new technologies, methodologies and ideas can be used to create a richer world of learning.

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How will ISD handle "Neural Buddhism"?

(shout out to Jerry Michalski for twittering this one - NY Times link)

Today David Brooks wrote a column about how scientific advances can cause massive cultural changes. An understatement right? The central figure in this article however is religion. Brooks argues the literature which is beginning to combine science and spirituality (not religion per se) in new ways, will lead to a kind of "neural Buddhism" defined by the following elements:

"First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is."

Aside from how interesting that is, what struck me is when Brooks describes a general sense of the more recent thoughts on how the brain works, he argues that:

"Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development."

I was just struck by how understandings like this really reveal a gap between the mechanistic production models of instruction that we use versus how the brain may really and truly operate. These differences were a bit more hidden when we believed th brain operated like a computer but the further we drift from that model the more wrong-headed our design models appear.

ahhh...the goood old days of Herding Cats and Building Planes on the Fly...

This post about the history of EDS included a You Tube link to a video from EDS about herding cats that we always used to use (with permission) in a lot of the briefings we did several years ago. Great stuff. So was this one about the plane....

Does anyone else see "Student Records" in "Data Portability"?

So I was reading the SCORM 2.0 White Paper Solicitation and I came to this section of items that would be valuable to have addressed by submitted white papers:

"Collaboration and Community. Learning takes place within a community and is a collaborative activity. How should SCORM 2.0 enable interoperability among learning systems and the technologies that support collaboration and community, including social networks, community learning, wikis, blogs, multiplayer games, and the emerging world of user generated content?"

Then I started seeing all the news about Google's new "Friend Connect" (and geez, if you watch the tech news at all, you'd have to live in an abandoned missile silo under a rock to have missed this breathless avalanche of stories (e.g. Tech Crunch, ZDNet Blogs, CNET News, NYTimes, PC World, actual Google Press Release).

I do like this explanation of the functionality from PC World:
"The way it works is any site that wants to can add Friend Connect functionality to their site can simply by adding a bit of HTML code to their site. The Friend Connect feature on a site acts as a small peephole on a Web page allowing content from a preselected social network (including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and others)to be viewed within the predefined window. In this way, Friend Connect seems to just be a way to pull information in from existing networks, almost like how it's possible to embed YouTube videos on your site with limited functionality. Similarly Friend Connect allows Web site visitors to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or… with existing friends from social sites on the Web."

Of course every story goes out of its way to say that this is just the latest in a growing body of efforts to link up the various parts of the social graph. Players in this arena (although not exactly all in the same role or capacity) include Facebook Connect, the Data Portability Project (of which MySpace is a member), and Google's Open Social. These also intersect in ways with projects like OAuth ("An open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.") and Open ID ("OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.").

All of this, the SCORM 2.0 piece and the work being done in all these other places really slammed it home for me how different our e-learning planet is now about a decade down the road. We aren't working in a vacuum or some isolated market vertical. We are running full tilt into other efforts in exploding market spaces that may well be already trying to solve problems that have thought were unique to us. If I was evaluating the white papers and I'm not, I would really look for one that included a process for investigating and evaluating how all of this other work might integrate with the search for SCORM 2.0. That white paper would be a prize itself.

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 2008

here is a link to a transcript of the talk

Check out Spore on the iPhone!

Hey buddy, can you spare $1600?

...for a new keyboard?!  I know that sounds like a lot of money ;-) but look at it....the Optimus Maximus...
"As you should know by now this amazing keyboard features a tiny screen on each key... that's 113 screens in all. What can you do with these tiny screens, you ask? Well, each key can change its image dynamically depending on what you're doing. Hold down SHIFT and all keys go uppercase. Run Photoshop and you can set it so each hotkey has an image representing its function."

Oooohhhhh.

Seafood Selector from the Environmental Defense Fund

Be sure to check out this page from the EDF for great advice on how to choose the healthiest seafood.

Semi-Daily Quote/Lyric/Words of Others

"     My back to the wall
    A victim of laughing chance
    This is for me
    The essence of true romance
    Sharing the things we know and love
    With those of my kind
    Libations
    Sensations
    That stagger the mind "

Steely Dan
Deacon Blues
Aja, 1977

   

Coming for your job...or at least the way you do it now...

(photo credit) I keep telling people that the whole "Web X.0 thing" (I thought I had that original idea this morning, Googled it and found like 520,000 results with the oldest one seeming to date from 2005 by Joi Ito  - 2005 in Web Time being something akin to the Paleoproterozoic) really reminds of the introduction of e-learning.  The excitement in some circles feels very similar and the trepidation in other circles also has a very deja vu ring to it. The other similarity is inevitability.

Imagine if you drove the car your have now to work but when you got to work and had to drive any where, you had to take a horse-drawn carriage. How would that strike you? Web X.0 becoming mainstream in the enterprise is being driven from the consumer-side. Why is that important? Because it is outside the control of companies and organizations. People will see and use these tolls and then they will come to work expecting them and no, it won't be just the Gen X'ers, Millennials, or Gen Y's. The tools will are  already becoming integrated with your existing enterprise platforms, so they're already inside the firewall. What can you do? Change. The hardest thing in the world - re-conceptualize everything from incentives to strategic objectives to make the best use of these emerging technologies and innovations - not in a faddish, short-term way though; create a process for evaluating and integrating these changes in a way that makes sense from a business perspective - the most important thing though is the starting point - don't start from a place that says "how little can we allow through and still keep going?" - ask instead "how much can we allow through and still remain coherent?"

Here is one for you: Web 2.0: Companies Will Spend $4.6 Billion By 2013, Forrester Predicts
(excerpt) "Though still considered an upstart technology, Forrester believes that conventional Web 2.0 elements -- social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting, and widgets -- are fast becoming the norm for communicating with employees and customers. The report highlights megacompanies such as General Motors, McDonald's, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, and Wells Fargo among those who already have jumped into the Web 2.0 pool with both feet. Additionally, some 56% of North American and European enterprises consider Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008, according to another recent
Forrester survey."

Want more? How about JackBe and Kapow releasing enterprise-grade mashup platforms? And before you say - "Yeah but my enterprise has security concerns, blah blah blah" Check out JackBe's case study of their work with the Defense Intelligence Agency and then talk to me about security concerns.

More?? How little companies like Intel releasing a client-side mashup creator and Microsoft releasing Live Mesh? Check out these business and career focused apps on Facebook. Or some of the great app from the Webware 100 Winners. Oh for Pete's sake, even Dilbert is doing it.

So please, much as with the "Should we use games for learning?" question - can we put the "IF" we'll use Web X.0 tools for learning and really get down to creating some design principles and case studies and processes that will help? Because your job will change..will you change with it?

Oh well....had to get back to work anyway...

I keep coming back to this intact cohort idea.....

So someone tell me if I'm wrong but here is how I am seeing this....the way IT departments are currently 'incentivized'  - their ideal situation would be zero users and no connection to the Internet. Once you connect to the internet and add users, then things start getting hinky. I'm not casting stones here, in fact in a way I'm apologizing to all the IT departments for whom I've caused trouble by demanding applications and access that did nothing to honor the way the were rated on the job performance - essentially I just kept asking them to do me favors.

Maybe we need to have a corporate discussion about changing the way the IT department is evaluated for job performance so that it is in-line with the strategic direction of the company. I think that strategic plans get written and even implementation plans get written (I've written a couple myself) but then no one from HR is on the writing team so the incentive structure stays the same and may not be a positive vector for hitting those strategic goals. Learning/training departments are seeing this right - as they get tasked with defining their purpose as supporting the strategic direction of the organization or specific business units or lines.

I'm still working through all this in my head but I think a first, practical move for me will be to expand my definition of the departments I need represented on IPTs for instance....

Just remember, I think I thought of it first...the Intact Cohort Conference

So I was giving a presentation yesterday at the e-Gov conference on KM. The presentation was on Web 2.0 and at one point my co-presenter, Tip Clifton of Eastpoint Analytics, asked the audience if any of their organizations aggressively supported the use of Web 2.0 tools. Out of about 50-70 people representing probably 20-30 organizations, not one raised their hand. That's one story right? We also asked how many people in that audience  had any experience with e-learning. Probably 3 people raised their hands. 

This really got me thinking. At DAU, we are working on creating curriculum that is focused on training and education for 'intact cohorts' - that is training and education for entire teams of people who work together. We are doing this based on the realization that while classes look like groups, they are really just temporary and arbitrary assemblies and when people go back to their regular jobs, they are now surrounded by people who do not have the same experience and who have not sat through the same class (at the same time) and yet those are the people we need to have that connective tissue between. So we thought - train them together - as a team - they'll learn teamwork, they'll learn knowledge in a cross-domain, interdisciplinary way and they'll be a stronger team when they return to their office.

Then in session after session yesterday, I keep hearing about problems with implementing KM systems because of IT shops, because of issues with corporate leadership and so on. These are issue that we have all heard at any number of conferences right? And yet, we all continue to go to conferences that are focused on our domain and out niche. Imagine if you went to a conference as the person from the learning team, along with an IT lead, a KM person, someone from the Front Office, maybe someone from HR, corporate communications, etc - you get the idea - whatever mix makes the most sense to your own corporate experience.

You don't get split into different tracks either but you all have to agree on which tracks to go through and so on. Can you imagine what that would be like? Do you think its possible? Valuable? if we can't create a conference where we actually bring all those people in, should we at least try to get speakers to craft sessions that address all these perspectives? Could we do that at least with keynotes?

SHOCKER: Most Kids Think That Learning from Games Would Be a Good Idea

Paul McNamara over at Network World's BuzzBlog reports on a study from Project Tomorrow.

This survey data is evidently drawn from all 50 states, American DOD schools, Canada, Mexico and
Australia including 319,223 K-12 students - 25,544 teachers - 19726 parents - 3,263 school leaders
from 3,729 schools and 867 districts. According to the report the responding schools were 97% public schools – 3% private schools, 32% Urban – 40% Suburban – 29% Rural, 43% Title I eligible; and 29% majority – minority student population.

Some of favorite findings:

Games make it easier to understand difficult concepts – 51%
o I would be more engaged in the subject – 50%
o I would learn more about the subject – 46% (56% of students in K-2 chose this as their #1 reason)
o It would be more interesting to practice problems – 44%

Here is another: "Only 3% of elementary students say they don’t play electronic games on some kind of device, 9% of middle school kids and 17% of high school kids."

Hmmm....wow....I wonder if maybe we should continue the debate about whether or not games are good for learning or maybe, here is an alternative...just shut up, accept the data and start really figuring out how to do it write and for PETE"S SAKE understand that design principles, ESPECIALLY design principles (except they aren't really design principles are they Adriana? ;-))...are not crafted in stone and can and should change and that BY ALL THAT'S GOOD AND PURE the classrooms and instructor-led training  were  probably NEVER studied RE their effectiveness as learning environments but rather as production environments. I'm sure that the Romans thought their empire wold stand for all time as well and look what happened to them.

Phew....Someone had me my water bottle.....sorry...its just that some of the comments on the original article are so wrong-headed that they just sent my blood pressure reeling - you should read them...

Will Thalheimer and the Answer to Who Learns What from Where

---First, apologies if I cover ground pounded by others elsewhere, but I'm still catching up from the Guild Annual Gathering (have some more on that coming soon).

Will Thalheimer just brilliantly asked a great question - who do you learn from? He asked this of retail clerks but you have to wonder how different the results would be for the typical office worker population. Will highlights several key results on his blog; a couple of them are:

• People learn the most from those who they work closely with.
• People learn the most from their experience doing the job.
• People learn the most from their self-initiated efforts at learning.

Is it just me or are these things that seem to be fairly self-evident? The question then has to become, if you believe that they are self-evident, what the hell happened to our design and budget priorities? Seriously, look at the chart people - e-learning comes in at "Learn Some"...square in the middle. Look at the power in the hands of the 'head clerks' in the individual departments. How much of your corporate training is focused in a 'train the trainer' mode of those people?

Maybe we all need to read SWAY: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior and try to understand how we got here.

Kudos to Brent Schlenker for Annual Gathering Coverage

I have to say to all you wannabes trying to really cover a conference or provide ways for attendees to follow what's going on, Brent Schlenker has really raised the bar. Check out the Pageflakes page below:

Brent used Pageflakes to aggregate Twitters, Flickr tags, blog posts, del.icio.us tags and more on one page.

This kind of thing should become standard procedure for conferences:
1. Order catering
2. Set up Social networking solutions

Late...but Jon Stewart reports on Second Life

e-Learning Guild Annual Gathering - Day 1

So the general conference is starting today. I did a WAY early "Breakfast Byte" session this morning on managing emerging technologies - good turnout and amazingly consistent focus on FEAR as the leading problem in implementing new technologies for learning.

In the opening session now and after David Holcomb does a great job welcoming people and going through LINGOS awards...Heidi Fisk and Brent Schlenker  do their best  'storytelling'  routine to  cover the  routine logistical chores...funny stuff and well received.

Brent is now covering how people like me are live blogging....Brent has really done a great job setting up a number of ways to track the Annual Gathering (AG). Check this page for related instances of Meebo, flickr, PageFlakes, facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter.

At the e-Learning Guild's Annual Gathering

Will post more tomorrow...today doing a whole day workshop on "Immersive Learning Simulations"....nice crowd, bigger than expected....

Dilbert on Generation Differences in the Workplace

(Dilbert Link)

Grid 16: How Fast Can You Learn, Prioritize, and React?

OK...take 3 minutes and head over to Kongregate and try Grid 16. I don't care if you're a 'gamer' or not (whatever that means)...head over and see how you do...no instructions...just the admonitions to "Use Your Gamer Logic" and "Do Not Panic"....play it twice...did you get better?

Now take a look at the results page....
...nice feedback...I'm glad I scored high on "Prioritizing" ...I think it really matters in which order the mini games come up too....wow...nice experience though and the music alone is enough to get your heart rate up....

Vintage Tech Predictions - Some eerily right.....

I love this stuff. The blog "Modern Mechanix" says that it covers "Yesterday's Technology Today"...so true. This site has tons of back issues of Popular Science, Modern Mechanics, and many more. Its just classic. One recently unearthed article, "40 Years in the Future" from 1968 has some really interesting predictions.

Some right:

"A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off."

"Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities."

"Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills."

Here are a couple focused on learning:

"Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape _ * libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term."

**Hey look you jerk patent grubbers at Blackboard...turns out someone ELSE thought of the LMS, lets see like 30 YEARS prior to you!

And weren't we just talking about this.....
"No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential."

Encyclopedia Britannica for the iPhone

Its no Wikipedia but turns out the Encyclopedia Britannica has an iPhone optimized version....

Want RealPlayer without ads? Thank You BBC!

According to this article in the Washington Post, the BBC required Real to produce a version of its player without ads. While the article doesn't give a direct link, I think this is the one here - of course I can't install Real Player at work so I'll have to wait until I get home or rely on someone out there for confirmation that this version of the player is sans ads but I'm hopeful.

Teachertube Test

This is actually what I was doing yesterday.....

...Superbowl party anyone? That is a 16 foot long, 450 lb. piece of hi-def glass that we installed yesterday in the "Center for Simulation, Training and Research (C-STAR) that we are creating at Defense Acquisition University.

And yes, I skipped blogging to go over and watch and make sure that this thing went in. Phew.