e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

A truckload of Twitter tools and some peachy keen visualizations....

My netvibes page is rapidly falling into disuse thanks to Twitter. I still have much love for all the feeds in my reader but it feels more lecture-like with people talking AT me. I understand that there is a masked asymmetry involved in Twitter but it just feels like a great rolling conversation in the hallway of this awesome conference where everybody interesting just happens to be chatting it up. So before I head to IITSEC, I wanted to pass along a few of the tidbits I've picked up in the hallway. 

BigTweet: A way to post to your Twitter feed from any Web page. You can post sequenced Tweets so that you can send out 280 characters at a time. I want to play with this but as with alot of these tools/services, I find myself pausing to ask ' how loose do I want to be with my Twitter credentials'?

Block Posters: I may have mentioned this one already but you upload an image, tell it was size paper you have in your printer and how big you want the image to be and presto...you get a PDF that you print out and make a wall-size poster from. Nifty. Found it through Twitter of course.

TweetGrid: Set up your grid (up to a 3x3), enter your search terms and watch the grid magically update as TweetGrid scans the Twitterverse. This is a nice Web site but I think someone on Twitter said it best when they said "it wants to be an Air app."

Tweetsgiving: Here is a great social media success story. This site, created by Epic Change, managed to raise $10,000 in 48 hours from 336 contributors using nothing but social media. The money will go to fund a new classroom for a school in Tanzania.

People Browsr: Twitter is like this ridiculously deep trove of social interaction. People Browsr is one of those tools that begins to peel back some of the layers of that onion. You get a similar feel from Tweet Deck's multiple column view but People Browsr allows you mix in feed from all your online networks. Dizzying really.

Who to follow?: Now a great place to start that I've mentioned before, is Jane Hart's Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter. Another collection of lists that I am currently plowing through is this growing set of niche Top Tens from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger. I am also following Mr Tweet, who seems to aimed at helping people expose folks they should follow.

edmodo: Just like Yammer is an attempt to take Twitter (aka microblogging) inside the corporate firewall, edmodo seems to be aiming at the teacher/class market. Stowe Boyd has a great post outlining his initial survey of this as a tool which allows teachers to set up private networks for their classes, and send each other files, notes, etc. This one will bear watching.

Best Online Learning Games-2008: This is from Larry Ferlazzo and while it has nothing to do with Twitter per se, that is how I found it.

The same goes for these last two items: FeedVis: Top 50 Edublogs and Show/World. Jason Priem put together this great visualiztion tool for looking deeper into the posts from the Top 50 EduBlogs. As Jason so eloquently puts it "It's an animated tagcloud that lets you compare word frequencies accross different time periods and authors, then check out the posts that used the words." The coolest thing though is that Jason put the code for feedvis up for download and all it takes to parse another OPML file, is to change one line of code.

Finally, we'll close with Show/World. Click through the available maps to see the world change in proportion to the population, the percent of broadband penetarion, the rate of infant mortality and illiteracy. Not always comfortable but always revealing.

Back from T'Giving and Headed Off to I/ITSEC

OK...so I get one day of rest to do laundry and then I head off to the Interservice and Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference (IITSEC). If you are not within the U.S. Dept of Defense sphere or its international partners, then let me hip you to this gig.

Imagine 15-20K people from all over the world who deal in training, simulation and education for various militaries. Now imagine an expo floor (pdf), kinda like COMDEX meets E3 meets an arms dealer. Now toss in a program full of 'paper sessions' with titles like: "Semantic Web Technology for Training to Meet a Changing Threat", "CultureGear: Upacking How to Teach Generalizable Cross-cultural Skills", or "Harnessing the Power of Social Networks Using Instructional Theory." Now you start to see the parameters of IITSEC.

Now the other kicker to IISTEC is that if you are in this industry and dealing with U.S. DOD, then everyone in your work universe or their bosses, will also be here. We used to joke that you could get more done in a week at IITSEC than you could in a year back at the office.

I'll try to cover what I can but if you look at the program and see something specific that you'd like me to scope out for you - let me  know.   And if you're going to be in Orlando next week, we'll see you there!

Focus on Learning for Oragnizational Success

Getting pretty psyched about this....my colleague Brent Schlenker and I, along with the great and powerful Dr. Will Thalheimer, are putting on 4 days of workshops covering everything from Web 2.0/Collaborative Learning to Immersive Learning Simulations (aka Serious Games) to Creating and Measuring Learning Transfer.

We're doing it all in Washington DC from December 8-11 and we'd love to see you there.

New Twitter Art

All the Twitter stuff I have been failing to blog about....

 So I'm about to TWexplode from all the TWesources that I have been quietly gathering of late. Symptomatic of our 2.0 world and open APIs...when a particular resource explodes in popularity, so too do the number of associate resources to twist and tweak that service in whole new ways...its actually quite lovely in one way and absolutley vertiginous in terms of trying to track all of it.

I've decided then to just go ahead and purge myself of all these tabs relating to Twitter-centric resources - fully understanding that #1 I shall never be as complete nor as dilligent in my coverage of these things as Jane is and #2 that the list will be hopelessly out of date as soon as I stop typing and hit publish. Bearing those 2 caveats in mind, here we go...

We'll start with the best:

Jane Hart's Ever-Growing List of Learning Professionals (& Others) on Twitter
Jane Hart's List of Twitter Apps
Jane Hart's Twitter Reading List

Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals

Tweetburner: Shorten and track the URL's in your tweets
TweetStats: Wadda you think it does?
47 Awesome Twitter Tools You Should be Using: As long as they're awesome....
Twubble: Supposed to graph your Twitter fiends, I've never actually had it finish one
TwitterKeys: post on how to add super-needed icons to your Twitter feeds...
Group Tweet: ability to send Tweets to specific group...you would've never guessed from name right?

Twitter Matters #4: social capital discussion evolving
Twitter's Hockey Stick Moment

Twitterspeak: 66 Twitter Terms You Don't Need to Know
Great pic of TwitterCamp in action at DevLearn
Twistory: "Add your Twitter backlog feed to your favorite calendar application and browse through your personal Twitter diary, making your Twitter history both fun and useful!"
TwitterFountain: "we mash up tweets and Flickr-images that share the same tags into a spectacular visual."
181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters to Help You Find Followers

phew....

GovLoop....the Social Network for Govt 2.0

I am noticing a hockey stick-like moment for ning lately - at least in my circles. Brent stood up one for our summer session on 2.0, the folks behind Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations are using it as a framework for all the good they are doing and now its even getting picked up by 'unofficial' segments of the U.S. government.

Meet GovLoop. A full-on ning site designed for: "gov't employee (fed/state/local), public policy student/professor, good gov't organization,  gov't contractor with good intentions."

I am really digging this particular implementation and kudos to Steve Ressler, GovLoop's founder - for going forward with this idea. I have worked for the federal government for about a decade now but as a contractor/consultant...I have only been a full-on federal employee for about 1.5 years now. I will say that one issue that  the Fed MUST address as more and more newbies like myself enter its workforce to replace the wave of retirees...is ensuring that there is powerful mentoring system in place. The U.S. federal government  - as a company to work for - is HUGE and career advancement paths and opportunities for learning and growth -while plentiful and varied - are often hard to figure out how to find and access. This is just the sort of site that could help with that.

Live session with David Weinberger @ Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations

In live session now....not a presentation but a conversation...look at the image...see how people have been able to write in their own topics on the screen..very cool....I don't know if you can see but I am also impressed with the fact that we have 75 people in session now from a variety of global locations....

In live session at Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations

This screencap shows the danger of letting morons have access to the whiteboarding tools. This is the main site for the conference. There are some bumpy patches getting started but I think Jane, Tony, Jay, Harold, et al....deserve HUGE props for putting this things together with largely free tools. Awesome job guys!

The Great ILS Challenge 08 - Part II - The Narratives

So some folks sent in some very interesting comments and ideas on this challenge but not in the form of a slide deck. I wanted to include those pieces as well so here they are below in as best order as I can arrange them...I will say that I don't know if some folks who sent stuff in, wanted their name publicly attached so I'll try to err on the side of caution...If I missed anything that anyone sent me...pls resend...things got a bit crazy there for a while. Thx all!! Mark

One of the first comments I got was:

"With all due respect Mark, I think this question is ill posed. People react to all of the inputs around them. Someone who is ethical in matters concerning a hundred dollars may be unethical in matters concerning billions of dollars. Someone completely ethical in his family sphere of life may be unethical at work, and vice-versa. Etc. This question also implies that the current financial crisis is simply the results of unethical behavior. I think a lot of other human factors went into its making. Its comforting to think there are good people and bad people, but that line of thought can lead to some very, very nasty places. Too late to change the question?"

My answer is yes - the point of the challenge is to pose a difficult, unfair and potentially impossible hurdle. I mean at GDC, two of the challenges were building a game based on love and then build one on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. The designers have an unlimited budget and staff and don't actually have to build the game so yes, its dificult..its a challenge.

"I learned at my mother's knee (and my Dad's poker table) that game ethics are not real-world ethics.
Mercy (for a simple example) so precious in social life, would ruin chess."

Right. That's why we need to build a new game.

Whoops! Totally forgot Marco Greco's input (Web site/slides) - Marco brings the ethics discussion back around to negotiations and posits a system of repeated plays that provides a data set pointing to an ethical valuation. This idea of establishing multiple data points came up in a number of the designs. Thx Marco!

Celine Llewellyn-Jones added: 
"as far as I'm aware there's no such thing as a universal set of ethics against which to judge players which means it would certainly be hard to establish their "goodness" or "badness" ;-)  But anyway you say ethical 'truth' which is very wise wording...

One way to deal with this might be to let players declare their own set of ethics at the start (maybe thorugh something like a simple questionnaire) and then establish the consistency with which they are able to maintain them in a number of increasingly complex situations where there's no right or wrong answer.  You could throw a number of increasingly difficult short scenarios which require players to act very quickly, and to therefore react on their gut instinct - that would limit the "I'm being watched I'd better do the right thing" approach to play....The closer you stick to your original dclared rules, the better you do in the game.  I suppose what it really establishes is how well you know yourself!  But the fact that you have to declare what you 'believe' to be your own ethics would be revealing in itself.

a example scenario is that of the run away train which you've probably heard before...you're asked first whether you believe all human life is equal or whether some life is more valuable than others - I can't remember - I'll have to check because it's something along these lines - maybe you know better than me but you're then faced with a dilemma in which your beliefs are directly challenged by having to react in the following scenario.  You're standing at a railway junction and you suddenly realise there's a driverless train careering along the track towards three people who haven't noticed and are certainly going to be killed if you don't act.  You can switch the junction so the train moves to a different track however there's a man standing just past the junction in the other direction.  Do you do nothing and indirectly kill three  people?  Or switch and be directly responsible for the death of one person...

In some ways what this scenario does more than anything is make you question your own declared values....I think a lot of people don't know what they believe deep down (I'm still trying to work out my own ethical leanings).  I think this would be a great game to help people understand themselves as much as anything.  Of course whether ethics are truly constant - whether they change day by day, depending on who you're with, time of day, whether you have a hangover, whether you're feeling good or bad or lucky, whether you just watched a gangster film...all these things would need to be factored in somehow...you'd have to have your player play over a long period...

Or you might create a game that reveals players attitudes to rules/social values in general - after all games are all about agreeing to play by rules, you might argue that ethics aresimply game rules establish by a society.culture....(maybe?), do players wish to stick to the 'rules' - to the letter even when it means hurting a fellow person?  do some players like to break the rules?  Do some players break the rules only when they're not being watched?..Do some players start out sticking to the rules but find themselves persuaded to break the rules later on when they find things aren't going their way?  That would be a very interesting game - a game where it's OK to break the rules but perhaps once they're broken you have no idea what the repercussions will be for all the players....

well - bit of a rushed flurry of ideas - but your question inspired me so I thought I'd just dash something off quickly!  sorry - very rough."

DevLearn08: The Great (and community-powered) ILS Challenge

Phew. You guys did an INCREDIBLE job of responding to my plea for assistance. First, let me say that I hope that the family medical emergency that knocked out one of my presenters, has resolved itself in a HUGELY positive way - -there are design challenges and then there are important things right?

Now, before I get to the community submissions, let me profusely thank Deborah Todd and Bob Hone - our 'in room' contributors. They both did a fabulous job and brought some amazing insights to the session. <you know its going well, when you look around the packed room and everyone is taking notes>

So to recap - the challenge was to design a game that would reveal the 'ethical truth' of a person...so let's get beyond compliance training and get to actual performance right?

Also let me thank the people who sent in slides <you folks are awesome and your efforts were all greatly received by the packed room!) ..and let apologize to the folks who sent in stuff that I just was not able to get to...

Joe Sullivan (Web site/slides): "Finding Out Who’s Naughty or Nice?"
Joe was one of the first ones to jump into the mix and did a great job - bringing us the idea of using Karma and multiple lives as a game mechanic. Sure, you could win the game in one lifetime - by being a real SOB but then that wouldn't exactly set you up well for your starting position in the next world.

Alan Levine (Web site/slides): "Who the *#@% can we  Trust?" 
Alan, a past ILS designer himself, brings us the latest in ethics detectors - featuring possibly the first use of canine technology in a corporate setting.

Clive Shepherd (Web site/slides): "The Ethics Game"
Clive's submission is well-thought out and brings up the idea of how can we apply weights to various risks/rewards in ethical situations that differ from person to person.

Karl Kapp (Web site/slides): "an untitled work" :-)
Karl does his typical great job and brings up the design point that the game really needs some high stakes to start eliciting hard ethical choices from people.

Noah Falstein (Web site/slides): "Stealth Ethics"
Noah, an amazing designer and game consultant, weighs in with an entry that trumpets one of the main and ironic themes of this challenge - namely that you may well need to hide the fact that people are actually being assessed on their ethics in order to get an accurate assessment of their ethics.

Dan Bliton (Web site/slides): "Welcome back Representative Oehlert"
Dan does an amazingly in-depth job in this "ripped from the headlines" exploration of ethics in a Congressional setting including possibly the first use of the word "Deontological" I've seen in a PPT deck. Dan also touches on something akin to Joe's "middle path" - this idea that there may not be a pure, ethical path for a person to follow.

B.J. Schone (Web site/slides): "Designing a Game to Reveal an Individual's Ethical Qualities"
I like B.J.'s idea of creating an open game where play is longer and more free-form. I also like the idea of creating an "accidental" ethical situation - something mirrored in a couple of the other presentations....

OK...those are just the slides...I wanted to get those out and now I'll go and sift through all the narrative stuff I got on this...let me know if there is any problem getting to any of the slides....