e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Can we create a standard data format across the U.S. Fed?

(excuse the LETSI cross-posting)

There was a recent article in Computerworld entitled "Let’s turn the federal government over to bloggers." The point of the article was to talk about the myriad data formats spread across the federal government. The article quotes a paper from a group of Princeton researchers and includes this excerpt:

"Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large."

 

So the question is, without yet working thorugh the entire paper, is - does this represent another group and/or effort that ADL/SCORM/CORDRA should be drawing on and working with to accomplish its goals? What would be the impact on the e-learning marketplace if we saw the development of such a set of standards?

Generational Change in the U.S. Military (strategy+business)

(strategy +business link)

I think this article is nice treatment of the generational shift as it may play out in the U.S. military. There are of course parallels to not only other militaries but to the corporate sector as well. This sounds familiar:

"Not long ago, one of the authors of this article was asked to lead a U.S. Air Force study on the implications for the military of this new online generation. The request came from senior officers who had been appalled to discover a number of junior officers using the still-
permissible Facebook Web site for the purpose of organizing their squadrons. These senior officers were having difficulty with the concept of using a civilian social-networking site for military purposes. What would that mean for military security? How would it affect the control and vulnerability of squadrons in the field? And from the perspective of DOD “middle management,” what was a major supposed to do? Forbid the behavior and risk losing the real benefits of an online community? Or protect it and risk the wrath of more senior officers who just didn’t understand?"

**I should also say kudos to strategy+business for while they do require registration to read this full article online, the full PDF version is freely available with no registration.

Listen to How DISA is Paying for Collaboration Tools

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is "a combat support agency                 responsible for planning, engineering, acquiring, fielding, and                 supporting global net-centric solutions to serve the needs of                 the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and other                 DoD Components, under all conditions of peace and war."

In this interview from Washington Technology, the thing that struck me wasn't that back in July DISA paid IBM $17 million for collaboration services, its the fact that the way its being paid on a "pay per use" model. The exact quote was "We're not paying those folks by the tool. We're paying them by the usage."

This is a model that is much more easily supported by more recent, Web 2.0 implementations than older more traditional installations of learning systems that require server installations, etc. I thnk it is clearly one more step down the path of a broader "pay per use" deployment within the federal government.