e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

"Social Networks that Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope" (Huberman & Romero)

Abstract: "Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the "declared" set of friends and followers."

Micro vs Macro Production

So I feel really very remiss about not blogging so long. Oddly enough, its not how I used to feel. "Back in the day" ...like a year ago...when I'd have a couple week hiatus from my blog for whatever reason, I'd feel guilty in a production sense - like I hadn't been kicking anything out and just letting ideas pile up and not get to them. Its different now.

I have really become quite addicted to Twitter (see graph, courtesy of Tweetstats). It didn't start out that way for me...when I first looked at Twitter, I Saw a bunch of "going to the store" and "I'm sad" kind of Tweets (that's what you call the micro-posts you put out on Twitter) and I really didn't want to keep track of all that. Now however, Twitter really seems to have hit an age where it is incredibly interesting. To be sure the "going to the store" crap is still out there but I have a higher tolerance for it and a better understanding of how to filter it. I say I have a higher tolerance for it now because it is usually mixed in with really great, thought-provoking posts from people I respect and I'll take a couple of "store" Tweets from them - its a positive ROI. On the filter side, I'm also learning the gentle art of the "unfollow" - that is electing to stop getting updates from a particular person in Twitter. "Follow" is what you do when you want to track what someone else is tweeting. There is a whole emergent layer of behavior that is being mapped out in real-time as people explore and probe at the edges of this new social environment. What is acceptable? What is not? Is it rude to unfollow? How about "locking" your Twitter account so you actually have to approve people who want to follow you?

Back to my feelings...Twitter is both a powerful and dead-on simple intake and output medium. 140 characters...that's it. Gotta love constraints for forcing creativity. So instead of blogging, I have been pusing a lot of stuff out via Twitter - stuff that I would be hard-pressed to make into a whole blog post. I've also been getting a great deal of feedback from that stuff that I sent out too. So much more feedback than blogging...I think that's really a key to the addiction is the immediate feedback...the feeling of actually being "in" a conversation instead of the monologue that blogging can feel like. 

So I am going to try to blog more again...there is ROI in the longer form but if you really want to jump into the conversation, then follow me on Twitter. :-)

P.S.

I've posted before (1,2) about the insane number of Twitter tools that are now available - with more and more coming online and a ridiculous pace. There are even a number of Twitter "How To's" coming online like this one from Webware.

OK...so this is the kind of innovation I'm looking for in the learning industry...

(found via TechCrunch)

On one level, SonicSwap is a service that makes use of YouTube's API to allow users to upload their iTunes playlists and play songs and videos via YouTube's API. But now all that good brain fertilizer from the SCORM 2.0 workshop has me thinking....so we build this platform...YouTube for learning...and then we publish the API and people can use the platform and can assign rights using the platform...and others can pull objects thru the API via the platform...now I haven't gotten the iTunes piece figured out yet....but I'd love to see more innovation like this and like Udutu's work  in our maket space....so what gets your vote for most innovative learning tool?

Dueling Slide Presentations: SlideRocket and 280 Slides

I had posted before about SlideRocket and how kewl and shiny it is (I still think its cool and shiny) but now I've also done an initial glance at 280 Slides and while it may be a bit less shiny..I think that users might find it more comfortable to use.

280 has a less flashy tool set than SlideRocket but excels in exposing its capability to export presentations to PPT 2007, PPT 97-2004, Open Document or PDF. I also love the way that you can publish your slides to Slideshare from within 280, email it or get a link and/or embed code. I like the "Notes" feature and the ability to suck in video and photos not just from your desktop but from the Web as well. I think that between the two, folks who like Keynote or who want to do Keynote-like presentations will like SlideRocket and folks who are interested in going quite so edgy and who are interested in ensuring that they have local copies of their slides will gravitate to 280. I like 'em both....

Jake McAuley and an insanely large compendium of 2.0 sites

Holy Social Media Batman!

So you say you want some 2.0? Wel, Go2Web20 is just this mind-bendingly large collection of 2.0 sites. Incredible work. If that's not 2.0-ish for you, check out the directory which Go2Web20 created and posted via Scribd...

WEB2~Directory~V2 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Two Education Videos and a Great Poem

In the first video, Mark Yim talks about lessons learned from teaching engineering at the GRASP Lab. Some of my favorite quotes include:
-"Technology changes people" and the "Thumb Generation" - imagine how you point at the sky changing because of how you use technology
- "We have to change the way we teach to do an impedance match with the way students learn."

The second video is of Chris Lehman of the Science Leadership Academy. Inspirational - really

-School 2.0 "creating the schools we need today"

-"Stop thinking that schools should be just like business. Stop thinking that everything that a kid does can be measured by a test"

-Sign on the wall at the MIT Media Lab "lifelong kindergarten"

-Recall-based learning is obsolete in the Age of Google

SocialText 3.0...OK...I'm impressed.

Socialtext 3.0 came out today and geez did Twitter light up. I checked out the site and watched the 60 second video and then went to blip.tv and watched the other videos and yeah, more impressed than when I started.

According to the site, Socialtext 3.0 is comprised of three parts:

Socialtext People - Social networking for the enterprise

Socialtext Workspace - Group-editable wiki for easy, flexible, enterprise-wide             collaboration

Socialtext Dashboard - Customizable home pages that let each person           decide where to focus their attention.         Socialtext 3.0 delivers connected collaboration with context, both           internally within the organization and externally with customers and           partners in extranet communities. It is built on a modular and integrated           architecture that enables rapid integration with other enterprise systems           and makes other enterprise applications social.    

Think Twitter, Facebook, Wikis and more all rolled up in a nice, neat appliance that I can just install behind my firewall - a CRITCAL feature for those of us in government service!

Watch the videos, read the press - I'm signing up for the 14 day trial - I'll let you know how it goes.

Monitter - Keyword Tracking of twitter

So Monitter looks pretty slick. You enter three keywords and then Monitter tracks those words in twitter and pushes the results into three columns. Each column has its own RSS feed (e-Learning, Oehlert, eLearning) and you can restrict the search by distance if you want.

Nicely done....I could see this and/or its accompanying widget being a sort of dashboard for tracking twitter feeds relevant to or from within your organization. Could we get Monitter for Yammer?

"Change 2.0: How Does e-Learning 2.0 Affect Organizational Culture?" (eLearning Guild article)

So there is this BRILLIANT piece in the Learning Solutions e-magazine from the eLearning Guild....that's actually the article by Jane Hart, "Understanding Today’s Learner."

Then there is this much less brilliant article written by some hack with an unpronounceable German-sounding last name -

"Change 2.0: How Does e-Learning 2.0 Affect Organizational Culture?" It's OK but this Oehlert guy who wrote it, kinda sketchy....

Tim O'Reilly asks the Question that Raph Koster Asked Back in February...are we working on the right things?

Raph Koster, at the last Game Developers Conference (1, 2), shocked a few people when after showing pictures of Club Penguin and Second Life - he juxtaposed those with images of Darfur and Haiti. His point was to ask why game developers are doing what they do - and if they were perhaps squandering the potential of this powerful medium in which they were engaged. Seems that Tim O'Reilly is now asking the same question of the Web 2.0 world.

At the latest Web 2.0 Expo in New York, O'Reilly asked that in the face of global warming, a growing income gap and the unprecedented financial crisis - if developing a Facebook app so that we could 'throw sheep' at each other, was the best use of our talents.

These two pieces just have me wondering - is the learning/training industry asking itself this question? Is theer any expectation that it should do so? If we do ask the question and the answer is something other than compliance training and page-turners - then how do we answer the inevitable follow-on: how do we do something more meaningful and still pay our employees and our rent?